by Alyssa Day
Jack was down, and Quinn was losing her mind over it. He could feel her maddened anguish searing through him because of the blood bond and realized, yet again, that he couldn’t help her.
Alaric tried to pull Quinn away from Jack, but she screamed and fought him off.
“No, leave me alone! Wait. You can heal him,” she said imploringly, tugging on Alaric’s hand. “You healed me before. I’ve seen you heal lots of people. You can do it. Fix him.”
But the priest was shaking his head, a universe of sadness in his somber expression. “He’s gone, Quinn. I can heal grievous wounds, it is true, and you know I would do anything for you, but I cannot heal death. Only the gods can do that.”
Quinn screamed again, a sound of such utter, hopeless rage that it sent chills snaking down Daniel’s spine. Serai shuddered and turned her head to look up at Daniel, and the deep blue of her eyes had spread from her irises to completely cover the white, so that her eyes were entirely blue.
“He’s not gone,” she said, her voice gone deep with ancient power. “He’s almost gone, but a small part of him remains.”
Alaric stared at her and raised his hands almost as if to block any attack Serai might try. She made a dismissing motion and ignored him, focused entirely on Quinn and Jack.
“Put me down. There next to Jack,” Serai ordered Daniel, and he found himself obeying her without question. The magic resonating in her voice called to him on such a visceral level that it echoed in his bones. He wouldn’t have been able to refuse her—looking around, he saw that everyone but Alaric had stepped forward in response to her command, as well.
He helped her to sit on the ground next to Jack, and she gently nudged Quinn to one side and then lay down across the badly damaged tiger, so that her body draped across Jack’s.
Quinn grabbed at her. “No! What are you doing? Get off him!”
But Alaric gently pulled Quinn back and held her back by wrapping his arms around her. “Give her a chance, Quinn. The ancients had magic we have long forgotten.”
Quinn shook her head back and forth, over and over, but subsided, watching Serai with huge eyes filled with tears that she wouldn’t let fall.
She had reason to cry. Gashes so deep that Daniel could see bone in some of them covered every quarter of Jack’s body. Serai grasped his fur with both hands and started to hum softly, then turned those blind and darkling eyes to Quinn.
“Part of him lives, but only his animal side is still—barely—on this side of the river of death,” she said, so softly it was almost a whisper. “I can call to the tiger that is Jack and help him come back, but his human side is almost certainly lost forever.”
Quinn stared at Serai, pain and terror and awe mixed in her expression. “What are you?”
“I am Serai of Atlantis, and the Emperor gifted me with ancient magic not seen on this world since before my continent dove beneath the oceans,” Serai said in that terrible, beautiful voice of power. “I gift you his choice, as another once gifted me the choice of life or death for one I loved. Shall I let him seek out his ancestors in the afterlife or do you wish him to live, though it be perhaps only a half life?”
Her gaze met Daniel’s, and he understood, in a way he never had before, what it had cost her to make that choice for him—both that day and every day of her life since. Now she offered the same painful choice to Quinn, and he could do nothing but stand helplessly by and watch them.
The knife he’d pulled out of his side a little while ago during the battle had hurt far less.
“I choose life,” Quinn said, her voice ringing out. “You make him live, do you hear me? No matter what it takes. Make at least part of him live, and I can find the rest of him somehow. Someday. You make him live.”
Serai nodded and began singing, first softly and sweetly, and then stronger and more powerfully, as magic threaded through the lyrics and melody of her song. A gentle, glowing, golden light rose from Jack’s body and surrounded them, until they shone as if lit from within by miniature suns. Everyone watching them held his or her breath in unison until, seconds or centuries later, a rough coughing noise sounded and Jack’s body shuddered fiercely, almost rising completely up off the ground before it fell back down.
Quinn cried out and put her arms around Jack’s neck, but the tiger snarled at her and Alaric yanked her back and away, putting his own body between the two of them. Daniel pulled Serai away, too, but she shook her head and he settled for crouching down next to her, between her delicate skin and Jack’s powerful jaws.
“Does he know who he is?” Alaric demanded.
Serai shook her head but then nodded. “I think so?” The power had gone from her voice, and all that remained was exhaustion.
“Honestly, I don’t know what he knows,” she admitted. “Or who he knows. If he has reverted fully to tiger and only tiger, he’s not safe to be around.”
Quinn squared her shoulders but then dropped down to put a hand on Serai’s shoulder. “Thank you. No matter what else, you brought him back from death. We’ll figure the rest out. I owe him that much.”
Alaric called to his own particular brand of Atlantean power, and a silvery blue light soared up from the priest’s hands and then spread out to surround the tiger, who snarled weakly and then sat up, shivering in the light. Jack’s bloodstained fur was dark and matted, but the gashes were healed.
“I can’t tell,” Alaric said. “I just don’t know. Shape-shifters are too different from Atlanteans, and Poseidon’s power recoils from trying to analyze the mind of a tiger.”
“Your magic is unbalanced without the soul-meld,” Serai said absently, brushing Alaric aside as if he were a troublesome child.
The priest stared at her, his eyes widening. “What do you mean? I am the most powerful—”
“Yes, yes, I’ve heard it,” Serai interrupted. “Most powerful high priest in the history of Atlantis. But it’s not true, you know. I’ve been around for all of them since Atlantis dove beneath the sea. Your power is not even close to that Nereus wielded. At least, before his wife died and he almost drowned the world.”
“What—”
Quinn cut him off, and her voice was hoarse with barely repressed pain. “I don’t care. I don’t care about any of it right now. Not the bankers, or the rebellion, or any damn part of it. I sure as hell don’t care about Atlantean ancient history. I’m leaving, and I’m taking Jack with me. Somewhere he can be safe, until we figure this out. I owe him that. I owe him my life, several times over.”
Alaric took her hand in his and nodded. “Of course. I know just the place. I’ll take you there now, and I’ll never, ever leave your side again.”
The shimmer of magic that surrounded Alaric as he said it told Daniel that the priest had just made a vow he wouldn’t be able to break without serious consequence. Words had power, and some more than others. Their future would be even more complicated now.
Alaric slashed a hand through the air, and the now-familiar portal began to shimmer in the dark.
“You should come with us, Princess,” Alaric said. “We can help you.”
“You need my help, priest,” Serai said, putting a hand on Daniel’s arm. “I have protection beyond your knowledge in the presence of the mage beside me.”
Daniel didn’t deserve her praise. Skills learned as a mage millennia ago were so long gone as to be rusty with disuse. Only good for destroying furniture and cake. He couldn’t help, unless . . .
Unless he called to the dying soul of the human—which happened to be a special talent of the Nightwalker Guild. It was better to leave a live body behind than a dead one, according to the rules they’d stuffed in his head. Common decency or morality had nothing to do with guild law, but practicality ruled all.
“I can help, possibly,” he said. “Let me try to reach Jack.”
“What can you do? Try to blood bond a tiger?” Quinn shook her head. “Go away, Daniel, there’s no need for your special skills here.”
“I have fo
rgotten more magic than most of your human witches ever possess, Quinn, and one of my talents as senior mage of the Nightwalker Guild was to teach others to call out to the souls of dying mortals,” Daniel said. “Let me try. It can’t hurt him, not now. Maybe I can help.”
Surprisingly, Quinn looked to Serai first, then Alaric. Both of them nodded, Alaric perhaps a little skeptically, but it was still a nod.
“Fine. Try what you can. But then we take him away and let him rest and heal.” Quinn moved a few inches to the side, keeping one hand on Jack’s fur. The tiger followed her with its eyes but made no move to attack, just sat, shivering, in the center of their small group.
Daniel reached deep inside himself again, for the second time that night, and called for the constructive alter-ego of the destructive force he’d unleashed earlier. The power was too long unused and responded only sluggishly to his call, and at only partial strength of what he dimly remembered from days long, long gone. He’d fought with fists, daggers, and his vampire physical abilities for so long he’d nearly forgotten his magic. Perhaps he didn’t deserve a response from power he’d discarded and scorned.
But it did respond. Slowly and painfully, but it finally answered him. He invoked words of power in languages that had existed long before French had dreamed itself into being, and the magic rose to his call, at least enough to fuel one not-so-simple question.
Jack. Are you there? Jack Shepherd of the tiger pride, have you gone beyond reach of mortal call?
Daniel waited for what seemed a very long time. Just when he was about to admit defeat, a weak, thready voice that was almost unidentifiable as Jack’s answered him.
I don’t know where I am, or if I can come back. I don’t know if I want to come back. Leave me be, vampire, or magician, or whatever you are. Leave me to make my own choices. Don’t call me again, or I’ll leave forever. The choice to die is so very tempting.
Daniel waited, but the message was complete. Jack had to choose to come back, and nothing they could do would influence him, or so the shape-shifter thought. Daniel, though, knew better. He himself had once rejoined the living for the dream of love of a woman.
Maybe the love Jack felt for Quinn—and hers for him, though it was not the bond she shared with Alaric—would be enough. It was beyond his reach now. He turned to Quinn.
“I don’t know if he’ll ever return,” he warned her. “All I know is that he’s somewhere in there. Deep inside, or maybe even not inside the tiger but very nearby. But he won’t come back because we push him. He warned me quite specifically that if we try, he’ll choose never to come back.”
Quinn narrowed her eyes. “If he thinks he’s more stubborn that I am, he’s sadly mistaken. Let’s go, Alaric. Take us away, and give me time to let this tiger heal and find himself again.”
Alaric simply nodded, then took her hand in one of his and made a motion with the other that lifted the tiger on a shimmering pillow of pure energy. The portal, now large enough for a half dozen warriors to enter walking side by side, glowed brightly in the moonlit night. Daniel looked around to see that the piles of decaying vampire remains had all melted into the ground and vanished in the darkness.
Reisen, who’d been standing behind the group around Jack, and whom Daniel hadn’t even noticed until then, gazed at the portal with such stark longing on his face that Alaric paused when he saw the warrior.
“Do others here need healing? I forget my duties.”
Reisen shook his head. “No, we have only minor injuries in those still alive. You . . . you go to Atlantis?”
“You can return home,” Alaric told Reisen. “Your exile was self-imposed. Conlan offered forgiveness and healing.”
Reisen took a deep breath, but stayed where he was. “I have one final mission to perform for Quinn.”
Melody, her face badly bruised from the fight, looked up at Reisen and put a hand on his arm. “Thank you. For what you did during that fight, too. I’d be dead on the ground if not for you, and the world would be short one majorly terrific hacker.”
She tried to smile but failed miserably, and tears ran freely down her face as she turned her gaze to Quinn. “Take care of Jack for me, Boss. I’ll be on top of things here.”
Quinn nodded, but didn’t even glance back. She was already walking ahead of Alaric to the portal, one hand still in Jack’s fur.
Alaric turned to Daniel just before he stepped into the glowing oval of light. “Six women and the fate of Atlantis herself depend upon what happens to that gemstone, Daniel. Don’t let them down. Since she won’t return to Atlantis, I’ll send help. A lot of help.”
“We don’t need help from those who imprison women for thousands of years, failed priest,” Serai said, her eyes again perfectly dark, completely blue. The power hadn’t left her, then. “If I return now, I lose any chance to retrieve the Emperor. I might be safe, since I’m out of the pod, but I won’t trade my life for theirs.”
“She stays,” Daniel said. “But we’ll take whatever help we can get to keep her safe.”
Serai glared at him, but he didn’t care. He wouldn’t risk her life for foolish pride, neither her pride nor his. When she was thinking clearly again, she’d agree. Alaric nodded, and then the unlikely trio moved through the gate: the priest, the rebel leader he loved, and the tiger who might never recover his humanity.
When the light from the portal vanished, swallowing the three, everyone watching exhaled as if they’d all been holding their breath by mutual agreement.
“This sucks beyond all reason,” Melody said, her tearstained face at odds with her flippant words. “I’ m heading into town for a hotel room and a hot shower. Tomorrow morning is early enough to decide on a plan. Anybody with me?”
“I’m not leaving you until this mission is complete,” Reisen said flatly. “Lead on. We must, however, discover who those vampires were, and why they attacked. Are they with the vampire controlling this region? Nicholas? Are they in league with the witches?”
“Or, worse, working for that human banker,” Daniel said grimly. “For tonight—what’s left of it—we should find shelter and rest.”
“Yes,” Serai said. “I’d like to experience a hotel before I . . .”
As her voice trailed off, Daniel realized she’d been about to say “before I die.”
“Don’t even think it,” he warned her. “I won’t allow it.”
She just sighed, exhaustion in every line of her body. “I’m too tired to argue with you, and I need a hot bath. Let’s all talk after we rest.”
Daniel wondered how they’d get to a hotel, and who would take care of the fallen humans, but this was not the first time the rebels had faced such losses, and they had a system in place. Within the hour, they were ensconced in a hotel in Sedona, and he was systematically drinking his way through every tiny bottle of whiskey in the minibar while he tried not to think about Serai’s naked body in the bathtub on the other side of a very flimsy door. He could smell the bath salts she’d poured in the tub. He could smell the soap and the shampoo that was touching her perfect skin and beautiful hair. But a far worse problem than that was becoming more and more evident.
He could smell her blood.
He could breathe in the scent of her luscious, life-giving blood, pumping through her veins beneath that perfect and oh-so-fragile skin. He’d channeled so much power, so long unused, and he was growing weak from the drain on his energy. The bloodlust he’d controlled for so many thousands of years was raising its monstrous head to scent its prey.
And Serai smelled like prey.
Chapter 12
Sedona
Serai sank farther into the scented water until only her knees and head remained above the clouds of frothy bubbles. The bath salts had a pleasing floral scent, but that of no flower she knew or remembered. It was no Atlantean tub, to be sure. She’d do no swimming or even languid floating with her friends here in this hotel bathroom. After so long without a bath, though, with only magical stasis-maintaine
d cleanliness, this small tub felt fit for a king. Or at least fit for a once-almost-queen. One who wanted nothing more than to scrub the scent of fire and blood and battle from her skin.
The steamy heat sank into her tired muscles, soothing and relaxing them after a day and night of activity that surely had been more strenuous than a normal person’s week. Or month. She hadn’t even known that she had the ability to shift her shape to that of the ancient tiger, and yet she’d done it not once but twice. The saber-toothed tiger had been her favorite animal to study in the schoolroom. So beautiful and yet fierce and deadly.
Rather like Daniel. An image of him, standing over her and ferociously protecting her from attack, flashed into her mind, and she drew a shaky breath. He was the fiercest warrior she’d ever seen, and every ounce of that rage and power had been focused on saving her.
A tingling sensation swept through her at the thought of him—her vampire warrior and protector—waiting in the next room, with only a door between them. Her nipples stiffened and she blinked to see their pink tips pointing up through the bubbles. She raised her hands to cup her breasts and ran an exploratory thumb over one nipple, gasping at the electric sensation that pinged through her body from that sensitive place to another, even more sensitive place.
How much more exciting would it be if it were Daniel touching her there? She caught her breath at the thought, feeling deliciously naughty and then, suddenly, starkly ashamed. Men and women had just died, and she herself had killed one of them. Yes, it had been a vampire who’d been attacking Reisen, bent on killing him. Yes, it had been in battle.
But she’d never even struck anyone in anger, and now she’d killed a man. A vampire, like Daniel. How could she dismiss that so easily? The tears began to run down her face as the horrible inventory unfolded in her mind. Quinn’s friend Jack, the man who’d been kind enough to spend part of his day protecting Serai from her own foolishness, was wounded perhaps beyond hope of healing. His humanity might never return. Several more of the rebels—more friends—were also dead or injured.