Vampire in Atlantis

you my gratitude, not my anger,” he said, struggling to force the berserker rage back down where he could control it. After the fury came the bloodlust, and he could afford neither at this time.
    The vampire raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Do you expect me to accept your apology?”
    “Didn’t offer one,” Daniel said, heading for Serai now that he was in control enough to manage the bloodlust, in spite of the delicious smell of the blood pumping from Serai’s leg. “What happened?”
    The woman raced over to him, then slowed as she approached, clearly nervous about what he might do. To her credit, she didn’t let fear stop her from kneeling down next to Serai and pressing a cloth pad over the bleeding wound.
    “They shot her. Those damn soldiers. First they threw a knife that stabbed my son, clear through his shoulder. Serai used the King stone—the Emperor—to heal Ian, but then they shot her and we don’t know what to do.” She turned golden, tear-filled eyes to Daniel. “I want to help her but I’m no healer. I don’t know how to use the Emperor like that. Do you?”
    Daniel started to reply in the negative, but then he realized that he might, indeed, know how to heal with the stone. He shared Serai’s power, didn’t he? He stared down at Serai’s pale, pale face and knew a moment of pure and utter terror.
    “Don’t you die on me, you hear me?” He kissed her forehead and then her lips. “Don’t you even think about it, because I will follow you into the deepest level of the nine hells and bring you back.”
    The vampire approached warily. “Ivy, you should tend to your son. He needs you.”
    Ivy glanced at her son, who was snoring quietly on the floor, and then stubbornly shook her head. “No. She needs me. I promised I’d do anything for her. Anything she ever needed. I’m not going to fulfill that promise by letting her die five minutes later, Nicholas.”
    Daniel whipped his head around to stare at the vampire. “Nicholas? Regional-head-of-this-area in-league-withslimeball-vampires Nicholas?”
    “I know you, too, Primator,” Nicholas said darkly. “Don’t be so quick to cast stones.”
    But Daniel had lost interest. None of it mattered. Nothing but saving Serai. He took a deep breath and reached out to the blazing fire of the purple gemstone that she still held in her hands.
    “Do or die,” he told them, or told himself.
    And then he dared to touch the prized gem of the sea god—a god who hated vampires above all else—in order to save the woman he loved.

Chapter 37
     

     
    Brig closed his phone, smelling something fishy even though he was a long damn way from the ocean. First off, Smithson hadn’t been quite the upstanding citizen the higher-ups had been touting. Brig was an old hand at working the military communication channels, and he’d gotten the gouge—the unofficial but critically important scoop—on Smithson’s background on the call he’d just taken.
    Second, there was a kid in that cave. A human kid. A kid that one of St. Ives’s men had thrown a knife into. If the vampire hadn’t killed the murdering bastard, Brig might have done it himself.
    Third, there was the vampire that had just blown through the side of the trailer like a shoulder-launched missile. Brig had interviewed a lot of men and women in his day, and he could sniff out integrity like a bloodhound with a brand-new nose.
    That vampire had integrity, and he’d cared about nothing but saving his woman. Not plots or conspiracies or any other damned thing.
    The phone rang again.
    “You have a go, Colonel St. Ives,” a familiar and abrasive voice said in his ear.
    “There’s a kid in there, sir. A human boy. The vampire’s hostage, from what intel could discover. A complete innocent.”
    With hardly a pause, the voice continued. “Collateral damage. Regrettable, but unavoidable. You have a go.”
    Brig stood there, staring at the phone for a long time after the line went dead.
    “Fuck that ,” he finally said. “Lieutenant? We’re moving out.”
    He had a grandbaby to meet, and he’d be damned if he’d meet him or her with another child’s blood on his hands. It was way the hell past time to retire.
    He headed out of the trailer, laughing at the man-shaped hole in the wall, and then he stood and watched his men as they loaded up and fell back.
    “Good luck, Daniel with one name,” he finally said before he went to find his jeep.

Chapter 38
     

     
    Serai fell into the magic,