Vampire in Atlantis wop-7

by Alyssa Day

  “By the time I was sane enough to think that maybe the story I’d heard was wrong, that maybe you lived, Atlantis was gone. Vanished beneath the sea. After that, I became a monster the like of which the world had never seen. For several years, I raged and rampaged, killing humans and treating them as nothing more than prey for slaughter. I went after the criminals and the rogue soldiers, those who looted and pillaged and raped. I killed them all and drank their blood and I gloried in it.”

  She stopped walking, but he refused to look at her.

  “You were trying to achieve some sort of justice,” she said, but he ruthlessly cut her off, before she could get carried away with some false idea of his nobility.

  “I was a murderer, after vengeance. Nothing more. Don’t try to make me out to be anything heroic. It would be the worst kind of lie,” he said roughly.

  “So what changed?”

  He started walking again, all but dragging her along. “What do you mean?”

  “What changed? That’s not who you are now, so what changed?’

  He flashed back to that moment, that one crystal-clear moment in time. The moment he’d never forget.

  “I met a girl who reminded me of you,” he confessed, the words almost dragged out of him.

  The memory that he could never, ever forget. As if on command, it played again in his head in brilliant, heartbreaking color:

  He’d attacked a small village where a gang of marauders lived, killing and maiming every man in it without regard for anything but the ever-present, voracious bloodlust, when a girl threw herself on his back and started punching him in the head. He threw her off without a thought, but when he turned, he realized that she was only a child. He never, ever killed children. Even in his madness, he’d retained that much of himself.

  But in a flash of light from the fire, he realized something else: she looked like his Serai. Not exactly, not like a sister or daughter or even a cousin. But there was something in the curve of her cheek and the fall of her hair that arrested him and froze him in place.

  “How can you do this? Are you a monster?” the girl cried out, but he didn’t hear her. He heard her words in Serai’s voice, and he was destroyed.

  He threw all the gold in his pockets at the girl and ran. Ran, and then flew, and never stopped until he found himself deep in the middle of a forest so old and dark and deep that the humans believed it to be cursed. He opened a hole in the ground underneath an ancient tree and threw himself into it, covering himself up and losing himself to the pain.

  The mage who’d turned him found him and coaxed him back to the surface. Cleaned him up and taught him a few hard truths. Told him he had a choice: study and learn and work to make the world a better place, or become one of the evil, lost ones. The first choice was the harder one.

  Redemption would not be cheaply bought.

  Daniel chose redemption. But a thousand years is a very long time, and although the world changed, evil remained the same. Finally his mentor gave in to despair and walked into the sunlight. On that day, Daniel chose a lesser death. He chose to put himself in a state of hibernation for a very, very long time, in hopes that perhaps the world would be different when he awoke. Better.

  Worth fighting for.

  He had no idea that he would sleep nine thousand years.

  When he woke, the world had changed. He traveled all over it, helping where he could, studying and learning the new ways and customs and amazing technology. Unfortunately, people were still dying. But he met an unexpected group of allies: the Atlantean warriors. He didn’t bother to ask about Serai, though. Who would know anything about a girl dead for more than eleven thousand years?

  Her quiet voice broke into his reverie. “But before that? You met the girl who looked like me, and then what? You . . . you fell in love?”

  “What? No, I didn’t fall in love. I managed not to kill her, too, though.” He lifted her up and over a fallen tree. “Are we still on the right path?”

  She closed her eyes again, for nearly a minute this time, and then nodded. “I’m so tired, though. I can still feel the Emperor, and it’s not moving. The witch hasn’t done anything with it in a while, as far as I can tell. Maybe they’re resting for the night?”

  “Maybe. But those were vampires that passed us earlier, and if they are part of a more powerful vampire’s blood coven, they won’t be sleeping.”

  She leaned against him briefly, then took a deep breath and started walking again. “Why would a witch be helping a vampire? Why would they want the Emperor, anyway, or even know about it?”

  “Who knows? I don’t know anything much about Atlantean history, Serai, and anyway, you’re not the only one who slept most of the world away. I slept for nine thousand years, hibernating until the horrors I’d seen—the evil I’d done—could fade in my memories.”

  “Did it work?”

  “No,” he said, kicking a log so hard that it shattered into kindling. “No, it didn’t. But I deserve to live with the memories of what I did. It’s my own version of hell.”

  “Not just bad memories, though,” she said, almost whispering. “You remembered me.”

  “I did. I remembered you.” He stopped walking and roughly pulled her to him, needing to feel her in his arms. “I will always remember you, even when you have come to your senses and left me, but I promise you that you will remember me, too.”

  With a desperation born of passion, he took her mouth with his own. Claimed it—claimed her—though he could never deserve to keep her. Kissed her as if he were a dying man and she the only chance at life.

  “Remember this,” he said fiercely. “Remember the feel of my mouth on yours, my body against yours, when you find that perfect Atlantean man someday.”

  She started to protest, but he silenced her with his lips, kissing her so hard and deep that he could almost pretend that she belonged to him and always would. It would have helped him find his way back to sanity if she’d fought him.

  Instead she pulled him closer, and he was lost.

  Long minutes later, he raised his head, coming back to himself enough to realize they stood unprotected in the middle of the path, and their enemies were closer than was safe. Serai clung to him, her body trembling, and he had never wanted anything as much as he wanted to strip her clothes from her and take her, bury his cock in her warm sweetness, and make her his.

  His timing sucked.

  “I love you,” she said.

  And the bottom fell out of his world.

  He opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out but a hoarse, choked noise, and then finally he made his stunned brain work and words happened. “Your timing sucks.”

  Her eyes opened so wide that they were enormous in her pale face, shining like the night stars in the moonlight, and he had just enough time to realize how unbearably hurt she would be by what he’d said before she started laughing.

  Serai laughed so hard she doubled over, clutching her stomach, and then she laughed some more, while he grew more and more puzzled. When she finally could breathe again, she rose on tiptoe and kissed his chin.

  “Oh, my love. You are still that blacksmith at heart, aren’t you? I was afraid you were too elegant and powerful and sophisticated for me, a poor inexperienced maiden, but you are still my Daniel, aren’t you?”

  He looked away from her, scanning the area, the sky, the trees, the river. Anything to avoid looking at her beautiful, innocent, hopeful face.

  “I can never be your Daniel. Forget that boy, that stupid useless blacksmith. What we thought we had was a childish dream, and we’re both too old and wise to believe that dreams can come true.”

  “But, Daniel—”

  “No. You deserve better, and I deserve the death I was seeking the day I fell into Atlantis and found you.”

  All traces of her laughter and even her smile were long gone when he dared glance at her again.

  “Oh, Daniel. Older and wiser never has to mean hopeless or in despair.” She reach
ed out to him, but he moved away and pointed to the red wall of stone curving away from them about a hundred yards off.

  “I know those rocks. There’s a hidden cave with a stone structure the Sinagua built around the other side, and it faces onto a small canyon. There are stone stairs leading to spaces with enclosures even deeper in the cave, and we can rest there. The sun will be up soon, and in any event you need to rest.”

  She shook her head, stubborn as usual, but before she could argue, she cried out and fell to the ground, her body twitching and jerking uncontrollably.

  Regretting his harshness, he raced to her and lifted her off the ground and held her close until the spasms subsided. Why not tell her anything she wanted to hear? If she died from the damn Emperor’s magic, at least she’d have been happy for a few short hours. He grimly called himself a thousand kinds of fool until she could speak again.

  “She’s using it again. The witch. The Emperor is still some distance away, but we’re gaining on it. She seems to be learning how to use it. I’m not sure how much more I can take.” A bout of coughing interrupted her and she leaned against him until it stopped, but her voice was hoarse when she continued. “Rest. You’re right. I need to rest. I can’t help any of them if I fall apart before we even find it.”

  Lifting her into his arms, he strode to the cliff wall and tucked her head against his chest before he climbed the steps carved into the stone face to the cave dwelling. He didn’t let her look up until they’d moved back into the cave and away from the opening, so her fear of heights didn’t further incapacitate her. He hated to do anything that might scare her, but it wasn’t safe on the ground, especially not when the sun rose.

  “Rest now, mi amara,” he said. “We don’t dare have a fire, in case the vampires have human thugs working for them who would see it.”

  She nodded and slumped down against a wall, clearly exhausted beyond the point of arguing or even speaking. He pulled the blankets from his pack and made a bed of sorts for her, then lay down next to her and pulled her into his arms, so her head was pillowed on his shoulder.

  “Tell me about that tower,” he said quietly, but with an undercurrent of pure steel. He would know the truth of this.

  She closed her eyes, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him while she spoke. “Even the soft ground of the palace gardens is unforgiving if the fall is from a high enough place. I shattered my body.”

  He inhaled sharply, feeling something inside him shatter, too, at the thought of her pain. “How did you live?”

  She shrugged slightly, her eyes still closed. “How does anyone survive anything in Atlantis? When I opened my eyes, sure I was about to die, the healers were running toward me. Soon I was good as new,” she said bitterly.

  “All but in your mind,” he said.

  “And my heart. Please, Daniel, let it go. I can’t talk about it now.”

  He kissed her—gentle, brief—and then forced himself to let it go. For her.

  “Do you need anything else? Food or water?”

  She didn’t answer, and he was afraid she was punishing him, but when he tilted his head to look into her eyes, she was sound asleep. Exhaustion and weakness had overcome her, and he needed to keep her safe until darkness came again and they could go on and succeed in their task. Nothing else mattered until then. Nothing.

  But she loves me, a dark voice whispered deep in the recesses of his heart. She loves me, and I will never, ever give her up.

  “She deserves better,” he said aloud, fully aware that he was talking to himself—out loud—and that was surely step one on the path to madness.

  Mad or no, she loves me, and she is mine.

  The sane part of his mind, he found, had no wish to argue, so he allowed himself to fall into a light doze, now that they were securely hidden from any view from outside.

  She loved him. She loved him.

  But when he slept, he dreamed of purple fire.

  Chapter 18

  Daniel woke first, a change in the air pressure alerting him to the coming dusk. He and Serai had slept nearly twelve hours, and each of the times he’d woken to check on her during the day she’d been sleeping deeply, all but unconscious in his arms. He knew the trek was taking its toll on her, but there was no alternative. Her fear of heights wouldn’t allow her to fly. If they didn’t find the gem—Well.

  He would not think of that.

  She lay curled against him, and her scent of sunshine and sea surrounded him with its delicate flavor. He wanted to taste her again, and his body hardened painfully at the thought of waking her by undressing her and kissing every inch of exposed skin. She sighed in her sleep and put a hand on his face, as if petting him or telling him to wait just a little while, or so he imagined. He grinned ruefully. Even in the face of impending danger and almost certain death, his blood rushed to his cock at the sight of her. In some ways, he really wasn’t much different from that boy she’d known so long ago.

  His grin faded as he realized one crucial difference: that boy would not have been fighting the urge to sink his fangs into her oh-so-tempting neck. The blood thirst was worse than he’d ever known it, and he had a strong feeling that it was more about his feelings for Serai than about the blood itself. He didn’t need to feed on blood very often. The blood of the human who had “volunteered” outside the bar would suffice for at least a week more.

  No, it wasn’t about need. It was all about desire.

  Trying to distract himself, he took her hand in his and realized it was icy cold, so he massaged it, trying to provide heat from friction since his own body temperature ran a little cooler than human or Atlantean. He knew she was shaky from the stasis, in spite of the magic. How she could bear up under the pressure and the demands of this quest after eleven thousand years of inactivity was enough to boggle the mind.

  “You’re an extraordinary woman, Serai of Atlantis,” he murmured, and he wasn’t even all that surprised when she opened her eyes and looked into his.

  “You’re quite the bee’s knees, yourself,” she said, smiling.

  He laughed. “I haven’t heard that one in a long time. And thank you.”

  Her brows drew together. “I know. My knowledge of languages is extensive, but my grasp of the correct chronology is rather fluid. I know Rome is long gone, but sometimes I find myself thinking in Latin. The proper speech patterns of England during the Regency period fascinated me, so I might inadvertently drop into those. I find American English a little tiring and flat, if that makes sense, with none of the lyricism of Atlantean, so it’s hard for me to maintain conversation it it.”

  “I never would have been able to guess that,” he said, switching to ancient Atlantean. “I think you’re amazing. Your brain must be truly a marvel, to keep up with all of those languages.”

  She shifted, making him all too painfully aware that she still lay in his arms, when his pants seemed to shrink a couple of sizes.

  “My strength is up, but my limbs feel weak. Almost as if they weren’t connected to my body,” she said, also in Atlantean, strain evident in her pale face. “Walking will be difficult this night.”

  “Let me help.” He sat up and pulled her arm into his lap, then began a vigorous massage to get the blood moving and her muscles warmed up. He realized the oddity that he, a vampire, was working to increase Serai’s blood circulation without any intent to partake of that blood, but it was far from the oddest thing he’d encountered in the past few days, so he filed it away under “irrelevancies” and continued, moving on to her other arm for a while.

  “May I remove your socks?”

  She bit her lip, and in the fading glow of what little light reached them this far back in the cave he saw that her cheeks had turned pink yet again.

  “You can’t possibly be shy at the thought of me seeing your feet after I have seen every inch of you,” he said, amused and entranced in equal measure.

  “No, but I’m afraid . . . I’m afraid my feet smell bad!”

  It
took a beat, but then they simultaneously burst into laughter.

  “Evil vampires and witches and malfunctioning magical gems, and you’re worried about stinky feet?” He shook his head, still grinning. “You really are a princess.”

  “Maybe, but even a princess can worry about stinky feet,” she said haughtily, and he laughed again and then removed her sock before she could protest. He pulled her decidedly non-stinky foot into his lap and began to massage it and her leg.

  “You—oh—I—oh. Oh,” she said, almost moaning by the second or third “oh.” “Oh, that feels so good. My poor feet are much abused by my first outing into the world.”

  He grinned and applied gentle pressure to her calf. “This is not exactly what I had in mind when I thought of you moaning for me.”

  Serai put her hands over her eyes. “I refuse to let you embarrass me after the things we did to each other in that hotel.”

  “Then why are your cheeks so becomingly pink?”

  Her eyes flew open. “You can’t even see what color my cheeks are, it’s dark.”

  “I have excellent night vision,” he informed her, switching to the other leg and beginning the same gentle massage.

  “That’s not all you have that’s excellent,” she murmured.

  “I heard that.”

  “A gentleman would be kissing me now,” she said.

  “I’ m not a—Wait. Oh, yeah. I’m definitely a gentleman,” he said, releasing her leg and lying back down next to her.

  He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, a long, deep, slow kiss that threatened to blow the top of his skull off by the time he was done.

  “Definitely a gentleman, but finding it a little hard to breathe right now,” he said. “Maybe you should take the lead this time.”

  * * *

  Serai didn’t hesitate. She twined her fingers through his silken hair and feathered kisses across those seductive lips of his. She might not have long to live, and she was determined to make the most of every second of it. His scent of woods and musk and man wrapped itself around her and enticed her into kissing his neck and then daring to touch her tongue to the edge of his ear.