Vampire in Atlantis

said, abjectly sorrowful that he’d never been to Europe, just because Serai claimed to be from there.
    Damn, but she was good.
    “Please, call me Serai,” she said, daring to lightly touch his sleeve, just for the briefest of seconds, nothing to alert the guard in the back with Daniel who was actually paying attention to his job instead of to the beautiful woman in the front seat.
    The driver actually blushed, if the way the tips of his ears turned red in the lights from the dashboard was any indication, and Daniel had to stifle a groan. If they didn’t get there soon, he was going to have to step in and put loverboy out of his misery.
    It would be a public service.
    The guard next to him said something into his radio and then leaned forward. “The colonel wants us to stop around the next ridge.”
    “Roger that,” the driver said, suddenly snapping to attention. The colonel must be someone with enough authority to make a young soldier remember his duty, even in the presence of his dream girl.
    They slowly rounded a corner and pulled to a stop in front of a barrage of lights and a large vehicle like a trailer on wheels. The front door of the trailer slammed open, and an older man stepped out. He was dressed simply in the same black uniform as Rob’s, with no special insignia to indicate rank, but the way the two soldiers in the truck snapped to attention told Daniel that this must be the colonel.
    Rob jumped out of the truck and saluted. He’d left the door open, so Daniel and Serai could hear everything he said. “Reporting with the prisoners, um, witnesses, as ordered, Colonel St. Ives, sir. One of them is a vampire.”
    Serai glanced back at Daniel, her eyes full of concern and something else. Something worse. She was fading again; her strength draining out of her as he watched. The soul-meld and the vortex either hadn’t been enough, or the Emperor was sucking the magic out of her faster than she could keep up. Either way, this wasn’t good.
    The colonel walked over to the car, opened the back door, and motioned to Daniel. A hands-on kind of man who didn’t stand on ceremony or wait for his minion to do things, then. Daniel admired that, so he didn’t immediately rip the man’s throat out.
    While he stepped out of the car, St. Ives stared at him, his dark eyes assessing. “Why are you here, son?”
    “I’m not your son,” Daniel said, reasonably enough, he thought.
    “No need for rudeness. I’m sure you’re probably a few years older than me, in vampire years, but I’m an old country boy with a lot of bad habits. So perhaps you will give me your name and we’ll start over, but be warned, I don’t have a lot of time.”
    “Daniel.”
    St. Ives waited, but Daniel added nothing further.
    “That’s it? Daniel? Mr. Daniel? Just Daniel? Okay, let me clarify my question. What the fuck are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere with that woman who looks like she needs a doctor, only two short miles from the hiding spot of the worst vampire in the Southwest?”
    Daniel took a minute to untangle that question. “My companion is ill, and we’d appreciate if you would escort us to a hospital. We were on our way back from our hike, to do just that, when your soldiers rudely abducted us. You can understand why I don’t feel all that friendly or like answering your interrogation. As to the rest, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    The colonel eyed him skeptically. “Right. No idea why I would be suspicious of a vampire lurking around, not far from where I found a dozen other vamps hiding in various bushes.”
    Daniel raised an eyebrow. “That sounds uncomfortable. Was there poison ivy? Vampires can get poison ivy, too, you know.”
    St. Ives abruptly lost patience with Daniel. “Hold him here,” he ordered Rob, and he strode around to the other side of the truck and opened Serai’s door.
    “Ma’am, I’m going to need to ask you a few questions,” he said.
    Daniel didn’t hear what Serai replied, but it didn’t matter, since she stepped out of the car and collapsed into a dead faint in the colonel’s arms.
    St. Ives cast a long-suffering glance up at the sky. “Son of a bitch. I’m never going to get home, am I?”

Chapter 35
     

     
    Serai woke up, groggy and dazed, to find that she was lying on a hard bed in the large mobile vehicle from which the colonel had exited when they arrived. She glanced around from under her lashes, not moving, assessing the situation