Vampire in Atlantis

Chapter 39

Conlan, Riley, Ven, Erin, and the rest of their family and friends stood in a semicircle around the dazed but obviously very healthy women who’d just stepped out of their stasis pods for the first time in eleven thousand years.

“They did it,” Riley said, tears streaming down her face. “Daniel and Serai must have found the Emperor and saved everyone.”

Before Conlan could respond, the familiar shimmer of the portal formed its oval shape before them, but a very unfamiliar deep male voice sounded from within it.

“I come bearing two secrets for you from the spirit of the portal who inhabited herein before me, Conlan of Atlantis,” the voice said. “Do you wish to know how to save the saviors?”

Cathedral Rock, thirty minutes until dawn

Daniel held Serai’s unresponsive body in his arms, rocking her back and forth, wishing he had a voice made for singing. He’d love to be able to sing her to sleep.

To death.

Instead, all he could do was pour out his heart and soul in words that were meaningless and unpoetic.

“I love you” was so insignificant.

He’d waited for her—some part of his heart and soul had waited for her for thousands of years—and now that he’d finally found her again, he would lose her so quickly. His berserker fury had faded, though, as he waited here for the dawn. Rage had no place at his own dying of the light.

Fury was wasted emotion.

All his heart could contain was love, and sorrow, and regret.

A shimmering light began to glow behind him, but it was too soon and in the wrong direction, so he turned to see that the damned capricious portal was opening.

“Too little, too late,” he said, laughing or crying. “Go back to the hell you came from, demon.”

A dark form stepped out of the portal, silhouetted so that he couldn’t see its voice.

“I’ve been called worse,” Ven said, crossing the grass to him. “I hear you’ve had a rough time.”

The prince dropped to the ground to sit next to Daniel and put a hand on his shoulder. “How are you holding up, my friend?”

“You need to stay back,” Daniel said dully. “When dawn comes and the flames take us, there is no need for you to be harmed.”

“We are unhappy with your decision to die, nightwalker,” said another familiar voice. “We owe you an ass-kicking,” Lord Justice continued.

Figure after figure walked out of the portal and ranged themselves around Daniel and Serai. Conlan and his wife Riley. Ven’s Erin. Justice’s Keely. Christophe and a woman Daniel had never met. Brennan and Tiernan, who stopped to put a hand on his shoulder before she moved on. Even Reisen and Melody, who seemed to have recovered from her injury, though she wore a splint on one arm.

“The portal seems to be working again,” Daniel observed, too exhausted and anguished to respond to the presence of so many Atlanteans.

“Not exactly,” Ven said, still sitting next to him. “It—or rather, she—is kind of taking a vacation. But the new portal presence is a little more chatty, and told us a secret or two.”

Daniel stared blankly at his friend and wondered why Ven thought he would possibly care about Atlantean secrets.

“First, apparently you really do have a soul.”

Daniel just stared at Ven, still not understanding. Maybe answering would make him go away. “I know that. Soul-meld. Can’t you leave us alone?”

He pulled Serai closer and rocked back and forth, wishing again that he knew how to sing. Or play the harp. His mind was shattering. His heart had already done so.

But Ven was still talking. “Second, it seems that if you complete a third blood exchange with an Atlantean with whom you’ve reached the soul-meld, both of your lives will be saved.”

Daniel heard the words but couldn’t understand their meaning. It was too much. Too hard. Losing Serai . . .

Twenty minutes until dawn, his internal clock reminded him.

Losing Serai . . .

But wait. He tried to focus on Ven’s mouth, which was still moving. Forming words. Important words.

“What? What did you say?” he demanded.

Ven grasped Daniel’s shoulders and shook him a little. “Wake up, my friend. We’re running out of time. You need to make a third blood exchange with Serai, and you’ll both be saved.”

Daniel looked around the circle of people he mostly had dared to think of as friends. “Truly? The third blood bond?”

“Now,” Conlan commanded. “For once in your life, listen to me and do it now.”

“Please,” Tiernan added.

Fifteen minutes until dawn.

“If it kills her—” he began, but Ven cut him off.

“As opposed to sitting here, waiting for the sun to turn you both into barbecue? Do it now.”

When Daniel still hesitated, afraid of turning Serai into the monster he’d once become and feared more than anything he’d become again, Ven drew one of his daggers.

“Forgive me, Daniel,” he said, and then he quickly grabbed Serai’s hand and drew a line across her palm. Daniel almost didn’t realize what Ven had done until he smelled the rich, warm scent of her blood.

“And you,” Ven said, and almost blindly Daniel held up his own hand. Ven made the same cut, and Daniel gently placed his hand across Serai’s slightly open mouth and lifted her hand to his own. As he drank, too desperate to hope, too terrified to be self-conscious about taking her blood in front of everyone, her lips moved, just a fraction of a movement at first, but then more strongly, as she drank his blood. He felt the pull on his hand and drank more strongly from hers, and the Emperor, lying forgotten between them, suddenly pulsed in a blaze of purple fire.

Serai’s body arched up in his arms, and Daniel cried out as the same pain she was feeling—he could sense her pain, as she could feel his—transformed, magically, miraculously, into restorative healing warmth that flooded from the Emperor into both of them, surrounding them, embracing them, giving them life when they’d faced death.

The tsunami of light went on and on, scouring them inside and out, until he fell back, exhausted, on to the grass, still tightly embracing Serai.

“I see we’re having a party, and you’ve decided to invite some friends,” Serai said, lifting her head from his chest and looking around. “Perhaps next time, you could wait until I’ve had a proper bath and arranged my hair.”

Daniel stared at her, dumbfounded, and when that sexy, seductive, magnificent smile formed on her lips, he knew he truly had died and gone to the most spectacular of all heavens.

“We’re alive?” he asked stupidly.

“We’re alive, and I’m really, really hungry,” she said, and everyone around them started laughing.

But then the sun rose over the horizon, and the first questing rays of light reached them, and the entire world caught on fire.