Vampire in Atlantis

Chapter 26

Daniel and Serai hiked steadily, making better progress than they had thus far, until nearly dawn, when he called for a break.

“We’ll need to stop soon and find a place to rest.” He scanned the area for one of the many caves that would give him sufficient darkness to avoid the deadly rays of the sun.

Serai kept hiking, not even slowing down. “I’m not tired.”

“Nor am I, but unless you like your companions slightly flambéed, we need to get out of the sun.”

She instantly stopped walking and whirled around. “I’m sorry, Daniel. I wasn’t thinking. I just—we’re so close, and I can feel the Emperor in my brain, pounding and pounding its call, and—”

“I know. I’m sorry I can’t help you in the daylight. If you have changed your mind and want to call Conlan and Ven, you know I think it’s a good idea.”

“No,” she said, not even hesitating. “I still don’t trust them.”

“What about Reisen?”

She shook her head. “I’ve tried several times to contact him to see if they’re well. If Melody survived. But he won’t answer me.”

“Or he can’t answer you,” Daniel said grimly. “Neither option is good for us.”

She put her hands on his shoulders and looked up at him with nothing but trust in her eyes. “We can do this. We can. We’ll rest for the day and find the Emperor tonight.”

“If it’s still here to be found,” he said grimly. “We don’t know when they’re going to move it, Serai. We need to contact Ven and Conlan, now. Too much—too many lives—depend on us finding that stone for us to wait a single minute longer.”

She sighed and moved away from him, saying nothing, but she raised her face to the sky and closed her eyes. A long moment later, she inhaled sharply and opened her eyes.

“There’s no response. They’re gone.”

“That’s impossible. They wouldn’t have just left, not with the Emperor lost and your life and those other women’s lives on the line. Try again.”

She did, but then shook her head. This time she looked a little frightened. “They’re gone, Daniel. Either dead or gone back to Atlantis, or somewhere else that is far out of my range.”

“What is your range?”

She shrugged. “Perhaps a thousand miles, in current measurements? More or less.”

“That’s pretty impressive. And you’re sure? Absolutely sure?”

“Yes. There is nothing. It’s different from Reisen; I can feel his presence but he won’t answer or has his mental communication pathway shut to all messages, not just mine. But there is no trace of Conlan, Ven, or the Nereid at all.”

Daniel put his arms around her and pulled her close, unable to resist comforting her.

“I can call the portal, if you’re sure we need them,” she murmured, her breath warm against his neck.

He tried very hard to concentrate on facts and the mission at hand, but the reality of her soft warmth against his body was knocking all of his brain cells out of his head as his blood rushed south.

“Portal?” He kissed her cheek, and her nose, and her other cheek, before taking her mouth. Heat rushed through him, a conflagration so intense he almost thought he had been caught in the sun, from her touch and the way she responded to him.

“Sun. Need to get out of the open,” he managed, when he could make himself stop kissing her. “Can you call the portal from inside the cave?”

“Of course,” she said. “Which cave?”

“There.” He pointed to an opening that nature had carved into the face of the rock wall curving away from them on the left, and the rough stone footholds that the Sinagua had added centuries ago to nature’s handiwork. “Can you climb that?”

She flashed a wicked grin at him. “Of course. Especially now, with your magical blood inside me.”

He didn’t have time to think of any coherent response to that before she was racing across the ground and then almost flying up the stairs to the cave. At the top, she turned and looked at him, still standing where she’d left him.

“Coming or not?”

Drops of water splashed on his head, and he turned his face up to the sky, welcoming the first rain they’d had since beginning the quest. Morning showers didn’t last long in Sedona this time of year, he’d noticed, and he should take advantage of this one. He flew up to the cave, not bothering with the stairs, and immediately pulled the empty water bottles out of the pack, uncapped them, and set them on the ledge.

“Luckily they have wide mouths. They should fill easily enough,” he said. “Thankfully it’s finally raining. We were out of water.”

Serai looked at him, then up at the sky, and then down at the water bottles. Then she leaned against the wall of the cave and started laughing.

“Are you losing touch with reality?” he asked cautiously. “I know you’re exhausted, and this is very difficult, and the burden on you—”

“Daniel. You just told me you’re thankful it started raining.”

“Yes.”

“You just told me, one of Poseidon’s own, that you’re thankful it started raining, since we were out of water.”

He was starting to understand, and feeling like an idiot, when she apparently decided he needed visual illustrations. She waved a hand, and a shimmering silver curtain of pounding rain surrounded them—inside of the cave.

Serai gracefully leaned down to take one of the bottles, held it up to the indoor waterfall, and then, once it was full, handed it to Daniel.

“Taste this.”

He drank deeply, and it was the best, purest, sweetest water he’d ever tasted. “Not bad” was all he’d admit, but she laughed at him. Together they filled the rest of the bottles, and then Serai waved her hand once more, and the indoor rain stopped, magically leaving the cave completely dry.

“Water is the one thing—the only thing I can think of, to be candid—that we don’t need to worry about,” she said, but her smile faded quickly. “I’ll call the portal, and we’ll find out just what Conlan knew or didn’t know about the Nereid’s attack.”

She raised her hands and softly sang out to call to the portal’s magic, but this time the portal didn’t respond right away.

“Maybe it doesn’t like caves?”

“That has nothing to do with it. I’m so weak, perhaps . . . I’ll try again.” She called again, but still there was no response, so she tried again.

And again.

And again.

Nothing.

The first pale rays of sun were beginning to glow in the air outside, lightening the darkness in the cave, so Daniel could see very clearly when the blood drained out of Serai’s face.

“It’s a test,” she whispered. “It’s a test, and I have to pass it or we all die.”

“Serai, that can’t be true. Why would you be forced to face a test when you’re fresh out of sacrificing millennia of your life for Atlantis?”

She slowly slid down the wall until she collapsed into a ball on the cave floor. “It doesn’t matter what I did before. All that matters is now. The portal—it only ignores a call if assistance is refused.”

“No. Ven and the guys said the portal is capricious. Maybe this is some sort of practical joke, and if you try later—”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand. I could hear it—hear her—in my head. The spirit of the portal. She refused to allow the portal to open. Told me I must face this test alone, with no aid from Atlantis.”

He crouched down beside her and took her into his arms. “Never,” he said fiercely. “You will never be alone so long as I draw breath. The portal will have to kill me to take you away from me, and let me tell you, I’m very hard to kill, even for a magic doorway.”

She smiled, only a little, but it was a smile, and even so much courage was enough to take his breath away.

“I need to kiss you now. I need to be inside you. Now. Please,” he said roughly, and he didn’t give her time to answer before he claimed her mouth in a kiss that held every ounce of his desperation that she would live, must live, no matter what obstacle.

“Yes, Daniel,” she said, when he finally allowed her space to breathe. “Yes, I want you, too. I need you, too.”

Serai held out her arms, aware in a place deeper than mere consciousness that she’d accepted more than just a kiss. More than just his body into hers. If they made love again, she was in very real danger of reaching the soul-meld with this man, and he would be bound to her for eternity. Exactly as she hoped. Perhaps not in his plans, however, since he kept telling her she would be better off without him. Was that just a pretty way to say he didn’t want to spend very much time with her?

She closed her eyes, refusing even to consider it. She might not live through another day; worry for the future could certainly wait until later. For now, she had this man in her arms, kissing her, ravishing her with his deep, dangerous kisses.

He was hers, for now. She could think about always later.

Daniel’s strong arms wrapped around her and pulled her up off the floor so quickly that they almost levitated before he realized what he was doing and dropped back down to land on his feet, but she was still held so high and tightly in his arms that her toes didn’t touch the ground. He tightened one arm around her waist and used the other to reach up and grasp her braid, twisting it around his hand and pulling her head back so he had free access to her neck.

“Must resist,” he growled against her skin, and she felt his tongue touch her neck and then the slight scrape of his teeth, and she froze into perfect stillness as she realized exactly what he was resisting.

“Must not bite you, your blood is so delicious, so sweet and addictive,” he murmured, kissing his way up the side of her neck and then gently biting her earlobe as she wiggled in his arms, fighting to get closer, to feel more, to bask in the sheer sensation of being in his arms.

Now that she knew what lovemaking truly was, she wanted more and more and more of it.

“I may be a wanton,” she admitted, and was surprised when he laughed.

“I really, really hope so,” he said fervently, and then he lifted her even higher, so her legs automatically wrapped around his waist, and he walked with her until her back rested against the cave wall. He kissed her again, deeper, darker, until her entire world swirled around her in a haze of sensual delight.

“Thank you, mi amara,” he whispered, his lips only a breath from her ear. “Thank you for returning to me.”

Daniel fought against the competing pulls of desire and bloodlust, both driving him to take her, take her, take her. He’d taken her virginity only a short while ago, and she must still be sore from that encounter. He had no right to push her to further sexual activity so soon. But the way she kissed him drove him insane. Her lips were so soft and sweet, and her passion inflamed him and drove him to the edge of madness. His body was so hard and ready, and his cock pushed forward, nudging against her sweet softness like a heat-seeking missile.

He had to laugh at himself for the thought. Now there was an analogy that an ancient Atlantean maiden would not appreciate.

“Daniel, why are you smiling? Why aren’t you kissing me?” She twined her fingers in his hair and pulled his head back to hers, and the sweet taste of her mouth told him more than her words.

Told him she was his.

“Mine, do you hear me? I will never, ever let you go,” he told her, desire and need and possession all tangling up to darken his voice. “Don’t ever think of that Atlantean man who would be better for you. If he even dares to think about touching you, I’ll kill him.”

She pulled away a little and laughed up at him. “Daniel. You do realize you’re threatening a figment of your own imagination, right? All I have ever wanted is you. You’re the one who keeps pushing me off on this paragon of Atlantean manhood who exists only in your own mind.”

His fangs descended and he scowled. “Never. Do you hear me? Never. You’re mine. Say it.”

Her smile faded and she stared into his eyes for a very long time, an eternity, before she finally nodded. “Yes. I’m yours. But you’re mine, as well, mi amaro. Say it,” she demanded, every inch the haughty Atlantean princess he’d once dreamed of in his lonely apprentice’s bed.

“Yes. Yours. Always,” he growled. “I need to fuck you now.”

She gasped, and her eyes darkened, and he hesitated, but she lifted her face to his in acceptance and he wanted to shout and roar his need and possession to the universe. To eternity. Instead, he released her for only long enough to strip out of his clothes and then tear hers from her body, only barely managing to be careful enough not to shred them into pieces in his urgency.

He took her mouth again, so as not to drive his fangs into her skin. He needed all of it. Her body. Her blood. Her surrender. “Now.”

“Yes. Now.” Serai put her arms around his neck, and he lifted her again, directly onto his erection, slowly but inexorably pushing into her silky wet heat.

“Oh, oh,” she cried out, making little noises as he leaned her back against the cave wall, her legs wrapped around him again, but this time nothing between them but the cool dawn air.

“Gods, you’re so wet for me, Serai, you’re so hot and wet for me. I’m losing my mind here.” He thrust farther, farther, until his cock was so far inside her that he couldn’t push any deeper. Then he stood still, giving her time to adjust to his invasion, but he couldn’t help but bend down to capture one ripe pink nipple with his mouth.

She cried out again, this time his name, and he tightened his grip on her lovely round ass and licked and sucked on her nipples until she was squirming around his cock and driving him completely insane.

“Now, now, now. Move, I need you to move,” she said breathlessly, and he raised his head to crush his mouth to hers again. Triumphant and triumphed over.

Serai’s entire body was trembling with need. She had never felt so alive, so sensitive, as if every inch of her skin were a nerve center crying out for his touch. For his hands and his mouth and his oh-so-clever tongue.

For his manhood.

“Please. Now,” she repeated, and he kissed her again and then finally started moving, thrusting in and out of her in long, slow strokes that put her in danger of exploding. Heat centered between her thighs traveled up the center of her body to her breasts and her lips and her brain, until she thought the world itself must be shattering off its orbit.

He tightened his grip on her bottom and then reached between them and pressed those wonderful fingers of his against that sensitive spot he’d discovered before, and she cried out again, and then he was pressing rhythmically there, pressing and rubbing while he drove inside her, long, hard wonderful strokes, and something was building and building inside her, swirling and spiraling, and tightening every muscle in her body while her nerves screamed for more, for more, for release, and then he thrust into her so hard and so fast, the muscles in his neck straining as he tried to maintain his control, and she realized she didn’t want him to hold on to his self-control, not now, not ever, so she tightened her inner muscles around his erection and tilted her head, baring her throat to him.

“Bite me. Take my blood while you take me over the edge.”

Daniel stared at her in shock and froze, mid-motion, but she tightened her muscles around his cock again and touched her neck, trailing a finger provocatively down her luscious pale skin, and something inside him broke, his control shattered, and he started fucking her again, so hard and so deep that she would never, ever forget him, never escape him, never ever leave him.

Never.

He sank his fangs into her neck and she screamed, not from pain, he’d made sure not to hurt her, she screamed as she came, shattering around him, convulsing around his cock, over and over until he couldn’t help it, he thrust into her one last time and came himself, his seed pumping into her as her blood pumped into his mouth, a circle of want and need and home and forever.

He licked the tiny wounds in her neck closed and rested his forehead against hers, and they stood, locked in place, while they gulped in deep breaths together.

“I think you should put me down, but I’m not sure my legs will work,” she said, her voice shaky.

He attempted a smile, but his face wasn’t working. All he could do was gasp and try to breathe. He felt as though he’d run a thousand miles in a day, or flown across a continent, and he looked into her eyes while he thought of a way to tell her how much he needed her, but shock rendered him temporarily speechless.

“Your—your eyes,” he managed, and then his tongue got tangled as he stared at the tiny blue-green flames in her eyes.

“Yes? What about my eyes? They’re bluer than the ocean,” she teased.

“They have these little flames in the middle. I know that sounds stupid, but I, they—”

Her eyes widened even farther, until they were enormous in her face. The flames grew even larger, until they were nearly taking over her entire irises.

“The soul-meld? Is it really happening?” Her whisper trailed off, and he realized that he was still holding her up in his arms, against a cave wall, his cock still inside her.

“Maybe we should clean up and talk about your eyes,” he began, but she didn’t let him finish.

She grabbed his head with both hands and kissed him so fiercely that he had no choice but to kiss her back. His body responded with a vigor that belied the long years of disuse and his cock hardened inside her so fast that he wondered dizzily if mage or Atlantean magic were involved, and then she somehow moved, with him still inside her, lowered her legs and pushed him back until he was lying on his back on the pile of their discarded clothes and she was straddling him.

Gloriously naked, she was beautifully and gloriously naked above him, her ripe round breasts begging him to reach up and take them in his hands, and so he did, while she slowly and sensually rose and lowered herself on his cock. Her eyes were still full of those blue-green flames, but it seemed a distant concern, far less important than rising up off the ground so he could suck on her nipples, until she pushed him back down and arched over him, crying out as she convulsed around him again, and he took charge of the tempo, quickening it, thrusting up into her with the speed and force he needed to reach another climax so soon. She reached down behind her and grabbed his balls and gently squeezed, and he arched up off the ground and poured into her again, harder and more powerfully than before.

That’s when the walls of the cave shattered into an explosion of sound and color, and reality shifted as his mind expanded and collapsed and expanded again, and his vision fractured into a prism of sparkling shapes and colors, until he floated gently down to earth in a flash of light, but a different earth, an earth that had vanished thousands of years ago.

Flash.

Somehow he stood in Atlantis, and it was still on the surface of the ocean.

Serai stood in front of him, sheathed in silvery light, talking to a man he knew to be her father, but he was long dead, this was impossible.

“Serai,” he called out, but even as she ignored him as if he didn’t exist, he felt her body warm and pliant against his in another reality.

“I cannot do this thing, Father,” she said, tears streaking down her face. “I won’t. I must find Daniel. He was wounded, and your guards took me away. I need to find him. I need to help him. I won’t be frozen into a box for some future king.”

“Daniel is dead,” her father said, and Serai collapsed into a faint.

Flash.

Serai lying shattered on the ground, bones broken and blood everywhere, resigned to death and screaming a protest against the healers as they converged on her.

Flash.

Serai lying down inside a crystal casket, not dead, not even dying, but resigned to spend centuries asleep, alone, as she would always be alone, because the one man she would ever love was gone.

Flash.

Centuries of waiting, then millennia, time passing in a constant blur, only one annual semi-wakening to feed information into her mind and reassure her she hadn’t crumbled to dust. Every time she woke, his name was the first word on her unmoving lips; his face, the first sight in her unforgiving mind; his love, the only thing in her never-healing heart.

Daniel. Daniel. Daniel.

Flash.

The shock of the Emperor’s stuttering power. Her escape. Running to the portal, only to find her dream of the past eleven thousand years had become reality. The warmth and love in her disbelieving heart when she saw his face.

His face.

Flash.

Daniel slowly came back to himself from the waking dream, only to realize that he still held Serai in his arms. She rested against his chest, arm tucked on his shoulder, eyes wide and staring, but unseeing. Whatever had just happened to him seemed to be happening to her.

No.

No.

If she saw his history—his bloody and monstrous past—she would never forgive him. Never stay with him.

He shook her and called her name, then resorted to shouting at her, but nothing mattered, nothing worked, so he simply gathered her into his arms and waited, silent as the grave he’d soon be seeking out, for the woman he loved to learn who he truly was and order him out of her life forever.

Serai fell, twirling and twisting, tossed through a typhoon of sound and sensation, through an apocalypse of blood and death, fear and fury. Light flashed all around her, and she woke up in the very same shop where she’d first met Daniel, all those years ago.

Flash.

He stood still, staring after a girl who was leaving the shop, and Serai was a tiny bit jealous, until the girl smiled back at him over her shoulder and she realized it was her. Herself, eleven thousand years ago, on the very first day she’d met Daniel.

“Hits you like that sometimes,” a man standing in the shop said, grinning at Daniel’s expression of utter shock. “Been married more than twenty years to a woman who made me feel just like you look right now.”

Daniel blinked and opened and closed his mouth a few times. “But—but—”

The man laughed. “Yep. That’s what I said. You’re done for.”

Flash.

The fight in the shop, that day the invading army attacked Atlantis. Daniel fighting for his life against looting soldiers, protecting the trapdoor, protecting her. Falling, so much blood.

Flash.

Daniel waking, crazed with the bloodlust, calling for her. The old nightwalker telling him she was gone. Atlantis was gone. Gone forever. Daniel screaming her name until he was hoarse, and then falling to the ground, body heaving with great, racking sobs.

Flash.

Murder. Vengeance. The flash of recognition in that village ; the girl who reminded him of Serai. Hibernation. The quest for redemption. The eventual resignation and despair.

Flash.

Walking into the sun, only to look up and see that the sunlight wasn’t killing him. The light came from her face. Her face. Serai. Love. Desire. Need. In his face. For her.

For her.

When she woke from the trance, she gasped and then gulped in great, shuddering breaths, as if she’d been starved of oxygen for hours or days. Daniel held her tightly, so tightly that she wasn’t even cold, although they lay on the floor of the cave, still unclothed.

“Well?” His voice was as hoarse as if he’d been screaming. For all she knew, he had. She’d been deaf to him while the soul-meld took her and showed her his life.

“You’re leaving me now, aren’t you? I understand. I forgive you, and we can just forget all that stuff about ‘mine’ and ‘forever,’” he said, his face so cold and remote that—for a split second—she almost doubted him. Almost.

But she’d seen inside his soul. She said the only thing she could. The only possible words to share at such a time.

“Daniel. We have answered the question the elders have asked for millennia,” she told him, touching his stern face with her hand. “Nightwalkers do have souls. I have just walked in yours, and I want to cry for your pain. Know this, though, my vampire. My love. I will never let you go, and if you mention it again, I may have to hurt you.”

Daniel couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. Could only feel, as a wave of pure warmth and love swept through him. “You’ve seen my soul? Is that even possible? I’d wondered—I’d feared—”

“You cannot reach the soul-meld with someone who has no soul,” she said, smiling, and he realized the blue-green flames in her eyes were still there. “We are bound forever now.”

The ancient words came to her, unbidden, mandating her to recite them:

“I offer my magic, my heart, and my life to protect your own.

From now until the last drop of ocean has vanished from the earth,

You are my soul.”

Shimmering silver threads, clearly visible in the predawn light in the cave, formed and curled around them both, tying them together inescapably. Forever, she’d said.

Daniel couldn’t take it all in. It was too much.

“I have a soul?”

“You do,” she confirmed. “A badly wounded soul, forced to make so many hard choices, still fighting hard to redeem itself from the dark. And now it, as well as you, belong to me.”

“Forever?” he repeated, stupidly.

“Forever.”

“Then we will make damn sure that nothing happens to you. I promise you that. Upon my life, upon my oath as a senior mage of the Nightwalker Guild, and upon my love for you, Serai, I swear to you that I will not let you die. We will find that Emperor and save your sisters, this I swear to you.”

She smiled and kissed him, and this time the world didn’t shatter and the walls didn’t fall in and the floor didn’t disappear from under him. It was just a kiss, only a kiss.

The kiss that began the rest of his life.