Vampire in Atlantis by Alyssa Day Page A

taking advantage of her. Not if he ever wanted to live with himself.
    “What about kung fu?”
    “Nothing. Never mind. Stupid random thought. So why is the jewel hurting you?”
    She crossed to the fire and put her hands out to the heat, although it wasn’t particularly cold in the cave. Not to him, at least. Maybe to a woman fresh out of thousands of years in a crystal prison, it felt freezing. He had no idea how to deal with this Serai, the woman who had stepped out of a fairy tale, so beautiful and so tempting.
    “Sleeping Beauty,” he murmured.
    She glanced back at him over her shoulder, the fire silhouetting her curves through the thin material of the dress, and his body hardened. Wanting. Needing. Even his fangs were aching, trying to drop down, and he’d had complete control over them for centuries. He realized he was breathing in time with the beat of her heart, and he forced himself to back away as far as he could get. Still, it was a cave. He was maybe a dozen paces from her, a distance he could cross in a split second with vampiric speed.
    She could be his, the monster inside him whispered. She belonged to him. He could take her, right now, and never let her get away from him.
    “Daniel, I need your help.”
    He sighed. The four deadliest words in any language, especially when spoken by a damsel in distress. He smiled at the thought of a woman who could become a saber-toothed tiger ever being a damsel in distress, but what the hell. He had his little quirks—the delusion that he could ever be a white knight foremost among them—and he was way past believing he could change.
    “You’re smiling?” Her voice rose, and he could tell she was annoyed. She’d gotten that little frown on her face, the same patrician, aristocratic expression that had warned her guards all those years ago that they’d better leave her alone for a while or face a highly unpleasant few hours.
    “You need my help, and I gladly and most willingly give it, my lady,” he said, sweeping his best, if quite rusty, bow. He’d been a blacksmith, not a courtier. “But I need more of the facts. What is the Emperor doing to you, and what do you need my help with?”
    “It’s connected to me and to the other maidens, who are still in stasis, and somebody is trying to use it. Someone has already tried to channel magic through it, and it nearly killed him . . . no, her,” she said thoughtfully. “It felt like female magic. She’s gone now, from my awareness, either dead or unconscious, but for a moment we were connected. I could feel the others, too. If this woman, this witch, tries to wield the Emperor again, it could kill us all.”
    At the thought of Serai’s death, the breath left Daniel’s body so fast and hard he nearly doubled over, but instead he put his hands on the hilts of the daggers he always wore, even in Washington.
    Actually, especially in Washington.
    “We need to find it. Now,” he said, and his voice rasped as he formed the words.
    “I can feel it,” she said. “I think I can find it. We should leave now.” She started toward the cave entryway, but stumbled before she’d gotten three steps.
    “You have to rest first,” Daniel said, catching her before she could fall, and steeling himself against the punch of bloodlust. “Sleep. Your body isn’t used to so much activity. I don’t know how you’re walking at all, actually, after such a long period of inactivity. How are your muscles not atrophied?”
    “The Emperor and the high priests over the years took care of that. Magic can achieve what science cannot, after all. Think of it. How am I even alive in a world that has changed beyond any possibility of recognition?”
    She pulled away from him a little but then surrendered to his unspoken demand, leaning back against his chest and sighing. Daniel realized she was trembling, and he swept her into his arms and carried her back over to the pallet. He arranged the blankets around her again, prepared to wait