by Alyssa Day
“I intend to make an official apology to her and to the remaining five, as soon as I can find Serai and find a way to release the other maidens,” he said.
“Oh, I’m sure an apology will help,” Riley said, rolling her eyes. “Hey, we’re sorry we stole the past eleven thousand years of your life, here’s a gold watch. Have a nice day.”
“I’d like a gold watch,” Ven offered. Erin smacked him in the head again.
“Look, we’ll do whatever necessary—give them gold, jewels, houses, whatever they want,” Conlan said. “First, we have to find them. And right now? I’m worried that Serai is lost somewhere and hurt. What could she possibly know about surviving on the surface? What if she stepped out of the portal right into the middle of a vampire’s lair?”
A cold wind swept through the air, and all six of them looked up to see Poseidon’s high priest, Alaric, materialize in one of his dramatic entrances. “It’s worse than you realize,” Alaric said, as usual not wasting time with small talk. “I’ve just been to the temple, and the magic that maintains the stasis is in flux. We either figure out how to release those women now, or they may all die.”
Ven raised an eyebrow. “How’s Quinn?”
“I did not see the rebel leader on this trip to the surface,” Alaric said, his eyes glowing bright green with barely restrained power.
Ven snorted. “You mean, you didn’t see the woman you’re ass-over-priestly-teakettle in love with?”
Erin lifted a hand to smack Ven in the head again, but this time he caught her wrist and kissed her palm.
“Perhaps you should consider your next words carefully, Your Highness,” Alaric told Ven. “Should you wish to continue life as one of the palace peacocks, I can make that happen. How is your appetite for birdseed?”
The high priest balanced a sphere of glowing power in his palm, a not-so-veiled threat.
Ven held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Dude. Message understood. But you call me Your Highness again, and I’ll kick your ass.”
Conlan put a hand on Alaric’s shoulder. “Stand down, my friend. Ven has chronic mouth-runs-faster-than-his-brain syndrome, as we all know, but none is better in a fight. I doubt he’d serve Atlantis so well as a preening bird.”
“About Quinn, though, Alaric,” Riley said. “Have you seen my sister recently? She still hasn’t met the baby.”
“No, I have not. She is entangled with a problem in the southwest United States. Something about bankers funding magic to help the vampires cement their control over the human population.”
“A trifecta of bad, bad, and worse,” Keely said. “No offense, Erin, but the last thing we need is witches on the side of the vampires.”
“That certainly doesn’t offend me,” Erin said grimly.
“We’ve been fighting just that in my own coven. The way so many humans hate and fear witches makes the vampire’s acceptance very appealing to those who play deadly games with the black, though. An alliance between vampires and sorcerers would be a catastrophe.”
“We’re not going to let that happen. Not now, not ever,” Conlan said. “We are the Warriors of Poseidon, and the vow our predecessors first swore eleven thousand years ago is the same we swear today. We will protect humanity from dark witches and vampires, both. Now, more than ever, we need to find every single jewel lost from Poseidon’s trident, so Atlantis can rise to the surface and take her place in the world.”
“I’m a little tired of protecting people who help the ones trying to conquer them,” Alaric said, closing his hand over the energy sphere and squashing it. Sparks flew out between his fingers and fluttered to the ground, burning the grass wherever they fell.
“Not all humans are sheep, Alaric,” Erin said, as patiently as if she and Alaric hadn’t had the same conversation so many times before. “Wait. Back up a minute. What did you say about Quinn and black magic sorcerers? That’s not good. Not good at all. Does she need help?”
Ven’s lazy grin disappeared. “Why do you think that putting yourself in danger is the answer to every problem, Erin?”
Erin’s mouth fell open as she stared up at Ven. “Seriously? Did you just ask me that, Warrior Man?”
“That’s different,” he muttered, flushing a dark red.
“No, it isn’t,” Riley said, standing up. “Does my sister need help? Maybe I should go to her, since she won’t come to me.”
For the first time since he’d watched, terrified, as she struggled through a difficult birth to bring their son into the world, Conlan felt true panic. Riley in a nest of vampires and black magic practitioners? Over his dead body. But he knew better than to try to forbid it, either as prince or as husband.
“Aidan needs you here, mi amara. At least until he is weaned. Or did you plan to take our son, the heir to the Atlantean throne, into the midst of danger, too?”
Riley glared at him. “Of course I didn’t plan that. I just . . . I hate feeling helpless while Quinn is in danger, and now Serai and the other women, too. I need something to do.”
“I feel the same way,” Erin added.
Keely nodded. “I’m no witch or warrior, but I’m pretty good with planning and a fair hand with a shotgun. Just tell me what I can do to help, and let’s get to it. Those women don’t have much time, if Alaric is right, and he almost always is.”
Alaric bowed to her. “So pleasant to have someone acknowledge reality. Although the qualifier ‘almost’ was unnecessary.”
Justice pulled Keely closer and glared at the high priest. “Don’t humor him, Keely. His head will grow larger than the dome covering Atlantis.”
“Somebody has to go to Arizona and find out if Quinn needs help,” Riley said.
“I will go,” Alaric said, in a voice that rang with finality.
Since Conlan had been planning to ask him to do just that, he had no problem with it. “Fine. Before you go, though, is there anything else you can do here to help in the temple?”
Alaric shook his head. “Horace knows the magic of the stasis better than any in the recorded history of the temple. If anyone can keep them stable or find a way to release them, it’s him. All my presence and interference is accomplishing is distracting him and making him nervous.”
“You? Make someone nervous? Say it isn’t so,” Ven said.
Alaric glared at Ven, and Conlan ignored them both. “Then go. Find out what Quinn needs,” Conlan ordered his high priest, as if Alaric ever took orders anyway. Conlan cast a glance at his wife’s pale face before continuing. “Then see if you can convince her to come back here with you for a visit. Tell her that her sister needs her.”
Riley’s smile was reward enough for any king, and Conlan allowed himself a deep breath as the smallest portion of the weight on his shoulders lifted. International politics, Atlantean magic, the protection of humanity—it was an enormous burden, all of it, but one he would gladly shoulder forever, if only his wife continued to smile at him like that.
Damn. Alaric was right. Marriage was turning him into a girl.
Conlan turned to watch the high priest as he strode off toward the temple, presumably to offer final instructions before he returned to the surface. If Alaric and Quinn ever did manage to work things out, Conlan would laugh his ass off to see Alaric’s turn to be humbled by love.
Oh, yeah, he couldn’t wait for that. Payback, as the saying went, was a barnacle that bit you in the nuts.
He turned to the rest of them. “Back to the war room, I’m afraid, after we dine. Atlantis must rise, and soon, and now we need to plan for every possible reaction and outcome.”
Keely shook her head. “Have you heard the saying ‘God laughs when man plans’?”
He nodded ruefully. “I’ve gone one better. I’ve heard a god laugh when he learned my plans.”
Keely’s eyes widened, and then she laughed. “I’m never going to get used to this place, am I?”
“We certainly hope you do,” Justice said smugly. “We will never let you leave.”
>
This time Keely smacked Justice on the back of the head, and everybody laughed as they headed into the palace to eat. Conlan didn’t begrudge them a moment of lightness in a long line of crises. He’d been ruling Atlantis long enough to know that they must take their moments of peace when they could. They never lasted long.
Chapter 9
The cavern
Daniel crouched in place, clinging to the ceiling of the cavern, not even bothering to try to appear remotely human. So the rebels feared him. They should fear him. He’d run into the sunlight after Serai, only falling back to the healing darkness of the cave when Jack, of all people, had shoved his burning body out of the sun’s deadly reach. Then, his body still smoking, enraged by the pain but most of all by his own helplessness—yet again—to help the woman he loved, Daniel had systematically destroyed everything he could get his hands on.
The two men who’d rushed in to try to stop him would regret that act of foolishness for a very long time. Quinn had finally thrown her hands up in disgust and left him to what she’d termed his “childish temper tantrum.”
He had a shameful feeling she might have been right, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but getting to Serai. He knew she was safe; Jack had followed her and was standing guard near her in tiger form, which probably made Serai feel safer than she would have felt had a man unknown to her offered to do so.
It figured. Daniel had spent his entire life in love with a woman who felt safer with a wild jungle cat than with a person. There was a lesson in there somewhere, but he’d be damned if he could figure out what it was.
He laughed humorlessly and dropped down to land on the floor. He’d be damned anyway. Didn’t the religious folk say vampires had no souls? His brief hope that he’d found salvation had been as foolish as it had been short-lived. He’d found a woman who wanted nothing to do with him—who believed him capable of amputating a man’s hand in a simple fight.
Well. Of course he was capable of just that, but he wouldn’t . . . he didn’t . . . at least, not to allies. That would have to be good enough. The only thing keeping him from descending into irretrievable madness was that she’d refused to speak to Reisen, too. Once Quinn had followed Serai and explained about Reisen’s hand, Serai had, according to Quinn, shot a withering look at Reisen and demanded by what right he had attacked her companion.
Reisen had pleaded with her to hear his side, but Serai had ignored him as if he didn’t exist and asked Quinn for a little peace. Quinn had agreed, Jack had volunteered, Serai had asked for him to resume tiger form, and all of that had happened nearly two hours ago.
The longest two hours of Daniel’s life.
Quinn walked back into the cavern and stood, hands on hips, and shot a challenging stare at Daniel. “So? Who’s cleaning up this mess? I liked that cake, too.”
He looked around the area and realized that bits and pieces of food, drinks, and the table and chairs lay everywhere. One table leg was embedded in the ceiling. He didn’t actually remember doing that. He’d always been good at repressing bad memories and making them disappear, but as for the detritus of a destroyed meal, he was as useless as . . . No.
Making things disappear. A long-buried memory of nightwalker guild magic surfaced, and he chased it to its source. One of the darker lessons of the guild. When the bloodlust conquered reason, the evidence of murder must be made to disappear.
Humans with wooden stakes had outnumbered the nightwalkers then, too.
He closed his eyes and called on powers he hadn’t used in a very, very long time. As Serai had reminded him, once he had been a master mage in the Nightwalker Guild. Some little bit of that magic should remain, even though he hadn’t used it in thousands of years. What did he need magic for, when ordinary vampire strength had been sufficient?
This, though, was a more delicate task than breaking heads or rescuing humans. He searched for the thin line of silvery power, buried deep in his consciousness, and carefully lifted it with his mind. “Aidez moi,” he whispered. Help me.
The language spoken didn’t matter, but he’d always liked French for magic. He sent the silver ribbon of power out into and around the room, and the debris vanished. Quinn shivered violently when the magic passed over and through her, but said nothing until the task was done.
“Nice,” she said dryly. “You can always fall back on a housekeeping job if the vampire politician thing doesn’t work out.”
“I’m no longer Primator. I quit.”
“Why?”
He sliced a hand through the air to cut off the questions. He should have known better. This was Quinn.
“I’m an emotional empath, you know that. Even without the blood bond,” she said. “I can feel your pain at not being able to go after her. Why don’t you fill the twenty minutes or so until the sun sets by telling me about her?”
“Why?” He sped through the room so fast that she surely couldn’t see him. He stopped mere inches from her. “Why do you care?”
She tilted her head and looked up at him. “Because I’m your friend, you idiot. One of the few you have, I’m guessing. So tell me about her. How did you meet?”
He glared at her, which had no effect, and considered tying her up and gagging her, which wouldn’t be worth it. She was right, anyway. His internal clock told him he had twenty-one minutes exactly until it was safe for him to step out of the damned cavern.
“Fine. Let me tell you a fairy tale. This one is called ‘The Princess and the Blacksmith,’” he said caustically.
She smiled and dropped down to sit cross-legged on the floor. “Oh, good. I hope it has a happy ending.”
“I seriously doubt it. Okay, let’s waste both of our time. Once upon a time,” he began, “long, long ago . . .”
* * *
Eleven thousand years ago, Atlantis
Our hero, let’s call him Daniel, was a young apprentice blacksmith on a life-changing voyage. He’d traveled with his master to the home of the most wondrous metals in the known world—Atlantis. He found magic in the people, the land, and the metal itself. A marvelous metal called orichalcum sparkled in both day and night as if the sun’s rays and moonbeams each had poured their light into its very essence. Daniel, who was young and foolish, had believed he could be content for the rest of his life if only he could have the opportunity in his free time, when the day’s work was done, to create works of art and maybe even jewelry with such a metal. Similar to copper and silver, orichalcum was rarer and more pure than either and more valuable than both.
Of course, that which is rare and valuable is coveted by men, and the value of orichalcum was one of the reasons why so many kings and armies had attacked the Seven Isles more and more frequently as of late, causing all of Atlantis to be in a state of armed defense. But orichalcum wasn’t the only reason for the attacks, or even the most crucial. Because when men came to attack and conquer and plunder, they mainly came for another, far more primal and brutal reason. They came to abduct the most sought after prizes of all: Atlantean women for their wives.
“Women are still thought of as chattel in some places in the world,” Quinn interjected bitterly. “Eleven thousand years later, and still the same bullshit.”
Daniel aimed a long look at her. “Do you want me to tell this or not?”
She nodded, and he continued.
When Daniel first met Serai, he understood all of it. She was so beautiful that the gods themselves were rumored to want her. He met her when she came to pick up a piece of jewelry in the shop next to the smithy where he was newly apprenticed. They struck up a friendship, all the more intense for being forbidden. Serai was almost a princess; as the daughter of a powerful, very rich Atlantean lord, who stood high in the ranks of Atlantis’s elders, she was destined for a very good match, perhaps even a royal one. Her father would never allow her to become involved with a lowly metalworker apprentice.
Daniel’s new mentor, the master jeweler and metalworker who owned both the shop and the smithy, w
as an eccentric man. He only worked in the shop at night since he’d hired a full-time blacksmith for the smithy, and he left Daniel to craft jewelry and run the shop during the day, claiming that he knew an honest man when he saw one and Daniel was just that.
The final—and most deadly—attack came before anyone in Atlantis expected it. Daniel was alone with Serai in the shop, her bodyguards across the lane having a mug of ale on a hot summer’s day. The armies rode through the capital city so fast that Serai’s bodyguards died in the street trying to get to her. Daniel hid Serai in a hiding place underneath the floor of the shop and then tried to fight off the looters who targeted the shop for its treasures. The thieving soldiers of the marauding army stabbed him, struck him in the head, and left him for dead where he fell, lying over the trapdoor to the hiding place, covering it with his body.
During the long hours that followed, until day turned to night, Serai was trapped in the dark, unable to move the trapdoor with Daniel’s weight on top of it. The worst part? She wasn’t alone. When night fell, her suspicions turned to fact: the master jeweler rose from his day sleep. He was a senior mage of the Nightwalker Guild; those who fed on the blood of willing humans. He pushed the trapdoor up, and Serai rushed to Daniel’s side.
But it was too late. Daniel was so near death that he couldn’t hear her; his body icy cold. Only the faint rise and fall of his chest told them that Daniel had any life left in him at all. The Nightwalker mage offered Serai Daniel’s final choice: would she allow him to turn Daniel into a vampire, or should they let him die?
She chose life for Daniel, and he spent the next several thousand years trying not to hate her for it, since she had escaped into death without him. But by the time she made that fateful choice, the Atlantean armies had beaten back the invaders, and Serai’s father’s guards burst into the shop and found her. They took her, fighting them all the way, away from the shop, away from Daniel, and away from any future that he and Serai might have hoped for. By the time Daniel was transformed from a nearly dead human into a nightwalker, Atlantis had vanished—destroyed—and all trace of it had sunken beneath the sea, or so everyone had believed.