by Alyssa Day
“I’m sure she could. Thank you.”
Daniel headed back to his hotel room, where Serai hopefully still slept. So many strange alliances and friendships had formed during the course of the rebellion. Life and hope always found a way, and perhaps it had taken one small human with blue-tipped hair and far too much makeup to remind him of that.
It wouldn’t be the strangest thing to have happened to him since that fateful day when Atlantis was attacked. Not by a long shot.
* * *
Serai woke to an empty room and lay there, disoriented, for a few seconds until it all came back to her. The escape from Atlantis. The danger she was in and the mission she must complete. The battle. Daniel.
Daniel.
Her cheeks flamed as she remembered what he’d done to her—what they’d done together. In the very bed in which she now lay. She lifted the sheet and saw that, yes, she was still shamelessly nude, so she could banish any thought that she might have only dreamed the events of the night. Her lips curved into a smile as she remembered the glorious things he’d done to her oh-so-willing body, but then she sat up in a rush, electrified by a sudden thought.
Was she even still a maiden at all?
The door opened as if in answer to her unspoken question, and she gasped until she realized it was Daniel, entering quietly and holding a cup and a small paper bag.
“You went for breakfast? Without me?”
He looked up and smiled at her. A little bit smugly, actually, and she blushed again and clutched the sheets to her chest all the more tightly.
“I left a note for you,” he said, indicating the pillow next to her with a nod. As he’d said, there was a note, his bold masculine handwriting slanted across the page.
Gone to get coffee and make plans with Reisen. Back soon.—Daniel
She realized it was the first time she’d ever seen his handwriting. “It looks like you. Your writing. Bold and unhesitating.”
He crossed the room and handed her the cup, which smelled deliciously of coffee and spice. She took a sip as he sat next to her on the bed.
“I was certainly bold last night,” he said, and she choked on the coffee. He grinned at her, that masculine triumph even more strongly written on his face now.
“Am I still a maiden?” She blurted out the question before embarrassment could stop her, and was intrigued to see the hot red flush that climbed up his cheekbones.
“I—What? Yes. Yes, I mean, you’re . . . you’re still, well, what we did, ah, I mean—”
She helped him out before he strangled on his answer. Oddly enough, his embarrassment helped her past her own. “It’s a simple question. Did you, ah, push past any obstruction with your fingers last night?”
He swallowed audibly, almost a gulping sound, and suddenly she wanted to laugh.
“No, I was careful not to, you know, I didn’t want to hurt you, only bring you pleasure, and . . . oh, hell, are you sorry?”
Pain creased his face, and she sobered at the idea that she’d caused him to regret any part of the magical moments he’d shared with her.
“No, Daniel. It was a gift, what you gave to me last night. I only wondered if I were still a maiden because it’s a burden I so long to be rid of. Without my maidenhood, I lose my value in the game of kings and their need for breeding stock,” she said bitterly.
He took the cup out of her hand and placed it gently on the table beside the bed, and then pulled her into his arms. “Oh, sweetheart. It’s not like that anymore. Virginity isn’t a prized commodity in today’s world, at least not in most areas of the world. People are valued for who they are, not for the lack of bedding experience.”
She snuggled into his embrace, content to hold and be held by him for a few minutes, before responding. “Can you be sure it is so in Atlantis? And if yes, why didn’t they release us long ago?”
“I don’t know. I can’t speak to how things are in Atlantis, but I have met Riley and I doubt Conlan wanted her for her virginity. She’s past the age when women . . . Ah, well, anyway, I doubt it.”
She looked up into his face and smiled to see her big, tough warrior vampire mage turning red again. An impish idea took hold of her. “Should we talk about our feelings now?”
The look of horror on his face made her laugh out loud.
“I was kidding, silly man. Some things have not changed in all these years, I see, and some subjects are still better discussed with one’s girlfriends.”
Daniel shook his head. “You must be feeling better if you’re up to torturing me, you little imp.”
She tried on what she hoped was a seductive smile, and he bent his head to hers and captured her mouth in a long and deliciously satisfying kiss. She was quite breathless by the time he raised his head, and little tingles raced through her nerve endings.
“Maybe we should talk about this,” he said, jumping up to pace across the floor and away from her. He had a slightly panicked expression on his face, and she wondered what she’d done wrong.
Or right.
She experimented by letting the sheet drop, just the barest inch or so, so that more of the upper slopes of her breasts were visible, and Daniel’s eyes darkened.
“You’re playing dangerous games with me,” he said. “We are trapped in this room until the sun goes down, and I can make very sure there is no question at all about your maiden status by that time, if you wish it so.”
It was her turn to freeze as she realized she might be playing with fire, and she wasn’t quite sure she was ready to face that kind of flame. She pulled the sheet back up.
“I’m not . . . I don’t—”
“Not yet?” He smiled but looked disappointed enough to satisfy her pride.
“Perhaps not ever, Mage,” she said haughtily, to cover her sudden shyness. “Do not take my acceptance of your advances for granted.”
He just laughed. “I wasn’t the one draping myself oh-so-prettily in that bedsheet, Princess.”
She blushed again and then lifted one shoulder. “Perhaps we should move on. If you will turn your back, I will dress, and we can discuss your meeting with Reisen.”
He shook his head and his gaze seared over her. She wouldn’t be surprised if he could see right through the sheet. “I don’t think so. I told you once already that I wouldn’t miss an opportunity to see your beautiful body, and you have no reason to be shy with me. I touched and tasted every inch of that perfect skin last night.”
She caught her breath at the memory of his dark head bent against her breasts, and for a crazy moment, she was tempted to toss the sheet aside, walk nude across the floor, and throw her arms around him. He’d be the one unable to catch his breath then.
Before she could decide one way or the other, he sighed. “Okay. I’m no gentleman, but I can pretend to be one for long enough for you to get dressed. We do have a lot to discuss. But move quickly before my instincts win out over this moment of chivalry and I pounce on you.”
He turned around and she jumped out of the bed and ran to the bathroom, not stopping until she closed the door behind her.
His deep laughter followed her into the bathroom, and she listened through the door.
“Oh, sweetheart. You do have the most glorious ass I’ve ever seen.”
She looked at herself in the mirror and confirmed that her face was every bit as bright red as she’d feared, but even as the wave of shyness and embarrassment swept over her, she also admitted to a very feminine feeling of satisfaction.
The most glorious bottom he’d ever seen.
Not bad for an eleven-thousand-year-old woman.
Chapter 14
Nicholas’s mansion, the basement computer rooms and interrogation chamber
Nicholas watched Ivy as she struggled to gather enough courage to touch the amethyst again. The jewel sat on a velvet cushion, inanimate yet somehow serene, as if daring the sorceress to touch it. She wasn’t quite up to taking the dare yet.
He smelled the banker’s slightly sour
stench even before Smithson entered the room. The smell wasn’t body odor; the man was clean enough. Nicholas assumed the stink was the smell of soulless evil.
Pot, skillet.
“Do I even want to know why you have a room in your basement with a two-way glass window installed?” Smithson’s voice was too cheerful for someone whose plans were falling apart.
Nicholas decided to remind the banker of that. “Do not presume to question me about my actions, human,” he hissed, baring his fangs. He was rewarded with the banker’s barely visible shudder. Smithson was tough enough for a mortal, but Nicholas had lived for centuries and crushed the spirits of far tougher wannabe predators than this one.
“I’m not questioning you,” Smithson said quickly. “I just—”
“The attack at the rebel campground was a complete and utter failure,” Nicholas said. “Your intelligence was flawed. Not only were the numbers greater than your men reported, but they had two shape-shifters on their side, both tigers. Not to mention a vampire of their own.”
Nicholas’s source, one of his blood pride, had actually reported seeing that one of the shifters had been a saber-toothed tiger, but he assumed the vampire had been struck senseless with fear or stupidity. Either way, Nicholas didn’t care. He’d sent the sniveling idiot to the true death for his idiocy.
Nicholas didn’t like visual reminders of failure, as his subordinates had long since learned. He was a big fan of killing the messenger if the news happened to be bad. Not necessarily a great communication strategy, but eminently satisfying.
“A vampire? I thought you were in charge of all of them in this region,” Smithson said. “How could one stand against us? Do you have a traitor in your group?”
In a movement so fast it blurred, Nicholas pinned Smithson to the wall, pressing his arm into the banker’s neck. “Do not dare to question me, or I will enjoy draining you of every drop of your blood. There are many humans ready and willing to take your place.”
Smithson’s face turned the color of an overripe tomato as he struggled to draw a breath. Nicholas finally tired of the game and let him go with a final warning. “Remember that.”
Nicholas saw the look of utter hatred that crossed the banker’s face, but he laughed. He had far more to worry about than a human’s anger.
“She won’t try,” he said, pointing to Ivy, who still sat huddled on the floor, as far from the gemstone as was possible in the small room. “I think her fear of the gem is outweighing her fear of me, as impossible as that sounds.”
“Oh, not for long,” Smithson said, retaining a measure of his composure as he rubbed the red marks on his neck. “If we can’t torture them into doing what we want, we can always make life miserable for their families.”
The banker walked to the doorway and said something to one of his thugs waiting outside and then returned to Nicholas.
“Watch this.”
The door to the room opened, and Ivy flinched and looked up, then cried out and ran across the room. A boy stumbled into the room as if pushed.
“Ian! What—where did you—why are you here?” She pulled him into a fierce hug and burst into tears.
The boy awkwardly patted her back. “Sheesh, Mom, calm down. It’s okay. I’m here now, and I’ll take care of you.”
Nicholas eyed the boy’s bruised face and blackened eye, and a slow wave of rage churned through his gut. “What did you do to him?”
“I didn’t do anything. Some of my men may have gotten a little carried away.” The nasty little banker had the nerve to smile. “I wish I could always do business like this. Threatening their families makes them so much more agreeable.”
Almost casually, Nicholson backhanded the banker so hard that the man flew backward and struck the wall before sliding down to the floor.
“We don’t make war on children. Remember it,” he said.
“Don’t ever put your hands on me again, or I’ll be sure you never get one word of information about the investors,” Smithson shouted. The effect of his belligerence was muted somewhat by the fact he still sat on the floor and cringed when Nicholas turned around.
“If that boy is hurt again, even so much as a minor bruise or cut, I’ll end you,” Nicholas said. “I’ve survived for centuries without your pathetic excuse for help. You might remember that when you’re considering how very fragile humans are.”
Smithson struggled to stand up. The man was a worthless pile of excrement, but he was no coward, Nicholas had to give him that.
“You promised to turn me. I want to be a vampire,” Smithson said. “Whatever it takes.”
“Indeed. Whatever it takes, I promise to drain all the blood from your body.” Nicholas let all the feeling and movement vanish slowly from his expression until he stood utterly motionless, like a particularly deadly block of ice.
Smithson shuddered again, but persevered. “And then give me some of yours. Three times. Once is only a blood bond, I know that much.”
Ivy pounded on the window, saving Nicholas from the annoyance of a reply.
“You let him go,” she screamed. “I’ll do anything you want. Just let him go.”
Nicholas pressed a button on the panel set into the wall next to the window and leaned forward. “You’ll do anything I want, anyway, my beautiful little witch. Now try again with the jewel, and we’ll send in food and drink for you and the boy.”
Tears gathered in her eyes, but she blinked them back, squaring her shoulders to appear strong for her boy. Nicholas admired that in a mother. His own son’s mother had been a sniveling coward, too terrified to even let Nicholas approach his boy. No matter that Nicholas had been forced into this life; he’d not chosen to become vampire.
Ancient history had no place here, however. He banished the unwelcome memories and focused on Ivy. Beautiful and deadly, the witch had dabbled in the black side of her magic often enough to gain the title sorceress and dark powers she had no business wielding. Time enough to put shackles on her later, though. For now he needed every bit of her strength and didn’t care overly much where she found it.
“No, Mom, your nose has been bleeding again,” Ian said, trying to stop his mother from approaching the amethyst. “You know what the doctor said. Too much magic, and you could get a brain aneurysm, remember? You can’t push like this again.”
Ivy shook her head. “Ian, you don’t understand. I have to help these . . . men . . . or they’ll hurt us.” She put a gentle hand on his face and tilted it to the light to better see the bruising, and when she turned back toward the window, her eyes were glowing with a deep purple fire.
“Know this. Whoever hurt my son will pay for it,” she said, each word a deadly chip of ice. “If you touch him again, I’ll kill you.”
Nicholas inclined his head, though she couldn’t see it, and touched the panel again. “You have my word your son will be unharmed. The one who bruised him will be punished. We will not release either of you, however, until you achieve our goal. Do you understand?”
It was her turn to nod. She drew in a deep breath and then turned to the amethyst, and three quick steps later she held it in her hands. It did something to her—something he couldn’t see but which clearly hurt her, judging by the sound she made and how her face drained of all color. She only tightened her fingers around the gem and closed her eyes, and began murmuring something under her breath, a kind of chant that even Nicholas, with his vampire hearing, couldn’t quite make out.
Seconds later, though, a pulse of magic rocked the building, and a weak, pale beam of violet light shot out of the gem, spilling between her fingers and across the room. Its end terminated on the third drawer of the second in a line of filing cabinets.
Precisely spotlighting the single location in the room where he had previously hidden a small cache of gold and jewels.
“Houston, we have liftoff,” Nicholas murmured.
Smithson hesitantly moved up next to him at the mirror as the light vanished. Ivy fell to the ground, and her
son ran to gather her up. Nicholas stared at the thin stream of blood that trickled from the witch’s nose. A brain aneurysm would be most unfortunate at this point in the process.
“We need to find a way to strengthen or reinforce her magic so it doesn’t harm her to use the gem,” he told Smithson.
The banker blinked rapidly, which had the unpleasant effect of making him look even more like a rodent than he usually did. “You care about what happens to her? I thought she was just a tool.”
“I take good care of my tools, as any competent mechanic would. If she dies, she is of no use to us, and we need her for this.”
“Are you finally ready to tell me what exactly the plan is?”
Nicholas glanced at the human, considering. So long as he kept Smithson at hand, there was little to no chance of betrayal. Why not, after all? There was no danger here.
“The gem acts as a dowsing rod for other gems and for gold. Any valuable mined from the earth. It might even find oil, for all we know.”
Smithson whistled, long and loud. “That’s—that’s—”
“Exactly.”
“How did you find out about this?”
“It was one of your human archaeologists, actually, who recently discovered cave writing that translated into a heretofore unknown legend from the days of the Sinagua Indians. According to these pictographs, the Sinagua hid a great treasure when the vampires first came to the area. Their medicine men warned them that they might not survive as a people, and apparently they wanted to record this story for posterity.”
Smithson held up a hand. “Hold up. Your kind is why the Sinagua died out all those years ago? Have you told anybody? All the historians and archaeologists around here would go crazy for that information, and now that vampires are part of society, you can tell them this stuff freely, right? It’s not like you can get in trouble for what some unrelated vampires did hundreds of years ago.”
