Vampire in Atlantis

The case he’d stared into with mixed portions of anticipation and dismay on many occasions throughout his life. The case that had held the incredibly beautiful woman who once was to have been his wife and the future queen of Atlantis.
    Except it was empty. Shattered . Clearly the explosion of crystal had originated here.
    He spoke out loud the words he couldn’t quite believe. “She’s gone. Serai is missing.”

     
    Serai, still crouching down in hiding, heard the voice she’d once anticipated with such fear and longing. It was him. The high prince. The one who’d been destined to marry her. The one who’d abandoned her for the charms of a human woman, according to the attendants and their gossip.
    She hated him. Not that she’d ever wanted to marry a man she didn’t know and could never love. No, she despised High Prince Pretty Boy Conlan because he wasn’t Daniel, and because he’d been her chance for freedom and he’d left her to rot.
    Enough woolgathering. Conlan had called for healers. More people would be coming. And Poseidon only knew where High Priest Alaric was—if he appeared, her brief moment of freedom would be over. The high priest terrified her.
    It was time to run, and she knew exactly where to go. The portal and then the surface. The Emperor’s unique magic had fed knowledge of the outside world and of Atlantis to her and the other maidens for all these years. She could hide there; she would be inconspicuous and fit in—just another human woman, not a discarded Atlantean queen-to-be. She knew the languages. She could speak modern slang, even.
    “Groovy,” she whispered. “That’s a bitchin’ idea.”
    And then she picked up the hem of her skirt and ran.

Chapter 3
     

     

Reflecting Pool, Washington Monument, Washington, D.C.
     
    Daniel walked into the water in the cool pearly light of impending dawn. It had been water that separated him from Serai, after all, and it only seemed fitting that water stand guard and witness over him at the time of the true death. The few people he could see were jogging, that peculiar human preoccupation with spending hundreds of dollars on shoes and clothing to drive their cars for an hour, so they could run for five minutes.
    Human logic. It would have destroyed them all thousands of years ago, their stubborn, foolish excuse for logic, but the humans had one crucial quality that neither the vampires, the Fae, or even the shape-shifters could ever possess: they bred like rabbits. The sheer overwhelming numbers of them far outweighed any concentrated threat by any of the supernatural factions.
    But unlike rabbits, humans had forgotten how to run— really run—most of them. Daniel bared his teeth in what passed for a smile with him these days, not even caring for once if his fangs were showing. He could show them again what it was to run. Run for their lives.
    Run from the monster .
    He’d done it before. He’d even enjoyed it. Ripping throats open with his teeth. Bathing in fountains of blood. Brutal, violent, glorious death. Back in the dark days. The lost days. After he’d died the first death and risen, cold and alone and without the only woman he’d ever loved. He’d become a monster and a killer, and he’d reveled in it.
    But no more.
    Now it was time to die.
    He thought briefly of last words as dawn edged its way into the world, turning the edges of the obelisk from silver to a rosy glow as the sun rose, proudly silhouetted against the morning sky. What would be fitting to close the chapter of a single lonely vampire who’d lived for so very very long? Memory was nothing more than a collection of clutter, polished and positioned to shine in the light of untrustworthy wishful thinking and hindsight. Death took its final inventory, and nothing survived it except deeds recorded in history books by the victorious.
    So he didn’t try for the momentous, instead speaking only the truth of his heart.
    “Good-bye, Serai. I have always loved you. If there truly is a land beyond this one, may I find you again.”
    Then he raised his face to the horizon and watched the sun rise for the first time in thousands of years. The shimmering first rays swam toward him on the surface of the water, changing the deep rose of dawn to burnished gold. Closer, ever closer, until the first questing ray of light from something like his four millionth day on the earth reached his legs.
    No pain—not yet—just a sense of wonder at the glory of it. How could