Vampire in Atlantis

Chapter 17

Daniel finally allowed Serai to stand up when he hadn’t heard anything but the sounds of nature for at least fifteen minutes.

“Are they gone?” she whispered, brushing dirt off her hiking clothes. “Also, what was it? More vampires?”

“Yes. I thought a few shifters were with them, at first, but flying shifters would have been birds, silent or chirping or something, not talking. They were vampires, and they were clumsy amateurs. Loud and arrogant, without a clue somebody might have been here to hear them.”

“Lucky for us, surely?”

He touched her cheek and smiled at her, trying to shove the knot of fear and rage for her—for what might happen to her if they didn’t succeed—deeper in his gut. She didn’t need to know he had the slightest doubt.

“Everything is lucky for us. When we’re done with this little errand, we’ll go to Vegas.”

She laughed. “Isn’t that in the desert? With the places humans go to shove money in machines and listen to the little bell sounds?”

He shook his head. “I think that was one strange filter the Emperor put your knowledge of the world through.”

“Yes, I would agree,” she said seriously. “Who is Justin Bieber, and why is his hair poisonous to small girls?”

It was a long time before he could stop laughing hard enough to answer her.

They made good time, considering, and had hiked nearly three miles when she admitted to needing a break. She drank water and ate some bread and nuts from her pack, while he stared at her and tried not to think about how sweet her blood might taste.

It was a very unsatisfying rest break, which only got worse when she pinned him with that sapphire gaze and asked the one question he’d been praying she’d never get around to asking.

“What happened to you after you became a nightwalker? What have you been up to for the past eleven millennia?”

He stood up so fast he knocked over the rock he’d been using for a seat. “We need to get going. Definitely no time to discuss boring details of the past several thousand years.”

She put her things away in her backpack and didn’t answer him, but he could feel the weight of her disappointment—or disapproval—in her silence.

“It’s not a pretty story,” he finally said, not looking at her. Not wanting to see her face.

“I don’t want pretty. I want the truth. All I’ve ever wanted. Your history is a part of you, and I love . . . I love to hear about the past,” she said, biting her lip.

Daniel felt like the rock he’d been sitting on had just slammed into the side of his head. She loved him? Had she been about to admit to that?

No. Of course not. He was a damned fool to think it.

“Not my past,” he said flatly. “Nobody would love to hear about my past.”

“Then don’t tell me all of it. Just tell me the part that happened right after you became a nightwalker. What happened? Did it hurt? Was the mage training hard?” She slipped her hand in his so naturally that he almost didn’t notice it until they’d taken a few steps, and then a wave of warmth and peace swept through him and he tightened his fingers, never wanting to let her go.

They walked in silence for nearly ten minutes, Serai apparently content to wait for his response, while he considered what to say. Finally he shrugged. Let her hear it, then. Let her know firsthand what a monster he was. It would be easier for her to let him go when the time came.

Easier for him to leave her to a better fate, as well.

“I became a monster. There was nothing left of the Daniel you knew; he lost himself to the bloodlust and the pain of losing you.”

She flinched a little, but tightened her grip on his hand. “I’d heard it was bad at the beginning, for the newly made.”

“It’s bad enough, as far as I saw from others, but never as bad as I became, or at least that’s what they told me. I had lost you forever. I thought you were dead. I had nothing else to live for, so I didn’t bother to live. I wanted to die, but the monster’s sense of self-preservation was too strong.”

He heard her indrawn breath, but ruthlessly continued. She’d wanted to hear it. She could hear it all.

“By the time I was sane enough to think that maybe the story I’d heard was wrong, that maybe you lived, Atlantis was gone. Vanished beneath the sea. After that, I became a monster the like of which the world had never seen. For several years, I raged and rampaged, killing humans and treating them as nothing more than prey for slaughter. I went after the criminals and the rogue soldiers, those who looted and pillaged and raped. I killed them all and drank their blood and I gloried in it.”

She stopped walking, but he refused to look at her.

“You were trying to achieve some sort of justice,” she said, but he ruthlessly cut her off, before she could get carried away with some false idea of his nobility.

“I was a murderer, after vengeance. Nothing more. Don’t try to make me out to be anything heroic. It would be the worst kind of lie,” he said roughly.

“So what changed?”

He started walking again, all but dragging her along. “What do you mean?”

“What changed? That’s not who you are now, so what changed?’

He flashed back to that moment, that one crystal-clear moment in time. The moment he’d never forget.

“I met a girl who reminded me of you,” he confessed, the words almost dragged out of him.

The memory that he could never, ever forget. As if on command, it played again in his head in brilliant, heartbreaking color:

He’d attacked a small village where a gang of marauders lived, killing and maiming every man in it without regard for anything but the ever-present, voracious bloodlust, when a girl threw herself on his back and started punching him in the head. He threw her off without a thought, but when he turned, he realized that she was only a child. He never, ever killed children. Even in his madness, he’d retained that much of himself.

But in a flash of light from the fire, he realized something else: she looked like his Serai. Not exactly, not like a sister or daughter or even a cousin. But there was something in the curve of her cheek and the fall of her hair that arrested him and froze him in place.

“How can you do this? Are you a monster?” the girl cried out, but he didn’t hear her. He heard her words in Serai’s voice, and he was destroyed.

He threw all the gold in his pockets at the girl and ran. Ran, and then flew, and never stopped until he found himself deep in the middle of a forest so old and dark and deep that the humans believed it to be cursed. He opened a hole in the ground underneath an ancient tree and threw himself into it, covering himself up and losing himself to the pain.

The mage who’d turned him found him and coaxed him back to the surface. Cleaned him up and taught him a few hard truths. Told him he had a choice: study and learn and work to make the world a better place, or become one of the evil, lost ones. The first choice was the harder one.

Redemption would not be cheaply bought.

Daniel chose redemption. But a thousand years is a very long time, and although the world changed, evil remained the same. Finally his mentor gave in to despair and walked into the sunlight. On that day, Daniel chose a lesser death. He chose to put himself in a state of hibernation for a very, very long time, in hopes that perhaps the world would be different when he awoke. Better.

Worth fighting for.

He had no idea that he would sleep nine thousand years.

When he woke, the world had changed. He traveled all over it, helping where he could, studying and learning the new ways and customs and amazing technology. Unfortunately, people were still dying. But he met an unexpected group of allies: the Atlantean warriors. He didn’t bother to ask about Serai, though. Who would know anything about a girl dead for more than eleven thousand years?

Her quiet voice broke into his reverie. “But before that? You met the girl who looked like me, and then what? You . . . you fell in love?”

“What? No, I didn’t fall in love. I managed not to kill her, too, though.” He lifted her up and over a fallen tree. “Are we still on the right path?”

She closed her eyes again, for nearly a minute this time, and then nodded. “I’m so tired, though. I can still feel the Emperor, and it’s not moving. The witch hasn’t done anything with it in a while, as far as I can tell. Maybe they’re resting for the night?”

“Maybe. But those were vampires that passed us earlier, and if they are part of a more powerful vampire’s blood coven, they won’t be sleeping.”

She leaned against him briefly, then took a deep breath and started walking again. “Why would a witch be helping a vampire? Why would they want the Emperor, anyway, or even know about it?”

“Who knows? I don’t know anything much about Atlantean history, Serai, and anyway, you’re not the only one who slept most of the world away. I slept for nine thousand years, hibernating until the horrors I’d seen—the evil I’d done—could fade in my memories.”

“Did it work?”

“No,” he said, kicking a log so hard that it shattered into kindling. “No, it didn’t. But I deserve to live with the memories of what I did. It’s my own version of hell.”

“Not just bad memories, though,” she said, almost whispering. “You remembered me.”

“I did. I remembered you.” He stopped walking and roughly pulled her to him, needing to feel her in his arms. “I will always remember you, even when you have come to your senses and left me, but I promise you that you will remember me, too.”

With a desperation born of passion, he took her mouth with his own. Claimed it—claimed her—though he could never deserve to keep her. Kissed her as if he were a dying man and she the only chance at life.

“Remember this,” he said fiercely. “Remember the feel of my mouth on yours, my body against yours, when you find that perfect Atlantean man someday.”

She started to protest, but he silenced her with his lips, kissing her so hard and deep that he could almost pretend that she belonged to him and always would. It would have helped him find his way back to sanity if she’d fought him.

Instead she pulled him closer, and he was lost.

Long minutes later, he raised his head, coming back to himself enough to realize they stood unprotected in the middle of the path, and their enemies were closer than was safe. Serai clung to him, her body trembling, and he had never wanted anything as much as he wanted to strip her clothes from her and take her, bury his cock in her warm sweetness, and make her his.

His timing sucked.

“I love you,” she said.

And the bottom fell out of his world.

He opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out but a hoarse, choked noise, and then finally he made his stunned brain work and words happened. “Your timing sucks.”

Her eyes opened so wide that they were enormous in her pale face, shining like the night stars in the moonlight, and he had just enough time to realize how unbearably hurt she would be by what he’d said before she started laughing.

Serai laughed so hard she doubled over, clutching her stomach, and then she laughed some more, while he grew more and more puzzled. When she finally could breathe again, she rose on tiptoe and kissed his chin.

“Oh, my love. You are still that blacksmith at heart, aren’t you? I was afraid you were too elegant and powerful and sophisticated for me, a poor inexperienced maiden, but you are still my Daniel, aren’t you?”

He looked away from her, scanning the area, the sky, the trees, the river. Anything to avoid looking at her beautiful, innocent, hopeful face.

“I can never be your Daniel. Forget that boy, that stupid useless blacksmith. What we thought we had was a childish dream, and we’re both too old and wise to believe that dreams can come true.”

“But, Daniel—”

“No. You deserve better, and I deserve the death I was seeking the day I fell into Atlantis and found you.”

All traces of her laughter and even her smile were long gone when he dared glance at her again.

“Oh, Daniel. Older and wiser never has to mean hopeless or in despair.” She reached out to him, but he moved away and pointed to the red wall of stone curving away from them about a hundred yards off.

“I know those rocks. There’s a hidden cave with a stone structure the Sinagua built around the other side, and it faces onto a small canyon. There are stone stairs leading to spaces with enclosures even deeper in the cave, and we can rest there. The sun will be up soon, and in any event you need to rest.”

She shook her head, stubborn as usual, but before she could argue, she cried out and fell to the ground, her body twitching and jerking uncontrollably.

Regretting his harshness, he raced to her and lifted her off the ground and held her close until the spasms subsided. Why not tell her anything she wanted to hear? If she died from the damn Emperor’s magic, at least she’d have been happy for a few short hours. He grimly called himself a thousand kinds of fool until she could speak again.

“She’s using it again. The witch. The Emperor is still some distance away, but we’re gaining on it. She seems to be learning how to use it. I’m not sure how much more I can take.” A bout of coughing interrupted her and she leaned against him until it stopped, but her voice was hoarse when she continued. “Rest. You’re right. I need to rest. I can’t help any of them if I fall apart before we even find it.”

Lifting her into his arms, he strode to the cliff wall and tucked her head against his chest before he climbed the steps carved into the stone face to the cave dwelling. He didn’t let her look up until they’d moved back into the cave and away from the opening, so her fear of heights didn’t further incapacitate her. He hated to do anything that might scare her, but it wasn’t safe on the ground, especially not when the sun rose.

“Rest now, mi amara,” he said. “We don’t dare have a fire, in case the vampires have human thugs working for them who would see it.”

She nodded and slumped down against a wall, clearly exhausted beyond the point of arguing or even speaking. He pulled the blankets from his pack and made a bed of sorts for her, then lay down next to her and pulled her into his arms, so her head was pillowed on his shoulder.

“Tell me about that tower,” he said quietly, but with an undercurrent of pure steel. He would know the truth of this.

She closed her eyes, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him while she spoke. “Even the soft ground of the palace gardens is unforgiving if the fall is from a high enough place. I shattered my body.”

He inhaled sharply, feeling something inside him shatter, too, at the thought of her pain. “How did you live?”

She shrugged slightly, her eyes still closed. “How does anyone survive anything in Atlantis? When I opened my eyes, sure I was about to die, the healers were running toward me. Soon I was good as new,” she said bitterly.

“All but in your mind,” he said.

“And my heart. Please, Daniel, let it go. I can’t talk about it now.”

He kissed her—gentle, brief—and then forced himself to let it go. For her.

“Do you need anything else? Food or water?”

She didn’t answer, and he was afraid she was punishing him, but when he tilted his head to look into her eyes, she was sound asleep. Exhaustion and weakness had overcome her, and he needed to keep her safe until darkness came again and they could go on and succeed in their task. Nothing else mattered until then. Nothing.

But she loves me, a dark voice whispered deep in the recesses of his heart. She loves me, and I will never, ever give her up.

“She deserves better,” he said aloud, fully aware that he was talking to himself—out loud—and that was surely step one on the path to madness.

Mad or no, she loves me, and she is mine.

The sane part of his mind, he found, had no wish to argue, so he allowed himself to fall into a light doze, now that they were securely hidden from any view from outside.

She loved him. She loved him.

But when he slept, he dreamed of purple fire.