“He infected them all,” Makeda said. “They were supposed to die with him.”
“He was evil,” Brigid said. “He killed so many people. Human and vampire. His ambition had no mercy. I’m glad he’s going to die.”
The volcano gave one last rumble and fell quiet. The sea calmed. The sky went still.
The conquest of Alitea was over.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“How many?” Lucien dragged himself onto the boat minutes before dawn. Saba, Kato, Arosh, and Ziri had remained on the ruined island, taking shelter in the mountain and in each other’s arms. “Inaya’s daughter said there were survivors.”
“Thirty-two,” Baojia said quietly.
Lucien stopped in his tracks. “Thirty-two?” By his estimate, there were over two hundred immortals who’d been living on Alitea.
“The ones who got out… Laskaris and Jason had guards waiting for them. The guards killed whoever they could find, most before we could reach them. Some of the survivors swam toward the Alitean guard with their throats bared.”
“They wanted to die.” Lucien closed his eyes. “This evil—”
“Has come to an end.” Baojia put a hand on his shoulder. “You have ended it, Lucien. You and your mother. Our world can make a fresh start. We’ll find whatever stockpiles of Elixir are left and destroy them. No one will dare defy Saba when word of this spreads. You’ve found a cure for the survivors. We can begin again.”
But he hadn’t found the cure. Not on his own. “Where’s Makeda?”
“In your quarters.”
“Has she barred the door?”
Baojia raised his hands. “This is where I back away slowly and find someone who can call my mate.”
“There should be a satellite phone on the bridge,” he said. “Try that.”
“Thanks. And good luck.”
Lucien knew she’d be furious with him, but all he wanted was to crawl beside her, lose himself in her touch, and wipe the horror of this night from his mind. If he was very, very persuasive, he might put off the dressing-down he probably deserved until the following night.
If he was lucky.
He knocked on the door when he found it locked. A few moments passed, and he heard slow movement inside.
“Lucien?”
“It’s me, Makeda.”
Beeping followed by clicked release. She was swaying when she opened the doors, and he realized how close to dawn it must have been. She was barely conscious.
“Sorry.” He scooped her up and brought her to the bed, laying her down before he went to secure their quarters.
“Mad… at you.”
“I know.” He stripped off his clothes and got in bed beside her. “I deserve it.”
“Mad…”
“Sleep,” he said, kissing her temple. “Be mad at me tomorrow. For now, rest.”
And know that you are my world.
❖
He held her tightly through the day, his body resisting the daily torpor of the sun. His mind flashed to the battle the night before. The hail of rain and ash, the surging of earth and sea. In that moment, Lucien had truly understood how delicately balanced it all was. It could crash around him. Seas could rise and the earth sink. His very existence, the air he breathed, was an incalculable and precarious gift.
The complex dance of life had never seemed so fragile. He was spun and woven into it, a tiny thread in an endless tapestry. He could break. They all could.
And they could begin again.
Sometime when the sun reached its apex, he fell asleep only to wake when he felt Makeda stir in his arms. Her amnis rose and reached for his. He was selfishly grateful they were mated. Though she could seethe and rage at him, they were already tied in a way that would make true detachment nearly impossible.
“Makeda?” he whispered.
“You are lucky I love you so damn much, Lucien Thrax.”
He let out a long breath. “I know. For the record, I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m sorry, and I’m not.”
She punched his shoulder. “When you walked into that mess last night—”
“I knew I might be the only one who could make my mother see reason.” He kissed her forehead. “And she might not have. She might have pulled the island into the sea, and if that had happened—”
“I am a water vampire. I would have been fine. You were being irrational.”
He let out a long breath. “Only ever with you, Dr. Abel.”
“Do you think”—she turned in his arms and looked straight into his eyes—“that I want to live in this crazy world without you? That if you had… died that I would just move on, find another—”
He kissed her hard. “You have a family. Friends. You have important, vital work to finish. And I only have you. You cannot ask me not to risk my life for yours. Not when I’ve just found you, Makeda.”
“We risk together,” she said. “We fight together. We search for answers together. That is the only way I can do this, Lucien.”
“You’re not a warrior,” he said.
“Then teach me.”
Kato’s words of warning came to him. If you try to change who she is, you will learn to hate the thing she becomes.
“Don’t you think I can learn?” she asked.
Kato was right. And he was also wrong.
“You, Dr. Abel?” He gripped her hip. “You told me once that you never forget a lesson. Of course you can learn.”
“That’s right. Don’t forget it.”
Kato was right because Makeda’s humanity defined her as a healer. But he was wrong because Makeda was also a protector.
She was no longer human. She had eternal life in front of her, and change would now be her constant. Change brought life. Perhaps he’d forgotten that for too long.
“If you want to fight with me,” he said, “I will teach you. But right now…” His hand moved down her back to cup the rounded bottom he loved so much. “Make love to me, Makeda. Let me make love to you.”
She pushed Lucien to his back and moved over him, straddling his hips with her long legs. She kissed his chest over his heart. His neck. His jaw. His lips. Lucien put his hands on her hips and watched her love him, marveling at the play of light over her skin. The wild curls on her head. The soft, blood-flushed lips kissing every inch of his body. She took him in her mouth, making him close his eyes at the heady pleasure of it. He was mindless to anything but her tongue and her hands and the bite she sank into his thigh. He lay before her, a willing offering.
And when he was mindless, she rose over him, sinking onto his erection, her heat a tight, languid caress. She gripped his hands, brought them to her breasts, and rode him.
For hours.
“Makeda, please.”
He begged for her bite, but she teased him, punishing him for his arrogance the night before.
Please.
He was dying. He needed her. He was losing his mind.
Then Makeda bent down and offered her neck to him.
Lucien bit viciously and flipped her over, taking control as he thrust a hand in her hair and rode her. Kissed her. Tasted her amnis as it flooded his blood and skin.
She cried out and came hard around him.
Lucien didn’t stop.
By the time he came, her neck and breasts were swollen from his lips and fangs. His teeth had marked her, high on her breast, on the curve of her shoulder, the soft skin behind her ear. She was panting and shivering.
Lucien was shivering too. The combination of their blood was a heady thing, as close to intoxication as he’d ever felt since he’d become immortal. She’d wrecked him with slow pleasure. Then he’d wrecked her in the most gratifying way possible.
“Lucien.” She curled her body into his, goose bumps covering her skin, her hands and arms trembling.
“Queen,” he whispered, wrapping his arms around her and holding her tight. “Yene Makeda, you are my queen.”
They passed the rest of the night in mindless pleasure, and no one knocked on their door.
❖
Sadly, that didn’t last the second night.
Lucien felt Carwyn before he heard him. “The father is here.”
Makeda blinked her eyes. “Who?”
“Carwyn. Didn’t I tell you he used to be a priest?”
“With those shirts?” Makeda frowned. “You know, somehow I can see it. It’s weird, but I can see it.”
He walked to the door, cracked it open, and came face-to-face with the pale, redheaded man whose fist was raised to knock.
“Hello!” Carwyn’s voice was loud enough to cause a wince. “Get that out of your system yet?”
“Is sex something that’s supposed to get out of your system?”
Carwyn grinned. “Not if you’re doing it right. You’ve been summoned though, both of you.”
“To the island?”
“Yes.”
He took a deep breath and tasted the air, but he couldn’t smell his mother or any of the ancients. “Fine. Give us thirty minutes and have a boat ready.”
“Your mate doesn’t need a boat.”
Makeda shouted, “His mate is in the process of taming her disastrous hair, so a boat is definitely needed.”
Lucien raised one eyebrow. “You heard her.” Then he shut the door.
Makeda was already in the small bathroom in their quarters, showering the sweat and blood off her body.
“Your hair could never be disastrous,” he said. “Just so you know.”
“Spoken like a man.”
He didn’t try to argue with her. Thousands of years had given him that much wisdom at least.
The shower was too small to join her, so he waited until she was out to take his turn. When she left the bathroom wrapped in a towel, he was smiling.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I like this.”
She frowned. “What?”
“Living with you.”
She shared a shy smile with him before he took her place in the shower. When he emerged, she was already dressed and her hair was “tamed.” Lucien found it difficult not to muss her again, but as he valued his life, he decided not to chance it. He took Makeda’s hand and led her down the steps to the lower deck where a boat was waiting to take them to the island.
Life seemed to have sorted itself out the previous night. Or Inaya’s people really were that good at hosting.
Vampires lounged near the pool with trays of fruit laid out. Silver carafes—containing blood if he had to guess—and bottles of blood-wine were also scattered about the deck. Lucien saw their allies conversing quietly or laughing in corners. Kiraz lay on a pool float, flirting with one of Emil’s men. Inaya’s daughter held court in the corner, quietly advising several newcomers Lucien didn’t recognize.
“Battle one day, party the next?” Makeda asked.
“Most of these vampires have been in enough battles to know when it’s time to relax.”
“Is anyone going with us?”
“Tenzin and Carwyn will come.”
“Where’s Baojia?”
“Trying to get home, according to Carwyn.” Lucien helped her down the last set of steps. “Apparently Brigid is being stingy with the plane. I think she’s still mad we left her in Athens.”
The boat to the island was a sleek wooden vessel that came with Emil’s yacht. It buzzed toward the great mass of rock that only two nights before had been a smoking pile about to explode. The sea gate stood open, its rock-hewn edges concealing the harbor within.
Tenzin flew overhead. Her task that night was to formally greet the new council of elders at Alitea and report back to those at Penglai. No doubt she was mostly curious what disaster Saba had wrought.
But as they passed through the stone gate and entered the harbor, the last vestiges of worry fell from Lucien’s shoulders and his heart finally felt peace. The earth was a resilient and powerful thing.
The ancient streets of Alitea were no more. The cracked marble and ruined statues had been swept into the harbor. Lucien saw their shadowed forms standing silently beneath the sea, testament to a god’s folly. He looked up at the cliffs, and instead of white balconies rising from the walls of the sea fortress, vines crawled and flowers fell from balconies taken over by lush greenery where birds were already flying.
The manicured order of Alitea had been swept away, and the earth had sprung up new in its place. The land sloped down from the mountain into the harbor, a symphony of green plants, grey rock, and brown soil dotted with stones. There were no animals. No people. The boat came to rest in the shallows, and Lucien, Makeda, and Carwyn climbed out, splashing over a pebbled beach until they reached the smooth pathway bordered by cypress.
“When she talks about remaking the world, she doesn’t joke around,” Carwyn said quietly.
“No,” Lucien said. “She does not.”
Makeda looked around. “What happened to… everything? There was a city here. Roads. Buildings.”
“She’s never liked those things,” Lucien said. “If this is her new kingdom, it will be a very different one from the old.”
He linked Makeda’s hand in his and walked up the path toward the smell and sounds that were home to him. Distant chatter in a variety of tongues. A campfire. Roasting coffee.
Saba, Kato, Arosh, and Ziri sat on blankets under a spreading olive tree. Kato leaned against a stone, and Arosh lay with his head in Saba’s lap as she stirred a pan over some coals. The queen of the vampire race was roasting coffee on an island she’d remade in one night.
“Are you well, Emaye?”
“I am well, yene Luka.”
Arosh sat up and smiled at Lucien. “It is better, is it not?”
Lucien could feel the volcano’s energy. It wasn’t dormant, but it was calm. The earth was verdant and the air full of life. The waves rolled gently against the shore; he could hear the sea lap against what was left of the carved marble blocks piled along the harbor. The breeze carried the hint of citrus blossoms and salt air.
Lucien looked around the island and nodded. “It is good.”
Ziri was perched on a tall rock that might have been a pediment once. The smooth white marble was already covered in moss. “We will build a city again. Eventually. For now, the vampires we have gathered may stay in the cliff rooms.”
“The ones the birds are trying to take over?”
Saba shrugged. “My children would do well to share with the other living things of this world.”
Lucien sat next to her. As soon as he did, Carwyn and Makeda sat next to him. Tenzin, who’d been following silently, perched in the olive tree.
“Did you have any questions, daughter of Zhang?” Saba said.
“No.”
“And what will you report to your father?”
Tenzin floated down from the tree and sat across from Saba as the smoke rose between them.
“I will tell my father that the ancient sea is at rest once more,” Tenzin said. “And our mother still gives us life.”
“For now.” Saba’s eyes narrowed. “For now, daughter.”
“I understand.”
“Not yet.” Saba leaned against her rock. “But you will.”
Without another word, Tenzin took to the sky and disappeared into the night.
Lucien leaned back against the rock that grew behind him and pulled Makeda between his legs. He wrapped his arms around her waist and leaned his cheek on the hair she’d tried to tame. The sea air had already teased it loose from the knot she’d attempted. Lucien fell silent and listened to the conversations of his mother and his friends. Of priests and queens. Spies and kings. Healers and assassins.
The earth was a living thing beneath him. He closed his eyes and felt the new roots his mother had planted steal down into the soil. He listened to the slow circulation of blood in his woman’s veins and the air that filled her lungs.
Lucien held his mate for hours on the earth his mother
had made new. He held her, and he knew peace.
EPILOGUE
Northern California
“This is ridiculous.”
Makeda turned to see Natalie standing in the doorway. Makeda flew back and plastered herself against the back wall of the lab.
“What are you doing?”
Natalie shrugged and pulled Baojia into the room. “See? I told you.”
“It wasn’t me. I told you, Mak was the one who—”
“She is not supposed to be in here!” Makeda pointed accusingly at Natalie. The very human, still-somewhat-appetizing Natalie. “What are you thinking, Baojia?”
“I’m thinking that you’re going to be fine,” Baojia said. “You’re ten months old and you haven’t had a single incident of losing control. If you weren’t a vampire, I’d say you’re inhuman.” He frowned. “But you are a vampire, so that’s an obvious statement.”
Natalie squinted. “What are you talking about?”
“It made more sense in my head.” He turned on his heel and left. “I’ll go get the kids.”
Makeda’s heart took off at a gallop. “No!”
“Calm down,” Natalie said, stepping farther into the room. “He’s not going to bring them here. We wouldn’t freak you out that much.”
She banged her fist on the lab table and made a note to smooth the stainless steel out after Natalie had left. “You are not supposed to be here. I told you twelve months.”
“You are paranoid. You’ve been locked in this lab for six months. Ruben and Baojia say you haven’t had a single slipup.” Natalie stepped closer. “Besides, it’s you. I trust you.”
“You shouldn’t. Because right now you smell like dinner.”