Vampire in Atlantis

the knife in one hand and then stared a challenge at Serai. She nodded, filled with the power of the Emperor.
    “Yes, now, Nicholas of the Nightwalker Guild,” she said, and she heard the change in her voice. Heard the power of the Emperor taking her over again.
    Nicholas looked puzzled and then a little awed, but he slowly removed the knife, and as Serai directed the stream of healing light and magic into the wound, Ian never even flinched. They all watched as the gash in his skin healed completely until nothing but a thin pink scar, barely visible, remained.
    “I feel great, Mom,” he said bravely, and then his eyelids fluttered shut, and his head fell back against his mother’s shoulder. He let out a little hiccupping snore, and the three adults grouped around him looked at one another and laughed.
    “I owe you my life, Serai of Atlantis,” Ivy said fiercely. “My son is everything to me. Anything in my considerable power to do for you, you only need to ask me. Ever, do you hear me?”
    Serai inclined her head, the power of the Emperor calling her further and further away from mortal concerns. “Take your child to safety, that is all I ask,” she said, and then she stood and crossed to the entrance to the cave, still holding the Emperor.
    “You mustn’t stand there, you’re a target,” Nicholas said, trying to pull her away, but the Emperor slapped out at him and he fell back, dazed from the jolt of electricity that had poured from the amethyst and into his body.
    “I think not,” Serai whispered. “Not a target, but a prism. Now I will help my sisters.”
    She called on the Emperor again, this time directing its magic to Atlantis, and rejoiced as she saw in her mind’s eye the vision of her sisters waking and rising out of their stasis pods. Guen, Helena, and Merlina, all safe and healthy and whole.
    “Thank you, Emperor, and thank you, Poseidon. Thank you for saving my sisters.”
    The Emperor’s power pulsed and glowed in her hands, and then the purple shimmering light began to climb up her arms from her hands, encircling her limbs and sinking into her flesh.
    As you take me, so I take you , the Emperor told her, and Serai had only a moment to be afraid of what that might mean for her mortal life before the bullet punched into her leg and she fell.

Chapter 36
     

     
    Daniel felt the bullet as if it had entered his own body, and he leapt to his feet and roared out his rage to the world, ignoring the three soldiers who were aiming their guns at his head. Both the blood bond and the soul-meld served to tell him how much pain Serai was in, and the fury took him, rolled him under, ground him into shattered bits of madness and despair, until nothing was left of Daniel but a berserker’s insanity and a nightwalker mage’s terrible power.
    “Enough,” he roared, and he used his magic to blast through the cuffs and rip the soldiers’ guns from them. He blew a man-sized hole in the side of the command trailer and shot through it, bowling over everyone who got in his way, including the colonel himself. He soared through the air, racing through the sky faster than he’d ever flown before, intent on reaching Serai and determined to kill anyone and everyone who had hurt her.
    He swept into the cave on a wave of wind and wrath, smashing into the vampire who knelt near Serai.
    “I will kill you,” Daniel snarled, and the vampire looked startled for a moment, but then he joined the battle with deadly intent.
    They leapt at each other, crashed into the walls and ceiling, and tried their damndest to kill each other. Daniel finally remembered his daggers, the ones that the soldiers hadn’t bothered to take, since they were so sure of their pathetic silver cuffs and their pathetic guns, and he drew them in midair.
    “Now, you will die for harming my woman,” he shouted, but the boy shouted something right back at him, distracting him, and the vampire knocked one of his daggers out of his hand.
    “He didn’t harm Serai, he was helping her,” the boy shouted again, and Daniel glanced at the woman, who was nodding, and he realized that neither the boy nor his mother’s heart rate indicated deception.
    Terror, but not deception.
    “Enough,” he called out, just before the other vampire hurled Daniel’s own knife at him. Daniel ducked easily, snatched his blade from midair, sheathed both daggers, and then held out his hands, palms facing the other man.
    “If you truly tried to help her, I owe