Vampire in Atlantis

am Serai of Atlantis, and this gem belongs to me.”
    The vampire bared his fangs at her. “Bold claim for a woman who was just knocked on her ass by the jewel she claims is hers. The King stone doesn’t seem to agree.”
    Serai looked at him, feeling stupid and wishing there were a healer nearby for the pounding headache starting up in her brain. “What? Oh, the Emperor. Where did you get ‘King stone’? Although it’s certainly close, considering the true name was lost to you landwalkers eleven thousand years ago.”
    His eyes widened. “Landwalkers? And you flew in here as mist? Are you really Atlantean?”
    The boy rolled his eyes, and Serai felt an instant kinship with him.
    “Of course not. Do you see a mermaid tail?” he asked the adults.
    Bizarrely, all three of them stared at her legs. Serai could feel the hysterical laughter bubbling up inside her, and she forced it back down. “No tail, no fins, no gills. No mermaids. Atlanteans are ordinary people, quite like you, except we live underneath the ocean. For now,” she amended.
    “That’s wicked cool,” the boy said, dropping down to sit cross-legged beside her. “Can I visit? I would get awesome extra credit for a report on Atlantis. Also, are all the girls as pretty as you? He ducked his head and blushed. “Um, ignore that last part. It was totally random.”
    “Ian.” The woman scolded him. “What have I told you?”
    Ian shrugged and grinned, unrepentant, at his mother. “Nothing about hot chicks from Atlantis, that’s for sure. I would have remembered.”
    Serai smiled at him, delighted. “I’m a ‘hot chick’ ? Is that like the bee’s knees?”
    He stared at her, clearly mystified. “What the heck does that mean? Do bees even have knees? How would you know? Who’d want to get close enough to find out?”
    The vampire cleared his throat, although Serai could tell he was fighting not to smile. The entire situation was so impossibly strange and surreal that Serai was almost sure she’d wake up any minute, secure in the crystal pod, having simply been the victim of another stasis dream.
    Hot chick, though—she couldn’t have made that one up.
    She held her hand out to the boy, and he chivalrously helped her up, in spite of his mother’s not so subtle urgings to stay away from Serai.
    “I am Serai of Atlantis,” she tried again. “And you are?”
    “Ian Khetta. Pleased to meet you,” he said, holding out his hand and blushing furiously. “Sorry about the hot chick thing. That’s my mom, Ivy Khetta. She’s a smoking powerful witch. And he’s Mr. Nicholas, a vampire who says he eats people and uses their bones for toothpicks, but we haven’t seen that. He did pull a guy’s intestines out, but the guy had hit me and hurt my mom, so we weren’t too broken up about it.”
    Serai tilted her head, fascinated by the boy’s candor and phrasing, and was trying to think of how to respond to that flow of information when the vampire did so first.
    “He hit you? He swore he did not,” Nicholas snarled.
    Ian rolled his eyes. “Right. Because bad guys never lie to each other. Dude, do you watch TV at all?”
    “Don’t call me dude,” the vampire said, but he grinned at the boy without a hint of fang.
    Serai was confused. “So you’re not the evil villain the soldiers are here to capture?”
    “Depends on how you define evil,” Ivy said.
    So fast Serai was sure Ivy hadn’t seen it, a flash of surprise crossed the vampire’s eyes, probably because the witch had defended him.
    “You should not have attempted to wield the Emperor, Ivy,” Serai said seriously. “It is one of the seven gems of Poseidon’s trident, and a mortal should never touch the objects of power that belong to a god. Not if she wishes to live.”
    “And yet you touched it,” Ivy said, folding her arms across her chest, her body language a clear picture of defiance.
    “I am linked to the stone; as are the remaining three of my sisters. I must take it back with me to Atlantis to save their lives.”
    Nicholas stepped into the space between Serai and the Emperor. “I may have something to say about that,” he said ominously.
    “Say it quickly, then,” Ian said. “Because those soldiers are heading right for us, and I think—”
    The boy quit speaking mid-sentence and stared down at his shoulder and the knife blade which was suddenly protruding from it. He reached out for Ivy as he stumbled, and the brave young adult presence he’d been