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herself. Lying so close beside her, he could inhale her scent, both floral and spicy, without the distraction of other smells. He breathed in deeply, tasting the air around her: the heat of her skin, the unique signature of the blood pulsing through her veins, and the faint female tang that stirred his body in a way he wanted very much to ignore.
    Once again, as at the beginning, he was captivated by her beauty, her natural grace, the harmony of her movements. Not even the bulky camouflage fatigues could conceal how extraordinary she was. Her sleek, slender figure, strong and utterly female at the same time, was as perfect as that of the most beautiful Opir female. Her hair was the color of her namesake’s fur, her skin honey-warm in the light of the dying sun, her green eyes with their oval, almost catlike pupils vivid and fearless.
    If it hadn’t been for all those compelling qualities and a hundred more uncounted, he might have continued to forget that he had once been capable of wanting a woman. But she had made it impossible for him to take any further comfort in that denial. Or in the solitude he had learned to embrace over the past two decades.
    Lifting his head a little, Damon peered in the direction from which the shots had come. The shooter wasn’t in the valley; Damon estimated that he or she must be hidden somewhere in the hills on the other side.
    “Do you see anything?” Alexia whispered, unslinging her rifle from her shoulder.
    Once again he found himself focused on her instead of the danger confronting them. He remembered the first time he had met her gaze, the brief flash of uncertainty and surprise he had glimpsed in her eyes. It had been obvious that she, unlike her partner, had never met one of his kind before.
    He had been careful to watch her reaction when he’d told her about the dead Council agent, hoping she would slip and reveal some knowledge of a previous Aegis mission to investigate the colony. In spite of her defiance, he could tell she knew nothing.
    Perhaps she and her partner were the first. But he wasn’t foolish enough to believe she wouldn’t use her time with him to augment her agency’s knowledge of the Council’s activities in the Zone.
    That was good. As long as Alexia was asking questions and he kept her satisfied with vague answers, she would be less likely to realize what he was doing. The fact that her partner had broken away was a problem, but not an insoluble one. Not as long as Damon kept his head.
    And kept himself from feeling.
    “Our would-be executioner is firing from the east,” he said, belatedly answering Alexia’s question.
    “A single sniper,” she said. “From the colony?” She looked sideways at him, eyes narrowed. “It’s still light. Do they have any Daysiders down there?”
    Damon was genuinely surprised at the question, though he had no intention of offering the real reason why that was virtually impossible.
    “Unlikely,” he said.
    “But a Nightsider would be taking a chance emerging so early,” she said, watching him out of the corner of her eye. “Even protective gear doesn’t ease most vampires’ fear of sunlight.”
    She waited for Damon to answer, but he held his silence. She shifted her weight and rested her chin on her forearms.
    “It wouldn’t be one of the colony’s humans unless he or she is under the direct control of a Bloodmaster,” she said. “You suggested the Nightsiders who founded the settlement were the kind who wouldn’t be missed leaving Erebus. Are you sure there are no Bloodmasters down there?”
    “That is what I am here to find out,” Damon said.
    A second round of shots pierced the air above them, almost close enough to graze Damon’s scalp. He grabbed Alexia and rolled them both down the slight incline behind them, fetching up against a clump of scrub oaks with Alexia’s chest and hips and legs atop his, her rifle trapped beneath him.
    She lay panting in his arms for a moment, obviously surprised by his