by Alyssa Day
Pure, clean, healthy rage burned through Serai, searing the last of her dizziness to ash. “Did you just dismiss me as a silly girl who has fallen for a vampire’s tricks?” She made sure to carefully enunciate each word. “You have just insulted the wrong Atlantean, youngling.”
Daniel laughed, drawing Justice’s attention again. “You’re in trouble now, Justice. When she called Alaric and Conlan younglings, she really put them in their place.”
Justice turned a shocked expression to Serai. “You did that? How did our brother react?”
Serai raised an eyebrow. “Which one is your brother? Alaric or Conlan? You have a similar look around the eyes as Conlan, but the blue in your hair is pure Nereid. Though of course I have not seen a true Nereid for more than eleven thousand years.”
Justice lowered the sword a few inches, relaxing his ready stance a bit. “You have met our kind? Truly? We had known you were one of the ancient ones, but we never thought—”
Faintly, ever so faintly, Serai felt a touch of very old magic sing its way through the space surrounding the three of them. She shot a glance at Daniel and saw that his gaze had gone blank and somewhat unfocused. He was trying to access his nightwalker mage powers, she was sure of it, but he was so out of practice that it probably would take some time.
She would provide a distraction, then.
“Why are you referring to yourself in the plural?” She called to the water magic and formed two apple-sized spheres of water and light, which she casually began to juggle from hand to hand. A bit of fun to distract children, but perhaps it also worked on those who were mentally unstable. A man who referred to himself as “we” would fit in that category.
He watched her with great concentration, a look of joy and fascination on his face. “I have not seen the mummer’s balls of waterlight since I was a child,” he said. “My mother’s sister came to visit me once . . . It is a Nereid magic, I had heard.”
Serai noticed Daniel raising his hands, his eyes closed tightly, and knew she had to keep the warrior distracted for just a little while longer.
She tossed one of the spheres toward Justice, who instinctively raised his free hand to catch it, lowering his sword hand even further. He laughed when the sphere splashed and dissolved against his fingers.
“Daniel did not attack me, Lord Justice,” she said softly, in a sing-song cadence, riding her own magic on the waves of Daniel’s gentle persuasive push, but it was too much, too soon, and Justice’s face hardened.
“We saw him. He attacked you, and you fell.”
She took a step toward him. “No. I was dizzy from the magical fluctuations of the Emperor. A witch is attempting to use it for her own ends, and the backlash is harming me and the other maidens. Daniel has been protecting me and supporting me as we seek it.”
Justice looked doubtful, but she took another step toward him. “Is it not your duty to protect me, as a Warrior of Poseidon?”
“Yes, of course, my lady, but—”
“Then you must allow me to continue my quest, and allow Daniel to help me do so. If I don’t find the Emperor, I may die. All of the maidens still in stasis may die.”
He hesitated, but then shook his head and raised his sword again, this time in a defensive position, but still aimed at Daniel. “We cannot take the chance that you have been misled by the vampire’s magic. We will all wait here for Conlan’s return.”
“I’m sorry, Justice, but we’re out of time, my friend,” Daniel said. He sliced one hand through the air, chanting under his breath, and Justice froze in place, as still as one of the statues in the palace atrium, nothing but his eyes moving.
The look in those eyes promised a slow and brutal death to his assailant when the immobilizing magic wore off, however.
“Everything she told you was the truth, Justice, but we just don’t have the time to wait. Serai is growing weaker every minute. If we don’t find that Emperor soon, it could be very bad.”
Daniel raised his hands into the air, and Justice’s immobilized body turned sideways and then floated down gently to the grass. The strain from using the magic was plain on Daniel’s face, and Serai automatically sent her own magic flowing through the air to support his, not thinking of the cost to her strength.
She staggered a little, and Daniel ran to her and caught her before she fell.
“We must move, now,” she whispered. “It’s growing worse, Daniel. I don’t know how much longer I can go on.”
“Can we try to fly again?”
A wave of panic rushed through her at the idea, and she stumbled again as her knees went weak.
Daniel nodded grimly. “I see the answer is no,” he said. “We’ll hike faster. I’ll carry you if I need to.”
“Conlan and Ven will find you,” Daniel told Justice. “They should be back soon. You can contact them through your telepathy thing, I’m guessing?”
“Yes, he should be able to do so,” Serai answered, since Justice obviously could not. “We need to go now, Daniel. Please.”
“I’m sorry,” Daniel told Justice, and then they set off again, he all but carrying her as they walked toward the resonance of the Emperor’s power, shining like a beacon in her mind.
They hiked in silence for perhaps twenty minutes, until they reached an obstruction on the path. She put her arm around Daniel’s waist, and he flinched a little.
She pulled her hand back and stared down, uncomprehending, at the dark wetness on her fingers where they’d grasped his waist.
“You’re injured? This is blood?” She pulled him around to face her and pushed his shirt away from his skin before he could protest. A slender gash in his side steadily dripped blood, and his shirt and the tops of his pants were drenched.
“How did I not see this?”
He grinned at her, but his face was strained. “It’s dark. Tough to see blood in the dark.”
A wave of dizziness swept through her again, and she realized she’d been supporting him with her magic, unknowingly, since the battle with Justice. It was weakening her even more, and with that compounded by the Emperor’s magical drain, she was barely standing upright. She shut down the flow of her own magic to Daniel, but it was too late. She’d lost too much of her energy during the confrontation with Justice.
“We’re in trouble,” she said softly. “Serious trouble.”
“You might be right,” he said, abruptly sitting down, hard, on the rocky ground. “Oh, yeah. We’re in trouble.”
Daniel stared stupidly at his legs, which wouldn’t function anymore. He felt a sudden loss, almost as if—almost as if—
“You. You were pouring magic into my spell back there,” he said, feeling like a damn fool for not realizing it before.
“I thought you needed the help,” she said wearily, dropping down to sit next to him. “It has been so long since you used your mage powers, and it felt like you needed the support.”
He wanted to berate her for weakening herself to help him, but he couldn’t say or do anything that might upset her. Not now. Not when they were in so much trouble and might not survive it.
“Thank you,” he said instead.
She smiled. “You are very welcome. Now what do we do?”
He dug around in the pack until he found the last bottle of water. “You drink this, and I figure out what we can do until Conlan and Ven get back. Maybe if—”
“Daniel.”
“—if we call him. Can’t you reach out on that mental calling channel? We can—”
“Daniel,” she interrupted again, this time putting a hand over his mouth. “You need to drink, too. I know this much of nightwalkers. Healing a wound is a simple matter if you have blood.”
Bleak, black despair swamped his vision, and he couldn’t bear to look at her. “I cannot. Please, don’t ask me to do this.”
She grasped his shoulders, forcing him to see her. “I need you to do it, for me, Daniel. I need you to drink my blood so you can be strong enough to help me.”
> She took a deep breath, before she continued. “And I need for you to give me some of your blood, too.”
He jumped up, wanting to run away. Wanting to kill somebody. He was good at killing.
He was terrible at everything else.
“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said. “More of my blood? In you? We’d strengthen the blood bond, at the very least. And as for the rest, can you even bear to suffer a nightwalker’s bite? I know the venom can be poisonous to your kind.”
Ven had told him, on one of their beer-drinking nights. A vampire’s bite had nearly killed Brennan once, apparently. Just a single bite.
“I’m immune,” Serai said quietly. “Your mentor bit me that day, Daniel. I never wanted you to know, because I knew you’d blame yourself, but it’s relevant now.”
Daniel roared out his agony to the night skies and then crouched down on the ground next to her. “I am sorry beyond the telling of it,” he growled. “If he were still alive, I’d kill him now. Slowly and painfully.”
She shook her head. “It’s not important. He woke up disoriented from the noise of battle above and released me almost as soon as he bit me. But it was enough for me to learn that I am immune to the nightwalker bite.”
“If I were to do this thing, I would truly be the monster you claim I am not,” Daniel said, wondering why he was even considering it. But the ache in his side and his rapidly growing weakness gave him reason enough. He’d been avoiding feeding for so long—only taking the least he possibly needed to survive—and now he was paying for it. The wound was deep enough and wide enough that it had drained far too much of his blood.
“If we’re not strong enough to succeed in this mission, I will die.” She took his hands in hers. “Surely with that on one side of the scales, exchanging blood is not so dire.”
“It only sounds bad if you say it fast,” Daniel said, mocking himself for the fool he was. He was going to do this horrible, monstrous thing, and use pretty speeches to excuse it.
“We are two halves of this quest; two halves of a whole that was split apart unfairly so many years ago, Daniel. Our destiny is together, not apart. If you can strengthen me and I you, then there is no bad in it.”
Serai tilted her face up to his and pressed her lips to his, as if to convince him of the truth of her words. He couldn’t let her, but yet . . . what she said had merit.
“I’m not usually so weak,” he said, pulling away from her. “Justice scored a hit exactly where that vampire’d stabbed me in the attack the other night. My internal organs were not yet entirely healed from that, I think.”
“And you’ve been abstaining from drinking blood since you found me, haven’t you?”
“All but once,” he admitted.
Her eyes narrowed. “Was she pretty?”
In spite of the danger of their situation, he laughed a little. “He was a large, sunburned tourist with an ‘Arizona is for Lovers’ T-shirt, and I only took a little.”
She tilted her head and moved her braid to one side of her neck, baring the other side to him. It was as sensuous and provocative as if she’d removed her clothing, and his breathing sped up in spite of his resolve not to do this monstrous thing.
“Please, Daniel. Please help me save my sisters,” she whispered, and his resolve crumpled into dust like the fragile bones of long-forgotten principles.
His fangs descended, and he clamped a tight control on the bloodlust, which was screaming at him to take her blood, take all of it, take her, take everything.
“Just a little bit. Just enough to heal this wound.”
“And enough to strengthen you for what lies ahead. There are certainly going to be those ready to try to stop us,” she said, looking up at him with those incredibly lovely eyes. “I trust you, Daniel. Maybe more than you trust yourself.”
“That wouldn’t be hard to do.” He still only half-believed he was going to do it, but she was right. If they didn’t gain a little strength, their mission was doomed, and her death was all but certain.
Or maybe he was lying to himself. It didn’t matter, though. He couldn’t fight both Serai and himself. He was going to do this.
He leaned closer and put the tiniest bit of compulsion in his gaze, calling on the nightwalker magic to help him seduce her into enjoying his bite instead of feeling the pain as his teeth punctured her skin.
She sighed as she went under, smiling dreamily up at him. “Oh, Daniel, I want to affirm life with you again right now. Is that normal?”
Her smile blasted through the last of the battle-hardened defenses that he’d built around his heart and he fell, body and soul. He was hers, and she was his. What better way to strengthen that bond?
He kissed her neck, very gently, and then sank his fangs into her skin directly over her pulse. The rush of her blood was like nothing he’d ever tasted or experienced before, and the taste was beyond description. Spicy and exhilarating and delicious; as if a fountain of pure magic were entering his mouth and body. He had to fight against the bloodlust and against his own monstrous instincts to force himself to take only a little; only enough that he could feel his body healing and renewing itself.
He carefully closed the puncture marks on her neck with his tongue, and then he bent his forehead to hers. “Thank you, mi amara. You have revived me, my beautiful one.”
Her head lolled back against his arm, and his heart jumped in his chest as he realized that even the little blood he’d taken might have been too much for her, in her weakened state.
“’S my turn?” she said, her words slurring. “Feel a l’il drunk.”
“Yes, it’s your turn. Hang on.” He frantically tore the sleeve of his shirt in his haste to get it out of the way and then bit into his wrist. Carefully holding it over her mouth, he lifted her head up so she wouldn’t choke.
She hesitated but didn’t fight him before she closed her mouth around the tear in his skin and drank. As he watched, he could see the lines of strain on her beautiful face smooth out and disappear. She only drank from him for a very little while—less than half a minute—and the pure sensuality of the experience was enough to drive him nearly mad. He’d shared blood before, but it had never been like this. The headiest aphrodisiac could not compare to the feel of Serai’s lips on his skin, and the sight of her throat as she drank. The sensation of his blood being pulled from his skin and into her mouth was enough to sear every nerve ending in his body into a throbbing readiness.
If they ever shared blood while making love, he thought he might die from the sheer pleasure of it.
She leaned her head back, away from his wrist, and he closed the wound with a quick swipe of his tongue. She smiled up at him, and it was the smile of a woman well sated by her man—a smile so sensual and seductive that it took every ounce of his willpower to keep from stripping her clothes from her and plunging into her right there on the ground.
“I feel so very much better,” she said, still smiling. “Still a little drunk, but in a good way. I feel like I could run a thousand miles and fight a thousand enemies.”
“Drinking vampire blood can have that effect sometimes,” he said, returning her smile.
“And the other part? Is it always so . . . sexual?” She bit her lip, as if afraid of the answer.
“No, never,” he said firmly. “I have never felt like that when taking blood or sharing my own. Usually it’s more like drinking a glass of juice.”
She giggled, actually giggled, and he thanked any gods who were listening that this insane plan had worked, but she quickly sobered. “We have to go now, Daniel. I can feel the Emperor more strongly than ever. Its power is building, as if . . . it sounds strange, I know, but almost as if the gemstone is becoming angry at its misuse. Does that make any sense at all?”
“It’s the possession of a god, Serai. Anything at all can make sense; the more frightening, the more plausible, I think.”
He helped her to stand up, and then, because he could keep from doing so no mor
e than he could keep from breathing, he kissed her, long and deep. The energy from her blood rushed through him, potent and powerful, and he believed he could take on Poseidon himself for that gem.
“Do you hear it?” Serai looked around, an expression of pure awe on her face. “The sounds of the night. They’re so clear now. Is that because I drank your blood? Does it always sound so incredibly beautiful to you, as if your dreams themselves were transformed into music?”
“I remember a time, long, long ago, when the enhanced nightwalker senses seemed magical to me,” he said. “But never as magical as they do now, with you here to share them with me.”
“We can explore the world together, Daniel. After this quest is done, and my sisters safely restored.” She twirled around like a giddy girl, laughing and flinging her arms wide. “All over the world, what do you say?”
“As you wish,” he said, smiling at the memory of another princess, in a movie Ven had once shown him. “I can be the Dread Pirate Daniel.”
She stopped twirling and stared at him, perplexed. “What? A pirate?”
He laughed. “It’s a long story, for another time. For now, maybe you should contact Conlan and Ven so they can hurry up and—”
“No! I will not call them, nor answer their call. I don’t trust them.” She yanked the backpack up off the ground and took off walking so fast she was nearly running.
He raced to catch up with her. “What do you mean?”
“They must have known Lord Justice was planning to attack. Perhaps they even ordered him to do so. I don’t trust them. Who knows what secret agenda they have? If my sisters die because of their political maneuvering or whatever reason they sent Justice after us, without telling us, then they will pay for it with every ounce of magic I still possess.”
“But we don’t know that Justice didn’t act on his own. Besides, we need all the help we can get, Serai. I won’t risk your life.” He knew even as he said it that it was no good. She wasn’t listening, but he had to try.
She glared at him, raising her chin in that determined way she had, and he knew he’d been right. “Nor will I risk yours. That sword wound could have killed you, and I blame High Prince Barnacle Dung for it. We go on alone. Now that I’m so much stronger, I can use my magic to mask our trail and my presence, even on the mental pathway, from other Atlanteans.” She paused and took his hand. “I feel it, Daniel. I feel that this is the way it’s meant to be. Please? I need your help.”