Vampire in Atlantis

die naked.
    Daniel flew through the air toward her—actually flew ; her muddled mind told her that if she survived this she had to ask him how he did that—and landed on the ground with one foot on each side of her waist, standing over her prone body.
    “If you die, I’m going to haunt you,” he growled at her, his fangs fully bared, and then another of the attackers came at him, screaming something about points for killing the Primator. Daniel met the attack with crossed daggers and then he sliced downward, and another head rolled across the ground.
    Serai’s thoughts tumbled crazily; she realized she was near hysteria when she started to hum “vampire heads are falling down” to the tune of some song buried in her memory about a London bridge, and then when everything went suddenly, eerily quiet, she wondered if she’d lost her hearing or her mind.
    Or both.
    But then a woman—it sounded like June, maybe, but Serai wasn’t sure—screamed, “The tiger is down.” Serai had just enough time to be touched that the landwalkers cared about her even though they’d just met her, before Quinn raced past. A moment later, Quinn started screaming, too, and even Serai’s exhausted mind began to realize that it wasn’t her they were talking about.
    She wasn’t the tiger who was down.
    “Jack!” Quinn screamed, over and over. Just his name, again and again and again.
    Then Serai heard Alaric’s unmistakable voice. “I’m sorry, Quinn. He’s dead.”

Chapter 11
     

     
    Daniel stared down at the limp, blood-soaked form of the tiger who’d been Quinn’s best friend in the world, and a bleak sense of futility washed over him. Why? Why was it always the good guys—the best of them—who paid the highest price? He tightened his hold on Serai, who had insisted on standing on her own two feet when he’d picked her up from the ground. When he’d seen her fall, he’d almost faced death for the second time that day. If he lost her now . . . but no. Better to focus on the immediate reality.
    Jack was down, and Quinn was losing her mind over it. He could feel her maddened anguish searing through him because of the blood bond and realized, yet again, that he couldn’t help her.
    Alaric tried to pull Quinn away from Jack, but she screamed and fought him off.
    “No, leave me alone! Wait. You can heal him,” she said imploringly, tugging on Alaric’s hand. “You healed me before. I’ve seen you heal lots of people. You can do it. Fix him.”
    But the priest was shaking his head, a universe of sadness in his somber expression. “He’s gone, Quinn. I can heal grievous wounds, it is true, and you know I would do anything for you, but I cannot heal death. Only the gods can do that.”
    Quinn screamed again, a sound of such utter, hopeless rage that it sent chills snaking down Daniel’s spine. Serai shuddered and turned her head to look up at Daniel, and the deep blue of her eyes had spread from her irises to completely cover the white, so that her eyes were entirely blue.
    “He’s not gone,” she said, her voice gone deep with ancient power. “He’s almost gone, but a small part of him remains.”
    Alaric stared at her and raised his hands almost as if to block any attack Serai might try. She made a dismissing motion and ignored him, focused entirely on Quinn and Jack.
    “Put me down. There next to Jack,” Serai ordered Daniel, and he found himself obeying her without question. The magic resonating in her voice called to him on such a visceral level that it echoed in his bones. He wouldn’t have been able to refuse her—looking around, he saw that everyone but Alaric had stepped forward in response to her command, as well.
    He helped her to sit on the ground next to Jack, and she gently nudged Quinn to one side and then lay down across the badly damaged tiger, so that her body draped across Jack’s.
    Quinn grabbed at her. “No! What are you doing? Get off him!”
    But Alaric gently pulled Quinn back and held her back by wrapping his arms around her. “Give her a chance, Quinn. The ancients had magic we have long forgotten.”
    Quinn shook her head back and forth, over and over, but subsided, watching Serai with huge eyes filled with tears that she wouldn’t let fall.
    She had reason to cry. Gashes so deep that Daniel could see bone in some of them covered every quarter of Jack’s body. Serai grasped his fur with both hands and started to hum softly, then turned those blind and darkling eyes to