problem, Erin?”
Erin’s mouth fell open as she stared up at Ven. “Seriously? Did you just ask me that, Warrior Man?”
“That’s different,” he muttered, flushing a dark red.
“No, it isn’t,” Riley said, standing up. “Does my sister need help? Maybe I should go to her, since she won’t come to me.”
For the first time since he’d watched, terrified, as she struggled through a difficult birth to bring their son into the world, Conlan felt true panic. Riley in a nest of vampires and black magic practitioners? Over his dead body. But he knew better than to try to forbid it, either as prince or as husband.
“Aidan needs you here,
Riley glared at him. “Of course I didn’t plan that. I just . . . I hate feeling helpless while Quinn is in danger, and now Serai and the other women, too. I need something to do.”
“I feel the same way,” Erin added.
Keely nodded. “I’m no witch or warrior, but I’m pretty good with planning and a fair hand with a shotgun. Just tell me what I can do to help, and let’s get to it. Those women don’t have much time, if Alaric is right, and he almost always is.”
Alaric bowed to her. “So pleasant to have someone acknowledge reality. Although the qualifier ‘almost’ was unnecessary.”
Justice pulled Keely closer and glared at the high priest. “Don’t humor him, Keely. His head will grow larger than the dome covering Atlantis.”
“Somebody has to go to Arizona and find out if Quinn needs help,” Riley said.
“I will go,” Alaric said, in a voice that rang with finality.
Since Conlan had been planning to ask him to do just that, he had no problem with it. “Fine. Before you go, though, is there anything else you can do here to help in the temple?”
Alaric shook his head. “Horace knows the magic of the stasis better than any in the recorded history of the temple. If anyone can keep them stable or find a way to release them, it’s him. All my presence and interference is accomplishing is distracting him and making him nervous.”
“You? Make someone nervous? Say it isn’t so,” Ven said.
Alaric glared at Ven, and Conlan ignored them both. “Then go. Find out what Quinn needs,” Conlan ordered his high priest, as if Alaric ever took orders anyway. Conlan cast a glance at his wife’s pale face before continuing. “Then see if you can convince her to come back here with you for a visit. Tell her that her sister needs her.”
Riley’s smile was reward enough for any king, and Conlan allowed himself a deep breath as the smallest portion of the weight on his shoulders lifted. International politics, Atlantean magic, the protection of humanity—it was an enormous burden, all of it, but one he would gladly shoulder forever, if only his wife continued to smile at him like that.
Damn. Alaric was right. Marriage was turning him into a girl.
Conlan turned to watch the high priest as he strode off toward the temple, presumably to offer final instructions before he returned to the surface. If Alaric and Quinn ever did manage to work things out, Conlan would laugh his ass off to see Alaric’s turn to be humbled by love.
Oh, yeah, he couldn’t wait for that. Payback, as the saying went, was a barnacle that bit you in the nuts.
He turned to the rest of them. “Back to the war room, I’m afraid, after we dine. Atlantis must rise, and soon, and now we need to plan for every possible reaction and outcome.”
Keely shook her head. “Have you heard the saying ‘God laughs when man plans’?”
He nodded ruefully. “I’ve gone one better. I’ve
Keely’s eyes widened, and then she laughed. “I’m never going to get used to this place, am I?”
“We certainly hope you do,” Justice said smugly. “We will never let you leave.”
This time Keely smacked Justice on the back of the head, and everybody laughed as they headed into the palace to eat. Conlan didn’t begrudge them a moment of lightness in a long line of crises. He’d been ruling Atlantis long enough to know that they must take their moments of peace when they could. They never lasted long.
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—
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
