by Alyssa Day
“He hit you? He swore he did not,” Nicholas snarled.
Ian rolled his eyes. “Right. Because bad guys never lie to each other. Dude, do you watch TV at all?”
“Don’t call me dude,” the vampire said, but he grinned at the boy without a hint of fang.
Serai was confused. “So you’re not the evil villain the soldiers are here to capture?”
“Depends on how you define evil,” Ivy said.
So fast Serai was sure Ivy hadn’t seen it, a flash of surprise crossed the vampire’s eyes, probably because the witch had defended him.
“You should not have attempted to wield the Emperor, Ivy,” Serai said seriously. “It is one of the seven gems of Poseidon’s trident, and a mortal should never touch the objects of power that belong to a god. Not if she wishes to live.”
“And yet you touched it,” Ivy said, folding her arms across her chest, her body language a clear picture of defiance.
“I am linked to the stone; as are the remaining three of my sisters. I must take it back with me to Atlantis to save their lives.”
Nicholas stepped into the space between Serai and the Emperor. “I may have something to say about that,” he said ominously.
“Say it quickly, then,” Ian said. “Because those soldiers are heading right for us, and I think—”
The boy quit speaking mid-sentence and stared down at his shoulder and the knife blade which was suddenly protruding from it. He reached out for Ivy as he stumbled, and the brave young adult presence he’d been projecting crumpled as he fell.
“Mommy?”
Ivy screamed and ran to her son, but Nicholas was there first, catching him as he fell.
Serai raced to the cave entrance, calling to her magic as she ran, and by the time the horrible soldier who would hurt a boy had climbed the rest of the way up the stone steps and into the cave, she carried glowing energy spheres whose heat didn’t come close to her fury.
“You would hurt a child?” She didn’t wait for an answer, especially since the visual evidence—more knives in his hands—was clear for all to see. Instead, she blasted him with both of the spheres, and he fell back, unconscious, to the cave floor.
Nicholas tore past her in a blast of displaced air and before she could say or do anything to stop him, he wrenched the soldier’s head from his body and tossed both pieces out of the cave and to the ground below.
“I will have the same again for anybody else who approaches,” he roared out into the night.
Before Serai could protest, Nicholas leapt out into the air and was back mere seconds later, carrying a struggling soldier.
“This one is alive,” Nicholas shouted. “If you want him to stay that way, keep back.”
“You didn’t have to kill him,” Serai said, staring at the place where the first soldier had fallen.
“He hurt the boy,” Nicholas said, and then he punched the new soldier in the side of the head, knocking him out. “An unconscious prisoner is a lot less trouble.”
“My son is bleeding to death,” Ivy shrieked. “Do something. Get us out of here.”
Serai quickly crossed to her side. “Does your power not extend to healing?”
Ivy shook her head, sobbing.
Ian looked up at Serai and tried to grin, but he was pale and it was true the wound was bleeding badly.
“I can repair this injury,” Serai said. “I will need to use the Emperor.”
“No,” Nicholas shouted. “It’s mine. I need it.”
“It is not yours, and you are a fool to try to claim it,” Serai said calmly.
“Nicholas, you can’t let Ian die,” Ivy said, no longer shouting but with tears streaming down her face. “Not even you could be so cruel.”
The vampire stared at the boy, so many different emotions crossing his face that Serai couldn’t begin to identify them all.
“Fine,” he finally said. “I am a fool. A weak, emotional, irrational fool, but you may take the gem if it allows you to help the boy.”
“I will make it allow me to do so,” Serai said grimly. She needed Daniel, though. He should have been here by now. She sent her senses out, seeking him, and found him healthy but still detained inside one of the vehicles.
Daniel, I need you now. Inside the cave. I’m going to attempt to wield the Emperor, and I need your strength. Please come.
She waited and almost immediately his strength surrounded her in a warm wave of love—and fury.
Don’t you dare touch that stone until I get there, or I will personally tie you down and never let you out of my bed for the next eleven thousand years!
She almost laughed, in spite of the situation and the danger. Her fierce warrior mage, determined to protect her at all cost. Except this time, it was her turn.
She took a deep breath and centered herself, and then she cupped the Emperor in both hands and raised it into the air. She was prepared for the first punch of power this time, and she opened herself to it instead of fighting it.
“Emperor, answer my call. Heal this boy who does not deserve to be injured in the cross fire of this battle. Heal the women who struggle, caught in stasis beneath the sea, O mighty Emperor, object of power of the sea god.”
She realized that she’d spoken the words in ancient Atlantean, but it seemed fitting that she honor the gem with its proper tongue. The Emperor’s tremendous power seared through her like a bonfire through kindling and she was afraid, but slowly she adjusted, tuning her own magic to the resonance of the amethyst.
She knelt beside Ian and nodded to his mother. “Please remove the knife now.”
Ivy shook her head. “Now? Are you sure? What if you’re wrong and removing it causes him to bleed out?”
Ian touched his mother’s cheek with the hand on his uninjured side. “No, Mom, she’s doing it already. I can feel the pain going away. Please take the knife out before my skin heals around it. That would be so gross!”
Ivy still hesitated, and Nicholas knelt beside her and gently moved her to one side. He took the hilt of the knife in one hand and then stared a challenge at Serai. She nodded, filled with the power of the Emperor.
“Yes, now, Nicholas of the Nightwalker Guild,” she said, and she heard the change in her voice. Heard the power of the Emperor taking her over again.
Nicholas looked puzzled and then a little awed, but he slowly removed the knife, and as Serai directed the stream of healing light and magic into the wound, Ian never even flinched. They all watched as the gash in his skin healed completely until nothing but a thin pink scar, barely visible, remained.
“I feel great, Mom,” he said bravely, and then his eyelids fluttered shut, and his head fell back against his mother’s shoulder. He let out a little hiccupping snore, and the three adults grouped around him looked at one another and laughed.
“I owe you my life, Serai of Atlantis,” Ivy said fiercely. “My son is everything to me. Anything in my considerable power to do for you, you only need to ask me. Ever, do you hear me?”
Serai inclined her head, the power of the Emperor calling her further and further away from mortal concerns. “Take your child to safety, that is all I ask,” she said, and then she stood and crossed to the entrance to the cave, still holding the Emperor.
“You mustn’t stand there, you’re a target,” Nicholas said, trying to pull her away, but the Emperor slapped out at him and he fell back, dazed from the jolt of electricity that had poured from the amethyst and into his body.
“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 l
ight 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.”