No. Of course not. He was a damned fool to think it.
“Not my past,” he said flatly. “Nobody would love to hear about my past.”
“Then don’t tell me all of it. Just tell me the part that happened right after you became a nightwalker. What happened? Did it hurt? Was the mage training hard?” She slipped her hand in his so naturally that he almost didn’t notice it until they’d taken a few steps, and then a wave of warmth and peace swept through him and he tightened his fingers, never wanting to let her go.
They walked in silence for nearly ten minutes, Serai apparently content to wait for his response, while he considered what to say. Finally he shrugged. Let her hear it, then. Let her know firsthand what a monster he was. It would be easier for her to let him go when the time came.
Easier for him to leave her to a better fate, as well.
“I became a monster. There was nothing left of the Daniel you knew; he lost himself to the bloodlust and the pain of losing you.”
She flinched a little, but tightened her grip on his hand. “I’d heard it was bad at the beginning, for the newly made.”
“It’s bad enough, as far as I saw from others, but never as bad as I became, or at least that’s what they told me. I had lost you forever. I thought you were dead. I had nothing else to live for, so I didn’t bother to live. I wanted to die, but the monster’s sense of self-preservation was too strong.”
He heard her indrawn breath, but ruthlessly continued. She’d wanted to hear it. She could hear it all.
“By the time I was sane enough to think that maybe the story I’d heard was wrong, that maybe you lived, Atlantis was gone. Vanished beneath the sea. After that, I became a monster the like of which the world had never seen. For several years, I raged and rampaged, killing humans and treating them as nothing more than prey for slaughter. I went after the criminals and the rogue soldiers, those who looted and pillaged and raped. I killed them all and drank their blood and I gloried in it.”
She stopped walking, but he refused to look at her.
“You were trying to achieve some sort of justice,” she said, but he ruthlessly cut her off, before she could get carried away with some false idea of his nobility.
“I was a murderer, after vengeance. Nothing more. Don’t try to make me out to be anything heroic. It would be the worst kind of lie,” he said roughly.
“So what changed?”
He started walking again, all but dragging her along. “What do you mean?”
“What changed? That’s not who you are now, so what changed?’
He flashed back to that moment, that one crystal-clear moment in time. The moment he’d never forget.
“I met a girl who reminded me of you,” he confessed, the words almost dragged out of him.
The memory that he could never, ever forget. As if on command, it played again in his head in brilliant, heartbreaking color:
He’d attacked a small village where a gang of marauders lived, killing and maiming every man in it without regard for anything but the ever-present, voracious bloodlust, when a girl threw herself on his back and started punching him in the head. He threw her off without a thought, but when he turned, he realized that she was only a child. He never, ever killed children. Even in his madness, he’d retained that much of himself.
But in a flash of light from the fire, he realized something else: she looked like his Serai. Not exactly, not like a sister or daughter or even a cousin. But there was something in the curve of her cheek and the fall of her hair that arrested him and froze him in place.
“How can you do this? Are you a monster?” the girl cried out, but he didn’t hear her. He heard her words in Serai’s voice, and he was destroyed.
He threw all the gold in his pockets at the girl and ran. Ran, and then flew, and never stopped until he found himself deep in the middle of a forest so old and dark and deep that the humans believed it to be cursed. He opened a hole in the ground underneath an ancient tree and threw himself into it, covering himself up and losing himself to the pain.
The mage who’d turned him found him and coaxed him back to the surface. Cleaned him up and taught him a few hard truths. Told him he had a choice: study and learn and work to make the world a better place, or become one of the evil, lost ones. The first choice was the harder one.
Redemption would not be cheaply bought.
Daniel chose redemption. But a thousand years is a very long time, and although the world changed, evil remained the same. Finally his mentor gave in to despair and walked into the sunlight. On that day, Daniel chose a lesser death. He chose to put himself in a state of hibernation for a very, very long time, in hopes that perhaps the world would be different when he awoke. Better.
Worth fighting for.
He had no idea that he would sleep nine thousand years.
When he woke, the world had changed. He traveled all over it, helping where he could, studying and learning the new ways and customs and amazing technology. Unfortunately, people were still dying. But he met an unexpected group of allies: the Atlantean warriors. He didn’t bother to ask about Serai, though. Who would know anything about a girl dead for more than eleven thousand years?
Her quiet voice broke into his reverie. “But before that? You met the girl who looked like me, and then what? You . . . you fell in love?”
“What? No, I didn’t fall in love. I managed not to kill her, too, though.” He lifted her up and over a fallen tree. “Are we still on the right path?”
She closed her eyes again, for nearly a minute this time, and then nodded. “I’m so tired, though. I can still feel the Emperor, and it’s not moving. The witch hasn’t done anything with it in a while, as far as I can tell. Maybe they’re resting for the night?”
“Maybe. But those were vampires that passed us earlier, and if they are part of a more powerful vampire’s blood coven, they won’t be sleeping.”
She leaned against him briefly, then took a deep breath and started walking again. “Why would a witch be helping a vampire? Why would they want the Emperor, anyway, or even know about it?”
“Who knows? I don’t know anything much about Atlantean history, Serai, and anyway, you’re not the only one who slept most of the world away. I slept for nine thousand years, hibernating until the horrors I’d seen—the evil I’d done—could fade in my memories.”
“Did it work?”
“No,” he said, kicking a log so hard that it shattered into kindling. “No, it didn’t. But I deserve to live with the memories of what I did. It’s my own version of hell.”
“Not just bad memories, though,” she said, almost whispering. “You remembered me.”
“I did. I remembered you.” He stopped walking and roughly pulled her to him, needing to feel her in his arms. “I will always remember you, even when you have come to your senses and left me, but I promise you that you will remember me, too.”
With a desperation born of passion, he took her mouth with his own. Claimed it—claimed her—though he could never deserve to keep her. Kissed her as if he were a dying man and she the only chance at life.
“Remember this,” he said fiercely. “Remember the feel of my mouth on yours, my body against yours, when you find that perfect Atlantean man someday.”
She started to protest, but he silenced her with his lips, kissing her so hard and deep that he could almost pretend that she belonged to him and always would. It would have helped him find his way back to sanity if she’d fought him.
Instead she pulled him closer, and he was lost.
Long minutes later, he raised his head, coming back to himself enough to realize they stood unprotected in the middle of the path, and their enemies were closer than was safe. Serai clung to him, her body trembling, and he had never wanted anything as much as he wanted to strip her clothes from her and take her, bury his cock in her warm sweetness, and make her his.