Ivy had tried to comfort him at first, promising him he wouldn’t be hurt, but she’d finally given up in disgust.
Even Ian had rolled his eyes after the first ten minutes or so and told the witch to “man up, dude.”
“We’re in trouble,” Nicholas said. He pointed to the man, Phillips or Phelps or whatever. “Shut up, now, or I’ll kill you myself.”
Phillips shut up, cramming his fist in his mouth to do it.
Ian shot Nicholas a hard look. “He’s a clerk in the New Age shop down by Tuzigoot, not exactly a hard-ass. Scaring him even more isn’t going to help.”
“Shut up and listen.”
Ian, astonishingly enough for a thirteen-year-old boy, actually shut up and listened. Five seconds later, he ran to his mother and took her arm.
“Mom, it’s gotta be the army. Holy crap, it really is the army coming to rescue us!”
Ivy and Nicholas shared a grim look over Ian’s head. If the army were on its way, the last thing they’d have in mind would be rescuing a witch from a vampire. More likely, they were after the power source of the King stone and would kill all of them to get it. Nicholas had heard rumors that the P-Ops Division was corrupt all the way to the top, and now he might be soon to gain confirmation firsthand.
“Hey, I lied, Phil,” Ivy said tiredly. “You’re probably going to get hurt.”
The man started wailing again, so Nicholas strode across the cave and casually backhanded him to shut him up. Phil’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he slumped to the ground.
“That’s better. Now maybe I can think.” Nicholas walked over to the box that held the gem and stared down at it as if the amethyst itself would give him a clue as to what to do next. They’d been on the verge of trying one final experiment to see if they could learn what the King stone really could do, when the stone had begun glowing on its own, shooting out a beam of light so strong that Nicholas was surprised it hadn’t cut straight through the stone cavern wall. Ivy told him that it wasn’t just light, either; the stone had been projecting magical energy at a level far more intense than anything she’d seen from it thus far.
“What can we do?” Ivy asked now, holding tight to Ian’s arm. “You promised to keep my son safe, vampire, and it’s dark enough that you can escape with him in a few minutes. I’ll stay here and deal with the army.”
“I won’t leave you, Mom,” Ian protested, and she ignored him as if he’d never even spoken, still staring steadily at Nicholas.
“I won’t leave you, either,” Nicholas said, leaving her to interpret it as she would. “We’ll all get out of here. The members of my blood pride should be here any minute to assist us.”
“Why did you send the guy away who brought Phil? He was human. The sunlight wouldn’t have bothered him.”
“More witnesses I didn’t need. Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”
The voice that shattered the silence, transmitted by some kind of electronic device, carried a weight of authority and command that didn’t bode well for their plans.
“This is Colonel Brig St. Ives of the federal P-Ops Division speaking. We have you surrounded, and we have captured your vampire associates, twelve in total. Please come out, sending Mr. Smithson out first, and nobody will get hurt.”
An even dozen had been all the members of his blood pride on this mission with him. This could be a slight problem.
“Whoops,” Ian said, grinning and almost jumping out of his skin with adrenaline and a sick kind of excitement. “Wonder if they’d accept parts of him? His spleen might be around here somewhere.”
Ivy pulled her son closer, her wild eyes fixed on Nicholas as if he were her savior instead of her killer. In spite of everything, he wanted to do just that. Save her. Protect her. Try again later. Forget the damn King stone and everything it might be able to do.
He focused on Ivy so intently that he missed it when Phil, who’d apparently been feigning unconsciousness, made his break, and by the time he realized the man was running out the entrance, it was too late to bother.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” Phil screamed. “I’m a hostage, I’m here, help me, help me—”
An explosion of gunfire cut off the rest of Phil’s plea for help, and Ivy screamed. Nicholas flashed over to the cave entrance and peered out into the gathering dusk, only to see Phil’s nearly disintegrated body.
“Interesting interpretation of ‘nobody will get hurt,’” Nicholas said. “Maybe we should rethink our options.”
Ivy picked up the Emperor and smiled, a wild glee darkening her eyes. “They’re wrong if they think nobody will get hurt. They’re a danger to my son. I’m going to bring them a world of hurt.”
Nicholas bared his fangs and snarled his agreement, and then he smiled. “You, beautiful witch, are my kind of woman.”
Chapter 33
Daniel shot out of the cave like a bat out of the worst of the nine hells the second the sun finally hid behind the horizon. Now that he and Serai were connected by the soul-meld and the vortex magic, he could feel the Emperor almost as intensely as she could.
Which meant he could leave her safely behind while he went after it.
Unfortunately, she had no intention of letting him do anything of the kind. By the time he turned around, she was already down the carved stone side of the cliff and standing on the ground, hands on her hips, staring up at him.
“You can forget that idea right now,” she informed him.
“Did the soul-meld give you psychic powers? And if so, can you snoop in everybody’s brain or just mine?” He landed next to her and stared her down with his fiercest glare.
Also unfortunately, she wasn’t intimidated in the least.
“You know, you’re kind of sexy when you scowl like that,” she said, flashing a seductive smile, and then blinking innocently when he growled at her.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Was that meant to frighten me into staying here, cowering in the corner like a good little princess?”
He shook his head and gave it up as a lost cause. “I’ve been around long enough to know defeat when it smacks me in the face. Let’s go. We need to find out why the army or P-Ops or who-the-hells-ever is heading in the same direction as the Emperor.”
“I have never believed in coincidence,” she said, braiding her hair back from her face.
“Neither have I.”
She bent to retrieve the backpack and he stopped her. “No need for it now. If we succeed, we can stop back and retrieve it if we need to hike out of here. Do you think you could be up for flying—no pun intended—if we have to do it to escape?”
She frowned but then nodded slowly. “You know, I have your magic inside me now, as well as my own. That should surely sustain me long enough to fly away from danger with the Emperor. And I have no time to harbor childish fears.”
“It’s not childish,
She threw her arms around him and kissed him, and then the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked shattered the early evening stillness.
“Going fast shouldn’t be a problem, sir,” a voice said. “Stand down and be prepared to surrender, or it will go very badly for you.”
Daniel cast a quick, reassuring glance at Serai, but he needn’t have bothered. She was perfectly calm, smiling out into the velvety blue darkness of twilight.
“We’re willing to come with you peacefully,” she said. “We’d certainly hate for things to go badly.”
Daniel held up his hands in the universal sign for “I surrender,” but he started laughing. He just couldn’t help it. He was still laughing as the very polite soldier—P-Ops according to the insignia on his black uniform—held a scanner up to Serai and then to him. As soon as he realized Daniel was a vampire, the soldier stepped quickly back
