Burn the Night (49 page)

I lay on my back for a second, trying to get my head to stop spinning while energy seeped back into my frame. I could feel the door to this world starting to close as I weakened. We needed to get out of there.

“Mira, help me!” Adio cried, drawing my attention back to him and the crystal chamber. I looked up to find Nick pounding against the crystal with both of his fists, screaming at me, while Adio used his own powers to mend the broken bits. I added my own energy, sealing my father away.

After a couple seconds I noticed that the chamber seemed to grow stronger and thicker as it absorbed his powers. I looked around the world to find that the leaves on trees were quickly growing black and falling off, while the ground split open and spouts of fire shot up. While the great creator goddess had created a second earth with her powers, the god of chaos was creating a world much more akin to the human idea of Hell.

“I think it would be a good time to beat a hasty retreat,” Adio said, grabbing my elbow. While I gathered up all the energy I had to focus on keeping the door open, Adio teleported us from the crystal chamber to the doorway, which was quickly closing. I pushed Adio through the opening and then dove through myself, landing in a heap on top of him. I summoned up enough energy to roll over Our Liege and lie on my back in the grass, letting the energy from the earth seep back into the frame as I closed my eyes.

“You seemed a little eager to close up that chamber,” I criticized, opening my eyes to find him sitting next to me, staring down at my scratched and bloody face. A smirk twisted his full lips.

“While the thought of locking you both away and out of my hair was tempting, I feared that if you were locked away, I would not be able to escape that world myself,” he admitted.

“Oh, yeah, I would have definitely kept you trapped if I was to be locked for eternity in a crystal chamber with Nick,” I said with a soft chuckle.

Adio smiled down at me. “The great trickster god tricked by his own daughter. It seems fitting.”

“I just hope it holds for a few millennia,” I grumbled. With muscles protesting, I pushed into a seated position and looked around the empty plaza. The stars still twinkled above and a steady wind swept across the silent ruins. The world seemed untouched by the feat we had accomplished, which was exactly as I hoped it would be.

Adio pushed to his feet and offered me his hand. “Come on. There is someone who is waiting for you.”

We walked across the plaza and down to the small clearing that held the only tree that grew in the ruins of Machu Picchu. Danaus knelt beside the figure that lay in the grass beneath the tree, but I noticed that his eyes were not on her, but staring in our direction, anxious and fearful. His shoulders slumped as we came into view and his head bowed as I heard a heavy sigh slip past his parted lips.

Standing over the goddess, I noticed that her heartbeat seemed a little stronger than before, and her breathing was deeper and more even. To my surprise, her eyelids fluttered and opened, pinning me with an intense stare. I fell into those brown eyes, losing all sense of time and place. Machu Picchu slipped away along with the rest of the world. There was just the swirl of energy that had taken on a variety of colors and shades as they danced around me and the goddess. Not only was she alive, but she was growing stronger with each passing second.

Fear trembled through me, but I didn’t question the choice I had made. The great creator goddess had to be a more benevolent force for the earth than the god of chaos. My only concern was that I might have separated her even farther from her mate, who was still trapped with the bori.

And then she smiled at me. The world came back into focus, and I watched as she sank into the earth as if returning back to the womb of her own birth. The earth closed in around her so that there was no mark left of her ever being present. There was nothing left but a new layer of energy dancing in the air, caressing my flesh, taking the place of Nick’s cold touch.

“She’s gone,” Danaus murmured, rising to his feet.

I extended my hand to him and he tightly clasped it in his large one. “She’s home.”

“I think it’s time we did that as well,” Danaus said as he pulled me closer.

Wincing, I raised my hand to shield my eyes. “We can’t.” The sky around us was quickly turning from dark blue to slate gray as the sun rose in the east. By now the sun would already be up in Savannah, and I could not even begin to guess at what might be a suitable hiding place in the city at the moment.

“Allow me,” Adio said, placing a hand on both our shoulders. In the blink of an eye we were enveloped in darkness, only to reappear less than a second later. The ground shifted beneath my feet and the air was considerably warmer than the mountains of Peru. “Consider this a belated honeymoon,” Adio added, and then quickly disappeared again.

Danaus stood close beside me, one arm wrapped around my waist as we gazed over at our new surroundings. We stood on a white beach just at the shoreline. The air was silent except for the sound of the waves lapping against the shore, while lights lit tall buildings in the distance. At the edge of the beach was a well-lit road lined with swaying palm trees. The thick scent of flowers filled the air.

“Where are we? He had to have taken us west,” Danaus murmured.

It took only another second for it to dawn on me, as I thought about what Adio had said just before he disappeared. He had taken us to one of the honeymoon capitals of the world. “We’re in Hawaii,” I said, laughing as I leaned into Danaus. I wrapped both my arms around his waist and held him tightly. He was alive and safe. We both were. Aurora was dead and Nick was in permanent exile. For once, we were both safe and free. The world had become a vastly different place overnight, but it was a world we could attempt to live in, not a world under the shadow of Aurora and my father.

With a low chuckle, Danaus swept one arm under my legs and carried me out into the surf before dropping down to dunk us both underwater. We came up together, sputtering and laughing in the warm water.

“What was that for?” I cried.

“That was for your stupid promise! I could have helped—”

I placed my hand against his cheek as my feet searched for a bottom in the ocean. “And you could have been trapped in there with Nick and me. I didn’t want that for you. Never. I wanted you to go on living.”

Danaus reached up and moved some wet hair away from my eyes. “I would have never stopped searching for a way to get to you.”

“And I would have waited for you to come,” I whispered, my lips brushing against his.

Danaus closed the last few centimeters between us and kissed me as we bobbed weightless in the surf. His arms wrapped around my body and I could taste his love for me as it washed away the last memories of the past few nights. Together we had faced impossible odds again and again, and each time we came out alive and in each other’s arms. With Danaus, the world held no horrors for me now.

Slowly breaking off the kiss, Danaus rubbed the tip of his nose against mine before loosening one arm so he could slowly paddle back toward the shore. “I say we find a quiet hotel where we can forget about the naturi and the Great Awakening for a few weeks.”

“That sounds like the best idea I’ve heard in months.”

“You think you can stand to be alone with me for a while with no impending danger?” Wrapping my arms around his neck, I let him carry me out of the water and back onto dry land.

A deep sense of peace seeped into the marrow of my bones as he pressed a kiss to my forehead.

“Together, as God intended.”

Acknowledgments

E
ach book proves to be its own special challenge, no matter how much you think you’ve learned from the previous books. As a result, I would like to give a special thanks to my friend Robert for giving me a quick lesson on sparring to help improve Mira and Danaus’s combat skills. In addition, I would like to thank my amazing editor Diana Gill for pushing me to be a stronger writer. I would also like to thank my wonderful agent Jennifer Schober for constantly checking on me to make sure that I was happy, healthy, and somewhat sane.

About the Author

By day, JOCELYNN DRAKE is a clean-cut financial analyst writer, but in her free time she writes about a dark underworld where vampires rule. The bestselling author of
Nightwalker
,
Dayhunter
,
Dawnbreaker
,
Pray for Dawn
, and
Wait for Dusk
, she lives in Kentucky. Visit her website at www.jocelynndrake.com.

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Praise for JOCELYNN DRAKE’s DARK DAYS

“An intoxicating mix of jet-setting action and sparkling turns of phrase. . . . Filled both with action and satisfying characters. I wanted to slowly savor it, but I reached the end far too soon, left hungry and impatient for the next adventure.”

Kim Harrison

“Darkly suspenseful and blessedly surprising . . . with prose as silky and enticing as her protagonist.”

Vicki Pettersson

By Jocelynn Drake

The Dark Days Novels

Nightwalker

Dayhunter

Dawnbreaker

Pray for Dawn

Wait for Dusk

Burn the Night

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

BURN THE NIGHT. Copyright © 2011 by Jocelynn Drake. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition JULY 2011 ISBN: 9780062087980

First Harper Voyager digest printing: July 2011

First Harper Voyager mass market printing: July 2011

FIRST EDITION

Cover art by Don Sipley

ISBN 9780061851827

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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