Vampire in Atlantis

here,” he said, holding her tightly to try to calm the spasms.
    Slowly—ever so slowly—the shaking subsided. She stopped screaming and began sobbing, loud, hoarse sobs that were almost as painful to him as they must be to her. She pulled away from him and sank to the ground, still sobbing as if her heart would break any minute.
    “Delia. Oh, no, poor Delia, she was the youngest of us. All that lovely golden hair, oh no, oh no, oh no,” she kept repeating, tears streaming down her face.
    He crouched down and took her in his arms and patted her back and stroked her hair—anything that might offer her some comfort. He had a sinking suspicion about who Delia might be, and even the monster crouched inside him roared its anguish at the thought. If one of the other maidens had just died, how long might it be until the person wielding the Emperor’s powers caused Serai to join her?
    Daniel would find this witch and kill her. Take the Emperor back to Atlantis, so Alaric and the rest of them could figure out a way to save Serai and the others. He’d capture Poseidon himself and demand the sea god’s help, if need be.
    Whatever it took.
    “Whatever it takes,” he said, out loud, as Serai’s sobs began to quiet. “We will find the Emperor and rescue your sisters. I swear this to you on my life.”
    She finally stopped crying and took a deep, shuddering breath before looking up at him. “I felt it, Daniel. I felt her die.”
    “Delia?”
    She nodded. “Yes. She—The Emperor’s connection to us stuttered and grew weak, but then a powerful surge of energy speared out through it and the witch who’s trying to access its power. She’s learning how to use it, Daniel. But I don’t think she has any idea that she’s hurting people by doing it. She’s . . . afraid, I think. And Delia. Oh, Daniel. She never had a chance to live her life at all. It’s not fair.”
    As she cried, curled against his chest like a wounded child, his heart shattered and then re-formed in ice and granite. So the witch who played with the Emperor’s magic was afraid, was she? Not yet she wasn’t. She hadn’t known anything like the terror he was going to crash down on her head. When he got his hands on her and anyone else who’d been participating in this deadly game, they’d all be very, very afraid.
    They would be afraid, and then they would be dead. He swore it on his ancient oath as a mage of the Nightwalker Guild.
    “I can’t fly, Daniel. I’m sorry,” she whispered, interrupting his silent plans to rip, tear, and maim.
    A horrible thought jumped into his mind. “Is that why you had the seizure? Serai, I’m sorry. I thought if you saw how safe it is, you’d—”
    “No. No, the seizure was due to the Emperor, but I can’t fly. I’m terrified of heights, and I don’t know how to calm down. I don’t think we have time for me to try to learn how to be unafraid, not now. Maybe later?” She attempted a smile, but her face was far too pale, and her terror was evident in her eyes and the way she bit her lip.
    “Don’t worry about it. We can find another way. I can walk almost as fast as I can fly. We’ll find the Emperor. I promise you.”
    They took a few minutes to drink some water, and Serai splashed a little on her face, and then they resumed following the path that only she could sense, to wherever the Emperor was now. The hike would have been beautiful in the daytime, Daniel imagined, but imagination was all that he’d known of sunlight for so long—other than those brief moments in Atlantis—that he didn’t dwell on it. There was a unique kind of beauty in the dark. The moon’s silvery light cast fascinating geometric shadows on the red rock formations for which the areas was famous. He could tell by Serai’s pounding heartbeat, though, that she had no attention to spare for scenery.
    “Tell me about the fear of heights,” he said, mostly to distract both of them from what waited ahead in the night. “I wouldn’t have thought there were all that many high places in an undersea city.”
    She shrugged her slender shoulders. “Not that many. Enough.”
    He could hear it in her voice: this was no random fear. “Enough?”
    “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said flatly.
    “Maybe I need to hear it. What happened?”
    “I threw myself off one of the palace towers. I wanted to die.”

     
    Serai sped up her pace, but she might as well not have bothered. Daniel’s fingers bit into her shoulders