Hunting Daylight (9781101619032) (4 page)

He’d forgotten how pretty his wife looked in sunlight. He watched her rise from the sand, dress billowing around her long legs. She’d gotten pregnant before he’d become a vampire, and their baby was the very last part of him that was human. Caro had loved him enough to embrace the night. Not once had she mentioned the cost of procuring his blood. Nor had she complained about the shabby dresses she and Vivi wore. A burning sensation moved behind his eyelids, but he had stared at Caro until his vision narrowed to a pinpoint. He’d groped his way back to the bathroom. Even though he hadn’t been able to see a bloody thing, he’d released a breath that he hadn’t known he was holding, and something had eased inside him.

Now he stretched out in the tub and listened to the small, irreplaceable sounds that made up their lives. The distant grind of a diesel generator. Wind chimes on the veranda.
The clink of pottery and silver in the plastic drainer as Caro washed dishes.

The kitchen stove was on the other side of the bathroom wall, and he smelled buttered prawns and
matata
, a peanutty clam stew. Cinnamon drenched the air, and he knew she’d made a green maize pudding, Vivi’s favorite. He caught another scent, metallic and salty—Caro had prepared him a going-away drink, blood ice frappé.

He heard footsteps in the hall, and a moment later the bathroom door opened. Caro walked in, blond hair tumbling over her shoulders, her cotton dress backlit from the hall sconce. Jude’s gaze swept over the faint outline of her legs, and then he looked up at her face. God, those cheekbones. She had never looked more beautiful.

“I’m worried about the generator,” she said. “It’s making that funny noise again.”

“I’ll check it before I leave.” He got out of the tub. “Where’s Vivi?”

“Napping.” Caro lit a candle and set it on the counter. The flame cast a burnished glow over her hair, sending up a dazzle of gold light. “We’ve got a little time before she wakes.”

He was hoping she’d say that. He lifted a pile of blankets and pillows, dropped them on the floor, then turned on the faucets. While the tub filled, he gently pressed Caro against the wall and kissed her. She tasted of salt and mango. He cupped the back of her head, his fingers sliding through her hair. Her body pushed against him, making his breath come faster and faster.

In the candlelight, her pupils were huge, showing an edge of silver-blue irises.

He looked down at her. “Are you still my girl?”

“For now,” she said, a hint of a smile in her voice.

Since they’d gotten married, this question and answer had become a teasing invocation, a lighthearted litany that moved between them like music.

He helped her undress, and then his clothes came off just as fast. They climbed into the tub, water sloshing around them, and eased down into the steam. Low inside him, a tight knot of pleasure loosened.

She reached for the soap. “I packed you some sunblock and—”

He silenced her with another kiss, and the soap she was holding thumped against the porcelain bottom of the tub. The heat from her body seeped into his chest and surged into his belly. A small humming sound began in her throat, and her breath hit his shoulder in warm spurts. He wasn’t inside her, but she was already coming, the way she always did. One of the lovelier side effects of his vampirism—and her hybridism—was the one Caro loved best: transcendent sex.

She pulled back a little, her breasts bobbing in the water, nipples taut. “A bathtub has so many functions,” she said a little breathlessly. “It’s a place to wash. And a place to sleep.”

“That’s true, lass,” he said, emphasizing the last word, a Yorkshire endearment that never failed to make her smile.

“A tub is also a place to make love.” Her lips curved as she slipped her hand under the water and found him. A tingle rippled through his flanks. He shut his eyes, concentrating on the pressure of her fingertips. He loved how
she gave her full attention to a task, whether it was making love, squeezing a lemon, or theorizing about heretics in the medieval church; history had been her passion before she’d gotten mixed up with vampires.

She dipped her shoulders under the water, and her damp hair floated around him like gilded seaweed. She was a mermaid who’d slipped out of her glossy sheath, her legs long and graceful, beckoning him to swim inside her. When he entered her, she drew in a mouthful of air, as if she were learning to breathe for the first time.

A long while later, while the tub refilled, Jude’s keen hearing picked up sounds in Vivi’s room. He heard her whimper, and then the mattress squeaked beneath her tiny body.

“Vivi’s having another nightmare,” he said.

“Poor baby.” Caro got out of the tub and dried off.

“Why is she having so many bad dreams?” Jude asked.

Caro didn’t answer. As she slipped on her dress, three lines cut across her forehead. Then she hurried out of the bathroom. A few moments later, Vivi settled down.

Jude pulled the stopper out of the drain and lay back, listening to the water swirl down the pipe. Vivi’s nightmares had begun two weeks ago, right after he accepted that job. Was there a connection? Many hybrids had prescient dreams, including Caro, but it was impossible to know if Vivi had inherited this alarming talent.

When Caro had gotten pregnant, her half-immortal chromosomes had collided with Jude’s then-mortal ones, and they’d produced a quarter-vampire baby. Some
immortals believed that a hybrid baby was mixed up in an eighth-century prophecy. Images had been found in worldwide frescoes and cave drawings, all of which had been created hundreds of years apart. The art was always the same: a war between humans and skeletons and a baby in a gilded cage. Ancient codices, including one that had been excluded from the Bible, predicted that a one-quarter-vampire baby would be instrumental in the salvation or destruction of the immortals. A small, fanatic group of vampires believed that Vivi was this child.

One baby, two opposing concepts, two possible outcomes. Either way, Jude couldn’t decide if this prophecy referred to God’s judgment on a subspecies or if it meant that a subspecies would pass judgment on an innocent child.

No parent wanted to hear this. Jude and Caro certainly hadn’t. Three years ago, on a sweltering night in Manhattan, Vivi had been born prematurely. She’d been rushed into the neonatal intensive care unit at Lenox Hill Hospital. A valve in her heart wouldn’t close, and each time she cried, her blood flowed in the opposite direction, turning her body a dusky purple-blue.

Jude and Caro had stood next to the NICU window, watching their baby scream in the oxygen tank, her fists and feet the color of ripe plums. Wires and tubes snaked around her tiny body. Jude had already received death threats from a group of immortal Egyptian monks—the brothers of the Sinai Cabal had turned Jude into a vampire, and in return, they’d forced him to belong to their guild. But they’d really wanted to steal his then-unborn child.

The nurses had let Caro hold Vivi for a moment. “She can’t be the only quarter-vampire in diapers,” Caro had
whispered, her hand caught around the baby-shoe necklace.

“Let’s hope not,” he’d whispered back. But he wasn’t sure; hybrids were so rare.

“Did my genes cause the heart defect?” Caro’s eyes filmed with tears.

“No, honey.” He put his arm around her, trying to think of a nonscientific way to explain Vivi’s condition. Patent ductus arteriosis wasn’t all that uncommon. Before birth, the fetus’s blood flows in one direction, thanks to a valve that stays open. This valve closes within three days after the baby is born. But Vivi’s hadn’t. Her blood flowed the wrong way when she cried, and that was why she was so blue.

After a moment, he said, “A valve in our baby’s heart was supposed to close after birth. Sometimes it takes longer with preemies. Let’s don’t give up yet.”

That night, their vampire friend, Raphael Della Rocca, flew in from Italy to be with them. He was tall, blond, and fine looking. Richer than the pope. As Vivi’s godfather, Raphael had brought in security guards and a world-famous pediatric cardiologist. Dr. Attenburg had admitting privileges at Lenox Hill, and he was sympathetic to the Barretts’ need for privacy.

But Vivi’s heart valve didn’t close. When she was six days old, she underwent open-heart surgery, followed by an extended stay in the neonatal unit. Vivi’s blood showed an increased amount of monoclonal antibodies, a protein that acts like warriors in the immune system. The human pediatricians fretted over various diseases, but Dr. Attenburg told Jude not to worry.

“Hybrid children often have benign blood conditions,” he said. “Besides, Vivi’s hematocrit and white blood cell count values are normal. She’ll be fine.”

A few weeks later, Jude and Caro brought home a pink, healthy baby and an astronomical hospital bill—it is nearly impossible for vampires to obtain health insurance, since the forms require sensitive information. However, Jude and Caro had started their marriage with several million euros, and they’d settled the bill. Far more worrisome was the Sinai Cabal. Jude always expected an undead version of Rumpelstiltskin to appear at his and Caro’s Upper East Side apartment, demanding they surrender
l’enfant terrible
, the cabal’s rude dysphemism for Vivi.

The Barretts left New York and flew to Prague, where they stayed with Caro’s beloved uncle Nigel, an undead archaeologist. Uncle Nigel was jovial and sensible. He never failed to make Caro laugh, and he was the only one who could soothe Vivi’s colic.

But a few months later, threatening letters from the Sinai Cabal started to jam Uncle Nigel’s mailbox. The Barretts moved to Amsterdam. A few months later they flew to Brussels.

They always traveled at night, and sometimes the airports and cities ran together. Madrid, Lisbon, Santiago, Auckland, Kyoto, Stockholm, Vienna, San Francisco, Zürich. Caro spoke all of the Romance languages, including some Bulgarian, and Jude knew enough German and Russian to get by, so they could negotiate with landlords and taxi drivers. However, it required money to be
fugitives, especially when one of them required expensive black market blood. The Barretts had literally flown into a financial maelstrom. Jude couldn’t shake the feeling that they were moving in other ways, too, further and further from the tranquillity that Caro had craved.

For now the money problems are over
, he told himself, sinking lower into the claw-foot tub,
thanks to the Al-Dîn Corporation
.

The bathroom door opened again, and Caro tiptoed inside.

“Vivi’s fine,” she said. “She was dreaming about bats. I wish they wouldn’t roost outside her window.”

He frowned. “Is she all right?”

“Yes. She went right back to sleep.”

Jude switched off the taps. Then he opened his arms. “Come here, beautiful.”

While the water splashed around us, I snuggled against Jude. A tiny ribbon of blood trailed down my neck and curved around my breast.

“Are you all right, lass?” Jude asked, pulling me closer.

“Mmm-hmm.” I smoothed my finger over his throat, where scabs were already starting to form around the tooth marks I’d made. Sometimes when we made love, he couldn’t resist giving me a nip. And sometimes I bit him. There’s just an undeniably erotic connection between vampires and teeth.