Atlantis Rising Page 12

  Tales of the legendary gift of the soul-meld between an Atlantean and his mate, which branded a warrior’s heart and soul as surely as Poseidon’s mark branded his body.

  It was impossible. The soul-meld was a legend, a fable. A fanciful bedtime story. Nothing more. Soul-melding did not exist.

  Like empaths don’t exist, right?

  Oh, damn. He needed Alaric to figure this one out. Soon. As soon as the Trident was retrieved. After they’d figured out why the hell those vamps had attacked, and how to find the Trident in the first place.

  Or even what to do about Reisen.

  Yeah. All the subjects he’d forgotten to raise with Alaric and the Seven earlier.

  He was screwed.

  At dawn the next morning, Conlan woke from a fractured sleep to the smell of coffee and the sound of low, male laughter. For a minute or two, before he moved from the bed he’d fallen into, exhausted, late the night before, he lay completely still, examining what he was feeling. Actually, what he wasn’t feeling. It was a kind of absence. The lack of something—what?

  His eyes snapped open as the truth came to him. What he’d felt—what was missing—was rage.

  Fury.

  He’d needed the flames of anger to defeat helplessness. To goad him into living for the long years that he’d been Anubisa’s captive. He’d fed those flames with memories of his parents and thoughts of his brother and Atlantis when despair or pain threatened to overpower the rage.

  But now, in spite of the vampire threat, and even in spite of Reisen’s treason, he’d let loose of some inner core of fury that had shored up his foundation for so long. His thoughts turned inward, examining, focusing on the building blocks of his psyche.

  Of what Alaric had called his uncompromised soul.

  It had been close. Damn, but it had been close. There had been so many times when he’d wondered why he bothered to try to stay alive. Why he kept fighting her.

  Why he didn’t let death take him.

  Conlan thought back to the concrete floors and the ten-inch-by-ten-inch metal grate in the floor.

  “The better for the blood to drain into,” she’d said, fangs flashing in the light of the dozens of candles that ringed the room. “It’s not like I’m going to drink it all, princeling. There will be much to tempt my blood pride down below.”

  Her blood pride. More like her coven of minions from hell. He’d heard them wailing and gnashing their fangs in the cavern below his cell every hour of every day.

  Every hour of every night.

  Until the day she released him.

  “And that’s what pisses me off the most, isn’t it?” he snarled, sitting up and swinging his feet off the bed. “That she released me. That I didn’t escape on my own. In the end, I turned out to be no better than any of the rest of her pets, didn’t I?”

  Just like that, it was back. The empty, barren landscapes inside his soul were filled with wrath.

  He welcomed it. Hell, he and rage were old buddies.

  Conlan? A delicate touch in his mind. Are you okay?

  Riley.

  For a heartbeat, the lyricism of her voice and the sparkling blues and golds of her emotions combined to drive the flames from his mind. He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, sure that he could smell her clean, fresh scent. Flowers and the ocean.

  Surer now—definitely louder, her voice pounded through his head: Conlan! If you’re okay, get your ass over here and unlock this door, or I will pound on your head!

  He started laughing at the contradiction. Ah, his delicate flower. Never one to say the expected, was she?

  Nope. And she wasn’t his anything, either. Better for both of them if he didn’t forget it.

  Sobering, he sent his reply back to her: On my way. Try not to chew through the wall, okay?

  He felt a slight trace of her amusement sparkle through him in colors of warm honey and gold. Then that peculiar slamming sensation in his head, which cut off any trace of her.

  Oh, yeah. She was pissed. This ought to be fun.

  Not.

  Reisen looked up from his contemplation of the object in his hands, eyes still dazzled, when the thud of heavy-soled boots thundered down the hall toward him. Micah strode into the room, followed closely by several more warriors.

  “My lord,” Micah said, breathing harshly. “While patrolling, we discovered a nest of shape-shifters based in a tattoo parlor in Virginia Beach.”

  Reisen laughed. “That seems a little odd, doesn’t it? Do you think the tattoos come back after they take animal form and then return to human?”

  Micah folded his arms over his chest, staring at Reisen with his usual implacable expression. “My lord?”

  Shaking off both the whimsy and the near-trancelike state he’d gone into while staring at the hen’s-egg-sized emerald in his hands for the past hour, Reisen stood up. “And? What did you do about it?”

  Micah shrugged. “We returned here to tell you about it. I wasn’t sure if our quest allowed time for battling a bunch of furballs. Especially after the Council’s decree that we only destroy shape-shifters proven of wrongdoing.”

  Reisen carefully replaced the emerald in its silk pouch and gently tucked the pouch back inside its small wooden box. The leaders of the East Coast cell of the Platoists had been only too anxious to give him the emerald, when they’d learned the truth of their organization’s central tenet.

  Atlantis was real.

  Moreover, Reisen was an Atlantean prince. They’d treated him like a god. He hadn’t exactly hated it.

  He’d thought the human was going to piss in his pants. Luckily for all concerned, the man had managed to contain his excitement long enough to retrieve the emerald and gift it to Reisen.

  Who now had to figure out how to use it. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. But some things were easy. “We all swore a sacred vow to protect humanity. It gains us nothing to restore Atlantis to its rightful place in the world, if that world is overrun with bloodsuckers and shape-shifters. In this, as in so much else, the Council is wrong.”

  Micah nodded, smiling. “I was hoping you’d say that,” he said, with his hands on the handle of his battle-axe. “All this tension has me in the mood to kick some shape-shifter ass.”

  The warriors ringing Micah nodded and growled their agreement. Reisen carefully packed the small wooden box and the fabric-wrapped bundle of the Trident into a leather carrying bag. One of the warriors stepped forward. “May I carry that for you, my lord?”

  “Thank you, but this is one burden that I’m honored to carry myself.” With that, Reisen led them to the main room of the house to do some planning. He still had more than a day before the scheduled meeting with the Platoists.

  Plenty of time to kick some shape-shifter ass.

  Chapter 16

  Riley was still grumbling under her breath a good ten minutes after Conlan had shown up and unlocked the door to her room. She’d read him the riot act. Just when she’d started to trust him and believe in all his crazy Atlantean royalty stuff, he’d pulled a prison warden act on her.

  But after he’d sketched out the bare-bones truth about the vampire threat, some crook named Reisen who’d stolen a precious artifact, and apologized five or six times, she’d calmed down.

  It was insane, but she knew she could trust him. Amazing how being able to feel a man’s emotions cut through the doubt. This was mainly about protecting her.

  She’d switched to subverbal grumbling after tasting the coffee he’d brought as a peace offering. It was hot, sweet, and delicious.

  Words that could also describe Conlan. She peeked up at him through her lashes. How unfair was it that the man looked even better in the morning? All that muscle hadn’t diminished one bit in the light of day. Worse, she noticed new things about him. Like the faint blue highlight to his black hair. It didn’t look like a salon job, so it must be an Atlantis thing.

  She tightened her hands on her coffee cup, mostly to keep from reaching out to
touch his hair.

  It was a compulsion. A craving. It felt the way her addict clients had described the need for their drug of choice.

  Conlan paced back and forth in the room, mostly ignoring her. Or at least not looking at her. Considering the tension in his massive shoulders, she’d bet big money that he wasn’t unaware of her.

  She was clean, at least. The small bathroom attached to her room—her prison cell—was well stocked with an assortment of soaps, shampoos, and conditioners. Brand-new toothbrushes wrapped in plastic lay in rows in a drawer under the sink.

  The thought of it pissed her off all over again. “So, bring a lot of women here, do you?”

  He stopped pacing and whirled around to face her. “What? What are you talking about? I haven’t been to this house in more than a decade. It belongs to my brother.”

  She nodded. “It figures. Like brother, like brother, right? You’re just a couple of good old boys who kidnap women and drag them to your evil lair.”

  “Are you on some sort of medication? Or are all human females as completely illogical as you are?” He looked genuinely puzzled, which almost made her smile.

  “So you spend a lot of time protecting humanity, just not much time having conversations with it. Us. Am I getting the gist of this?” She drained her coffee cup, placed it on the small table next to the wall, and nodded at the door. “Also, are you going to let me out of here anytime soon? Not that being abducted hasn’t been great fun, but I have a date with Detective Ramirez.”

  She flinched at the sound of the low rumbling growl that started in his chest and worked his way up out of his throat. “You’re not going anywhere, Riley,” he said. “And if you like this Ramirez at all, you’ll forget about going on any dates with him. I seem to be somewhat unstable even hearing of the idea.”

  The look on his face was possessive and predatory all at once. He suddenly resembled a feral jungle animal defending its territory.

  She so hadn’t had enough coffee for that. “Are you going to start peeing on the walls next, to mark your territory?” she asked, all sweetness and light. “Because we had a tomcat who did that when I was a kid.”

  She smiled up at him. “My dad had him neutered.”

  One moment, he was standing across the room from her, and the next he was right up against her body, crowding her backward until her butt hit the dresser. “I’ve already faced one female who wanted to neuter me,” he whispered in her ear. “Trust me on this. If I could survive her, my balls are infinitely safe with you.”

  She bit her lip, flustered. The scent of him, oddly like sunlight on seawater, clean and bracing, filled the bare inch or two of space between them. She had the oddest urge to bury her nose in his neck and simply stand there, inhaling him.

  She raised her hands to his chest, instead, blocking him. “I didn’t—I mean—your balls are safe—oh, heck. All I meant was that I have to go to the police station and make a statement. Detective Ramirez is the lead on the case.”

  Conlan’s shoulders relaxed, and the aggression he’d been radiating went down a notch. Cautiously, Riley lifted the mental shields she’d placed around her emotions earlier. She and Quinn had practiced for hours as kids, at first building pretend brick walls and then, as they grew older and more sophisticated, pretend titanium doors in their minds.

  Quinn had claimed all her doors were made of kryptonite, but Riley had just laughed. “It’s not like we’re ever going to face any superheroes, Quinn,” she’d said one day when they were on opposite ends of their twelfth year.

  “You never know,” Quinn had replied, dark and dramatic as always.

  “What is kryptonite?” Conlan asked, fingers twining around a strand of her hair.

  “What? How did you . . . oh, right. I opened the door,” Riley said, at first startled and then resigned. “Well, since it’s already open, let’s go for broke.”

  With that, she lifted her hands to his face, braced herself, and for the first time in her life sent her emotions, her thoughts, and her curiosity winging inside of another person.

  And was nearly brought to her knees.

  Strength. Courage. Honor. Duty.

  Glimpses of the past.

  A man, graying, with Conlan’s eyes, stood next to a woman so beautiful that Riley gasped.

  Mother. Father.

  Shift: A boy, it had to be Ven, and another, the scary healer guy, maybe? She wasn’t sure, since the boy with the green eyes so like Alaric’s was smiling.

  She didn’t think the healer had ever smiled.

  All of them riding horses, laughing.

  Shift: Rows of men, all huge, muscled, gorgeous, naked to the waist, sparring with swords and daggers in some kind of arena.

  Shift: Fires. Knives. Teeth, no, fangs. Pain. Searing, agonizing, ripping pain. She was dying—no, he, he, it was Conlan, they were torturing him, they were killing him . . .

  “No!” she screamed, her hands falling away from his face as she fell backward into the strength of his arms. “No, no, no, no, no.”

  As he lifted her gently, held her in his arms, all she could do was sob.

  Conlan stared down at the woman crying in his arms and felt the walls he’d built around his heart start to crumble. He literally heard the crashing sounds of the bricks and mortar, and all he could think of was how badly he needed to get away from her.

  As he started to release her, she clutched at his arms and looked up at him through pain-drenched eyes. “Damn them for what they did to you. I hope you track them down and rip their bloody guts out. I’m so sorry, Conlan. I should—I should never have intruded on your privacy.”

  She slowly reached up to touch the scar at his throat. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated, whispering. Then her eyes narrowed and she met his gaze again, her expression ferocious. “I hope I get a chance to run into any of the ones who hurt you. They won’t hurt anybody else, ever again.”

  He blinked, unable to remember when words had touched him the way hers did. She wanted to protect him. She wanted to avenge him.

  The cracking sound of those walls he’d built up inside himself turned into an avalanche.

  He tightened his arms around her again, burying his face in her hair. “Never apologize to me for your grace and your light, mi amara aknasha.”

  She pulled away a little and looked up at him through the tears running down her face. “What does that mean?”

  He shook his head, the lump lodged in his throat rendering him unable to form the words in English. She’d really think he was insane if he let her know he’d called her his beloved empath.

  Speaking of insane, he probably had about ten seconds before Ven came pounding on the door. He sucked in a huge breath and pressed a kiss to her forehead, then dropped his arms and stepped back. “Riley, I know this must feel like you got dropped into the middle of one of those horror movies Ven loves so much, but you have to trust me—”

  Riley flashed a brilliant smile at him, wiping the tears off her face. “Trust you? Are you kidding? After what I just saw, I’d trust you with my life.”

  Relief washed over him, loosening the clenched muscles in his neck and shoulders. “Good,” he said, trying to smile. “Because you may have to.”

  Chapter 17

  Riley followed Conlan down a long hallway lined with classic horror movie posters. She stopped, laughing, in front of the toothy tomato decorating the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes poster and then turned her gaze to The Blob.

  “Steve McQueen,” she mused, tracing the edge of the frame with one finger. “I loved this movie.”

  Conlan held his hand out to her and grinned. “You and my brother are going to get along just fine.”

  As they rounded the corner into some kind of large games room, she jerked to a stop at the sight of the crowd of enormous men who sat, stood, leaned, and basically filled up every ounce of space. Well, the men and the cartons, boxes, and trays of food that covered every spare inch of surface. The room looked like an invading army had
stopped by for breakfast.

  God, they were huge. No wonder they needed to eat all that food. It probably took a zillion calories a day to feed each one of them. She closed her eyes for a moment, reaching inward to be sure her titanium-door emotional shields were firmly in place. She didn’t want a repeat of the night before.

  Almost to a man, they all shot up to attention and stared at her, most of them grasping the handles of the daggers they wore.

  Would you like some coffee with your instruments of death? She covered her mouth to try to stop it, but she had an insane urge to laugh. Stress giggles, Quinn called it. Except Quinn rarely got them.

  Riley always did.

  She tightened her hold on Conlan’s hand and lifted her chin to face them, the flash of hysteria draining away at the sight of the deadly intent on their faces.

  “This is Riley Elisabeth Dawson,” Conlan said. “She is aknasha , and she is welcome among us. Please accord her all courtesy.

  “Riley, let me introduce my warriors. These are the Seven, my most trusted comrades. You know Ven, of course,” Conlan said, gesturing to his brother.

  “Ah, yes, the classic movie buff,” she said, smiling. “Steve McQueen rocks.”

  Ven grinned at her from across the room, holding up a half-eaten bagel in salute. “You are clearly a superior judge of films, Lady Sunshine.”

  Conlan continued. “Lord Justice.”

  The one with the long braid of blue hair and the sword, still strapped to his back, nodded, unsmiling. She nodded in return. The man would be drop-dead gorgeous if he ever smiled. She glanced at the sword. Maybe he preferred just being drop-dead.

  “Bastien.”

  The giant leaning against the far wall, a doughnut box clutched in his huge hand, smiled at her. “My pleasure, Lady Riley. Anybody brave enough to jump on top of a bloodsucker, unarmed, to defend my prince is golden with me.”

  She felt her cheeks heat up again, all the way to the tips of her ears. “Just Riley, please. And thank you. It was maybe more stupid than brave, though.”

  Another warrior, with an easy smile and a mischievous look to him, bowed. “Christophe, my lady. And most of battle is more stupid than brave, is it not? ’Tis why men wage it, not women.”