Vampire in Atlantis

way or the other. But she knew better. She knew she mattered to him.

She was counting on it.

“You, first. What happened after you pushed me down through that trapdoor, to the hiding place underneath the shop?” She paused for a moment to confirm her sense of the Emperor, and then kept walking, not giving Daniel a chance to argue. Still, they walked along in silence for another five or six minutes before he finally spoke.

“I did my best, but I was a foolish boy. The soldiers who attacked were well-armed and no strangers to battle. Or looting and raping and pillaging, for that matter. I probably would have been better to have hidden with you.”

“You wanted to protect me,” she said, touching his arm. “You wanted to protect the shop, too, over your sense of loyalty to your absent mentor.”

He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Right. Absent. He was there all the time, all those days I thought he was out buying things for the shop. He was sleeping beneath my feet, hiding from the sun. Sleeping in the dirt like an animal, like he taught me to do.”

She shivered at the stark bitterness in his voice. “But I thought he helped you. He was so elegant, the few times I met him, and the jewelry in the shop so exquisite. Where did he find that?”

Daniel shrugged. “I made some of it. The not-as-elegant pieces, although I tried so hard—Well. That’s another story. But he purchased some of it, and I did see him fashion some of the more amazing abstract pieces himself. I remember thinking at the time that he had uncommon strength in his hands and fingers, the way he could bend the metals.”

She remembered the unusual look of many of the pieces. So very lovely—styled with classic lines and simplicity, instead of the ornate design that had been in fashion then. She’d wanted one for herself, but her father was strict about such purchases, always telling her that one day she’d have a husband to buy things for her.

The wave of anger that swept through her at the memory caught her off guard, as did the sharp loneliness that followed. Though she’d had so many differences with her father and had once hated him for what he’d done to her, he’d still been her father. Now he was gone, along with her mother and brother, her friends, and everyone else she’d ever known. She was alone in a world that had moved on without her, and only Daniel had survived as her single constant from then till now. She slipped her hand in his and squeezed, needing the comfort, and was relieved when his fingers tightened around hers in response.

“One of the soldiers who believed strongly that he deserved a free helping of rings and bracelets stabbed me in the side and smashed the hilt of his sword against my head. That’s the last thing I knew,” Daniel said. “I suppose I should have been grateful that he didn’t use the sharp end and rip out my throat. I knew how to forge a sword but not much of how to use one, at least not in a real fight.”

“I think they must have thought you were dead. There was so much blood, Daniel. You had bled so much that I was sure you were dead when we first found you.”

His hand tightened around hers with gentle reassurance. “I nearly was.”

“Yes, you nearly were,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “I hid down there, terrified, until long after the shouts and stamping of the horses had passed. After I’d heard only silence for nearly half an hour, I finally gathered the courage to come back up and find you. But I couldn’t move the door. I tried with all my strength and even pushed with a board I found down there in the dirt with me, but to no avail.”

“I’d fallen right over top of the trapdoor,” Daniel said. “My last-ditch attempt to hide you, I remember. And all I did was cause you more fear and pain.” He kicked a tree root.

“No, you can’t think like that. You did your best, and you saved my life. Or, at the very least, you saved me from being used as a plaything for those horrible men.” She shuddered at the thought of being violated like that. Death wouldn’t have been worse—death was final, with no chance of healing. But death might have been easier. Ice ran through her veins at the thought of what she’d escaped.

“You were too valuable for that, mi amara,” he said gently. “You would have been treated as a precious commodity to become some warlord’s wife.”

She stumbled over a fallen branch, uncharacteristically clumsy in her shock at his use of the Atlantean term for “my beloved.” He’d called her his beloved, and probably didn’t even realize it.

She’d never forget it.

But, still, they were talking about the past. “Warlord’s wife. Prince’s wife. King’s wife. What does it matter? All of them would have robbed me of my freedom in different ways.”

“Would Conlan have forced you to wed him if you said no?” Daniel growled. “I can convince him of the error of that thinking the next time I see him.”

“I don’t know. I like to think not, especially with the choice he himself made that shattered Atlantean law, but I just don’t know. Princes generally choose with politics in mind, not people, or so the Emperor has shown me over the past millennia.”

“Back to that day,” Daniel prompted. “You finally got out when the mage woke up to help, he told me.”

“He terrified me. I was suddenly aware that someone other than me was down there, and I was afraid that one of the soldiers had found his way in, but then I thought it might be a nightwalker. I’d only heard of them—you —vampires,” she explained, stumbling over the words. “I didn’t know what to think. If his bloodlust was going to mean my horrible death.”

“Adrianus had been controlling his bloodlust for centuries by then.”

She stopped, closing her eyes and reaching out for the Emperor’s unique energy signal again. “I can feel it, closer this time. Daniel, we’re nearly there. But, oh, no, not again.”

Pain smashed into her as the witch controlling the Emperor channeled power through it once more, and Serai doubled over. “It’s stronger this time. I think I’m in trouble. Oh, by the gods, it hurts.”

Daniel shocked her by throwing her on the ground, safely cradled in his arms, and covering her body with his own. “We’re definitely in trouble. I can hear voices, and they’re coming from the trees and sky, and they’re moving too fast to be human. This can’t be a coincidence. Whoever has the Emperor, they have vampires with them.”

Chapter 16

Sedona National Bank, inside the vault

Melody grinned at the big hunk of muscled Atlantean roaming restlessly back and forth in the claustrophobic bank vault.

“Does it help? The pacing, I mean. Does it make life better? Make the time pass faster? Cure the common cold?”

Reisen snarled something at her in a language she didn’t recognize, but she translated what he said well enough as “impatient man talk.” He was clearly the action hero type, not the sensitive-and-prone-to-anxiety type she usually fell for.

Whoa.

Even in the privacy of her own mind, thinking “fell for” in context of this man was way, way off base. It was like curling up for a few hot hours of World of Warcraft and finding a gnome and Tauren hot-tubbing in Arathi Basin.

Just not gonna happen. No way.

But man, oh, man, was the guy hot. Seriously hot. Mega hot. All those muscles. Plus those flashing blue eyes and bad boy long black hair combined to make her want to rub up against him and purr.

A lot.

Unfortunately, he’d been the perfect gentleman in the hotel room he’d insisted they share for her protection. She’d been all “right, for my protection, heh heh heh,” but her flutters of anticipation had turned to stark dismay when he hadn’t even tried to touch her once. Not even by “accident.” She’d almost thought he was gay, until she’d dropped her towel accidentally-on-purpose and seen the flash of sheer admiration and male lust cross his face. That had been great for her ego . . . right up to the point where he’d stalked past her into the bathroom and taken a long and, she suspected, very cold shower.

Alone.

She hadn’t quite worked up the courage to join him. A little too brazen ho-bag for her.