“Then you must allow me to continue my quest, and allow Daniel to help me do so. If I don’t find the Emperor, I may die. All of the maidens still in stasis may die.”
He hesitated, but then shook his head and raised his sword again, this time in a defensive position, but still aimed at Daniel. “We cannot take the chance that you have been misled by the vampire’s magic. We will all wait here for Conlan’s return.”
“I’m sorry, Justice, but we’re out of time, my friend,” Daniel said. He sliced one hand through the air, chanting under his breath, and Justice froze in place, as still as one of the statues in the palace atrium, nothing but his eyes moving.
The look in those eyes promised a slow and brutal death to his assailant when the immobilizing magic wore off, however.
“Everything she told you was the truth, Justice, but we just don’t have the time to wait. Serai is growing weaker every minute. If we don’t find that Emperor soon, it could be very bad.”
Daniel raised his hands into the air, and Justice’s immobilized body turned sideways and then floated down gently to the grass. The strain from using the magic was plain on Daniel’s face, and Serai automatically sent her own magic flowing through the air to support his, not thinking of the cost to her strength.
She staggered a little, and Daniel ran to her and caught her before she fell.
“We must move, now,” she whispered. “It’s growing worse, Daniel. I don’t know how much longer I can go on.”
“Can we try to fly again?”
A wave of panic rushed through her at the idea, and she stumbled again as her knees went weak.
Daniel nodded grimly. “I see the answer is no,” he said. “We’ll hike faster. I’ll carry you if I need to.”
“Conlan and Ven will find you,” Daniel told Justice. “They should be back soon. You can contact them through your telepathy thing, I’m guessing?”
“Yes, he should be able to do so,” Serai answered, since Justice obviously could not. “We need to go now, Daniel. Please.”
“I’m sorry,” Daniel told Justice, and then they set off again, he all but carrying her as they walked toward the resonance of the Emperor’s power, shining like a beacon in her mind.
They hiked in silence for perhaps twenty minutes, until they reached an obstruction on the path. She put her arm around Daniel’s waist, and he flinched a little.
She pulled her hand back and stared down, uncomprehending, at the dark wetness on her fingers where they’d grasped his waist.
“You’re injured? This is blood?” She pulled him around to face her and pushed his shirt away from his skin before he could protest. A slender gash in his side steadily dripped blood, and his shirt and the tops of his pants were drenched.
“How did I not see this?”
He grinned at her, but his face was strained. “It’s dark. Tough to see blood in the dark.”
A wave of dizziness swept through her again, and she realized she’d been supporting him with her magic, unknowingly, since the battle with Justice. It was weakening her even more, and with that compounded by the Emperor’s magical drain, she was barely standing upright. She shut down the flow of her own magic to Daniel, but it was too late. She’d lost too much of her energy during the confrontation with Justice.
“We’re in trouble,” she said softly. “Serious trouble.”
“You might be right,” he said, abruptly sitting down, hard, on the rocky ground. “Oh, yeah. We’re in trouble.”
Daniel stared stupidly at his legs, which wouldn’t function anymore. He felt a sudden loss, almost as if— almost as if—
“You. You were pouring magic into my spell back there,” he said, feeling like a damn fool for not realizing it before.
“I thought you needed the help,” she said wearily, dropping down to sit next to him. “It has been so long since you used your mage powers, and it felt like you needed the support.”
He wanted to berate her for weakening herself to help him, but he couldn’t say or do anything that might upset her. Not now. Not when they were in so much trouble and might not survive it.
“Thank you,” he said instead.
She smiled. “You are very welcome. Now what do we do?”
He dug around in the pack until he found the last bottle of water. “You drink this, and I figure out what we can do until Conlan and Ven get back. Maybe if—”
“Daniel.”
“—if we call him. Can’t you reach out on that mental calling channel? We can—”
“Daniel,” she interrupted again, this time putting a hand over his mouth. “You need to drink, too. I know this much of nightwalkers. Healing a wound is a simple matter if you have blood.”
Bleak, black despair swamped his vision, and he couldn’t bear to look at her. “I cannot. Please, don’t ask me to do this.”
She grasped his shoulders, forcing him to see her. “I need you to do it, for me, Daniel. I need you to drink my blood so you can be strong enough to help me.”
She took a deep breath, before she continued. “And I need for you to give me some of your blood, too.”
He jumped up, wanting to run away. Wanting to kill somebody. He was good at killing.
He was terrible at everything else.
“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said. “More of my blood? In you? We’d strengthen the blood bond, at the very least. And as for the rest, can you even bear to suffer a nightwalker’s bite? I know the venom can be poisonous to your kind.”
Ven had told him, on one of their beer-drinking nights. A vampire’s bite had nearly killed Brennan once, apparently. Just a single bite.
“I’m immune,” Serai said quietly. “Your mentor bit me that day, Daniel. I never wanted you to know, because I knew you’d blame yourself, but it’s relevant now.”
Daniel roared out his agony to the night skies and then crouched down on the ground next to her. “I am sorry beyond the telling of it,” he growled. “If he were still alive, I’d kill him now. Slowly and painfully.”
She shook her head. “It’s not important. He woke up disoriented from the noise of battle above and released me almost as soon as he bit me. But it was enough for me to learn that I am immune to the nightwalker bite.”
“If I were to do this thing, I would truly be the monster you claim I am not,” Daniel said, wondering why he was even considering it. But the ache in his side and his rapidly growing weakness gave him reason enough. He’d been avoiding feeding for so long—only taking the least he possibly needed to survive—and now he was paying for it. The wound was deep enough and wide enough that it had drained far too much of his blood.
“If we’re not strong enough to succeed in this mission, I will die.” She took his hands in hers. “Surely with that on one side of the scales, exchanging blood is not so dire.”
“It only sounds bad if you say it fast,” Daniel said, mocking himself for the fool he was. He was going to do this horrible, monstrous thing, and use pretty speeches to excuse it.
“We are two halves of this quest; two halves of a whole that was split apart unfairly so many years ago, Daniel. Our destiny is together, not apart. If you can strengthen me and I you, then there is no bad in it.”
Serai tilted her face up to his and pressed her lips to his, as if to convince him of the truth of her words. He couldn’t let her, but yet . . . what she said had merit.
“I’m not usually so weak,” he said, pulling away from her. “Justice scored a hit exactly where that vampire’d stabbed me in the attack the other night. My internal organs were not yet entirely healed from that, I think.”
“And you’ve been abstaining from drinking blood since you found me, haven’t you?”
“All but once,” he admitted.
Her eyes narrowed. “Was she pretty?”
In spite of the danger of their situation, he laughed a little. “
She tilted her head and moved her braid to one side of her neck, baring the other side to him. It was as sensuous and provocative as if she’d removed her clothing, and his breathing sped up in spite of his resolve not to
