by Alyssa Day
“What is that?” she asked instead, staring into the bluish-emerald flame glowing in his eyes. Thoughts of Atlantean and Wilding magic crossing paths—water and electricity battling for supremacy—skittered through her mind.
Disaster. Electrocution. Pain. Death.
Before he could reply, she pulled herself up and leaned against the car, never taking her eyes off his. “What is that blue-green light flaring in your eyes? Do Atlanteans call the Wilding?”
He shot to his feet. “What are you talking about? What blue-green flame? What is the Wilding?” He lifted a hand as if to touch his face, then lowered it; clenched and unclenched his hands and inhaled sharply.
“If you’ll excuse me, Erin,” he said, biting off the words as he strode around her car to the passenger side and threw the door open. He slid onto the seat and looked in the mirror under the dimness of the car’s overhead light.
As Erin took a shaky step away from the car, determined to hide the truth of just how badly his touch had shattered her defenses, she heard the passenger door slam behind her. The car shook so hard with the force she nearly fell again.
She whirled around to face him, and the sight that confronted her was entirely unexpected. The warrior, eyes closed and head bowed, pounded his fists on the top of her car once, twice, and then a third time, muttering in a liquid tongue that sounded like no language she knew. Then he seemed to catch himself and stared at her over the roof of her car, eyes flared wide with shock and something that looked a lot like desperation.
“Forgive me, please, but I have to leave. Now. I need to—Alaric—damnit. I just—oh, hells, I’m so outta here.” With that, he turned and leapt into the air, shimmering into sparkling mist as he rose into the darkening twilight sky.
She caught her breath. It was beautiful. It was terrifying. It was exactly as she’d dreamed of Atlantis. Shaking her head to try to clear it of magic and fancies, she caught sight of his car, blocking hers in.
“Trapped. Oh, Goddess, what have you done to me?”
A rasping voice answered her murmured question. “Better you should ask what we are about to do to you, Erin Connors.”
Before she could think or move or react, the amber on her fingers sang out a clear, sharp warning tone. A pulsing red light filled her field of vision and sliced through her powers and her personal shields, cutting off her access to the earth magic. For the first time since she’d turned sixteen, Erin was as powerless as a non-Magickal as she stood, alone, and faced the dark.
Chapter 3
Ven soared over the treetops, feeling a sick twisting in his gut. Naming himself something he’d have called anyone else to battle challenge for: a coward.
Running from a woman—running from an emotion—wasn’t his style. Hells, having emotions for women wasn’t his style. There was nothing, not one damn thing, that was in any way normal about his reaction to Erin Connors.
VEN! HELP ME!
The sharp call smashed through his skull, shattering his concentration so thoroughly he nearly fell out of the air. It was Erin, and somehow, magically, she’d managed to reach him telepathically.
And she was in trouble.
He changed direction midflight and sped back through the darkening sky, rage pounding through him. Trouble was something he could deal with.
Trouble was his specialty.
As he shimmered back over the tops of the trees bordering the headquarters building, he saw the sickly orange-red pulsing glow surrounding Erin and the two dark figures pointing sticks at her. Witches, then, or wizards. Vamps didn’t use wands or like much to be around anything wooden or pointy.
He called to the elements, diffused the mist forming his body even further so as not to draw suspicion, and floated down behind them. The two figures—definitely human, one male and one female on closer look—never even twitched. Erin stood, apparently unharmed, but frozen, in the center of an orb of the weird light. She was moving her lips but either she’d lost her voice or else no sound could penetrate the bubble. But he could hear the bastards holding her prisoner just fine, and decided to listen for a minute or two before he killed them for touching her.
Gather information. Act like a freaking ambassador. Then he’d rip their lungs out through their rib cages.
The woman spoke, her voice low. “This was badly thought out. We should have waited. What if someone from the coven walks out here and sees us?”
The man replied. “Hey, I saw an opportunity and I took it. He will reward us well for this. We just gotta get her out of here, fast. The car’s on its way.”
“You expect me to keep this shield up all the way to the mountains? I’m already tired, you idiot. She’s very powerful,” she hissed.
The man pulled something out of his pocket that glinted metallic in the pulsing red light. “No worry. She’ll be out for hours after I stick her with this.” He started walking toward Erin, and all ambassadorial thoughts vanished. A wave of primal fury roared through Ven, and he immediately transformed back into his body and leapt forward. He drew a dagger but changed his mind at the last second, turned it, handle first, and smashed it into the back of the woman’s head. Not hard enough to kill her, but she’d have one hell of a headache.
The reddish light immediately flickered off and Erin collapsed to the ground, maybe unconscious, striking her head on the dirt, hard.
The man whirled around and saw Ven and gasped, raising what Ven now saw was a hypodermic needle into the air with one hand and holding a gun in the other. “Come closer and I’ll kill her,” the thug snarled, pointing the gun at Erin.
“You’re not going to touch her,” Ven said, striding toward him and unsheathing his sword on the way. “In fact, you’re already a dead man for even thinking about hurting her.”
Time slowed to the speed of a single grain of sand falling from an hourglass as the man’s finger tightened on the gun and the image of Erin bleeding to death on the ground nearly blinded Ven with rage. Guns were fast. Bullets were fast.
Poseidon’s magic was faster.
Before the man’s finger could tighten sufficiently to pull the trigger, Ven had flashed between him and Erin and knocked his gun hand up so the pistol fired into the air. Then, wrenching the gun away, he smashed the bastard’s face with his fist and smiled as the man hit the ground. He knelt to check Erin’s pulse, which was strong and steady, and was relieved to see her eyelids were already flickering. The man groaned, and Ven grabbed him by the neck and yanked him up off the ground.
“Nice silencer. Now tell me who you are and why you’re here.”
The man flailed in Ven’s hand, feet kicking the air and hands struggling to peel Ven’s fingers away from his throat. He made choking noises as his face darkened.
“Oh, my bad. Guess you have to breathe to be able to talk,” Ven said, loosening his grip a fraction. “Now spit it out before I kill you just for fun.”
The man’s eyes glared hatred at him. That and something else. Terror, maybe. “If I tell you anything, they’ll kill me.”
“Yeah, well, I hate to sound like a B movie, but if you don’t talk, I’ll kill you.”
“You don’t understand.” The man practically spat the words at him. “There’s killing and then there’s killing. Do your worst.”
And then he laughed in Ven’s face, and almost before Ven heard the sharp report of the gunshot a hole blossomed in the middle of the man’s forehead.
Ven dropped him and whirled around to face the new threat, only to see another dark figure by the trees flash a sword through the air and slice the head off of the kneeling figure who held a gun in a two-handed position. The shooter immediately began to dissolve into slime.
Remembering the witch, Ven shot a look at where she’d fallen, only to see she’d disappeared. He shot up into the air and scanned the area, but came up with nothing. Leaping back to the ground, he moved to place himself between Erin, who was still lying silent on the ground, and the new threat. The slime had almost entirely melted i
nto the ground. “Vamp.”
“Yes, he was. As am I,” the one with the sword called. “But better the vampire you know, isn’t that the old saying?”
Ven recognized the voice and felt marginally better. But only marginally. “Daniel. Or Drakos. Or whatever your name is. I think that’s ‘the devil you know.’ And don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to have the help, but what exactly are you doing here?”
Daniel stepped forward. He looked the same as he had the night he’d betrayed his former master Barrabas to the Atlanteans, for whatever twisted reason he might have had.
“Devils, vampires, is there really any difference, metaphorically speaking?” Daniel paused and inclined his head. “Lord Vengeance. It is…interesting…to see you here.”
“I kinda thought Anubisa had killed you in D.C. for what you did.”
Daniel’s mouth twisted. “I removed myself from the battle when she appeared. Luckily her back was to me at the time, although who can tell what vision a goddess of the night may have? Perhaps I owe you a debt for her death on that day.”
“Yeah, well, consider us even, then. Where did that bloodsucker—uh, no offense—come from? And did you see a female witch get by you?”
Daniel pointed to the driveway. “He drove a car and parked it just behind the tree line, then headed here to back up this one, I presume. I saw no female, nor sensed any beating hearts other than the three of yours—now two.”
Ven glanced down at Erin, who was finally stirring, thank Poseidon. He desperately wanted to scoop her up off the ground but he wasn’t about to trust a vamp—even one who’d maybe just saved his life—any farther than he could throw him. Maybe not even that far. “What’s going on, Daniel? Why were they after Erin? Why are you here?”
The vampire’s eyes narrowed, and he glanced down at Erin with a look that was way too interested for Ven’s taste. A primitive protective instinct curled up from Ven’s gut and washed through his body, his muscles tightening in its wake. “I think you’d better tell me now. I’m here to make an alliance with Erin and her coven, and I’m not about to stand for any interference with that.”
He took a step closer to Daniel, staring him right in the eyes. “Just so you know.”
“Just so you know,” the vamp repeated, mocking him, clearly not the slightest damn bit intimidated, “I’m trying to protect Erin, too. He wants her, and he won’t stop until he gets her.”
Daniel’s head whipped to the side, as if listening to a sound beyond Ven’s range of hearing. “I have to go. The witches are coming home. I’ll clean up your trash for you.” He bent and scooped up the dead body lying at their feet. “Take care of her, do you understand? Don’t let your guard down for an instant. He is too powerful.”
With the preternatural speed so characteristic of the undead, Daniel shot across the ground toward the trees, lifting the dead body and rising into the air as he did so.
“Who in the nine hells are you talking about, damnit?” Ven yelled after him, sick to death of vampires and their half-truths and shadowed threats.
Daniel turned and stared back at Ven. “Oh, he may possibly be from some eleventh level of hell, Atlantean. I’m talking about Caligula.”
As the vampire vanished, Erin sat up, blinking and holding her head. Ven knelt to lift her off the ground, murmuring soothing noises against her silken hair, vowing with a fierce resolve to protect her. It was his job. It had nothing to do with the way his body tightened when he was near her.
Yeah. Right.
As he watched, a sleek limousine pulled up in the driveway and three women, all wearing long silk robes, piled out and pushed past the male driver to rush toward Ven. He tensed, but one of them, with long red hair, started chanting, and he felt the push of her magic, hard, against his skin before she’d uttered more than three words. Erin smiled at the newcomers, though, so he relaxed somewhat.
“Hey, friend here. Don’t turn me into a toad. I’m Ven from Atlantis, and we need to talk.”
Erin raised her head from his shoulder and drew in a shaky breath. “It’s true, Gennae.” She looked up at him with those enormous blue eyes. “He may have just saved my life.”
The three women all began talking at once.
“What?”
“Who—”
“Did you—”
And the redhead cut them off. “Inside. We’ll discuss this inside.”
The witches started toward the door and Ven followed them. “Are you okay?” he asked Erin, his arms tightening around her. “Really okay? How about your head? What did that ugly light do to you?”
Her head fell back against his shoulder, as if it were too heavy for her neck to support. “I think I’m okay. Ven, it was black magic. My amber sang to me. And they cut me off from my own power, so that witch had to be more powerful than any I’ve met before outside of those three.” She indicated the witches walking into the building in front of them.
“Yeah, well, we’ve got even bigger problems,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper so that only she could hear him. “Do you know the name Caligula?”
She gasped and her fingers convulsively clutched at his shoulders. Slowly, she turned her eyes up to study his face, and he’d never seen skin so pale on a living being. But all she spoke were two short words.
“Not again.”
The sky over Puget Sound
Ven transformed back into his physical form seconds before his body arrowed, head first, into the icy water. A power far older than Atlantis had engineered the magic of the portal that would take him home to find Alaric. To find some answers.
Poseidon himself knew answers were in short supply. Erin had begged him to keep the name Caligula to himself until she could fill him in on something. From the look in her eyes at the time, he had a feeling that it was a seriously bad story. The head witches or whatever they were had sworn to him that the building was warded with more than a century’s worth of magic and that Erin would be safe to rest there overnight. He’d very nearly demanded a demonstration before he agreed, but he’d gotten the distinct impression that Erin was about to drop where she stood. Either that, or that scary one, Berenice or something, was going to shoot some nasty-ass magic at him from the wand she was white-knuckling in the corner.
In the end, he’d been convinced that she was safe enough there, asked for and received a promise that she wouldn’t set foot out of the door until they could talk, and left. Now he needed to get home and report in. Maybe find out what kind of complicated plot the vamps were up to this time. Gather the boys and kick some bloodsucker ass.
He dove farther, deeper, scowling at the inconvenience of having to enter the doorway to his homeland through a body of natural water, but nobody except Alaric could call the portal from dry land. He plummeted down into the darkness of the icy waters, wishing the waves crashing around him would help him escape the residual terror he’d felt when Erin had hit the ground. Couldn’t be emotion. He didn’t do emotion. The lovely little witch must have trapped him with some weird musical spell.
Yeah, that had to be it.
He dove down still farther, calling to the power with his mind and senses. Offering himself as a prince of Atlantis. Falling into the ritual of the ages, calling out to be accepted into the portal’s will. Farther, deeper, he dove. Down past the memory of light, but still the melodies of her magic rang in his head. Resonated in the fibers of his being.
Deeper, yet. Still the portal failed to appear. Ven didn’t worry. Princes never worry, or so Conlan had told him often enough. The image of Erin falling flashed into his head. Okay, almost never worry.
But the first tendril of concern snaked through his mind when oxygen deprivation banded its iron grip around his lungs.
Princes may not worry, but princes can drown.
The depth gauge hardwired into every Atlantean brain warned him that he was passing the safety zone. He’d been diving for nearly five minutes. Another minute or so and he’d pass the point where his lungs had enough o
xygen to return to the surface. Superior Atlantean lung capacity.
The irony of an Atlantean prince dying in the sea should have amused him, but it was just pissing him off. With every ounce of power he possessed, he sent out another call, dropping into the formal speak of ritual he never bothered with except in times of high ceremony or extreme stress.
Portal! The King’s Vengeance demands entry! I serve Atlantis and my brother the high prince—to fail me is to fail us all.
For another long moment, nothing. Stubbornness—or the memory of clear blue eyes—propelled him ever farther down, in search of the knowledge he needed so desperately. Deep, and ever deeper. Flickers of dark danced at the edge of his consciousness before—finally—the familiar iridescent silvery-blue sparkles appeared and formed an ovoid shape beneath him as he plummeted down through the frigid water. Falling into and through the shimmering magic of the portal, he had an instant to wonder why the only image that flashed through his mind was her face. And then his oxygen-starved brain gave up the fight, and the shimmers faded to black.
Chapter 4
A cavern deep below Mount Rainier,
Cascade Range, Washington
The weak light of torches and candles barely illuminated the room well enough to see the speaker, but his face was one better suited for the dark, in any event. “Think of it as a birthday celebration, if you will. It’s simply that the birthday in question will mark two thousand years.” The vampire’s voice thrummed with an ancient power that boomed through the enormous empty space of the cavern, shuddered through the damp and mold that lined the black walls, and grated inside the listener’s eardrums. It was a voice designed to assert its owner’s pull over the weak, the servile, and the craven.
The listener was none of the three. But he was curious. “And you plan to use the occasion to do what? Regain the rule you lost all those long years ago?”
“I lost nothing. I was brutally murdered in the prime of my life.” The vampire glared, his eyes glowing a fierce red that cut through the murky dark. But then his laughter rang out, hoarse and slightly rusty. The bones in his face stood out in stark relief, framing his prominent Roman nose. Straight-edged black hair was styled in an ancient military cut. “Besides, the Roman Empire is long gone and was far smaller than what I plan to attain today.”