Vampire in Atlantis (36 page)
Read Vampire in Atlantis Online
Authors: Alyssa Day
Tags: #Romance, #Contemporary, #General, #Paranormal, #Fiction
“Your—your eyes,” he managed, and then his tongue got tangled as he stared at the tiny blue-green flames in her eyes.
“Yes? What about my eyes? They’re bluer than the ocean,” she teased.
“They have these little flames in the middle. I know that sounds stupid, but I, they—”
Her eyes widened even farther, until they were enormous in her face. The flames grew even larger, until they were nearly taking over her entire irises.
“The soul-meld? Is it really happening?” Her whisper trailed off, and he realized that he was still holding her up in his arms, against a cave wall, his cock still inside her.
“Maybe we should clean up and talk about your eyes,” he began, but she didn’t let him finish.
She grabbed his head with both hands and kissed him so fiercely that he had no choice but to kiss her back. His body responded with a vigor that belied the long years of disuse and his cock hardened inside her so fast that he wondered dizzily if mage or Atlantean magic were involved, and then she somehow moved, with him still inside her, lowered her legs and pushed him back until he was lying on his back on the pile of their discarded clothes and she was straddling him.
Gloriously naked, she was beautifully and gloriously naked above him, her ripe round breasts begging him to reach up and take them in his hands, and so he did, while she slowly and sensually rose and lowered herself on his cock. Her eyes were still full of those blue-green flames, but it seemed a distant concern, far less important than rising up off the ground so he could suck on her nipples, until she pushed him back down and arched over him, crying out as she convulsed around him again, and he took charge of the tempo, quickening it, thrusting up into her with the speed and force he needed to reach another climax so soon. She reached down behind her and grabbed his balls and gently squeezed, and he arched up off the ground and poured into her again, harder and more powerfully than before.
That’s when the walls of the cave shattered into an explosion of sound and color, and reality shifted as his mind expanded and collapsed and expanded again, and his vision fractured into a prism of sparkling shapes and colors, until he floated gently down to earth in a flash of light, but a different earth, an earth that had vanished thousands of years ago.
Flash.
Somehow he stood in Atlantis, and it was still on the surface of the ocean.
Serai stood in front of him, sheathed in silvery light, talking to a man he knew to be her father, but he was long dead, this was impossible.
“Serai,” he called out, but even as she ignored him as if he didn’t exist, he felt her body warm and pliant against his in another reality.
“I cannot do this thing, Father,” she said, tears streaking down her face. “I won’t. I must find Daniel. He was wounded, and your guards took me away. I need to find him. I need to help him. I won’t be frozen into a box for some future king.”
“Daniel is dead,” her father said, and Serai collapsed into a faint.
Flash.
Serai lying shattered on the ground, bones broken and blood everywhere, resigned to death and screaming a protest against the healers as they converged on her.
Flash.
Serai lying down inside a crystal casket, not dead, not even dying, but resigned to spend centuries asleep, alone, as she would always be alone, because the one man she would ever love was gone.
Flash.
Centuries of waiting, then millennia, time passing in a constant blur, only one annual semi-wakening to feed information into her mind and reassure her she hadn’t crumbled to dust. Every time she woke, his name was the first word on her unmoving lips; his face, the first sight in her unforgiving mind; his love, the only thing in her never-healing heart.
Daniel. Daniel. Daniel.
Flash.
The shock of the Emperor’s stuttering power. Her escape. Running to the portal, only to find her dream of the past eleven thousand years had become reality. The warmth and love in her disbelieving heart when she saw his face.
His
face.
face.
Flash.
Daniel slowly came back to himself from the waking dream, only to realize that he still held Serai in his arms. She rested against his chest, arm tucked on his shoulder, eyes wide and staring, but unseeing. Whatever had just happened to him seemed to be happening to her.
No.
No
.
.
If she saw his history—his bloody and monstrous past—she would never forgive him. Never stay with him.
He shook her and called her name, then resorted to shouting at her, but nothing mattered, nothing worked, so he simply gathered her into his arms and waited, silent as the grave he’d soon be seeking out, for the woman he loved to learn who he truly was and order him out of her life forever.
Serai fell, twirling and twisting, tossed through a typhoon of sound and sensation, through an apocalypse of blood and death, fear and fury. Light flashed all around her, and she woke up in the very same shop where she’d first met Daniel, all those years ago.
Flash.
He stood still, staring after a girl who was leaving the shop, and Serai was a tiny bit jealous, until the girl smiled back at him over her shoulder and she realized it was
her
. Herself, eleven thousand years ago, on the very first day she’d met Daniel.
her
. Herself, eleven thousand years ago, on the very first day she’d met Daniel.
“Hits you like that sometimes,” a man standing in the shop said, grinning at Daniel’s expression of utter shock. “Been married more than twenty years to a woman who made me feel just like you look right now.”
Daniel blinked and opened and closed his mouth a few times. “But—but—”
The man laughed. “Yep. That’s what I said. You’re done for.”
Flash.
The fight in the shop, that day the invading army attacked Atlantis. Daniel fighting for his life against looting soldiers, protecting the trapdoor, protecting her. Falling, so much blood.
Flash.
Daniel waking, crazed with the bloodlust, calling for her. The old nightwalker telling him she was gone. Atlantis was gone. Gone forever. Daniel screaming her name until he was hoarse, and then falling to the ground, body heaving with great, racking sobs.
Flash.
Murder. Vengeance. The flash of recognition in that village ; the girl who reminded him of Serai. Hibernation. The quest for redemption. The eventual resignation and despair.
Flash.
Walking into the sun, only to look up and see that the sunlight wasn’t killing him. The light came from her face.
Her
face. Serai. Love. Desire. Need. In his face. For her.
Her
face. Serai. Love. Desire. Need. In his face. For her.
For
her
.
her
.
When she woke from the trance, she gasped and then gulped in great, shuddering breaths, as if she’d been starved of oxygen for hours or days. Daniel held her tightly, so tightly that she wasn’t even cold, although they lay on the floor of the cave, still unclothed.
“Well?” His voice was as hoarse as if he’d been screaming. For all she knew, he had. She’d been deaf to him while the soul-meld took her and showed her his life.
“You’re leaving me now, aren’t you? I understand. I forgive you, and we can just forget all that stuff about ‘mine’ and ‘forever,’” he said, his face so cold and remote that—for a split second—she almost doubted him. Almost.
But she’d seen inside his
soul
. She said the only thing she could. The only possible words to share at such a time.
soul
. She said the only thing she could. The only possible words to share at such a time.
“Daniel. We have answered the question the elders have asked for millennia,” she told him, touching his stern face with her hand. “Nightwalkers
do
have souls. I have just walked in yours, and I want to cry for your pain. Know this, though, my vampire. My love. I will never let you go, and if you mention it again, I may have to hurt you.”
do
have souls. I have just walked in yours, and I want to cry for your pain. Know this, though, my vampire. My love. I will never let you go, and if you mention it again, I may have to hurt you.”
Daniel couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. Could only
feel
, as a wave of pure warmth and love swept through him. “You’ve seen my soul? Is that even possible? I’d wondered—I’d feared—”
feel
, as a wave of pure warmth and love swept through him. “You’ve seen my soul? Is that even possible? I’d wondered—I’d feared—”
“You cannot reach the soul-meld with someone who has no soul,” she said, smiling, and he realized the blue-green flames in her eyes were still there. “We are bound forever now.”
The ancient words came to her, unbidden, mandating her to recite them:
“I offer my magic, my heart, and my life to protect your own.From now until the last drop of ocean has vanished from the earth,You are my soul.”
Shimmering silver threads, clearly visible in the predawn light in the cave, formed and curled around them both, tying them together inescapably. Forever, she’d said.
Daniel couldn’t take it all in. It was too much.
“I have a soul?”
“You do,” she confirmed. “A badly wounded soul, forced to make so many hard choices, still fighting hard to redeem itself from the dark. And now it, as well as you, belong to me.”
“Forever?” he repeated, stupidly.
“Forever.”
“Then we will make damn sure that nothing happens to you. I promise you that. Upon my life, upon my oath as a senior mage of the Nightwalker Guild, and upon my love for you, Serai, I swear to you that I will not let you die. We will find that Emperor and save your sisters, this I swear to you.”
She smiled and kissed him, and this time the world didn’t shatter and the walls didn’t fall in and the floor didn’t disappear from under him. It was just a kiss, only a kiss.
The kiss that began the rest of his life.
Chapter 27
Ivy sat on her pallet of blankets in the cave where she’d recently seen a man die horribly, and wondered if she’d brought this all on herself. She hugged her knees and watched her son sleep, knowing that it was futile to waste time on the how and the why of the past. All that mattered was how they’d get out of this situation. A fierce wave of pride and fury swept through her, leaving nothing but icy cold resolve in its wake. Nobody was going to hurt her son.
Nobody.
Dusk was a few hours away, and she needed to figure out her escape plans before the vampire rose from his day sleep.
“I have no intention of hurting him,” Nicholas said from behind her, making her jump a little. She hadn’t even heard him approach. Damn sneaky vampires. He could have ripped her guts out, too, and she wouldn’t have heard it coming.
Although, was that something you’d
want
to hear coming?
want
to hear coming?
“Can you read my mind? If so, I can’t imagine you’re very flattered right now.” She didn’t bother to turn around and look at him. He was the last person in the world she wanted to see, now or ever. “Also, shouldn’t you be asleep? Evil vampire, and all that?”
“It doesn’t take a mind reader to see a mother’s protectiveness for her child,” he said, surprising her. “Also, I’m old enough to be awake whenever I like. Just because I can’t walk in the sun doesn’t mean I’m a slave to its passage through the sky.”
She smoothed an errant strand of hair from Ian’s face, and he stirred but didn’t wake up. She filed away the information about the vampire’s lack of need for day sleep. Just one more obstacle. She was good at overcoming obstacles.
“If you see my protectiveness, you understand why I would never let you turn him into a vampire.”
“I have no intention of turning him into a vampire,” he said. “But I thought it was easier to say yes and deal with the topic again when he actually turns twenty-one, in the unlikely event he even remembers asking or still wants it then.”
“Kids remember everything. Or at least my kid does. I can’t speak to any others. Ian, though, he’s special. Always has been. So much like his father.”
“Where is the boy’s father?” Nicholas’s voice had the slightest touch of frost in it, as if he planned to go attack Ian’s dad next. He was too late on that one.
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