Vampire in Atlantis

Melody returned with a bulging bag and a tray with three more coffees, and Daniel took his cup and stood. “I thank you for the coffee, but I must return in case Serai has woken. We’ll rest here during the day, and then we’re heading out as soon as the sun goes down.”

Melody nodded. “What do you need? Do you have money?”

“Yes, and credit cards enough even to make this overpriced place shiver with glee,” he said dryly. “One benefit of living forever, I suppose. Do you need money? I know the rebels are chronically underfunded.”

Melody tilted her head. “Yes, and since I’m a bona fide computer genius, I happen to have traced a few of our extraordinarily large donations back to a certain vampire primator. Thank you.”

“I’m not Primator. I quit,” he said tersely. Tired of explaining that one.

“You think somebody else could do that job better?” Reisen demanded. “Poseidon’s balls, man, Atlantis needs allies in high places.”

“Yes, and everything I do or have ever done should be predicated on what Atlantis needs, of course,” Daniel drawled. “Especially since it was Atlantean soldiers who dragged Serai away from me when I lay dying on the ground all those millennia ago. Atlantean mages and priests who decided to imprison her, so she could serve as brood mare to your royal studs in some distant future. Oh, yeah. Whatever Atlantis wants, I’m all over that.”

Reisen’s eyes flashed emerald fire, and he rose halfway out of his seat before he reconsidered and sat back down heavily. “Well. I’d be a liar or a fool if I tried to pretend that my goals have never collided with those of the powers that be in Atlantis. But the world needs good men to do good things, or it will be overrun with evil before too much longer.”

Melody, who’d sat silently watching them during the exchange, her eyes enormous, suddenly glared at Reisen and elbowed him in the side. “Hey! Good men and good women, thank you very much. Now maybe we could make with the friendship and figure out our day.”

She pointed to Daniel before he could speak. “You. If you’re going to be hiking at all, and I bet you are, if they’re skulking around trying to hide this gem you talked about, you’ll need gear and provisions. I’ll get someone to bring it to you.”

Daniel inclined his head in thanks.

“You,” she said, turning to Reisen, who seemed to be trying hard not to smile as the small human female put them both in their respective places. “I know you want to help Serai. But I need you, too. Can we compromise? You help me today and tonight, and then we’ll both find Daniel and Serai and help them. Both objectives met, and Melody doesn’t get killed while trying to rob a bank all by herself.”

“I will not let anything happen to you,” Reisen said, his eyes flashing again.

Daniel thought about the arrogance in the warrior’s voice, and a realization came to him. “Is it Lord Reisen, by any chance?”

Reisen nodded, though bitterness was evident in the hard lines of his face. “It was. Reisen of Mycenae. But I thought I knew a better path for Atlantis, and my error cost me everything.”

“You attempted a coup, or so I heard,” Daniel said.

“Conlan had been gone, prisoner to your evil goddess Anubisa, for seven long years. I thought he was dead, and Atlantis deserved real leadership, not a group of shell-shocked warriors waiting for a dead prince to return,” Reisen said, each word falling like a chunk of granite to the table.

“But he was alive,” Daniel said, stating the obvious, realizing how much it must have cost the warrior to realize he’d been wrong.

“He was alive,” Reisen agreed. “And so a coup became treachery, and I lost a hand in the process. No less than I deserve, or so most of Atlantis thinks.”

“Then they suck. I’m sure you did what you thought was best,” Melody said hotly. “What else can any of us do, especially in these crazy times? I’m one of the worst cyber criminals in the world, probably, and do you think I ever envisioned a life of crime? No, no, and no. But what I do is crucial to the rebel cause, and a little threat like a life sentence in Alcatraz isn’t going to stop me.”

“I don’t think they use Alcatraz to house prisoners anymore. It’s a tourist attraction now,” Daniel pointed out, trying to help the obviously distraught woman.

She rolled her eyes. “So missing the point, dude. Anyway, we need to go. Like, now. Our meet with the woman from the bank is coming up soon. We’ll be in touch as soon as we can.”

She dug around in her ever-present backpack for a while and then handed him a small phone. “Untraceable, disposable cell. Not much use in the canyons, of course, but my number is programmed in.”

“I can contact Serai on the Atlantean shared mental pathway, if that is possible between us,” Reisen said, and Daniel quashed a momentary pang of jealousy at the idea. Of course her fellow Atlanteans would be able to communicate with her in ways that Daniel never could. It was perfectly reasonable.

It was his own problem that “perfectly reasonable” was stabbing him in the gut.

“Good luck to you. I hope your meeting is successful. It would be very helpful to discover who exactly is involved in this scheme.”

They stood, and Melody picked up the remaining cup of coffee and the bag of pastries and held them out to Daniel. “Take these for Serai, okay? And tell her . . . tell her I’d like to get to know her. I bet she could use a girlfriend, since hers are all, well, you know what I mean.”

“I’m sure she could. Thank you.”

Daniel headed back to his hotel room, where Serai hopefully still slept. So many strange alliances and friendships had formed during the course of the rebellion. Life and hope always found a way, and perhaps it had taken one small human with blue-tipped hair and far too much makeup to remind him of that.

It wouldn’t be the strangest thing to have happened to him since that fateful day when Atlantis was attacked. Not by a long shot.

* * *

Serai woke to an empty room and lay there, disoriented, for a few seconds until it all came back to her. The escape from Atlantis. The danger she was in and the mission she must complete. The battle. Daniel.

Daniel.

Her cheeks flamed as she remembered what he’d done to her—what they’d done together. In the very bed in which she now lay. She lifted the sheet and saw that, yes, she was still shamelessly nude, so she could banish any thought that she might have only dreamed the events of the night. Her lips curved into a smile as she remembered the glorious things he’d done to her oh-so-willing body, but then she sat up in a rush, electrified by a sudden thought.

Was she even still a maiden at all?

The door opened as if in answer to her unspoken question, and she gasped until she realized it was Daniel, entering quietly and holding a cup and a small paper bag.

“You went for breakfast? Without me?”

He looked up and smiled at her. A little bit smugly, actually, and she blushed again and clutched the sheets to her chest all the more tightly.

“I left a note for you,” he said, indicating the pillow next to her with a nod. As he’d said, there was a note, his bold masculine handwriting slanted across the page.

Gone to get coffee and make plans with Reisen. Back soon.—Daniel

She realized it was the first time she’d ever seen his handwriting. “It looks like you. Your writing. Bold and unhesitating.”

He crossed the room and handed her the cup, which smelled deliciously of coffee and spice. She took a sip as he sat next to her on the bed.

“I was certainly bold last night,” he said, and she choked on the coffee. He grinned at her, that masculine triumph even more strongly written on his face now.

“Am I still a maiden?” She blurted out the question before embarrassment could stop her, and was intrigued to see the hot red flush that climbed up his cheekbones.

“I—What? Yes. Yes, I mean, you’re . . . you’re still, well, what we did, ah, I mean—”

She helped him out before he strangled on his answer. Oddly enough, his embarrassment helped her past her own. “It’s a simple question. Did you, ah, push past any obstruction with your fingers last night?”

He swallowed audibly, almost a gulping sound, and suddenly she wanted to laugh.