The Rescue

My hands were covered in blood.

Not mine. I'd checked twice, because the distinction matters when you're something that shouldn't exist.

The blood belonged to four vampires who had made the mistake of attacking their target in daylight. Who had compounded that mistake by doing it where I could see.

Who had made the fatal mistake of not knowing what I was. They'd been focused on their prey, backs turned, blades occupied. I'd had surprise and sunlight.

The fifth vampire, the one they'd been trying to kill, was staring at me like I'd grown a second head. Which, frankly, might have been less unsettling for him than what I'd actually done.

"You walked in sunlight."

His voice was old. Not old like my landlord, who wheezed about property values. Old like stone. Old like the language beneath language, the sound bedrock might make if it spoke.

"Yeah," I said, shaking gore off my fingers. One of the attackers had practically exploded when I'd taken his head. Vampire blood was darker than human, almost black, and it smelled like copper and ash.

"That's impossible."

"Tell that to my tan lines."

I shouldn't be cracking jokes. I should be running. I'd just outed myself to a vampire, a very old, very powerful one, judging by how hard his attackers had fought to kill him. The smart move was to disappear. New city. New identity. New careful, invisible life.

But he was hurt.

They'd caught him in the parking garage of a tower in the financial district, the kind of place vampires used for daytime business because the underground levels never saw natural light. He'd been leaving when they'd struck, silver chains, poison blades, the whole anti-vampire arsenal.

If I hadn't been walking past the garage entrance at the exact wrong moment, if I hadn't heard the snarl of predators hunting something bigger than them, if I hadn't moved before my brain caught up...

He'd be dead.

Instead, four vampires were dissolving into ash around us, and I was standing in a shaft of afternoon sunlight like some kind of fever dream.

"Who are you?"

The question was quieter this time. Not demanding. Almost... wondering.

"Nobody important."

I turned to leave. Made it three steps before his voice stopped me.

"You're a hybrid."

The word hit me like a physical blow. Twenty-eight years of hiding. Twenty-eight years of staying invisible, staying unknown, staying alive because no one knew what I was.

And this ancient thing named it in one breath.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You do." He was struggling to stand, using the concrete pillar for support. Silver chains had burned into his wrists. The poison was still working through his system, slowing even his immortal healing. "Half vampire. Half human. A daywalker."

"There's no such thing."

I knew it was a lie. He knew it was a lie. My whole existence was a lie I told myself every morning when I woke up and pretended I was just a woman with a night job and a blood condition.

"The law says you should be killed on sight." He was moving toward me now, slow and deliberate. Not predatory, curious. "Every hybrid found has been executed. You are an abomination against the purity of the bloodline."

A roar filled my ears, my own pulse, loud and insistent. Human heart, it still beat, still pumped warm blood through veins that shouldn't exist.

"Then kill me."

I don't know why I said it. Exhaustion, maybe. Twenty-eight years of hiding is a long time to be alone.

He stopped. Studied me the way a scholar studies a language he thought was dead.

"You just saved my life."

"Mistake."

"Perhaps." A ghost of something crossed his ancient face. "Or perhaps not."

The sun was still streaming through the garage entrance. I could feel it on my skin, warm, gentle, nothing like the burning death it would be to him.

"Come with me."

"Why? So you can execute me properly?"

"Because someone just tried very hard to kill me, and you're the only creature I've met in two thousand years who could have stopped them." His gaze didn't waver. "I have questions. You have answers. And I suspect we both have enemies we haven't identified yet."

Two thousand years.

I'd heard rumors of the ancient ones. Vampires so old they'd forgotten what humanity felt like. They ruled from shadows within shadows, making laws that shaped the supernatural world.

I'd just saved one of them.

God, I was an idiot.

"If you're going to kill me, just do it here." I spread my arms, let the sunlight fall across my blood-covered skin. "At least I'll die warm."

He studied me for a long moment. His face went still, careful, the way someone handles a thing they're afraid to break.

"I'm not going to kill you."

"The law..."

"I wrote the law." His voice was soft, terrifying. "Two thousand years ago, after wars that nearly destroyed us all. I wrote every word of the bloodline edicts. I have executed every hybrid brought before me for two millennia."

He stepped closer. The sunlight stopped inches from his feet, he couldn't come closer without burning.

"And you," he said, "are the first one who ever made me question it."

I should have run.

Every survival instinct I had, human and vampire alike, was screaming at me to flee. To disappear into the daylight world where he couldn't follow. To become invisible again and stay that way.

But I was tired.

So tired of being no one. Of hiding what I was. Of pretending the hunger didn't exist, the strength wasn't there, the other half of me wasn't real.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Valdris." A pause. "King Valdris, if we're being formal. Though I suspect formality means very little to someone who just killed my assassins in a parking garage."

King.

Of course. Of course I'd saved the king of all vampires from a daylight ambush. Of course the one time I broke my own rules, it was for the being who could destroy me with a single word.

"Zoya," I said. "My name is Zoya."

"Zoya." He repeated it slowly, as though learning its weight. "The daywalker who saved a king. What an impossible thing you are."

"Story of my life."

He almost smiled. Almost.

"Come with me," he said again. "Not as a prisoner. Not yet. Consider it... protective custody. Someone is hunting creatures like you. Someone who just tried to kill the only being who could change the laws that condemn you."

I looked at the ash piles that used to be four vampires. At the ancient king standing at the edge of shadow, asking an abomination to trust him.

The smart move was still to run.

But the smart move would leave me alone forever. Hiding forever. Waiting to die unknown in a world that didn't know I existed.

"If you're lying," I said, "if this is a trap..."

"Then you'll walk into the sunlight and I'll burn trying to follow." He didn't look away. "You have advantages I cannot match. But I have resources you cannot imagine. Perhaps we can be useful to each other."

Twenty-eight years of hiding.

Maybe it was time to stop.

"Fine," I said. "But I'm not calling you Your Majesty."

That almost-smile again. "I wouldn't dream of asking."

I stepped out of the sunlight and into the shadows.

Into whatever came next.