Still, “I will kill you if you hurt my mother” would have been fantastic last words. Ian was so going to score on his next birthday. She might even buy him a car. She laughed out loud, and realized blood loss was making her loopy.
“I want to laugh, too, from the sheer joy of it,” Smithson said, flashing his hideous Hollywood-white, over-veneered teeth. “This is miraculous. I do wish Nicholas had turned me, though, before I double-crossed the nasty bastard. Think of all that lovely interest, compounding for centuries.”
Ivy blinked. “You’re unbelievable. What kind of fool betrays a master vampire?”
Then she blinked again. And yet again. The blood loss must have taken her from dizziness straight to delusion, because she could almost swear she saw a hand sticking out of Smithson’s stomach. She decided that it was really a very good time to close her eyes and lie down, before dancing pink elephants appeared, too.
That’s when Ian and Smithson both screamed.
She jerked her head up and forced her eyes to open, only to wish that she hadn’t.
It had been a hand, after all. Nicholas’s hand, which had smashed clear through Smithson’s abdomen and ripped out much of the man’s intestines on its way back out.
“Unbelievable is an apt word. There is much about this scene that I find unbelievable, Ivy Khetta of the Crescent Moon coven,” Nicholas said, standing there calmly as if he hadn’t just eviscerated a man. “Fortunately for you, I can see that you were coerced into helping this fool who thought he would betray me and get away with it.”
Ivy pulled Ian into her arms and hugged him until he stopped screaming, but his thin shoulders shook as he fought back sobs.
“I have been coerced every step of the way, and you’re just as guilty as he was,” Ivy shot back at the vampire. Pretty brave of her, she figured, considering he stood there with Smithson’s guts wrapped around his arm like bracelets. Or else really, really stupid, for the same reason.
She decided to be helpful. “His goons are carrying the rubies off in duffel bags. You can probably still catch them if you leave now.”
Unbelievable must have been the word of the day, because—unbelievably—he smiled at her. “You have quite a bit of courage, my little witch.”
“I’m glad you think so, because I plan to throw up and pass out now,” she said, as the light from the lanterns wavered in pretty, pretty patterns in front of her. She tried to hang on, for Ian’s sake, but her body and magic had been pushed far beyond the level of her endurance. She clung to Ian and fell forward instead of back, until her head rested on his shoulder. Nicholas said something, and Ian said something else, but the words blurred together in her mind and could have been spoken in Mandarin Chinese for as much as she understood them.
She couldn’t leave her son alone with the vampire. She fought so hard to maintain consciousness, she really did, but she had nothing in her reserves, nothing at all, and even when she tried to focus on what they were saying, the last thing she heard didn’t make any sense at all, because she was almost certain her son asked Nicholas to turn him into a vampire.
And she thought she heard Nicholas agree.
After that, she didn’t hear anything at all.
Chapter 20
Serai put the cap back on her water bottle and took a deep breath, trying to convince herself, yet again, that she had the strength for this quest. Her legs were as heavy as if sculpted out of marble or orichalcum by a cloddish artist, and each step was harder than the last. The intermittently missing and damaged connection to the Emperor was draining every ounce of her energy, both magical and physical, and she was terrified about what it was doing to the four maidens left in the stasis pods in Atlantis.
Delia was already gone. Helena, Merlina, Brandacea, and Guen remained. Serai’s connection to them was weak, and growing weaker every moment, so she wasn’t entirely certain that they all still lived.
She hoped they did. If their lives could be sustained by the sheer force of her will, then they did still live.
“What is it?” Daniel asked, soundlessly dropping down next to her after a short flight to scout their area.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever see that and not be amazed,” she said. “That you can fly. How wonderful it must be.”
“You can fly as mist, can’t you? Or is that only a warrior thing? I’ve seen Ven and the guys do it. It’s pretty spectacular.”
She tilted her head, considering. “I think I may still be able to do so. It’s simple enough, part of the magic the sea god gifts to his children. I don’t know if I could do it now, though, since I’m so tired. And the problem—” She broke off, not wanting to let him see how pathetically weak and cowardly she was about something so minor as a fear of height. Lives depended on her.
He nodded, as if he could read her mind. “The acrophobia still applies. Perhaps, also, your connection with the Emperor won’t work when you’re in mist form.”
She smiled at him, aware that he was giving her a graceful excuse. She was grateful for his kindness, but not willing to spare herself the truth. “I’ m afraid, and we both know it, but I think it won’t matter. We’re very near the Emperor now. We just need to travel a bit farther and—”
The worst pain yet slammed into her with the force of a tsunami. The witch was using the Emperor, and this time she was mixing the gem’s power with something else—natural magic from the land around them—oh, gods, it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt . . .
She clenched her jaw shut against the scream, but a horrible moaning sound escaped her throat, and Daniel caught her arm.
“Is it the gem again?”
“Yes, it’s—”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. She couldn’t breathe. Her legs wouldn’t support her. The Emperor’s power drove through her, pulling at her own magic, siphoning off her strength in a flood. She could see the witch’s face, and the woman was terrified of something, or someone, but she was being forced to channel the Emperor. For an instant, Serai believed she’d made a connection with the witch, but then the power surged again, and she screamed and collapsed into Daniel’s arms.
The Emperor ruthlessly took and took, draining everything she had until she knew that it was the end, she would surely die from it, but she didn’t even have the strength to tell Daniel that she loved him, it had always been him, it would always be him, before the world exploded in a shimmering cascade of purple light.
Daniel lifted Serai’s limp form into his arms and listened for the sound of her breathing, but there was only silence. No breath, no heartbeat, nothing but the sound of finality and death and the end of everything. He roared out his anguish in a single, wordless bellow to the sky, incoherent with rage and loss, but then reason returned for long enough for him to realize it wasn’t too late.
He could fix this. She could hate him for the blood bond later, but at least she’d be alive to do so.
He bit viciously into his wrist and then held it over her lips, rubbing his dripping blood into her mouth. At first she was unresponsive, but he gently rubbed her throat to coax a swallowing reflex and after a moment long enough to nearly cost him his sanity, she moved her head a little and then swallowed convulsively. She immediately began coughing and retching, as if the taste of his blood had been so foul she must expel it from her mouth, but he forced her to accept more, enough to ensure she would wake and be restored.