Vampire in Atlantis (31 page)

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Authors: Alyssa Day

Tags: #Romance, #Contemporary, #General, #Paranormal, #Fiction

BOOK: Vampire in Atlantis
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“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 distract 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.”
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.

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