by Alyssa Day
Human logic. It would have destroyed them all thousands of years ago, their stubborn, foolish excuse for logic, but the humans had one crucial quality that neither the vampires, the Fae, or even the shape-shifters could ever possess: they bred like rabbits. The sheer overwhelming numbers of them far outweighed any concentrated threat by any of the supernatural factions.
But unlike rabbits, humans had forgotten how to run—really run—most of them. Daniel bared his teeth in what passed for a smile with him these days, not even caring for once if his fangs were showing. He could show them again what it was to run. Run for their lives.
Run from the monster.
He’d done it before. He’d even enjoyed it. Ripping throats open with his teeth. Bathing in fountains of blood. Brutal, violent, glorious death. Back in the dark days. The lost days. After he’d died the first death and risen, cold and alone and without the only woman he’d ever loved. He’d become a monster and a killer, and he’d reveled in it.
But no more.
Now it was time to die.
He thought briefly of last words as dawn edged its way into the world, turning the edges of the obelisk from silver to a rosy glow as the sun rose, proudly silhouetted against the morning sky. What would be fitting to close the chapter of a single lonely vampire who’d lived for so very very long? Memory was nothing more than a collection of clutter, polished and positioned to shine in the light of untrustworthy wishful thinking and hindsight. Death took its final inventory, and nothing survived it except deeds recorded in history books by the victorious.
So he didn’t try for the momentous, instead speaking only the truth of his heart.
“Good-bye, Serai. I have always loved you. If there truly is a land beyond this one, may I find you again.”
Then he raised his face to the horizon and watched the sun rise for the first time in thousands of years. The shimmering first rays swam toward him on the surface of the water, changing the deep rose of dawn to burnished gold. Closer, ever closer, until the first questing ray of light from something like his four millionth day on the earth reached his legs.
No pain—not yet—just a sense of wonder at the glory of it. How could he ever have resigned himself to eternal night? Especially alone in the darkest reaches of his own heart. Always alone.
Closer. Rising to his waist. Still no burning—no uncovered skin yet touched by the deadly glow.
He took a breath, drew it deep into lungs that hadn’t breathed daylight air in so long. Closed his eyes, then opened them again. He’d face this final test with the same defiance with which he’d lived his entire life.
Heat now. Burning. Fire sizzled across the skin of his throat at his open shirt collar. He raised his chin. Only one final moment of life—but no regrets. It was too late for that. Agony seared through him as the sun struck his face, full-on, and he clenched his teeth against the scream.
A final blast of heat and pain crushed his courage under the sun’s indifferent power, and he fell forward into the pool, silently screaming or cursing or praying, and the vortex of light and sound sucked him in, sucked him under, pulled him through, whirling and twisting, over and over, around and around, until a shove from a mighty force smashed him face-first into a solid surface.
He was dead, finally, finally dead. And he was lying on . . . grass?
The afterlife was paved in grass? He’d not expected that. Not for one such as him. Maybe oceans of burning lava or canyons filled with blazing fire. The deepest levels of the nine hells were surely reserved for vampires. However, not only was he lying on grass, which smelled like a particularly ripe and blooming spring, but he was lying in the sunlight. He was lying in some verdant field of the afterlife in sunshine . . . and he wasn’t burning.
Defiance gave way to joy, and he murmured thanks to any gods who would listen. All save one. The vampire goddess Anubisa deserved no thanks from him, and may she rot in whatever dark corner to which she’d escaped. Maybe not an appropriate thought for heaven, though.
He rested there for a long minute, with his face pressed into the grass, every bone in his body aching with the force of the collision, and considered whether or not to lift his head and look around. Before he could make that crucial decision, the unmistakable point of a spear jabbed him in the side of his neck, and a voice that had haunted him since his first death spoke.
“Who are you and whence did you come, Nightwalker?”
Daniel moved his head just enough to look up into the bright sunshine, and the sharp point of the spear bit into the flesh of his neck—just as his fangs had done to so many thousands of humans during his life. Irony, again. Perhaps this was yet to turn out to be one of the levels of hell and he’d be tortured not with fire but with a million tiny cuts, until his own blood ran free and dark into eternity.
The slender, curving silhouette of a woman wearing a long gown stood beside him. She held the non-pointy end of the spear. He could see nothing of her features at first, and then he saw her face, shining more brightly than a thousand afterlife-created suns.
Serai’s face.
She was to be his personal tour guide to heaven, then. Or his personal escort to hell. But her gasp spoke of disbelief, even shock.
Her next words were nothing that he could have expected, though. “I am Serai of Atlantis, a princess of Poseidon. Remember you me, Nightwalker? Be warned that you are now my prisoner.”
Memories long unused returned to him and allowed him to understand her. Her words were musical, the cadence liquid and lyrical. Ancient Atlantean. He answered her with the rusty pronunciation that was all he could manage. Shock and thousands of years of non-use had robbed him of fluency.
“Serai? I have waited more than eleven thousand years to hear your voice again.” He jumped to his feet and moved to take her in his arms, but was stopped again at spear point.
“No,” she said, the strain evident in her face, turning her perfect skin even paler than he remembered. “I’m leaving here. Now. Come with me or stay, but don’t even try to stop me.”
For the first time, he took the time to look around at his surroundings and saw the two fallen guards lying unconscious on the ground, but when he looked up to ask her about it, the sight in front of him stunned him to speechlessness for several seconds.
“What?” she snapped. “I didn’t kill them, if that’s what you’re thinking, although now that you’re a nightwalker, can’t you hear their heartbeats to confirm my claim?”
He pointed, still unable to form words. At the dome. The freaking glass dome that surrounded them as far as he could see—and the deep, dark blue currents of the ocean beyond it. A dark form swam past, and a single giant eye blinked at him.
“Is that . . . is that a whale?” He stared, feeling like his eyes would bug out of his head at any minute as it finally hit him. “Are we . . . are we in Atlantis?”
She rolled her eyes, apparently a timeless gesture. “Where else would we be? Now, move.”
She raised her arms and began to sing. Sing. The woman he’d loved and lost eleven thousand years ago—loved all of that time, if he wanted to be honest, although he didn’t—was singing. In Atlantis.
Or else, and he sighed as he came to the obvious realization: he really was dead. Somehow he’d ended up in the good grace of the gods instead of in the nine hells. He was here with Serai and she was singing and . . .
She’d stabbed him. With a spear.
“Nope. Probably not any form of heaven,” he muttered.
A shimmering oval of pure light appeared in front of Serai, and the smile that crossed her face in response blinded Daniel more than the light. She was so beautiful. Every bit as beautiful as he remembered, and more. Her silken dark hair was so black it had blue highlights in it, and longer than he remembered, swinging past her perfect, curving hips. Her eyes matched the ocean waves, just as blue. Just as deep.
And her lips—oh, her lips. He reacted just as strongly to their sensual curve now as he had when he was a young app
rentice, showing off a little with his metal-working skills and his muscles for the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
She still was.
The oval grew larger and wider, and he knew what it was. He’d seen Atlanteans use its magic before.
“The portal. You’re singing to the portal? I’ve never seen the warriors sing.”
She cast an amused glance at him. “They are barbarians. The portal only gives fully of its magic to those who understand and appreciate it.”
“Ven did mention how capricious it could be. Dumps them in the middle of the ocean sometimes.”
She laughed and then looked as startled as he felt, before she touched her fingertips to her lips. “I haven’t laughed in so very long,” she whispered, but then she took a deep breath. “Portal, take me where I need to be, I ask and beseech you.”
A wave of golden light shimmered over the silvery surface of the portal’s oval form and Serai smiled. She took a step forward, then hesitated before turning back to Daniel.
“Come with me?”
She held out her hand, and the ocean itself took a deep breath. She held out her hand. To him. He reached for her, and then paused, as a horrible thought struck him.
“To where? It was full daybreak where I came from, and if the sunlight strikes me, I’ll die in flames. I would risk that for you without hesitation, but I would not have you in danger from the fire.”
“We have no time for this. Conlan and his guards will be after me, or these guards will wake up . . .” She broke off mid-sentence and smiled at him, and he realized he would follow her smile into the fires of all nine of the hells, without question. “Trust me?”
He took her hand and they stepped forward into the portal, but as the light surrounded them, she cried out and doubled over. He caught her in his arms and held tight to the beautiful woman, who was his past and his future, as the world fractured around them in a vortex of spinning light, and he prayed to any god who would listen. He couldn’t lose her again.
Never again.
Serai fought against the pain ripping through her insides as the vortex swallowed her and Daniel. It was the Emperor. Someone had it and was trying to work its magic. Someone not Atlantean—someone who didn’t know what he or she was doing. That must be why she’d awoken now, off schedule, and had been able to escape.
The fluctuation in the gem’s energy seared through her and doubled her over. She thought instantly of her fellow maidens, still trapped in stasis, and wondered how this would affect them. If they would survive it. Another burst of pain wrenched through her, and she wondered if she would survive it. What a great joke the universe would be playing if she survived millennia in stasis only to die in the first short hour of freedom.
The portal’s light warmed around her in a magical caress, as if it felt her pain and wanted to comfort her. At the same moment, Daniel’s strong arms wrapped around her. She rested her head against the hard muscles of his chest and sent a mental thank-you to the portal, just as it opened again and deposited them in the torch-lit darkness of what looked like a smallish cavern. Stumbling a little as her bare feet touched the cold stone of the floor, though she was still safely ensconced in Daniel’s embrace, she had a mere second or two to register the small cluster of humans surrounding them before the tiger attacked.
Chapter 4
Serai screamed and Daniel pushed her behind him, putting his body between her and the tiger and yelling at it.
“Jack, no!”
Jack? He knew the tiger’s name?
The tiger ignored Daniel and charged, leaping through the air in full feline fury, its mouth opened in an earth-shattering roar. If she hadn’t been so terrified, Serai might have admired its feral beauty. Daniel leapt up to counter the tiger’s attack, and the two of them met in midair with a crash that resounded like thunder.
The tiger caught Daniel in its deadly embrace and swiped at him with paws the size of dinner plates, each tipped with long, sharp claws. Daniel’s nightwalker strength was a match for the tiger, though, and he shoved the beast’s forearm away from his face and then hurled it across the cavern, where it smashed into the wall.
A woman yelled at Daniel, by name, and Serai’s eyes narrowed as she examined the human female. Scruffy, small, and tough, with a waiflike exterior that covered a steel core, if the look in the woman’s dark eyes told true.
“Daniel, leave Jack alone. How dare you blast in here and hurt him?” the woman shouted in one of the landwalker languages. English. Serai knew it, of course. The Emperor had taught her all languages.
“Quinn, he attacked me, in case you didn’t notice,” Daniel replied, with what Serai believed to be admirable calm, under the circumstances.
“What do you expect, you idiot?” Quinn snapped, hands on hips, as the tiger shook its massive head and staggered to its feet.
Serai’s fear vanished and anger took its place. Lovely, warming anger, which stiffened her spine and reminded her she was a princess of Atlantis. She stepped forward until she was standing next to Daniel and gave Quinn her haughtiest glare.
“Stand back, female, or face my wrath,” Serai declared in English, holding her hands out to her side in the ready position.
Quinn’s mouth fell open, and the impudent woman began to laugh. At Serai. Anger heated up, became rage.
“Seriously? ‘Face my wrath’?” Quinn shook her head. “Daniel, where did you get her? Melodrama R Us?”
Serai’s face flushed. It had sounded a little over the top even as she said it, but she wasn’t exactly experienced at facing down humans in combat. The tiger paced forward, snarling at Daniel, until it stood next to Quinn.
“I’m out of practice at issuing warnings, human,” Serai snapped. “But how is this for something you can understand ? Keep your pet kitten away from Daniel, or I will be forced to harm it.”
The tiger paused, mid-snarl, tilted its head to the side, and stared at her, its tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. It almost looked like he, too, was laughing at her.
Quinn laughed. “Right. Daniel, tell your girlfriend there that we don’t have time for all this posturing and to stay away from Jack or she’ll get hurt. Now we need to talk about what you’re doing here—”
The tiger’s snarl interrupted the human just before it signaled its intent to attack by bunching its powerful muscles and tensing for the leap. Daniel growled deep in his throat, almost as wild as the tiger, but Serai was suddenly fed up with all of them. She called to the pure magic of Atlantis, the magic she had once wielded with little skill but that now rushed to her call. Jack leapt into the air again, but this time Serai knocked Daniel out of the way, and she sprang up to meet the tiger.
On its own terms.
Daniel fell backward, knocked out of the way by more than a quarter ton of tiger. He landed on his ass, and bounced back up immediately, wincing as the tigers crashed into each other. Serai had transformed in an instant’s shimmer of magic into an enormous tiger—bigger even than Jack, nearly as big as a horse. She roared, and Daniel almost fell over.
She wasn’t just a tiger. She was a saber-toothed tiger.
“Daniel!” Quinn screamed, just as he leapt toward the two tigers. “Do something! She’s going to kill him!”
The few other humans in the room that he’d ignored up to that point suddenly had weapons in their hands, and Daniel didn’t know what to do first to protect Serai. As it turned out, he didn’t have to do anything at all. Jack, who was probably even more shocked than Daniel, did it for him. The big cat rolled onto his back and presented his snowy white belly to Serai in a blatant display of surrender and submissiveness. Daniel, who’d seen Jack fight in both his tiger and human forms, was amazed. No way would the Jack he knew have backed down from a fight.
The shimmer of shape-shifter magic curled around Jack’s form even as Serai lightly clamped her massive jaws around his neck, so gently that the enormous curved sabers of her teeth didn’t break the skin of Jack’s human neck when
he returned to human form.
His naked, human form.
It was Daniel’s turn to growl. “Get dressed, shifter.”
Quinn made some kind of signaling gesture and the rest of them immediately put their weapons down. Daniel nodded to himself. When the leader of all North American human rebels gave her troops a command, she could expect instant obedience. She’d certainly earned their respect.
She’d always had his.
“Maybe you could ask your girlfriend to let me up?” Jack said, smiling a little but carefully not moving at all. Serai released him and backed away, then stalked over to Quinn and snarled at her.
Quinn held her hands up in front of her, the universal signal for “you win, don’t bite me,” and Daniel could have sworn Serai, still in tiger form, smirked. She padded over to him and curved around his body for a moment, then shifted from extinct tiger to haughty Atlantean princess in seconds. She, unlike Jack, was fully clothed.
Jack laughed and quickly dressed in clothes someone tossed him. His shifter magic was so powerful he generally shifted into human form with his clothing intact, but he either had been shocked out of his routine by the saber-toothed tiger suddenly appearing from nowhere, or the display of nakedness was simply to poke at Daniel.
If the latter, it had worked. Daniel started after Jack again, but Serai caught his arm.
“I think we’ve had enough of this,” she said quietly, and he whipped his head around to look at her, really look at her, and realized she was on the brink of collapse. “I’m very tired, Daniel. It has been a long . . . time.”
Her eyes rolled back in her head and he caught her, swinging her into his arms just before she fell to the stone floor of the cave. Pain and remorse stabbed at him. Yet again, after all these years, even when given a miraculous second chance, he was failing her.
