Vampire in Atlantis

just as much danger.

Smithson, meanwhile, was ignoring her completely as he all but danced around the pile of rocks. His rubies, then. They must be. Ordinary rocks wouldn’t have caused this level of capering glee. She’d seen them anyway, on the way down. Uncut and rough as most of them were, the occasional deep red glow, even in the unusual purple light, had told her all she’d needed to know. There was probably millions of dollars of rubies in that pile—maybe more, she didn’t know, she was no gemologist—and surely, surely Smithson had to be happy now. His thugs were quickly gathering all the rubies into a dozen or so large duffel bags and, one by one, heading out of the cave.

The slimeball in question smiled at her, rubbing his hands together. “Now, that wasn’t all that hard, was it?”

“My mom is bleeding all over, and she hurt her ankle falling. She could have died! You promised to let us go, so do it now, already,” Ian shouted at him.

Smithson paused and pretended to look regretful, but Ivy could see the mad, gleeful joy deep in his soulless eyes. “Oh, I’m so sorry. But your mommy is just too valuable. I’m afraid I still want her, and since I need you to keep her in line, well, it looks like we’re all going to take a trip together.”

“I will kill you if you hurt my mother,” Ian said hotly. He started to say something else, but Ivy shook his arm and gave him her most grim “stop right this instant because I’m your mother and I said so” look.

He subsided, but not for long, judging by the way his lips were pressed together in his “I’m going to explode any second” expression. She’d known this boy since the moment she’d pushed him crying out into the world nearly fourteen years ago, and when her son felt there was injustice in the world, he couldn’t keep silent about it, no matter the cost. She’d always loved that about him, but right now it might get them killed.

Still, “I will kill you if you hurt my mother” would have been fantastic last words. Ian was so going to score on his next birthday. She might even buy him a car. She laughed out loud, and realized blood loss was making her loopy.

“I want to laugh, too, from the sheer joy of it,” Smithson said, flashing his hideous Hollywood-white, over- veneered teeth. “This is miraculous. I do wish Nicholas had turned me, though, before I double-crossed the nasty bastard. Think of all that lovely interest, compounding for centuries.”

Ivy blinked. “You’re unbelievable. What kind of fool betrays a master vampire?”

Then she blinked again. And yet again. The blood loss must have taken her from dizziness straight to delusion, because she could almost swear she saw a hand sticking out of Smithson’s stomach. She decided that it was really a very good time to close her eyes and lie down, before dancing pink elephants appeared, too.

That’s when Ian and Smithson both screamed.

She jerked her head up and forced her eyes to open, only to wish that she hadn’t.

It had been a hand, after all. Nicholas’s hand, which had smashed clear through Smithson’s abdomen and ripped out much of the man’s intestines on its way back out.

“Unbelievable is an apt word. There is much about this scene that I find unbelievable, Ivy Khetta of the Crescent Moon coven,” Nicholas said, standing there calmly as if he hadn’t just eviscerated a man. “Fortunately for you, I can see that you were coerced into helping this fool who thought he would betray me and get away with it.”

Ivy pulled Ian into her arms and hugged him until he stopped screaming, but his thin shoulders shook as he fought back sobs.

“I have been coerced every step of the way, and you’re just as guilty as he was,” Ivy shot back at the vampire. Pretty brave of her, she figured, considering he stood there with Smithson’s guts wrapped around his arm like bracelets. Or else really, really stupid, for the same reason.

She decided to be helpful. “His goons are carrying the rubies off in duffel bags. You can probably still catch them if you leave now.”

Unbelievable must have been the word of the day, because—unbelievably—he smiled at her. “You have quite a bit of courage, my little witch.”

“I’m glad you think so, because I plan to throw up and pass out now,” she said, as the light from the lanterns wavered in pretty, pretty patterns in front of her. She tried to hang on, for Ian’s sake, but her body and magic had been pushed far beyond the level of her endurance. She clung to Ian and fell forward instead of back, until her head rested on his shoulder. Nicholas said something, and Ian said something else, but the words blurred together in her mind and could have been spoken in Mandarin Chinese for as much as she understood them.

She couldn’t leave her son alone with the vampire. She fought so hard to maintain consciousness, she really did, but she had nothing in her reserves, nothing at all, and even when she tried to focus on what they were saying, the last thing she heard didn’t make any sense at all, because she was almost certain her son asked Nicholas to turn him into a vampire.

And she thought she heard Nicholas agree.

After that, she didn’t hear anything at all.

Chapter 20

Serai put the cap back on her water bottle and took a deep breath, trying to convince herself, yet again, that she had the strength for this quest. Her legs were as heavy as if sculpted out of marble or orichalcum by a cloddish artist, and each step was harder than the last. The intermittently missing and damaged connection to the Emperor was draining every ounce of her energy, both magical and physical, and she was terrified about what it was doing to the four maidens left in the stasis pods in Atlantis.

Delia was already gone. Helena, Merlina, Brandacea, and Guen remained. Serai’s connection to them was weak, and growing weaker every moment, so she wasn’t entirely certain that they all still lived.

She hoped they did. If their lives could be sustained by the sheer force of her will, then they did still live.

“What is it?” Daniel asked, soundlessly dropping down next to her after a short flight to scout their area.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever see that and not be amazed,” she said. “That you can fly. How wonderful it must be.”

“You can fly as mist, can’t you? Or is that only a warrior thing? I’ve seen Ven and the guys do it. It’s pretty spectacular.”

She tilted her head, considering. “I think I may still be able to do so. It’s simple enough, part of the magic the sea god gifts to his children. I don’t know if I could do it now, though, since I’m so tired. And the problem—” She broke off, not wanting to let him see how pathetically weak and cowardly she was about something so minor as a fear of height. Lives depended on her.

He nodded, as if he could read her mind. “The acrophobia still applies. Perhaps, also, your connection with the Emperor won’t work when you’re in mist form.”

She smiled at him, aware that he was giving her a graceful excuse. She was grateful for his kindness, but not willing to spare herself the truth. “I’ m afraid, and we both know it, but I think it won’t matter. We’re very near the Emperor now. We just need to travel a bit farther and—”

The worst pain yet slammed into her with the force of a tsunami. The witch was using the Emperor, and this time she was mixing the gem’s power with something else—natural magic from the land around them—oh, gods, it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt . . .

She clenched her jaw shut against the scream, but a horrible moaning sound escaped her throat, and Daniel caught her arm.

“Is it the gem again?”

“Yes, it’s—”

She couldn’t finish the sentence. She couldn’t breathe. Her legs wouldn’t support her. The Emperor’s power drove through her, pulling at her own magic, siphoning off her strength in a flood. She could see the witch’s face, and the woman was terrified of something, or someone, but she was being forced to channel the Emperor. For an instant, Serai believed she’d made a connection with the witch, but then the power surged again, and she screamed and collapsed into Daniel’s arms.

The Emperor ruthlessly took and took, draining everything she had until she knew that it was the end, she