Yield the Night by Annette Marie Read Free Book Online

“So should I thank you for attacking my Consulate last night and kidnapping me?”
    “It’s not like that, Piper—” Mona began anxiously.
    Walter held up a hand. “She has every right to be upset. From her perspective, we have not been allies of any kind.”
    That was an understatement. Piper folded her arms and waited, anxiety slowly churning in her stomach.
    “Piper, we want to change your perspective. In spite of recent events, we are your allies. We are the allies of every human and haemon. We want to make the world a better, safer place. With daemons here, spreading fear and corrupting our attempts to rebuild, our progress as a society has stalled.”
    He gestured toward the window at the back of the room. A downtown vista, though of what city she wasn’t sure, stretched out as far as she could see. From above, the impression was overwhelmingly drab and rundown.
    “Not since the Dark Ages has humanity gone so long with so little progress. Seventy years. What kind of progress could we make if we removed the outside threats from our world?”
    Piper pulled a disbelieving face. “You’re blaming daemons for our lack of progress since the war? Based on what?”
    “Cities. When have you ever heard of great innovations coming from tiny, isolated towns? We need people to live in the cities again but as long as daemons are here, they won’t.”
    “There are lots of people in cities.”
    “No. Statistically there are very few. Over seventy percent of the population resides in rural communities and towns with no more than 5,000 inhabitants.”
    Piper grimaced and swallowed her arguments. Might as well let him finish his spiel.
    “People are afraid of daemons. Too many are unwilling to work or live in cities where daemons reside. Remember, Piper, outside well-trained Consuls, people can’t recognize daemons. To a human, anyone could be a daemon waiting for a chance to prey on them.”
    “Daemons aren’t vampires,” she said shortly. “They don’t—”
    “They prey on humans more than you’d like to admit, but that is beside the point. Humans believe daemons are a threat to them—and they aren’t wrong—so they stay away. If we remove daemons from the cities, people will return. We can rebuild the infrastructure, improve the power grid, kick-start the economy. Innovation and progress will begin again. As people return to the cities and society begins to function, higher education will once more become possible. We can reverse this slide back into the middle ages where the common people are nothing but ignorant farmers.”
    That sounded all grand and everything, but she didn’t believe daemons were the root of the problem. She couldn’t say what the root was, but without hard facts, all she saw was a scapegoat.
    “That is our goal. We are not extremists out to destroy the daemon race. We simply want them to return to their worlds while we put ours back together. When things are stable again, we can work out fair and controlled ways for daemons to visit again.”
    “Let’s say you did get them all to leave, how would you control their visits? How would you even know they were here?” It wasn’t like policing a land border; daemons could drop in through ley lines anywhere on the planet.
    “Some of our brightest minds have developed new technologies to help identify ley line disturbances.” Walter smiled benevolently. “But I’m sure you’re wondering what this has to do with you. Because we don’t intend to bar daemons from Earth entirely—nor would that be feasible—we need to create a system to control the daemons who do come here. Such a system does not currently exist.”
    She frowned. “The Consulates—”
    “The Consulate system doesn’t work, Piper,” Walter interrupted. “You know this.”
    She flinched. She used to believe wholly in the Consulates. Daemons needed them for safe accommodations on Earth, and they needed the Consuls as fair ambassadors between them and the human