Read Vampire in Atlantis for Free Online

head and he caught her, swinging her into his arms just before she fell to the stone floor of the cave. Pain and remorse stabbed at him. Yet again, after all these years, even when given a miraculous second chance, he was failing her.
    “Quinn, I need your help,” he said, ignoring Jack. “She’s weak and needs to rest.”
    Quinn swept her gaze over Serai’s unconscious form, still dressed in the silken gown, and then she nodded. “Of course. We can get you a place to sleep and warmer clothes for her. We’re camping out here, but you probably knew that, or why would you be here?”
    He grimly shook his head. “Trust me, I had no idea. I don’t even know where ‘here’ is.”
    Jack walked closer, ignoring Daniel’s scowl, and inhaled deeply, as if scenting Serai. “I wasn’t about to hurt her, and you know it, vampire,” the cat shifter said. “She’s beautiful, Daniel. She’s not a shifter, though, and she smells like . . . Atlantean? How did she do that? And a saber-tooth? They’ve been extinct so long—”
    “Probably around ten or eleven thousand years,” Daniel interrupted dryly. “I’ll explain later, if you’re done trying to kill me.”
    Jack scowled at him. “If I’d been trying to kill you, you’d be dead.”
    “Think again, little kitten,” Daniel advised flatly. “Remember who hit the wall.”
    “Children,” Quinn interrupted. “Enough. Let’s get her some rest, and then you have some explaining to do, Daniel.”
    Daniel’s temper flared, and for the first time in the years he’d known her, he let it loose at Quinn. “I am vampire. Senior mage of the Nightwalker Guild, and formerly primator of all vampires in this infant of a country. Tread softly before you think to issue orders to me, human.”
    He felt her shock through the blood bond he’d once had to force on her to save her life. Jack started to say something, but Quinn cut him off with a raised hand. The uncomfortable truth was, the blood bond ran both ways. She could probably sense Daniel’s emotions, too. She was certainly looking at him with more than a little sympathy in her dark eyes.
    “Daniel deserves our trust, Jack.” She issued a few quiet requests, and one of the humans motioned to Daniel to follow him down a dark corridor.
    Quinn’s slightly raised voice stopped him. “We’re near Sedona, Arizona, Daniel. And we’re in big trouble.”
    He almost smiled. “With you, what else is new?”

     
    Serai woke as Daniel put her down on a pallet in what looked like another room in the same cavern. Same dark stone walls. Same dank stone-and-dirt-cavern smell. A small fire glowed in a corner of the room, giving off a bit of heat and light, but not enough to really help. She was shivering bone deep and felt like she might never be warm again.
    Daniel sat on the edge of the narrow bed as he pulled rough blankets around her, but his hands stilled as he realized she was awake and looking at him.
    “How are you feeling?”
    She lifted one shoulder. “I’ve been better, but I’m alive. I’m free. There’s much to be said for that.”
    An awkward silence fell, and she watched him as he looked at the blankets, around the room, anywhere but at her. Maybe he didn’t want to be around her. Maybe he’d forgotten about her long ago, and she was an unwelcome reminder of a painful past. Maybe—
    His hands shot up and grabbed her shoulders, and he finally stared directly at her—into her eyes, as if the secrets of the universe hid there for him to find.
    “I thought you were dead,” he said, anguish in his rough tone. “How can you be alive, all these millennia later? You’re not a vampire, but you’re still exactly the same as the day Atlantis fell and not a day older. How is that even possible?”
    “Have you ever heard the tale of Sleeping Beauty?” she asked wryly.
    He just looked at her, silent, and for a moment a hint of the shy boy he’d been surfaced in his eyes. But only for a moment. The hard, deadly