Vampire in Atlantis wop-7
Page 14
She remembered the unusual look of many of the pieces. So very lovely—styled with classic lines and simplicity, instead of the ornate design that had been in fashion then. She’d wanted one for herself, but her father was strict about such purchases, always telling her that one day she’d have a husband to buy things for her.
The wave of anger that swept through her at the memory caught her off guard, as did the sharp loneliness that followed. Though she’d had so many differences with her father and had once hated him for what he’d done to her, he’d still been her father. Now he was gone, along with her mother and brother, her friends, and everyone else she’d ever known. She was alone in a world that had moved on without her, and only Daniel had survived as her single constant from then till now. She slipped her hand in his and squeezed, needing the comfort, and was relieved when his fingers tightened around hers in response.
“One of the soldiers who believed strongly that he deserved a free helping of rings and bracelets stabbed me in the side and smashed the hilt of his sword against my head. That’s the last thing I knew,” Daniel said. “I suppose I should have been grateful that he didn’t use the sharp end and rip out my throat. I knew how to forge a sword but not much of how to use one, at least not in a real fight.”
“I think they must have thought you were dead. There was so much blood, Daniel. You had bled so much that I was sure you were dead when we first found you.”
His hand tightened around hers with gentle reassurance. “I nearly was.”
“Yes, you nearly were,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “I hid down there, terrified, until long after the shouts and stamping of the horses had passed. After I’d heard only silence for nearly half an hour, I finally gathered the courage to come back up and find you. But I couldn’t move the door. I tried with all my strength and even pushed with a board I found down there in the dirt with me, but to no avail.”
“I’d fallen right over top of the trapdoor,” Daniel said. “My last-ditch attempt to hide you, I remember. And all I did was cause you more fear and pain.” He kicked a tree root.
“No, you can’t think like that. You did your best, and you saved my life. Or, at the very least, you saved me from being used as a plaything for those horrible men.” She shuddered at the thought of being violated like that. Death wouldn’t have been worse—death was final, with no chance of healing. But death might have been easier. Ice ran through her veins at the thought of what she’d escaped.
“You were too valuable for that, mi amara,” he said gently. “You would have been treated as a precious commodity to become some warlord’s wife.”
She stumbled over a fallen branch, uncharacteristically clumsy in her shock at his use of the Atlantean term for “my beloved.” He’d called her his beloved, and probably didn’t even realize it.
She’d never forget it.
But, still, they were talking about the past. “Warlord’s wife. Prince’s wife. King’s wife. What does it matter? All of them would have robbed me of my freedom in different ways.”
“Would Conlan have forced you to wed him if you said no?” Daniel growled. “I can convince him of the error of that thinking the next time I see him.”
“I don’t know. I like to think not, especially with the choice he himself made that shattered Atlantean law, but I just don’t know. Princes generally choose with politics in mind, not people, or so the Emperor has shown me over the past millennia.”
“Back to that day,” Daniel prompted. “You finally got out when the mage woke up to help, he told me.”
“He terrified me. I was suddenly aware that someone other than me was down there, and I was afraid that one of the soldiers had found his way in, but then I thought it might be a nightwalker. I’d only heard of them—you—vampires,” she explained, stumbling over the words. “I didn’t know what to think. If his bloodlust was going to mean my horrible death.”
“Adrianus had been controlling his bloodlust for centuries by then.”
She stopped, closing her eyes and reaching out for the Emperor’s unique energy signal again. “I can feel it, closer this time. Daniel, we’re nearly there. But, oh, no, not again.”
Pain smashed into her as the witch controlling the Emperor channeled power through it once more, and Serai doubled over. “It’s stronger this time. I think I’m in trouble. Oh, by the gods, it hurts.”
Daniel shocked her by throwing her on the ground, safely cradled in his arms, and covering her body with his own. “We’re definitely in trouble. I can hear voices, and they’re coming from the trees and sky, and they’re moving too fast to be human. This can’t be a coincidence. Whoever has the Emperor, they have vampires with them.”
Chapter 16
Sedona National Bank, inside the vault
Melody grinned at the big hunk of muscled Atlantean roaming restlessly back and forth in the claustrophobic bank vault.
“Does it help? The pacing, I mean. Does it make life better? Make the time pass faster? Cure the common cold?”
Reisen snarled something at her in a language she didn’t recognize, but she translated what he said well enough as “impatient man talk.” He was clearly the action hero type, not the sensitive-and-prone-to-anxiety type she usually fell for.
Whoa.
Even in the privacy of her own mind, thinking “fell for” in context of this man was way, way off base. It was like curling up for a few hot hours of World of Warcraft and finding a gnome and Tauren hot-tubbing in Arathi Basin.
Just not gonna happen. No way.
But man, oh, man, was the guy hot. Seriously hot. Mega hot. All those muscles. Plus those flashing blue eyes and bad boy long black hair combined to make her want to rub up against him and purr.
A lot.
Unfortunately, he’d been the perfect gentleman in the hotel room he’d insisted they share for her protection. She’d been all “right, for my protection, heh heh heh,” but her flutters of anticipation had turned to stark dismay when he hadn’t even tried to touch her once. Not even by “accident.” She’d almost thought he was gay, until she’d dropped her towel accidentally-on-purpose and seen the flash of sheer admiration and male lust cross his face. That had been great for her ego . . . right up to the point where he’d stalked past her into the bathroom and taken a long and, she suspected, very cold shower.
Alone.
She hadn’t quite worked up the courage to join him. A little too brazen ho-bag for her.
Now she sat on the floor of the vault, working her magic on a tough algorithm, trying to get past the encryption on what she figured was some very juicy data, while Reisen paced. And paced. And paced.
“What time is it?”
“Nine o’ clock. This is going to take me a while, so you should try to relax.”
“What is the value of this data, anyway? Why is it so important?”
“From what Quinn said, it’s everything you ever wanted to know about the plans to fund a mega vampire and banker consortium. Their goals are apparently to take over all financial institutions, crush any rebellions, and—so Quinn said—there’s even a faction that knows about you guys. They apparently want to convince the world that Atlantis is an evil superpower bent on world domination before you even show up to the party.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he snarled. “Atlantis is and always has been a peaceful nation. In fact, we have served and protected humans for more than eleven thousand years, since the time we first dove beneath the sea. As a sworn Warrior of Poseidon, I know this firsthand to be true. Not that your kind has ever appreciated it. And this latest madness, accepting the vampire race as your equals, when they only look at you as food—that has made many of us believe that you deserve what you get. We don’t want to dominate any part of your foolish world. We only wish you’d quit expecting us to fight your battles for you.”
“I never expected anything of the sort, big guy,” she said mildly, keying in the final codes to break through the encryption sequence. Now it wa
s a matter of time and waiting and hoping there wasn’t some kind of self-destruct written into the encryption code, like in a bad movie. She set the laptop on the floor next to her and stretched.
“What’s a Warrior of Poseidon, anyway? Some kind of cult of hot guys? Is that what that tattoo on your chest is about?”
He narrowed his eyes. “When did you see that?”
“Um, I might have peeked when you came out of the bathroom in only a towel.” She could feel her face turning pink, but what the heck. He’d been totally worth looking at. “What does it mean? Can I see it again?”
He scowled, but pulled his shirt up to show her the tat. She tried not to swallow her tongue as the move revealed his ripped abs and then the broad, muscular chest she’d wanted to get her hands on the night before.
High on the right side of his chest, she saw the tat again.
* * *
“This mark was branded on my skin by Poseidon himself when I swore my vow to serve the sea god and protect humanity. The circle represents all the peoples of the world, intersected by the pyramid of knowledge deeded to them by the ancients. The silhouette of Poseidon’s trident bisects them both.”
He shoved his shirt back down, and a dark flush rose on his cheekbones. She stared at him, fascinated, realizing he felt shy. The big, tough warrior who’d saved her life was shy about taking his shirt off.
The contradiction was kind of adorable, and definitely hot.
“So you swore to protect humans? And you’re trying to tell me you’re eleven thousand years old?” She rolled her eyes. “I’m guessing, let me think, um, no.”
“No, I’m not eleven thousand years old, but the first Warriors of Poseidon who originally swore the vow to protect—Oh, hells, are you almost done with that computer?”
She shrugged. “It’s working. Could take a while.”
“What time is it?”
She glanced at the bottom right of her computer screen. “Nine-fifteen. Fifteen minutes past the last time you asked. Don’t you have a watch?”
She could have barbecued chicken in the heat of his glare. Which reminded her that she was hungry. Again. As usual. For more than just food, too, after seeing him in all his muscled glory. But she figured she was out of luck on that one. Scruffy human computer nerds were so not his type, probably.
“I don’t wear watches. They don’t function properly with Atlantean magic around them. My father—” He stopped talking mid-sentence and glared at her again. “Why am I telling you any of this?”
“Your father?” She rummaged around in her backpack, looking for a granola bar or an apple. Preferably a Snickers. It had nuts. Health food, for sure.
“None of your business, human.” He whirled around and started back across the floor.
“Seriously?” She started laughing. She couldn’t help it. “Human? Are you going to start mumbling ‘my Precioussssss’ next?”
“What are you talking about? I never understand anything that comes out of your mouth,” he growled, actually growled at her, and she laughed again.
Which seemed to irritate him even more.
“Interesting you mention my mouth, since you can’t seem to stop staring at it,” she added, taunting him.
He whirled around and flashed across the room so fast she didn’t even see him move, and suddenly she was suspended in midair, held up by his big hands on her upper arms. His gorgeous, angry face was inches away from hers, and his eyes were practically glowing a hot, dark blue.
No, wait.
They actually were glowing.
Oh, crap.
“I don’t want to stare at your mouth,” he said, biting off each word. “I don’t want to stare at your bizarre hair, or your curvy little body, or the silky way your skin shines even in this hideous light. I didn’t want to have to restrain myself from tearing your clothes from you last night while you slept, and plunging into your hot, wet, tight—”
“I get it,” she said, gasping. “Got it. Totally. You don’t want to want me. Check. You can let me go now.”
He lowered her slowly down the length of his body until she was standing on her own two, rather unsteady legs, but he didn’t release her arms.
“No,” he said, tilting his head. “I don’t think I can let you go right now.”
He bent his head to hers and she saw it coming, even had time to escape, because he’d relaxed his grip on her arms, but she didn’t want to escape. Didn’t want to be let go. She put her arms around his neck and grinned up at him.
“This is going to be trouble,” she whispered.
“You already are,” he said, and then he kissed her, and oh, holy Linux squared but the man could kiss. She melted against him shamelessly, every nerve cell in her body dancing a tango—or at least a wild drunken chicken dance—at the feel of his mouth on hers.
Then he put those big hands of his on her butt and lifted her up and into him, against that extremely large, hard erection, and she quit thinking of anything at all except to thank her lucky stars that she’d already disconnected all the cameras in the vault for the entire night.
That decryption was going to take an awfully long time after all.
When her back hit the wall of safe-deposit boxes, and his mouth closed over her breast right through her top, she leaned her head back and moaned as loudly as she wanted. It was a soundproof vault, and nobody was in the bank but them. Nobody was coming, either. Reisen shoved her top and bra out of his way and sucked her nipple into his mouth and she revised that thought.
She fervently hoped at least the two of them would be coming. Soon.
Chapter 17
Red Rock Secret Mountain Wilderness area
Daniel finally allowed Serai to stand up when he hadn’t heard anything but the sounds of nature for at least fifteen minutes.
“Are they gone?” she whispered, brushing dirt off her hiking clothes. “Also, what was it? More vampires?”
“Yes. I thought a few shifters were with them, at first, but flying shifters would have been birds, silent or chirping or something, not talking. They were vampires, and they were clumsy amateurs. Loud and arrogant, without a clue somebody might have been here to hear them.”
“Lucky for us, surely?”
He touched her cheek and smiled at her, trying to shove the knot of fear and rage for her—for what might happen to her if they didn’t succeed—deeper in his gut. She didn’t need to know he had the slightest doubt.
“Everything is lucky for us. When we’re done with this little errand, we’ll go to Vegas.”
She laughed. “Isn’t that in the desert? With the places humans go to shove money in machines and listen to the little bell sounds?”
He shook his head. “I think that was one strange filter the Emperor put your knowledge of the world through.”
“Yes, I would agree,” she said seriously. “Who is Justin Bieber, and why is his hair poisonous to small girls?”
It was a long time before he could stop laughing hard enough to answer her.
They made good time, considering, and had hiked nearly three miles when she admitted to needing a break. She drank water and ate some bread and nuts from her pack, while he stared at her and tried not to think about how sweet her blood might taste.
It was a very unsatisfying rest break, which only got worse when she pinned him with that sapphire gaze and asked the one question he’d been praying she’d never get around to asking.
“What happened to you after you became a nightwalker? What have you been up to for the past eleven millennia?”
He stood up so fast he knocked over the rock he’d been using for a seat. “We need to get going. Definitely no time to discuss boring details of the past several thousand years.”
She put her things away in her backpack and didn’t answer him, but he could feel the weight of her disappointment—or disapproval—in her silence.
“It’s not a pretty story,” he finally said, not looking at her. Not wanting to see her face.
Daniel felt like the rock he’d been sitting on had just slammed into the side of his head. She loved him? Had she been about to admit to that?
No. Of course not. He was a damned fool to think it.
“Not my past,” he said flatly. “Nobody would love to hear about my past.”
“Then don’t tell me all of it. Just tell me the part that happened right after you became a nightwalker. What happened? Did it hurt? Was the mage training hard?” She slipped her hand in his so naturally that he almost didn’t notice it until they’d taken a few steps, and then a wave of warmth and peace swept through him and he tightened his fingers, never wanting to let her go.
They walked in silence for nearly ten minutes, Serai apparently content to wait for his response, while he considered what to say. Finally he shrugged. Let her hear it, then. Let her know firsthand what a monster he was. It would be easier for her to let him go when the time came.
Easier for him to leave her to a better fate, as well.
“I became a monster. There was nothing left of the Daniel you knew; he lost himself to the bloodlust and the pain of losing you.”
She flinched a little, but tightened her grip on his hand. “I’d heard it was bad at the beginning, for the newly made.”
“It’s bad enough, as far as I saw from others, but never as bad as I became, or at least that’s what they told me. I had lost you forever. I thought you were dead. I had nothing else to live for, so I didn’t bother to live. I wanted to die, but the monster’s sense of self-preservation was too strong.”
He heard her indrawn breath, but ruthlessly continued. She’d wanted to hear it. She could hear it all.