by Alyssa Day
* * *
He finished his pathetic tale and looked up, expecting Quinn to mock him for his weakness. What he saw instead shocked him. Quinn, the tough rebel leader who’d challenged monsters and battled horrors that would have made other humans curl up and beg to die, had tears in her eyes.
“Don’t,” he said harshly. “Don’t cry for me. I don’t deserve it.”
“Maybe I’m crying for both of us,” she said quietly. “You know I can never be with Alaric. The best I can hope for is at least I take a bunch of the bad guys with me when I meet my early and violent end.”
“A little melodramatic, Quinn.”
“A lot true.” She shrugged. “You have a chance, though. Go find her. Help her. Be who she needs and save her from all of this. Most of us don’t get a second chance, Daniel. Don’t waste yours.”
An icy wind swept into the cavern, interrupting whatever he’d been about to say, and Daniel threw himself in front of Quinn to protect her from this new danger, but it was only Alaric. Daniel almost laughed, even as the thought entered his mind. Only Alaric.
The priest was Quinn’s biggest danger of all.
Daniel felt the click inside his being that signaled the setting sun, but he waited to be sure Quinn—his friend—would be okay. “Are you all right with him?”
Alaric made a low sound, deep in his throat, and his eyes glowed a hot green.
“Save it, Priest,” Daniel advised. “You don’t want to go up against me. Nightwalker Guild. Senior mage. Look it up sometime.”
Quinn smiled a little. “Seriously. He’s hell on picnic tables. Go ahead, Daniel. I’m fine.”
Daniel didn’t wait any longer, especially since he knew the priest would give his own life to protect Quinn, and the two of them probably wanted some privacy anyway, to work out their own problems. If there was any possibility they could work them out, Quinn deserved that chance.
Not his business. He launched himself into the air and flew out of the cavern, soaring through the cool dusk sky to where he knew Serai waited. He could feel her, and he needed to find her. Now. And make her understand that she could never, ever leave him again until she was safe.
Then she could rip his heart out. Not before.
* * *
Oak Creek Canyon
As the sun finally sank beneath the horizon, Serai wrapped her arms around her knees and prepared to face the music.
Or face the vampire, to be exact. Although she liked the expression “face the music.” She’d quite liked “the bee’s knees,” too, but that one had fallen out of use some time ago. She realized her mind was racing around random irrelevant subjects, but she couldn’t help it. She’d spent the past couple of hours trying to contact the Emperor, worrying about what to do next, and feeling like an utter fool over her mistake about Reisen’s hand.
One thing was clear: she was done screaming like a foolish girl. It was time to gear up for battle, as her father used to say, although of course he’d spent time as an actual officer in the king’s guard, so maybe his meaning had been different. She needed to be strong. What other woman on the planet had so much knowledge of life, after all? Even though she hadn’t experienced any of it.
“I can do this,” she said firmly, and the sleeping tiger opened one bright green eye and looked at her.
Before she could explain what she could do, or even draw her next breath, Daniel was there. Just suddenly there, as if he’d dropped out of the sky, which, on reflection, she realized he had. He pulled her into his arms and held her so tightly she couldn’t breathe.
“Never again,” he demanded, his voice rough. “Never leave me again. Never run into danger when I can’t follow you. If something happened to you . . .”
Jack rolled to all four legs and snarled at Daniel, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it, since he scratched his ear with one giant paw and then ambled off, probably to find Quinn.
Serai leaned into Daniel, wanting nothing more than to curl up in his arms and hide from the rest of the world and her duty. She pretended, just for a few moments, that they were an ordinary couple who could afford the time to visit a lovely place and hold each other. Play tourist. Grow old together.
He’d never grow old, though, and she might die any minute, if they didn’t find the Emperor. She reluctantly pulled away from him.
“I’m sorry. About Reisen. I should have trusted you. I’ve been stupid, but that’s over,” she said, squaring her shoulders.
His eyes were perfectly, completely black with some suppressed emotion. Probably disgust. “Never apologize to me. Never. I should have been more careful; I should have—”
“I can feel it,” she interrupted, as another wave of pain struck, biting hard. “I can feel the Emperor. We can track it. It’s not that far away.”
Chapter 10
Daniel took Serai’s hand and headed back to the cave, which also served as the temporary headquarters of Quinn’s rebels. There would be supplies. Gear. Whatever he needed to help Serai find that damn stone and be safe. He swept a glance down her curves, now neatly attired in the same nondescript tan pants and white shirt that many of the others wore, and he couldn’t help but miss the filmy gown. But even in the plain contemporary clothing, with her glorious hair restrained in a simple braid down her back, she was obviously an Atlantean high-born lady. The way she held her head, the electric charge of restrained magic, even her graceful carriage in spite of the chunky hiking boots that now adorned her feet—nobody would mistake her for anything but aristocracy.
And all he wanted to do was remove every stitch of the new clothing and wrap himself around her until every inch of their skin was touching. Hold her. Explore her curves and learn her body. Teach her the ways of a man and a woman together, and discover for himself what it would be like to be with a woman whom his heart desired, not just his body. Even her braid tantalized him, as if begging him to release it and spread her hair out on silken sheets. He remembered fantasizing, so long ago, about her wearing nothing to his bed but the necklace he’d designed for her.
A stupid fantasy. The blacksmith and the beauty, indeed. Only in Hollywood’s version of fairy tales did a story like that work out.
“Daniel,” she murmured. “You’re holding my hand a little too tight.”
He relaxed his grip, feeling like a fool. Or the beast he’d named himself. She deserved better. Once she was safe and back in Atlantis, he was sure Conlan would find someone for her. Someone far more worthy than a vampire with blood on his hands. It was for the best.
So why did the mere thought of it make him want to kill someone?
“I don’t know you anymore,” she said. “It’s neither excuse nor apology, but I don’t know the man you’ve become, and I don’t know what violence you’re capable of doing in a moment’s anger. I had little contact with nightwalkers—my only experience, in fact, was with the master of your smithy and the fact that he didn’t eat me when we were trapped in that hole in the ground.”
“I need to hear it. All of it. What happened that day. Why you left me. Why you agreed to this stasis.” He stopped and wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close to his body in the sweet darkness of newly fallen night. “I know now is not the time, but when this is over and you’re safe, I need to hear it. I need to know.”
She looked up at him and solemnly nodded. “I know. We have much to tell before we can decide . . . many things. Soon.”
Her voice was calm and controlled, but he was a vampire and could hear her heart racing in her chest. Not from fear. He hoped it wasn’t fear. Could he dare believe it might be attraction? Even after all these years? Before he could doubt himself, he claimed what he’d wanted to steal from her since the day she first walked into his shop back in Atlantis. He leaned down and captured her lips with his own, tasting her sweetness. Sinking into her warmth.
And the world shattered.
Heat that surely would melt his flesh from his bones shot through him, and he tightened his arms a
round her until she could never escape. She kissed him back—at first an innocent brush of her lips and then an ardent and enthusiastic return of his passion. When her tongue hesitantly touched his own, he groaned deep in his throat and was lost. She twined her arms around his neck and tangled her hands in his hair, just as he wanted to do to hers, but he contented himself with wrapping her braid in his fist, another way to hold her, capture her, claim her. She made a tiny sound, a moan or a purr, and his cock hardened to a degree that shamed the rock surrounding them.
He pulled away for an unbearable moment, long enough to tell her, to explain his aggression. “I need you, my beautiful one. By all the gods, I need you.”
She blinked, her eyes enormous in her pale face, and tried to talk, but nothing but a whisper of sound emerged from her perfect lips. Not a protest, surely not, anything but that. Acceptance, agreement, acquiescence; he would brook nothing else.
She tried again. “Jack,” she managed to say.
Jack. Jack? Another man’s name was not what he wanted to hear from his woman. A red haze of fury washed over his vision, and he contemplated how much joy he would gain from ripping the tiger to tiny shreds. Or using his skin for a rug.
“Jack,” she repeated, but this time she was pointing. “He’s calling us, and he’s right there.”
The meaning behind her words finally sank in, and the berserker rage subsided. She didn’t want Jack. Jack was calling them. From right behind Daniel. Serai’s hands, he suddenly realized, were still twined in his hair.
His lips curved in a slow, dangerous smile, and she gasped a little. “If ever a kiss were worth waiting eleven thousand years for, that was it, my lady,” he murmured in her perfect, shell-like ear. “I will make sure it is not nearly so long a period until the next one.”
Even in the dim light from the lanterns, he could see her face flush a hot red, and she pushed against his chest until he let her go.
“You presume too much,” she said, but her haughty words were ruined a little by her breathlessness.
“Yep.” He took her hand again and headed toward the damn grinning tiger shifter and his lantern. He was almost to the cave when he realized he was whistling.
Life was suddenly looking up.
When they entered the cave, the atmosphere was noticeably chilly, and it had nothing to do with the weather. The positioning of the inhabitants told the whole story in a glance. Alaric leaned against a wall, scowling at Reisen, who stood as far as possible from the priest. Quinn stood, seemingly relaxed, in the center of the space. Only the stress in her eyes and her slightly increased heartbeat told Daniel that she wasn’t nearly as calm as she liked to project. A slender, not very tall human woman with blond-and-blue hair and a wicked grin sat on the floor near Quinn, a computer on her lap. She kept shooting glances at Reisen, who pretended not to notice, or perhaps really didn’t notice, since he was practically inhaling Serai with his eyes.
But Serai ignored him, her gaze fixed on Alaric, her face becomimg pale and bloodless. “You.”
Alaric took a step forward. “Princess. How are you here? What—”
“Stay away from me, or I will hurt you,” she said, her voice only trembling a little.
Daniel stepped between them at the same time that Quinn caught Alaric’s arm with her hand.
“She must return to Atlantis,” the priest said, flinching a little at the contact but not pulling away.
“I will never again listen to an Atlantean who tells me what I must do,” Serai said, raising her chin.
Daniel aimed a flat stare at the priest. “Alaric. You’ll need to go through me to get to her, so please choose which part of your pretty face you want to get smashed in first.”
Quinn glared at Daniel. “That’s not really helping. You either, Alaric. Can we discuss what we’re here for and then you can have a private meeting about Atlantean issues? I really don’t have time for this right now.”
She twined her fingers through Alaric’s, pulling him back, and the dark look the priest shot at her would have stopped most people in their tracks. Quinn only smiled and shook her head.
“You know better than that,” she whispered so softly that Daniel was sure most of the people in the room couldn’t hear her. “The only thing about you that scares me is your absence, Alaric.”
The priest stood frozen for a long moment and then inclined his head and moved back to his place by the wall. “We will have this talk, though, Princess Serai, vampire or no.”
“I’m no princess, Alaric, but yes, we will talk. You don’t scare me, however, so you can stop trying.”
She was lying; Daniel could hear her heartbeat racing. The priest scared her, and Daniel had to fight hard against the rising red tide of fury demanding that he attack Alaric. Neutralize the threat to Serai.
Reisen surprised everyone by stepping into the silence. “I need to talk to you, too, Lady Serai.”
“I think not,” Daniel said, baring his fangs at the Atlantean, who showed no signs of being intimidated. Maybe once you’d had your hand torn off by a vampire, you didn’t much fear the one who’d saved your miserable life.
“Daniel,” Reisen said, nodding stiffly.
“Reisen. Long time, no have-to-save-your-ass. Or is that long time, no see? I always get these human sayings confused.”
Quinn rolled her eyes. “Really? We’re going to do this now?”
“I believe it is an imbalance in the male brain,” Serai said regally. “They name it testosterone in this time. In mine, we merely called it stupidity.”
Quinn burst out laughing, and even Alaric cracked a smile, which made Daniel almost fall over.
“Either works,” Jack said as he entered the cave behind Daniel and Serai. He touched Serai on the arm. “You okay, kitten?”
“Tiger-skin rug. On my floor,” Daniel said, but with no heat. He couldn’t resent Jack’s concern. Beneath all that tiger fur, Jack was a warrior who took his job of protecting others seriously. Daniel inclined his head to Jack in thanks for being with Serai during the afternoon hours when he could not, and Jack punched him in the shoulder.
Serai stared at them both like they were lunatics.
“It’s a guy thing,” Jack said, shrugging. “He knows now that I’m pissed off about Quinn; I know he’s pissed off about you. It’s all good.”
“Certainly that would make perfect sense, if the world were upside down. However, I choose to ignore rather than debate your logic and simply respond that I am well,” Serai said. “Thank you for your assistance today.”
Jack grinned. “Tigers love nothing more than a nap in the sun. Throw in a beautiful woman for company, and it’s the cherry on the cake.”
Daniel narrowed his eyes, but Jack just laughed and walked farther into the cave and leaned against the wall between Reisen and Alaric.
“If we’re done posturing, maybe we could get this meeting started so we can move on,” Quinn said. “Jack?”
Jack nodded. “Okay, here’s what we’ve found out so far. Banker named Smithson seems to be the head of a massive consortium of investment bankers throughout the world. They’re bored with playing with their money, stepping on Third World countries, draining old people’s pensions, and the like. They want to dance with the big boys and never worry about trifling little things like banking laws or international monetary regulations.”
“Smithson is here?” Quinn asked.
“Right here at Sedona National Bank, which is apparently a front for all kinds of bad and wrong.”
The woman with the computer raised her hand.
“Melody, you don’t have to raise your hand,” Quinn said patiently, as if she’d said it many times before.
“Oh, sure, I’m sitting in on a meeting with the rebel leader, scary tiger man, and possible Area 51 man in black over in the corner,” Melody said, indicating Quinn, Jack, and Alaric in turn, before pointing at Daniel. “Plus let’s not forget terrifying vampire dude who blows up defenseless chocolate cakes. You think
I’m not going to be a little extra polite?”
Serai looked at Daniel. “You destroyed the cake? I loved that cake.”
Daniel glared at Melody. “Can we move on?”
Her black-rimmed eyes widened. “Um, sure. We found out that the records of all the consortium dudes are on an encrypted laptop that Smithson keeps in a safe-deposit box in his own bank, because, duh, he, like, runs the place.”
Serai tilted her head, clearly fascinated by Melody’s outrageous appearance and manner of speaking. “Duh?”
“It’s goth chick for ‘of course, as you all realize,’” Melody said, grinning. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
“You have no idea,” Serai said, flashing a genuine smile that made something in Daniel’s chest tighten.
Alaric straightened and pinned Serai with a flat gaze. “Yes. About that. You need to go back.”
Serai raised her chin. “I think you are the last person to tell me what I need to be doing, youngling.”
Reisen made a choking sound, and Daniel tried not to laugh. He wondered when the last time was that somebody had dared to defy the high priest of Atlantis—or call him youngling, which, as far as Daniel understood, meant something like “wet behind the ears child.”
Alaric stood frozen for a long moment, and then he covered his eyes with one hand and shook his head, muttering to himself. Finally the priest took a deep breath and tried again. “You don’t understand. The Emperor is operating incorrectly. You may be in danger.”
Serai put her hands on her hips. “Really? I might be in danger? You mean, apart from the bit where the fluctuation in the Emperor’s power nearly killed me in the stasis pod, so I had to escape? Or the part where someone is trying to wield the gem’s magic and sent me into seizures as I came through the portal? No, wait—maybe the fact that if I can’t find the Emperor and retrieve it before whoever has it tries again, the power fluctuations that already almost killed me could kill all of us?”
