by Alyssa Day
“I think not,” Serai whispered. “Not a target, but a prism. Now I will help my sisters.”
She called on the Emperor again, this time directing its magic to Atlantis, and rejoiced as she saw in her mind’s eye the vision of her sisters waking and rising out of their stasis pods. Guen, Helena, and Merlina, all safe and healthy and whole.
“Thank you, Emperor, and thank you, Poseidon. Thank you for saving my sisters.”
The Emperor’s power pulsed and glowed in her hands, and then the purple shimmering light began to climb up her arms from her hands, encircling her limbs and sinking into her flesh.
As you take me, so I take you, the Emperor told her, and Serai had only a moment to be afraid of what that might mean for her mortal life before the bullet punched into her leg and she fell.
Chapter 36
Daniel felt the bullet as if it had entered his own body, and he leapt to his feet and roared out his rage to the world, ignoring the three soldiers who were aiming their guns at his head. Both the blood bond and the soul-meld served to tell him how much pain Serai was in, and the fury took him, rolled him under, ground him into shattered bits of madness and despair, until nothing was left of Daniel but a berserker’s insanity and a nightwalker mage’s terrible power.
“Enough,” he roared, and he used his magic to blast through the cuffs and rip the soldiers’ guns from them. He blew a man-sized hole in the side of the command trailer and shot through it, bowling over everyone who got in his way, including the colonel himself. He soared through the air, racing through the sky faster than he’d ever flown before, intent on reaching Serai and determined to kill anyone and everyone who had hurt her.
He swept into the cave on a wave of wind and wrath, smashing into the vampire who knelt near Serai.
“I will kill you,” Daniel snarled, and the vampire looked startled for a moment, but then he joined the battle with deadly intent.
They leapt at each other, crashed into the walls and ceiling, and tried their damndest to kill each other. Daniel finally remembered his daggers, the ones that the soldiers hadn’t bothered to take, since they were so sure of their pathetic silver cuffs and their pathetic guns, and he drew them in midair.
“Now, you will die for harming my woman,” he shouted, but the boy shouted something right back at him, distracting him, and the vampire knocked one of his daggers out of his hand.
“He didn’t harm Serai, he was helping her,” the boy shouted again, and Daniel glanced at the woman, who was nodding, and he realized that neither the boy nor his mother’s heart rate indicated deception.
Terror, but not deception.
“Enough,” he called out, just before the other vampire hurled Daniel’s own knife at him. Daniel ducked easily, snatched his blade from midair, sheathed both daggers, and then held out his hands, palms facing the other man.
“If you truly tried to help her, I owe you my gratitude, not my anger,” he said, struggling to force the berserker rage back down where he could control it. After the fury came the bloodlust, and he could afford neither at this time.
The vampire raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Do you expect me to accept your apology?”
“Didn’t offer one,” Daniel said, heading for Serai now that he was in control enough to manage the bloodlust, in spite of the delicious smell of the blood pumping from Serai’s leg. “What happened?”
The woman raced over to him, then slowed as she approached, clearly nervous about what he might do. To her credit, she didn’t let fear stop her from kneeling down next to Serai and pressing a cloth pad over the bleeding wound.
“They shot her. Those damn soldiers. First they threw a knife that stabbed my son, clear through his shoulder. Serai used the King stone—the Emperor—to heal Ian, but then they shot her and we don’t know what to do.” She turned golden, tear-filled eyes to Daniel. “I want to help her but I’m no healer. I don’t know how to use the Emperor like that. Do you?”
Daniel started to reply in the negative, but then he realized that he might, indeed, know how to heal with the stone. He shared Serai’s power, didn’t he? He stared down at Serai’s pale, pale face and knew a moment of pure and utter terror.
“Don’t you die on me, you hear me?” He kissed her forehead and then her lips. “Don’t you even think about it, because I will follow you into the deepest level of the nine hells and bring you back.”
The vampire approached warily. “Ivy, you should tend to your son. He needs you.”
Ivy glanced at her son, who was snoring quietly on the floor, and then stubbornly shook her head. “No. She needs me. I promised I’d do anything for her. Anything she ever needed. I’m not going to fulfill that promise by letting her die five minutes later, Nicholas.”
Daniel whipped his head around to stare at the vampire. “Nicholas? Regional-head-of-this-area in-league-withslimeball-vampires Nicholas?”
“I know you, too, Primator,” Nicholas said darkly. “Don’t be so quick to cast stones.”
But Daniel had lost interest. None of it mattered. Nothing but saving Serai. He took a deep breath and reached out to the blazing fire of the purple gemstone that she still held in her hands.
“Do or die,” he told them, or told himself.
And then he dared to touch the prized gem of the sea god—a god who hated vampires above all else—in order to save the woman he loved.
Chapter 37
Brig closed his phone, smelling something fishy even though he was a long damn way from the ocean. First off, Smithson hadn’t been quite the upstanding citizen the higher-ups had been touting. Brig was an old hand at working the military communication channels, and he’d gotten the gouge—the unofficial but critically important scoop—on Smithson’s background on the call he’d just taken.
Second, there was a kid in that cave. A human kid. A kid that one of St. Ives’s men had thrown a knife into. If the vampire hadn’t killed the murdering bastard, Brig might have done it himself.
Third, there was the vampire that had just blown through the side of the trailer like a shoulder-launched missile. Brig had interviewed a lot of men and women in his day, and he could sniff out integrity like a bloodhound with a brand-new nose.
That vampire had integrity, and he’d cared about nothing but saving his woman. Not plots or conspiracies or any other damned thing.
The phone rang again.
“You have a go, Colonel St. Ives,” a familiar and abrasive voice said in his ear.
“There’s a kid in there, sir. A human boy. The vampire’s hostage, from what intel could discover. A complete innocent.”
With hardly a pause, the voice continued. “Collateral damage. Regrettable, but unavoidable. You have a go.”
Brig stood there, staring at the phone for a long time after the line went dead.
“Fuck that,” he finally said. “Lieutenant? We’re moving out.”
He had a grandbaby to meet, and he’d be damned if he’d meet him or her with another child’s blood on his hands. It was way the hell past time to retire.
He headed out of the trailer, laughing at the man-shaped hole in the wall, and then he stood and watched his men as they loaded up and fell back.
“Good luck, Daniel with one name,” he finally said before he went to find his jeep.
Chapter 38
Serai fell into the magic, the beautiful, terrible purple fire, and she surrendered to the pain. After all, she’d completed her quest. Succeeded at her task. She almost laughed. The portal would come for her, now that she lay dying with no hope of ever returning to Atlantis.
It had been a fair enough exchange. Her life finally held some meaning; some purpose. Instead of living or dying as a useless and unused specimen of breeding stock, she’d escaped and saved her sisters.
It was enough. It had to be enough.
She regretted Daniel, though.
A surge of pain smashed through her, and it took her a minute to realize it wasn’t from the Emperor draining her, or the bullet
wound, which was healed now anyway, but it was the pain of losing Daniel, after having found him again. She felt as if she could almost hear his voice, calling her name, but then the pain took her again, and he was gone.
There was nothing but the brilliant purple flame.
Daniel expected the world to blow up, or at least that he would blow up, when he touched the Emperor, but it was another reality entirely. He fell into the purple fire, mind and soul, and was trapped, unable to find a way out. Everywhere he looked, there was nothing but the flame.
“Serai,” he called out, over and over and then again. For a lifetime; for an eternity. Lost in the fire, and somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered that he’d left the two of them unprotected against a dangerous enemy.
Not that he particularly cared right at that moment. If she died, he would die with her. One way was as good as another. Or so he thought, right up to the point when he thought he heard her voice.
“Daniel?”
“I’m here.” He ran, racing through the never-ending amethyst fire, searching for her voice in some sort of twisted version of the children’s game of hide-and-seek. Finally, finally , he found her, lying in another crystal case like the one she’d told him about. This one, though, looked exactly like a coffin.
“No,” he shouted, and he lifted her limp form out of the coffin and into his arms. He ran as fast and as far as he could, fighting his way through the flames, which now seemed actively to be trying to harm him.
She finally opened her beautiful eyes, but all he saw in them was death. “I’m sorry, Daniel, but I can’t fight it, and the Emperor won’t release me. It wants to pull me into its prism of power, and I’m not strong enough to escape. Please know that I have always loved you, and I always will.”
“No,” he told her. “No, no, no, no, no.”
The beserker rage fought to break free, and he allowed it. Welcomed its red-hot wrath, set it to battle the icy cold purple fire.
The rage won. The anguish conquered. Daniel broke free.
He blinked, stunned, and looked around, only to realize he was still in that damned cave.
“No. She won’t die here, trapped in the dark like a rat,” he said to Nicholas, who was staring at him with a surprising amount of sympathy. “I’m taking her away from this. Will you cover me from the soldiers?”
“They’re gone,” the boy said. “They pulled out about fifteen minutes ago. We were just waiting to be sure you were okay.”
Daniel shook his head. “We are not. We never will be again. But I thank you for your generosity.”
“You abandoned the Primus when you were finally making a difference,” Nicholas said. “I am sorry for your loss, but we needed you.”
“Then you do it,” Daniel told him, utterly indifferent. “Take the job. Make changes. Save the world. I have lived for eleven thousand years and am done with all of it.”
Ian’s eyes grew wide. “Eleven thousand years? Really? Duuude.”
Daniel didn’t even have the energy to smile. “I’m taking her to see the sun, one last time. I think she can hold on that long.”
Nicholas bowed to him as he rose with Serai in his arms. “I’ll do my best,” he said.
Daniel didn’t bother to respond. He just launched himself into the air, Serai in his arms, and headed for the most beautiful place in the entire area.
He and Serai would meet the sun on the last day of their lives on the very top of Cathedral Rock.
Chapter 39
Atlantis, the Temple of the Maidens
Conlan, Riley, Ven, Erin, and the rest of their family and friends stood in a semicircle around the dazed but obviously very healthy women who’d just stepped out of their stasis pods for the first time in eleven thousand years.
“They did it,” Riley said, tears streaming down her face. “Daniel and Serai must have found the Emperor and saved everyone.”
Before Conlan could respond, the familiar shimmer of the portal formed its oval shape before them, but a very unfamiliar deep male voice sounded from within it.
“I come bearing two secrets for you from the spirit of the portal who inhabited herein before me, Conlan of Atlantis,” the voice said. “Do you wish to know how to save the saviors?”
Cathedral Rock, thirty minutes until dawn
Daniel held Serai’s unresponsive body in his arms, rocking her back and forth, wishing he had a voice made for singing. He’d love to be able to sing her to sleep.
To death.
Instead, all he could do was pour out his heart and soul in words that were meaningless and unpoetic.
“I love you” was so insignificant.
He’d waited for her—some part of his heart and soul had waited for her for thousands of years—and now that he’d finally found her again, he would lose her so quickly. His berserker fury had faded, though, as he waited here for the dawn. Rage had no place at his own dying of the light.
Fury was wasted emotion.
All his heart could contain was love, and sorrow, and regret.
A shimmering light began to glow behind him, but it was too soon and in the wrong direction, so he turned to see that the damned capricious portal was opening.
“Too little, too late,” he said, laughing or crying. “Go back to the hell you came from, demon.”
A dark form stepped out of the portal, silhouetted so that he couldn’t see its voice.
“I’ve been called worse,” Ven said, crossing the grass to him. “I hear you’ve had a rough time.”
The prince dropped to the ground to sit next to Daniel and put a hand on his shoulder. “How are you holding up, my friend?”
“You need to stay back,” Daniel said dully. “When dawn comes and the flames take us, there is no need for you to be harmed.”
“We are unhappy with your decision to die, nightwalker,” said another familiar voice. “We owe you an ass-kicking,” Lord Justice continued.
Figure after figure walked out of the portal and ranged themselves around Daniel and Serai. Conlan and his wife Riley. Ven’s Erin. Justice’s Keely. Christophe and a woman Daniel had never met. Brennan and Tiernan, who stopped to put a hand on his shoulder before she moved on. Even Reisen and Melody, who seemed to have recovered from her injury, though she wore a splint on one arm.
“The portal seems to be working again,” Daniel observed, too exhausted and anguished to respond to the presence of so many Atlanteans.
“Not exactly,” Ven said, still sitting next to him. “It—or rather, she—is kind of taking a vacation. But the new portal presence is a little more chatty, and told us a secret or two.”
Daniel stared blankly at his friend and wondered why Ven thought he would possibly care about Atlantean secrets.
“First, apparently you really do have a soul.”
Daniel just stared at Ven, still not understanding. Maybe answering would make him go away. “I know that. Soul-meld. Can’t you leave us alone?”
He pulled Serai closer and rocked back and forth, wishing again that he knew how to sing. Or play the harp. His mind was shattering. His heart had already done so.
But Ven was still talking. “Second, it seems that if you complete a third blood exchange with an Atlantean with whom you’ve reached the soul-meld, both of your lives will be saved.”
Daniel heard the words but couldn’t understand their meaning. It was too much. Too hard. Losing Serai . . .
Twenty minutes until dawn, his internal clock reminded him.
Losing Serai . . .
But wait. He tried to focus on Ven’s mouth, which was still moving. Forming words. Important words.
“What? What did you say?” he demanded.
Ven grasped Daniel’s shoulders and shook him a little. “Wake up, my friend. We’re running out of time. You need to make a third blood exchange with Serai, and you’ll both be saved.”
Daniel looked around the circle of people he mostly had dared to think of as friends. “Truly? The third blood bond?”
“Please,” Tiernan added.
Fifteen minutes until dawn.
“If it kills her—” he began, but Ven cut him off.
“As opposed to sitting here, waiting for the sun to turn you both into barbecue? Do it now.”
When Daniel still hesitated, afraid of turning Serai into the monster he’d once become and feared more than anything he’d become again, Ven drew one of his daggers.
“Forgive me, Daniel,” he said, and then he quickly grabbed Serai’s hand and drew a line across her palm. Daniel almost didn’t realize what Ven had done until he smelled the rich, warm scent of her blood.
“And you,” Ven said, and almost blindly Daniel held up his own hand. Ven made the same cut, and Daniel gently placed his hand across Serai’s slightly open mouth and lifted her hand to his own. As he drank, too desperate to hope, too terrified to be self-conscious about taking her blood in front of everyone, her lips moved, just a fraction of a movement at first, but then more strongly, as she drank his blood. He felt the pull on his hand and drank more strongly from hers, and the Emperor, lying forgotten between them, suddenly pulsed in a blaze of purple fire.
Serai’s body arched up in his arms, and Daniel cried out as the same pain she was feeling—he could sense her pain, as she could feel his—transformed, magically, miraculously, into restorative healing warmth that flooded from the Emperor into both of them, surrounding them, embracing them, giving them life when they’d faced death.
The tsunami of light went on and on, scouring them inside and out, until he fell back, exhausted, on to the grass, still tightly embracing Serai.
“I see we’re having a party, and you’ve decided to invite some friends,” Serai said, lifting her head from his chest and looking around. “Perhaps next time, you could wait until I’ve had a proper bath and arranged my hair.”
