Horace was bent over one of the crystal stasis cases, his hands splayed on the surface, his eyes closed, perfectly still, but Conlan could feel the power humming from whatever the chief attendant was doing.
“She’s fine,” Horace said, opening his eyes and sighing. “I’ll check the others.”
Conlan nodded and headed for the case that clearly wasn’t fine. The case he’d stared into with mixed portions of anticipation and dismay on many occasions throughout his life. The case that had held the incredibly beautiful woman who once was to have been his wife and the future queen of Atlantis.
Except it was empty. Shattered. Clearly the explosion of crystal had originated here.
He spoke out loud the words he couldn’t quite believe. “She’s gone. Serai is missing.”
Serai, still crouching down in hiding, heard the voice she’d once anticipated with such fear and longing. It was him. The high prince. The one who’d been destined to marry her. The one who’d abandoned her for the charms of a human woman, according to the attendants and their gossip.
She hated him. Not that she’d ever wanted to marry a man she didn’t know and could never love. No, she despised High Prince Pretty Boy Conlan because he wasn’t Daniel, and because he’d been her chance for freedom and he’d left her to rot.
Enough woolgathering. Conlan had called for healers. More people would be coming. And Poseidon only knew where High Priest Alaric was—if he appeared, her brief moment of freedom would be over. The high priest terrified her.
It was time to run, and she knew exactly where to go. The portal and then the surface. The Emperor’s unique magic had fed knowledge of the outside world and of Atlantis to her and the other maidens for all these years. She could hide there; she would be inconspicuous and fit in—just another human woman, not a discarded Atlantean queen-to-be. She knew the languages. She could speak modern slang, even.
“Groovy,” she whispered. “That’s a bitchin’ idea.”
And then she picked up the hem of her skirt and ran.
Chapter 3
Daniel walked into the water in the cool pearly light of impending dawn. It had been water that separated him from Serai, after all, and it only seemed fitting that water stand guard and witness over him at the time of the true death. The few people he could see were jogging, that peculiar human preoccupation with spending hundreds of dollars on shoes and clothing to drive their cars for an hour, so they could run for five minutes.
Human logic. It would have destroyed them all thousands of years ago, their stubborn, foolish excuse for logic, but the humans had one crucial quality that neither the vampires, the Fae, or even the shape-shifters could ever possess: they bred like rabbits. The sheer overwhelming numbers of them far outweighed any concentrated threat by any of the supernatural factions.
But unlike rabbits, humans had forgotten how to run—really run—most of them. Daniel bared his teeth in what passed for a smile with him these days, not even caring for once if his fangs were showing. He could show them again what it was to run. Run for their lives.
Run from the monster.
He’d done it before. He’d even enjoyed it. Ripping throats open with his teeth. Bathing in fountains of blood. Brutal, violent, glorious death. Back in the dark days. The lost days. After he’d died the first death and risen, cold and alone and without the only woman he’d ever loved. He’d become a monster and a killer, and he’d reveled in it.
But no more.
Now it was time to die.
He thought briefly of last words as dawn edged its way into the world, turning the edges of the obelisk from silver to a rosy glow as the sun rose, proudly silhouetted against the morning sky. What would be fitting to close the chapter of a single lonely vampire who’d lived for so very very long? Memory was nothing more than a collection of clutter, polished and positioned to shine in the light of untrustworthy wishful thinking and hindsight. Death took its final inventory, and nothing survived it except deeds recorded in history books by the victorious.
So he didn’t try for the momentous, instead speaking only the truth of his heart.
“Good-bye, Serai. I have always loved you. If there truly is a land beyond this one, may I find you again.”
Then he raised his face to the horizon and watched the sun rise for the first time in thousands of years. The shimmering first rays swam toward him on the surface of the water, changing the deep rose of dawn to burnished gold. Closer, ever closer, until the first questing ray of light from something like his four millionth day on the earth reached his legs.
No pain—not yet—just a sense of wonder at the glory of it. How could he ever have resigned himself to eternal night? Especially alone in the darkest reaches of his own heart. Always alone.
Closer. Rising to his waist. Still no burning—no uncovered skin yet touched by the deadly glow.
He took a breath, drew it deep into lungs that hadn’t breathed daylight air in so long. Closed his eyes, then opened them again. He’d face this final test with the same defiance with which he’d lived his entire life.
Heat now. Burning. Fire sizzled across the skin of his throat at his open shirt collar. He raised his chin. Only one final moment of life—but no regrets. It was too late for that. Agony seared through him as the sun struck his face, full-on, and he clenched his teeth against the scream.
A final blast of heat and pain crushed his courage under the sun’s indifferent power, and he fell forward into the pool, silently screaming or cursing or praying, and the vortex of light and sound sucked him in, sucked him under, pulled him through, whirling and twisting, over and over, around and around, until a shove from a mighty force smashed him face-first into a solid surface.
He was dead, finally, finally dead. And he was lying on . . . grass?
The afterlife was paved in grass? He’d not expected that. Not for one such as him. Maybe oceans of burning lava or canyons filled with blazing fire. The deepest levels of the nine hells were surely reserved for vampires. However, not only was he lying on grass, which smelled like a particularly ripe and blooming spring, but he was lying in the sunlight. He was lying in some verdant field of the afterlife in sunshine . . . and he wasn’t burning.
Defiance gave way to joy, and he murmured thanks to any gods who would listen. All save one. The vampire goddess Anubisa deserved no thanks from him, and may she rot in whatever dark corner to which she’d escaped. Maybe not an appropriate thought for heaven, though.
He rested there for a long minute, with his face pressed into the grass, every bone in his body aching with the force of the collision, and considered whether or not to lift his head and look around. Before he could make that crucial decision, the unmistakable point of a spear jabbed him in the side of his neck, and a voice that had haunted him since his first death spoke.
“Who are you and whence did you come, Nightwalker?”
Daniel moved his head just enough to look up into the bright sunshine, and the sharp point of the spear bit into the flesh of his neck—just as his fangs had done to so many thousands of humans during his life. Irony, again. Perhaps this was yet to turn out to be one of the levels of hell and he’d be tortured not with fire but with a million tiny cuts, until his own blood ran free and dark into eternity.
The slender, curving silhouette of a woman wearing a long gown stood beside him. She held the non-pointy end of the spear. He could see nothing of her features at first, and then he saw her face, shining more brightly than a thousand afterlife-created suns.
Serai’s face.