Vampire in Atlantis

her into his arms and waited, silent as the grave he’d soon be seeking out, for the woman he loved to learn who he truly was and order him out of her life forever.
    Serai fell, twirling and twisting, tossed through a typhoon of sound and sensation, through an apocalypse of blood and death, fear and fury. Light flashed all around her, and she woke up in the very same shop where she’d first met Daniel, all those years ago.
    Flash.
    He stood still, staring after a girl who was leaving the shop, and Serai was a tiny bit jealous, until the girl smiled back at him over her shoulder and she realized it was her . Herself, eleven thousand years ago, on the very first day she’d met Daniel.
    “Hits you like that sometimes,” a man standing in the shop said, grinning at Daniel’s expression of utter shock. “Been married more than twenty years to a woman who made me feel just like you look right now.”
    Daniel blinked and opened and closed his mouth a few times. “But—but—”
    The man laughed. “Yep. That’s what I said. You’re done for.”
    Flash.
    The fight in the shop, that day the invading army attacked Atlantis. Daniel fighting for his life against looting soldiers, protecting the trapdoor, protecting her. Falling, so much blood.
    Flash.
    Daniel waking, crazed with the bloodlust, calling for her. The old nightwalker telling him she was gone. Atlantis was gone. Gone forever. Daniel screaming her name until he was hoarse, and then falling to the ground, body heaving with great, racking sobs.
    Flash.
    Murder. Vengeance. The flash of recognition in that village ; the girl who reminded him of Serai. Hibernation. The quest for redemption. The eventual resignation and despair.
    Flash.
    Walking into the sun, only to look up and see that the sunlight wasn’t killing him. The light came from her face. Her face. Serai. Love. Desire. Need. In his face. For her.
    For her .
    When she woke from the trance, she gasped and then gulped in great, shuddering breaths, as if she’d been starved of oxygen for hours or days. Daniel held her tightly, so tightly that she wasn’t even cold, although they lay on the floor of the cave, still unclothed.
    “Well?” His voice was as hoarse as if he’d been screaming. For all she knew, he had. She’d been deaf to him while the soul-meld took her and showed her his life.
    “You’re leaving me now, aren’t you? I understand. I forgive you, and we can just forget all that stuff about ‘mine’ and ‘forever,’” he said, his face so cold and remote that—for a split second—she almost doubted him. Almost.
    But she’d seen inside his soul . She said the only thing she could. The only possible words to share at such a time.
    “Daniel. We have answered the question the elders have asked for millennia,” she told him, touching his stern face with her hand. “Nightwalkers do have souls. I have just walked in yours, and I want to cry for your pain. Know this, though, my vampire. My love. I will never let you go, and if you mention it again, I may have to hurt you.”
    Daniel couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. Could only feel , as a wave of pure warmth and love swept through him. “You’ve seen my soul? Is that even possible? I’d wondered—I’d feared—”
    “You cannot reach the soul-meld with someone who has no soul,” she said, smiling, and he realized the blue-green flames in her eyes were still there. “We are bound forever now.”
    The ancient words came to her, unbidden, mandating her to recite them:
    “I offer my magic, my heart, and my life to protect your own.
    From now until the last drop of ocean has vanished from the earth,
    You are my soul.”
     
    Shimmering silver threads, clearly visible in the predawn light in the cave, formed and curled around them both, tying them together inescapably. Forever, she’d said.
    Daniel couldn’t take it all in. It was too much.
    “I have a soul?”
    “You do,” she confirmed. “A badly wounded soul, forced to make so many hard choices, still fighting hard to redeem itself from the dark. And now it, as well as you, belong to me.”
    “Forever?” he repeated, stupidly.
    “Forever.”
    “Then we will make damn sure that nothing happens to you. I promise you that. Upon my life, upon my oath as a senior mage of the Nightwalker Guild, and upon my love for you, Serai, I swear to you that I will not let you die. We will find that Emperor and save your sisters, this I swear to you.”
    She smiled and kissed him,