by Alyssa Day
We will kill him slowly, the Nereid half of him announced. A mad glee underscored the words.
We do not kill our allies, Justice corrected himself.
We will at least hurt him. A lot.
Justice put on a burst of speed, so he could catch up with Daniel and Serai. Yes, he agreed. We will hurt him. A lot.
Chapter 22
Daniel caught up with Serai and waited until they’d hiked another twenty minutes or so—long enough for the metaphorical steam to quit coming out of her ears—before he spoke.
“Maybe poking your ex-fiancé with the fact we’d just had sex wasn’t the best way to begin the conversation,” he said.
“Actually, that was how I ended the conversation,” she pointed out, but she ducked her head and hid her face behind her hair for a few paces. His fierce princess was probably blushing again. The thought made him smile.
“He wasn’t my fiancé, either, if the term carries some consideration of mutual agreement. More like I’m the woman he ordered off the menu. Anyway, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put you in a bad position with your friend Ven or with the future king of Atlantis, especially since you are apparently a politician yourself.”
“You just said ‘politician’ in the same tone most people would use for ‘cockroach,’ so I’m guessing you don’t much approve.”
She glanced up at him but kept walking. “I don’t have the right to approve or disapprove of your life, Daniel. All I know is what politics and politicians did to me. The power of leadership too often becomes tyranny. People are sacrificed to once-noble ideas of the greater good, and the individual rights become lost in all of that planning and scheming. I lost eleven thousand years of my life to it. Don’t you think I have the right to be a little bitter?”
He laughed. “I think you have the right to be all kinds of bitter, Serai. I also think you’re right that we don’t have the time for it now. After this, though? We’re going to have a big old wallow.”
She started laughing. “With cake? There definitely needs to be cake with our wallowing.”
“And beer,” he added. “Cake and beer. Fried chicken, maybe.”
“You’re making me hungry. Do we have more food in that pack of yours?”
He stopped and set the backpack down on a rock and rummaged around and found granola bars and apples. He handed one of each to Serai, along with a bottle of water.
“It’s no royal feast, that’s for sure,” he said. “All we’ve got for now, though. When this is over, and we’re wallowing, I’ll take you out to eat at the best restaurant we can find.”
“Before or after the beer and cake?” She bit into her apple, and a blissful expression crossed her face, which immediately made him think of what else he could do to cause her to look like that, which made him desperately need another cold shower.
He settled for leaning against the rock, putting the pack on his lap as camouflage, and biting into a granola bar.
“This is delicious,” she said. “I missed fruit, perhaps even as much as cake.”
“This granola bar is really freaking nasty,” he said, spitting it out.
“Try the apple,” she advised, taking another bite of her own. “Do you need to drink my blood?”
He was glad he’d already spit out the piece of granola bar, because otherwise he surely would have choked on it. “Do I what?”
She regarded him calmly. “It was a reasonable question, Nightwalker. Do you need to drink my blood? I see no other around to serve as donor, and I don’t want my only ally on this quest to be weakened by hunger when we find the Emperor.”
“I—you—” He couldn’t find the words. Offering her blood to the monster. What next? Baring her neck? Did she have a death wish?
“Or is it thirst?” She tilted her head, still staring at him as if he were a somewhat interesting scientific experiment. “Do you consider the need for blood to be hunger or thirst?”
“I try not to consider it at all. The bloodlust is more powerful than either hunger or thirst. And, no, I don’t need to drink your blood. Don’t ever, ever offer to let me drink your blood again.” It took all of his willpower not to shout at her. What the hell was she thinking?
“Fine. It’s not like I’m going to offer to let anyone else drink my blood,” she said, tossing her apple core into the bushes for an animal’s breakfast and neatly stowing her empty water bottle in a pocket of the backpack, which was still on his lap, which brought her too close to him for comfort, considering the bizarre conversation they were having.
Far too close for comfort.
The meaning behind her words caught up with him, and he scowled at her. “Damn straight you’re never going to let anyone else drink your blood. I’d kill anyone who tried.”
He thought he saw a hint of a smile on her perfect lips, but it was gone so quickly he wasn’t sure.
“Are you baiting me?” he asked, incredulous. “About drinking your blood?”
“Baiting is such a harsh concept. A little gentle teasing, perhaps,” she said, brushing loose tendrils of hair away from her face. “Not about you drinking my blood, but about any others doing so. You seem to be quite possessive about my blood, after all, for someone who claims not to want it.”
How had the conversation turned freaking sideways and upside down on him? He’d never been that great with women, and clearly he wasn’t getting any better.
“I don’t—I’m not—Oh, screw it.” He slung the pack over his shoulder, no longer worried about her seeing his erection, since the conversation had been just as effective as that cold shower he’d wanted. “Let’s go.”
He headed off in the direction they’d been walking before, and her peals of silvery laughter followed him.
They hiked in silence for a while, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. He was content simply to be near her, for as long as he could. Until she decided that the beast wasn’t who she needed in her life. He was surprised, however, that after thousands of years of silence, she didn’t want to talk. He wanted to hear her voice, but he didn’t know what to say.
He jumped lightly over a fallen log in the path and held out his hand to help her over. She put her hand in his, and a bolt of electricity shot up his arm from the contact, but he tried to hide his reaction from her. She tightened her fingers on his and her eyes widened, and he suspected she’d noticed. Either that, or she’d had a similar reaction.
He didn’t know which to hope for.
“The Emperor isn’t moving right now,” she said, after she’d crossed the log. She didn’t let go of his hand. He decided to take that as a good sign.
“Tell me about what you’ve been doing recently,” she said. “How long have you been awake from the hibernation? How long have you been working with Conlan and Ven? How did you become primator?”
“Be careful what you wish for,” he muttered, thinking silence hadn’t been so bad, after all.
“What?” She shivered, and he stopped to pull her jacket out of the pack and hand it to her.
“Nothing. It can get pretty cold here at night.”
She zipped up her jacket and raised one eyebrow. “That’s it? You think talking about the weather can get you out of answering my questions?”
He started walking again. “Are we almost there yet?”
“No. Maybe another couple of hours’ walk at this rate. Plenty of time for you to tell me about yourself.”
“Fine. I’ll talk, but then you have to tell me exactly how you can shift into a saber-toothed tiger.”
“Excellent,” she said, smiling. She held out her hand and he took it again without thinking, but then he realized he was growing far too accustomed to being with her. Touching her. Holding her.
All the things that would make it worse when she left him.
“I’ve been roaming the earth for the past thousand years or so,” he told her. “When I woke from the hibernation, the lessons I’d learned before had stayed with me. My goals had changed.”
“Goals?”
“From vengeance to redemption,” he said quietly. Easy words to say; so easy. Far more difficult to put into practice.
“You had so much to redeem?”
“Yes. Far too much. More than I can ever atone for, more than I can ever be forgiven for,” he said. “I can’t speak of those dark days after Atlantis vanished, Serai. I’m sorry, but I cannot. Not to you, not to anyone, but especially not to you. I can’t watch your perception of me change, as you realize the monster I became.”
She frowned. “You can’t think . . . After, then. When you sought redemption. What did you do? The world was a far different place then, even only a thousand years ago. Where were you?”
She stopped and retied the laces of her hiking boot, and he wondered where to begin.
“I was in Europe. Times were bad. Vampires openly captured and killed humans in many places. Fear and superstition, the lack of any consolidated response—it all added up to a very bad time.”
“Sounds like ‘very bad time’ is quite an understatement.”
“I’ve been accused of that a lot lately,” he admitted.
“What did you do?”
“What little I could. I decided that, as a vampire, I could go undercover, so to speak, and pretend to be just another vampire looking for a bloody good time. Once I gained entry, I’d . . . change the regime, let’s say.”
“You’d kill them,” she said, glancing up at him and then away.
“Yes. I’d kill them. More murders on my hands,” he said harshly.
“More lives saved, I’d say,” she retorted. “Do you count that in your tallying up? The lives you have saved by stopping the murders?”
“It’s not like I keep a running score in my head, Serai. You don’t understand. Saving the lives of a few can never make up for what I did.”
She stopped walking but didn’t let go of his hand, forcing him to stop, too.
“You saved the lives of far more than a few. Admit it. And I think you do keep a running score, only in your twisted perception of yourself, you only remember to count the ones you harmed, not the ones you helped.”
He laughed bitterly. “The ones I harmed? You mean, the ones I murdered? The ones I drained dry until there wasn’t a drop of their blood left in their bodies? Those?”
A single tear escaped her lashes and ran slowly down her cheek, and he wanted to rip his tongue out of his mouth for shouting at her.
“Don’t cry for me, Princess. Don’t ever waste your tears on me.”
“But it’s all my fault,” she whispered. “I chose this life for you. I caused you to be a nightwalker, to suffer the bloodlust and the years and years of torment. All my fault. How you must hate me.”
She fell to her knees and covered her face with her hands, but he could still hear her sobs, and the hard, blackened shell covering his heart cracked a little bit more.
“No,” he said, lifting her into his arms. “Never, ever think that. You gave me the chance to live. To do something worthwhile with my life. It is not your fault that I failed so spectacularly.”
She lifted her tearstained face to him. “But you’re not failing anymore. You aren’t. You’re making the world a better place now. You keep saying you’re a monster. Even a monster can be redeemed, Daniel. The gods themselves teach us that. Are you so arrogant that the precepts of the gods and their teachings about forgiveness do not apply to you?”
He kissed the tears from her cheeks, one by one. “Forgiveness is a pretty concept, mi amara. But some things are too horrible to be forgiven. I have helped to take down some of the worst monsters in history, and still the scales are not balanced. When will I ever be able to do enough? When will I ever be able to live at peace with my past? Never. Only death will give me peace.”
“Then you condemn me to live another life without you?” She put her arms around his neck and stared fiercely into his eyes. “Do you think I will allow that? Think again, blacksmith, before you try to defy a princess of Atlantis.”
Her soft sniffle diminished the effect of her proud words, but he knew what she was trying to do for him, and his soul warmed with gratitude that she would even make the effort.
“I can never deserve you,” he said solemnly.
She flashed a beautiful smile, the tears still glittering on her lashes like miniature stars in the moonlight. “No? Well, you have the next thousand years or so to try, but not a day longer.”
“There’s more,” he warned her, trying to make her understand before he began to believe her foolishness. Before he began to hope. “I am blood-bonded with Quinn. Ven’s wife’s sister Deirdre died because of me. Everyone I care about dies. You would do well to stay far away from me.”
“This blood bond, was it to save Quinn’s life, as you did with me?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“And the other. Deirdre,” she said, persisting even though he could see the pain in her eyes and hear it in her voice. “Did you love her? How did she die?”
“No. No, I didn’t love her. I tried to save her, but she’d lost so many years to torture and despair. She threw herself in front of a death meant for me in order to escape her pain,” he admitted.
“I know that other women have been part of your life, but I don’t care. I can’t be jealous of them or angry with you for any friendship or solace you found when you believed me to be dead. I already lost you once,” she whispered. “I will not lose you again. Stop trying to make me leave you.”
He cast around in his mind for something—anything—that he could say to convince her, but she wasn’t giving him time to think. She was so warm and soft in his arms, and her body against his made him want to take her, over and over again.
She kissed him, and he forgot trying to be rational and stern and noble. Instead, he kissed her back, with everything his soul felt but his mind wouldn’t allow him to say.
“Daniel,” she whispered, a long time later. “I’m feeling dizzy again.”
He grinned. “I have that effect on you.”
Her answering smile was faint. “Yes. No. I think—”
Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she slumped against him. He caught her and gently placed her on the grass, hurriedly stuffing the backpack under her head. The damnable Emperor was taking its toll on her, and they were running out of time. She was growing weaker and weaker, and he was helpless to do anything to prevent it.
He leaned over her to reach into the backpack for another bottle of water, and was relieved to discover that her pulse and breathing were both strong. It was temporary, then. A little rest would surely make her better.
He felt the shift in air pressure even before he heard the shout. Somebody was coming in, and coming in fast. He rolled to the side and shot up, daggers in hands, to protect Serai from whatever new danger was attacking, but he was totally and completely unprepared for what he saw.
It was an Atlantean attacking them. A warrior with a long blue braid. A man he knew and had counted as an ally. Just before the sword swung in a deadly arc toward his head, Daniel had time to shout out his attacker’s name.
“Justice! What the hell are you doing?”
But then the battle was on, and Daniel saved his breath for the fight because, for some insane reason, Lord Justice of Atlantis was trying to kill him.
Chapter 23
Upon regaining consciousness, Serai’s first thought was that she must be dreaming, because Daniel was battling an Atlantean warrior who was trying his best to kill him. This one had the classic Atlantean looks—tall, dark, and muscled. She might have even thought him handsome, if he weren’t wielding an enormous sword against the man she loved.
Daniel deflected a vicious strike with his daggers and launched himself up into the sky, flipping over in midair above the warrior’s head and landing gracefully behind him. Daniel’s hand shot out and struck the attacker, hard, but with the hilt of his dagger, not the blade.
Why would he do that? She didn’t want to di
stract Daniel, especially against such a deadly fighter, but she needed to know what was going on. She carefully sat up, fighting a wave of dizziness, and waited for a momentary lull.
“Daniel? Who is this, and why is he attacking us?”
Daniel flung himself to the side to avoid another thrust of that wickedly sharp-looking sword, but it sliced through his shirt. “Princess, meet Lord Justice, formerly of Atlantis.”
“Formerly? What do you mean by that, vampire?” Justice said, pausing in his attempt to skewer Daniel. “We have not left Atlantis.”
“I mean formerly, as in you’re going to be dead soon, if you don’t stop this right now and tell me why in the nine hells you’re attacking me,” Daniel growled.
Justice swung his long braid, which looked almost blue in the moonlight, out of his way and took a ready stance with the sword held out and up in front of him. “Perhaps you should have thought of consequences when you attacked a princess of Atlantis. Now you will die for your presumption, and we shall happily be the ones to deliver the true death to you.”
Serai pushed herself off the ground to stand up, trying to ignore how shaky she was. If they didn’t find the Emperor soon, she was afraid she wouldn’t last much longer.
“This is making me very angry, Lord Justice,” she said, putting the full force of her position in her voice. “I am getting a little tired of people attacking Daniel. It was bad enough when danger came from our enemies, but first Jack, then Reisen, and now you. All allies, or so you claim, and yet you dare to attempt to harm the one person who is aiding me on my quest to retrieve the Emperor?”
Justice tilted his head and stared at her for a long minute, his eyes narrowed, as if trying to comprehend her meaning. He finally shook his head, dismissing her. “You do not understand, my lady. He was attacking you. Clearly he has used his vampire powers to enthrall you.”