Vampire in Atlantis

imprisoned for eleven thousand years ?”
    “I didn’t know!” he shouted. “I thought you were dead. I woke up and you were gone, and they told me you had died. They took me to deal with the newness of the bloodlust, and by the time I could control it and came back for any scrap of news of you, you and your whole godsdamned continent were gone .”
    A flare of something very like hope flamed in her chest, and she tried to speak but the words wouldn’t come. Not until he touched a finger to her cheek and it came back wet did she realize she was crying.
    “You thought I was dead? You didn’t abandon me?”
    The red flames had vanished from his eyes, and they shone a strange, almost silvery black as he stared at her. “I would never have abandoned you. But you were quick enough to leave me.”
    Frustration robbed her of fluency and she dropped back into her native Atlantean. “How can you think—”
    The pain crashed through her again and she cried out, doubling over as the Emperor sent a discordant slice of energy searing through her body and mind. “Someone has it. Make them stop, make them stop,” she said, almost sobbing.
    Daniel pulled her into his arms. “What is it? Someone has what?”
    “The Emperor. They’re tampering with the Emperor, and whoever it is will kill all six of us, if we don’t find it soon.”

Chapter 5
     

     

Montezuma’s Castle National Park, Arizona, inside the castle structure
     
     
     
    “Priestess, I’m . . . I’m sorry. My skills aren’t up to this. I can’t cast a glamour that would cover us both.”
    Ivy Khetta, high priestess of the Crescent Moon coven, turned away from the view that the Sinagua Indians had enjoyed for several hundred years, until nearly A.D. 1400, when the clan of vampires banished to the desert by their unforgiving goddess, Anubisa, had wiped out the native Americans. These days, none but national park employees and archaeologists were allowed to walk inside the structure that had been hand-built with stone, sweat, and adobe plaster so many centuries ago. She raised a hand to almost touch a spiral design that one of the Sinagua had incised into the plaster wall maybe a thousand years ago, just so she could feel the energy that still pulsed from the long-ago magic and passion of the artist.
    She wasn’t ready to activate the vortex energy, though. Not just yet.
    Ivy was definitely breaking more than a few federal laws just by stepping foot inside the castle, but nobody knew she was here and—in spite of her apprentice’s incompetence— nobody would, except those she couldn’t control. She managed—barely—to keep from looking for the vampire and his companions.
    Instead, she focused on the young witch. Of course, the fledgling couldn’t hide them from the park rangers and crowds of tourists who would soon swarm over the grounds like ants on a coyote’s corpse. Ivy was the only witch in the entire state powerful enough to wield such strong magic.
    After all, she wasn’t a witch at all.
    She was a sorceress who specialized in the black. Best that nobody else ever learned that, though, since her particular brand of dark sorcery was punishable by death. Ugly, bloody death that not even a sorceress who could call the black arts would be able to escape. If not death, at the very least she would face eternal imprisonment in dungeons built inside the Rocky Mountains. No, it was better that nobody figured out her secret. At least until she was ready. Nobody would ever treat her like they had her mother.
    Best nobody heard about that, either.
    “Don’t worry about it, ah—”
    “Aretha,” the witch offered helpfully, nervously smoothing her pale brown hair behind her ears.
    Ivy blinked. “Seriously? I thought it was Moon Blossom. Not sure which is worse.”
    Aretha blushed. “That was what I was trying on for a witch name. My mom’s a music fan, so my real name is Aretha. It was almost Madonna. Can you imagine Madonna Moskowitz?”
    “Better than Lady Gaga Moskowitz.”
    Aretha tittered a nervous laugh that echoed while she wandered around. “Did Montezuma really live here? I thought he lived in a gold palace, sacrificing virgins and stuff,” the young witch said, looking around in obvious distaste. “This is kind of low-rent for a big-time ruler, right?”
    “Are you an idiot?”
    “Uh, no. I mean, what do you mean?”
    “Montezuma was an Aztec ruler who probably never got this far north in his bloodthirsty life. The idiot