Vampire in Atlantis

Chapter 9

Daniel crouched in place, clinging to the ceiling of the cavern, not even bothering to try to appear remotely human. So the rebels feared him. They should fear him. He’d run into the sunlight after Serai, only falling back to the healing darkness of the cave when Jack, of all people, had shoved his burning body out of the sun’s deadly reach. Then, his body still smoking, enraged by the pain but most of all by his own helplessness—yet again—to help the woman he loved, Daniel had systematically destroyed everything he could get his hands on.

The two men who’d rushed in to try to stop him would regret that act of foolishness for a very long time. Quinn had finally thrown her hands up in disgust and left him to what she’d termed his “childish temper tantrum.”

He had a shameful feeling she might have been right, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but getting to Serai. He knew she was safe; Jack had followed her and was standing guard near her in tiger form, which probably made Serai feel safer than she would have felt had a man unknown to her offered to do so.

It figured. Daniel had spent his entire life in love with a woman who felt safer with a wild jungle cat than with a person. There was a lesson in there somewhere, but he’d be damned if he could figure out what it was.

He laughed humorlessly and dropped down to land on the floor. He’d be damned anyway. Didn’t the religious folk say vampires had no souls? His brief hope that he’d found salvation had been as foolish as it had been short-lived. He’d found a woman who wanted nothing to do with him—who believed him capable of amputating a man’s hand in a simple fight.

Well. Of course he was capable of just that, but he wouldn’t . . . he didn’t . . . at least, not to allies. That would have to be good enough. The only thing keeping him from descending into irretrievable madness was that she’d refused to speak to Reisen, too. Once Quinn had followed Serai and explained about Reisen’s hand, Serai had, according to Quinn, shot a withering look at Reisen and demanded by what right he had attacked her companion.

Reisen had pleaded with her to hear his side, but Serai had ignored him as if he didn’t exist and asked Quinn for a little peace. Quinn had agreed, Jack had volunteered, Serai had asked for him to resume tiger form, and all of that had happened nearly two hours ago.

The longest two hours of Daniel’s life.

Quinn walked back into the cavern and stood, hands on hips, and shot a challenging stare at Daniel. “So? Who’s cleaning up this mess? I liked that cake, too.”

He looked around the area and realized that bits and pieces of food, drinks, and the table and chairs lay everywhere. One table leg was embedded in the ceiling. He didn’t actually remember doing that. He’d always been good at repressing bad memories and making them disappear, but as for the detritus of a destroyed meal, he was as useless as . . . No.

Making things disappear. A long-buried memory of nightwalker guild magic surfaced, and he chased it to its source. One of the darker lessons of the guild. When the bloodlust conquered reason, the evidence of murder must be made to disappear.

Humans with wooden stakes had outnumbered the nightwalkers then, too.

He closed his eyes and called on powers he hadn’t used in a very, very long time. As Serai had reminded him, once he had been a master mage in the Nightwalker Guild. Some little bit of that magic should remain, even though he hadn’t used it in thousands of years. What did he need magic for, when ordinary vampire strength had been sufficient?

This, though, was a more delicate task than breaking heads or rescuing humans. He searched for the thin line of silvery power, buried deep in his consciousness, and carefully lifted it with his mind. “Aidez moi,” he whispered. Help me.

The language spoken didn’t matter, but he’d always liked French for magic. He sent the silver ribbon of power out into and around the room, and the debris vanished. Quinn shivered violently when the magic passed over and through her, but said nothing until the task was done.

“Nice,” she said dryly. “You can always fall back on a housekeeping job if the vampire politician thing doesn’t work out.”

“I’m no longer Primator. I quit.”

“Why?”

He sliced a hand through the air to cut off the questions. He should have known better. This was Quinn.

“I’m an emotional empath, you know that. Even without the blood bond,” she said. “I can feel your pain at not being able to go after her. Why don’t you fill the twenty minutes or so until the sun sets by telling me about her?”

“Why?” He sped through the room so fast that she surely couldn’t see him. He stopped mere inches from her. “Why do you care?”

She tilted her head and looked up at him. “Because I’m your friend, you idiot. One of the few you have, I’m guessing. So tell me about her. How did you meet?”

He glared at her, which had no effect, and considered tying her up and gagging her, which wouldn’t be worth it. She was right, anyway. His internal clock told him he had twenty-one minutes exactly until it was safe for him to step out of the damned cavern.

“Fine. Let me tell you a fairy tale. This one is called ‘The Princess and the Blacksmith,’” he said caustically.

She smiled and dropped down to sit cross-legged on the floor. “Oh, good. I hope it has a happy ending.”

“I seriously doubt it. Okay, let’s waste both of our time. Once upon a time,” he began, “long, long ago . . .”

Eleven thousand years ago, Atlantis

Our hero, let’s call him Daniel, was a young apprentice blacksmith on a life-changing voyage. He’d traveled with his master to the home of the most wondrous metals in the known world—Atlantis. He found magic in the people, the land, and the metal itself. A marvelous metal called orichalcum sparkled in both day and night as if the sun’s rays and moonbeams each had poured their light into its very essence. Daniel, who was young and foolish, had believed he could be content for the rest of his life if only he could have the opportunity in his free time, when the day’s work was done, to create works of art and maybe even jewelry with such a metal. Similar to copper and silver, orichalcum was rarer and more pure than either and more valuable than both.

Of course, that which is rare and valuable is coveted by men, and the value of orichalcum was one of the reasons why so many kings and armies had attacked the Seven Isles more and more frequently as of late, causing all of Atlantis to be in a state of armed defense. But orichalcum wasn’t the only reason for the attacks, or even the most crucial. Because when men came to attack and conquer and plunder, they mainly came for another, far more primal and brutal reason. They came to abduct the most sought after prizes of all: Atlantean women for their wives.

“Women are still thought of as chattel in some places in the world,” Quinn interjected bitterly. “Eleven thousand years later, and still the same bullshit.”

Daniel aimed a long look at her. “Do you want me to tell this or not?”

She nodded, and he continued.

When Daniel first met Serai, he understood all of it. She was so beautiful that the gods themselves were rumored to want her. He met her when she came to pick up a piece of jewelry in the shop next to the smithy where he was newly apprenticed. They struck up a friendship, all the more intense for being forbidden. Serai was almost a princess; as the daughter of a powerful, very rich Atlantean lord, who stood high in the ranks of Atlantis’s elders, she was destined for a very good match, perhaps even a royal one. Her father would never allow her to become involved with a lowly metalworker apprentice.

Daniel’s new mentor, the master jeweler and metalworker who owned both the shop and the smithy, was an eccentric man. He only worked in the shop at night since he’d hired a full-time blacksmith for the smithy, and he left Daniel to craft jewelry and run the shop during the day, claiming that he knew an honest man when he saw one and Daniel was just that.

The final—and most deadly—attack came before anyone in Atlantis expected it. Daniel was alone with Serai in the shop, her bodyguards across the lane having a mug of ale on a hot summer’s day. The armies rode through the capital city so fast that Serai’s bodyguards died in the street trying to get to her. Daniel hid Serai in a hiding place underneath the floor of the shop and then tried to fight off the looters who targeted the shop for its treasures. The thieving soldiers of the marauding army stabbed him, struck him in the head, and left him for dead where he fell, lying over the trapdoor to the hiding place, covering it with his body.

During the long hours that followed, until day turned to night, Serai was trapped in the dark, unable to move the trapdoor with Daniel’s weight on top of it. The worst part? She wasn’t alone. When night fell, her suspicions turned to fact: the master jeweler rose from his day sleep. He was a senior mage of the Nightwalker Guild; those who fed on the blood of willing humans. He pushed the trapdoor up, and Serai rushed to Daniel’s side.

But it was too late. Daniel was so near death that he couldn’t hear her; his body icy cold. Only the faint rise and fall of his chest told them that Daniel had any life left in him at all. The Nightwalker mage offered Serai Daniel’s final choice: would she allow him to turn Daniel into a vampire, or should they let him die?

She chose life for Daniel, and he spent the next several thousand years trying not to hate her for it, since she had escaped into death without him. But by the time she made that fateful choice, the Atlantean armies had beaten back the invaders, and Serai’s father’s guards burst into the shop and found her. They took her, fighting them all the way, away from the shop, away from Daniel, and away from any future that he and Serai might have hoped for. By the time Daniel was transformed from a nearly dead human into a nightwalker, Atlantis had vanished—destroyed—and all trace of it had sunken beneath the sea, or so everyone had believed.

He finished his pathetic tale and looked up, expecting Quinn to mock him for his weakness. What he saw instead shocked him. Quinn, the tough rebel leader who’d challenged monsters and battled horrors that would have made other humans curl up and beg to die, had tears in her eyes.

“Don’t,” he said harshly. “Don’t cry for me. I don’t deserve it.”

“Maybe I’m crying for both of us,” she said quietly. “You know I can never be with Alaric. The best I can hope for is at least I take a bunch of the bad guys with me when I meet my early and violent end.”

“A little melodramatic, Quinn.”

“A lot true.” She shrugged. “You have a chance, though. Go find her. Help her. Be who she needs and save her from all of this. Most of us don’t get a second chance, Daniel. Don’t waste yours.”

An icy wind swept into the cavern, interrupting whatever he’d been about to say, and Daniel threw himself in front of Quinn to protect her from this new danger, but it was only Alaric. Daniel almost laughed, even as the thought entered his mind. Only Alaric.

The priest was Quinn’s biggest danger of all.

Daniel felt the click inside his being that signaled the setting sun, but he waited to be sure Quinn—his friend—would be okay. “Are you all right with him?”

Alaric made a low sound, deep in his throat, and his eyes glowed a hot green.

“Save it, Priest,” Daniel advised. “You don’t want to go up against me. Nightwalker Guild. Senior mage. Look it up sometime.”

Quinn smiled a little. “Seriously. He’s hell on picnic tables. Go ahead, Daniel. I’m fine.”

Daniel didn’t wait any longer, especially since he knew the priest would give his own life to protect Quinn, and the two of them probably wanted some privacy anyway, to work out their own problems. If there was any possibility they could work them out, Quinn deserved that chance.

Not his business. He launched himself into the air and flew out of the cavern, soaring through the cool dusk sky to where he knew Serai waited. He could feel her, and he needed to find her. Now. And make her understand that she could never, ever leave him again until she was safe.

Then she could rip his heart out. Not before.

Oak Creek Canyon

As the sun finally sank beneath the horizon, Serai wrapped her arms around her knees and prepared to face the music.

Or face the vampire, to be exact. Although she liked the expression “face the music.” She’d quite liked “the bee’s knees,” too, but that one had fallen out of use some time ago. She realized her mind was racing around random irrelevant subjects, but she couldn’t help it. She’d spent the past couple of hours trying to contact the Emperor, worrying about what to do next, and feeling like an utter fool over her mistake about Reisen’s hand.

One thing was clear: she was done screaming like a foolish girl. It was time to gear up for battle, as her father used to say, although of course he’d spent time as an actual officer in the king’s guard, so maybe his meaning had been different. She needed to be strong. What other woman on the planet had so much knowledge of life, after all? Even though she hadn’t experienced any of it.

“I can do this,” she said firmly, and the sleeping tiger opened one bright green eye and looked at her.

Before she could explain what she could do, or even draw her next breath, Daniel was there. Just suddenly there, as if he’d dropped out of the sky, which, on reflection, she realized he had. He pulled her into his arms and held her so tightly she couldn’t breathe.

“Never again,” he demanded, his voice rough. “Never leave me again. Never run into danger when I can’t follow you. If something happened to you . . .”

Jack rolled to all four legs and snarled at Daniel, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it, since he scratched his ear with one giant paw and then ambled off, probably to find Quinn.

Serai leaned into Daniel, wanting nothing more than to curl up in his arms and hide from the rest of the world and her duty. She pretended, just for a few moments, that they were an ordinary couple who could afford the time to visit a lovely place and hold each other. Play tourist. Grow old together.

He’d never grow old, though, and she might die any minute, if they didn’t find the Emperor. She reluctantly pulled away from him.

“I’m sorry. About Reisen. I should have trusted you. I’ve been stupid, but that’s over,” she said, squaring her shoulders.

His eyes were perfectly, completely black with some suppressed emotion. Probably disgust. “Never apologize to me. Never. I should have been more careful; I should have—”

“I can feel it,” she interrupted, as another wave of pain struck, biting hard. “I can feel the Emperor. We can track it. It’s not that far away.”