Atlantis Unmasked Read online

  She stood frozen, her body trembling with an emotion he was afraid to try to name. The sounds of the trainees talking, sparring, and laughing faded to nothing more than a dull buzz in his ears. As he and Grace stood unmoving in a bizarre tableau, and the seconds ticked by one after another, underscoring her silence—her utter silence—he felt hope turn to ash inside him.

  He should have expected no better. He’d been a fool to hope. Grace was the descendant of a goddess. She deserved better than a broken warrior.

  She deserved better than him.

  He let his hands fall from her face and began to turn away, but she caught his hands in her own and stopped him. “What is it that you want?” She sounded breathless as though she’d been running. But had she been running toward or away from him?

  “I want to see you shoot those arrows,” he replied, the vice grip that had been squeezing his lungs loosening a fraction of its hold. “I want world peace, freedom from tyranny, and a very large piece of pecan pie.”

  He leaned down until his face was only inches from hers. “I want you.”

  And then, because the need was too great, and to kiss her would have been to take her, right there in front of the gods and everyone, he stepped back a pace and unsheathed his daggers. “You mentioned a challenge?”

  Grace lifted her chin and took a long, deep breath. Then she slowly removed an arrow from the quiver hanging on her shoulder. “You’re on, my friend. Dinner is definitely going to be on you, but I’ll spring for the pecan pie.”

  She turned and shouted for Sam to clear the area in front of the targets, and then flashed a seductive smile back over her shoulder at Alexios. “You can go first, if you like. Age before beauty and all that.” Then she started to laugh. “Although I think you’ve got me on the beauty front as well.”

  “You think I’ve got you,” he said slowly. “I like the sound of that.”

  Sam, Michelle, and the dozen trainees lined up in rows on either side of the target area, loudly calling out their favorites and bets for the challenge.

  Grace smiled and shook her head at them. “Hey, a little more respect here. Loser’s buying you yahoos dinner.”

  She raised her elegant wooden bow and fitted the arrow exactly where she wanted it in a graceful motion that was second nature to her, the bow a natural extension of her arm. Her breasts rose with the motion, straining against the fabric of her shirt, and his mouth went dry again, but this time for an entirely different reason.

  He bowed toward the trainees and then to Grace. “After you, my lady.”

  She leaned toward him a little, opening those lush lips, and he instinctively bent closer to hear. “There’s something you should know about me, Alexios. I choose my targets very carefully, and I never, ever miss when I aim,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “And now I’m aiming at you.”

  With that she whirled to face the target, pulled back her bowstring, and let the arrow fly. True to her word, the point struck dead center in the bull’s-eye of the large straw target that stood twenty yards directly opposite her.

  A cheer went up from their audience, and the man who’d had the effrontery to touch her earlier whistled. “Yeah, Grace! That’ll show him.”

  Alexios bared his teeth in a fierce approximation of a smile and lifted one of his daggers over his shoulder, judged the distance to the target next to Grace’s, and then threw it with exacting precision. The dagger struck right in the heart of the red circle.

  Another cheer went up, and he heard Michelle’s British voice rising above the others, “Twenty pounds on Grace!”

  “Let’s make it more interesting, shall we?” Grace said, another arrow already in her hand. “Five more each, and we’ll shoot simultaneously. Whoever has the best array at the finish will be declared the winner.”

  Words didn’t seem like enough. He threw back his head and laughed, sheer joy rising through his limbs, bubbling in his veins, and clearing out the cobwebs in his soul. She had courage as well as the grace that bore her name—a fitting match to a warrior, in every way possible. “As you like, my lady. Be warned, though. I plan to eat a very large dinner. I hope your pockets are full of cash.”

  With that, he took aim and threw dagger after dagger into the heart of his target. The challenge wasn’t the target; it was to keep from being distracted by the way his entire being strained toward Grace.

  But he’d trained for centuries to succeed in spite of any distraction, no matter how intense. He threw the daggers, one by one, and his aim was true with each. After he’d released all six of his daggers, he smiled with satisfaction at the way they clustered so tightly in the bull’s-eye. Nothing with a thickness greater than the tip of his smallest finger would have been able to fit between any of them.

  He’d won. She’d buy dinner, and then he would have her for dessert.

  He turned toward her, the satisfaction of victory fighting with the tiniest sliver of regret that she would be disappointed. But nothing remotely like disappointment showed on her face. Instead, bright triumph glittered in her gaze and smile.

  He shot a glance at her target. Five arrows stood in a circle in the center of her own bull’s-eye, their feathered fletching still quivering with the force of impact.

  “Five?” he said, frowning. “But—”

  “I have one more.” She fitted her sixth and final arrow to her bow, then, staring directly at Alexios the whole time and never once turning her gaze to the target, she let the arrow fly. The thunk of arrow on target was followed by a brief hush and then the sound of a dozen sharply drawn breaths.

  Still staring at Alexios, a smile twitching at the edges of her lips, Grace slung her bow over her shoulder again. A resounding cheer made it impossible for him to hear what she was saying, though her lips were moving.

  He had to know. He spun around to see her target, but it was unchanged. Five arrows stood tightly together, the work of an expert archer. Puzzled, he glanced at his own target and realization dawned. His was the one that had changed. Dead center, nestled in the midst of his six daggers, her final arrow stood proudly in feathered triumph.

  He bowed. “I must concede defeat and offer forfeit.”

  “Well, you do owe us all dinner now.” She was glorious in her triumph, color high and eyes sparkling. It took a more than heroic measure to force himself not to jump on her and carry her off like some ancient spoils of war. Yet it had been she who claimed victory. The thought of himself as a conqueror’s loot made him laugh out loud again.

  “I will buy the dinner. And after dinner . . .” He let the unfinished statement hang there in the air between them like a promise. Like a wish. After dinner, he and Grace would see who would triumph in their personal challenge. He let the heat of it show on his face, and she trembled just a little.

  Later, he would tease her, touch her, and taste her until she trembled like a seabird caught in a gale.

  “Dinner and much more,” he promised. As the crowd came rushing up to congratulate Grace, he moved toward the target to reclaim his daggers, allowing himself to think thoughts long banished of silken limbs and heated passion. She was a conqueror, his Grace.

  But tonight he would conquer her.

  Chapter 14

  Later that evening

  Grace’s skin felt hypersensitive, as though her nerve endings had been scraped raw and repositioned for maximum stimulation. She was antsy, tense; her breath caught in anticipation of something so momentous she couldn’t quite comprehend it. It was an emptiness that needed filling; it was an ache that needed tending.

  It was a wanting so deep and powerful that she couldn’t stretch her mind around the contours of it.

  She stood at the edge of the parapet, staring at the sea, trying to focus her mind on the mission. On her orders. On the very real concern that she hadn’t heard from Quinn or Jack.

  Or the meeting with the Fae in two days.

  But there was no room for any of it in her mind; the space was filled with Alexios
. His laughter—so rare, but she’d heard the low, rich tones of it a couple of times during dinner. The kindness in his eyes when she’d seen him sneaking scraps to Sam’s dog upon their return. The breadth of his shoulders in his elegant but simple shirt; the fabric so starkly white against the deep tan of his forearms and throat. The line of his neck as it curved into that sculpted jaw.

  The deep, deep blue of his eyes.

  She heard the tapping of ridiculously high heels and smiled as Michelle approached.

  “Do we need to have that chat about the birds and the bees?” Michelle leaned against the edge of the wall and smiled innocently up at Grace. “I popped by the store and picked you up some condoms,” she continued, dropping into an exaggerated whisper. “Not really sure they even knew about such a thing in his day. Don’t want you having any unexpected Atlantean bundles of joy.”

  A tendril of wistfulness crawled through Grace at the unexpected thought of carrying Alexios’s child, but the unfamiliar emotion was quickly followed by shock. “What are you talking about?”

  “I saw the way you two were looking at each other,” Michelle said patiently. “Everybody saw the way you two were looking at each other. Better to be prepared, I’m only saying, before he sweeps you off to Atlantis or the closest bedroom, whichever comes first.”

  Grace wrapped her arms around her chest, huddling forward into the wind. “I know,” she finally admitted. “Don’t you think I know? But the timing is terrible. And he has so many issues—he’s been through so much—I don’t think I’m enough. I don’t think I could ever be enough to help him get through it.”

  She glanced farther down the parapet, to where Sam and Alexios were discussing something with great animation. Knowing guys, it was either the end of the world or hockey scores.

  “Do you think they have hockey in Atlantis?”

  Michelle blinked and looked at Grace as if she were nuts. Good call. “Hockey. In Atlantis. You really expect me to believe you’re thinking about hockey?”

  Grace changed the subject, suddenly realizing the four of them were alone. “Where did everyone else go? Off to bed so soon?”

  “They’re off to check out the local nightlife. You never even heard them leave, did you?” Michelle shook her head. “Lost in happy lustful fantasies, no doubt.”

  “Actually—” Grace broke off whatever she’d been about to say. Stupid. Girly. Having conversations about her feelings. Next she’d be hanging posters of kittens and rainbows in her office.

  “It’s okay, you know,” Michelle said gently. “It’s okay to feel. Okay to want an emotional connection with something other than your bow.”

  “I don’t have time or room for it. If I let down my guard, if I start to care . . . and then he doesn’t . . . I can’t, Michelle. I want to, but I don’t know how.” She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders. “I can’t let my brother down by becoming distracted from the mission, anyway. He died. Every day that I go on living, if I’m not working to win the battle, I’m failing him.”

  “Oh, honey,” Michelle said, putting a hand on Grace’s arm. “Do you really think Robbie would want this for you? This unhappy, lonely life? I knew your brother, remember? He was so full of life and joy, and you meant the world to him. If you want to dedicate your life to vengeance, perhaps consider that what he would want isn’t this grim existence of battles and blood and death. Maybe he’d want you to find love.”

  Love? Was it even possible? How could a human fall in love with a man certain to outlive her for hundreds of years? Were Atlanteans immortal? She didn’t even know. The thought of growing old and wrinkled while Alexios remained with her out of loyalty and obligation, though he was still as virile and vibrant as the day they’d met . . . well, it turned her stomach. She wasn’t particularly vain, except about her hair that she really should cut. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d worn lipstick, for Pete’s sake.

  But to grow old and feeble while he stayed young. No. She couldn’t stand the thought of it.

  “It’s impossible. He’s too old for me” managed to make its way out from her frozen vocal cords.

  “Maybe. But these Atlanteans are magical, Grace,” Michelle said. “Perhaps there’s a way around that, too. But we’re putting the cart far ahead of the poor horse. You don’t even know if you’d want to grow old with the man. Shouldn’t you give yourself the chance to find out?”

  A burst of convivial laughter startled her, and she glanced down to see Sam giving Alexios a friendly punch on the arm. Men. A good dinner, a few beers, and some war stories, and they were buddies for life.

  Why couldn’t it be that easy between men and women?

  “Maybe it should be. Easier,” she told Michelle. “Maybe I should quit worrying about what might happen eighty years from now and focus on now. On tonight. On whether sex can ever be as great as it’s cracked up to be.”

  Michelle’s smile was a little wistful around the edges. “It can be, when your heart is involved. Or, let’s be honest, sometimes even when it’s not.” She laughed. “But I have a feeling you’re going to find out. Just relax and be open to the experience, promise me? I can tell you care about this man, and—”

  A loud scraping noise sounded through the chill, dark air, cutting off whatever Michelle had been about to say and putting them into instant alert. Grace instinctively sought out Alexios, but he was nothing but a blur in the air coming toward her, and then he was next to her, daggers out, crowding against her, pushing her away from the edge.

  “Move away from my right arm,” she snapped, needing space to draw her knife. “I knew I shouldn’t have left my gun and bow in the room.”

  “It was dinner, Grace,” Sam said, moving in front of Michelle, holding his Glock at the ready in a two-handed Weaver stance. “Who takes a gun to dinner in a tourist town?”

  “Who but you, you mean? Funny man.” She reached into her pants pockets and through the openings cut in the bottoms of the pockets to the silver-bladed knife strapped to her right thigh and the wooden stake strapped to her left. “Alexios, can you see what it is?”

  “It’s trouble. Move. Now. There are too many, Sam, and I don’t want the women—”

  “To hell with that,” Grace cut him off. “Michelle, you should—”

  “Already on it,” Michelle said cheerfully, stepping out of her shoes. “Bet you didn’t know Louboutin made a pair of stilettos like this.” She scooped up her shoes and pressed something on the insides of each with her thumbs. Four-inch blades snapped out of the heels, glittering with deadly silvery light.

  “Good thing those damn rookies are gone,” Sam drawled, cool as the ice floating in a Georgia mint julep. “They’d just get in the way. Shifters or vamps?”

  “Both, maybe, but definitely shifters. At least ten on this side alone,” Alexios said, glaring at Grace. “I know you’re a good fighter, but you don’t have your bow, and I don’t want you caught up close and deadly with a few hundred pounds of shifter. Get the hells out of here and take Michelle and her little toys with you.”

  “When hell freezes over is when I’ll run away like a little girl and leave you to face those attackers alone,” Grace said, glaring right back at him.

  Alexios growled a threat, but it came out in jumbled-up English and Atlantean, and then it was too late, anyway, too late, because the first wave of them came over the walls, fangs and claws bared. Panthers. They were panthers, but they weren’t all in full panther form but an obscene hybrid of panther and human, and just when he had time to wonder how big cats had climbed a thirty-foot stone wall, the first one hit him hard.

  Alexios went down, smashed onto his back, but his dagger was swinging up, all of his power behind it, and it drove into the panther’s stomach and ripped a path through its entrails, drenching Alexios in guts and blood and rank stench. He heard shots—the Glock firing round after round; thank Poseidon for Sam.

  Alexios shoved the panther off him and rolled. In seconds, he was up and going afte
r the next one, scanning for Grace. She’d been backed into a corner by a huge black panther that was snarling and batting at her but not yet ready to brave Grace’s long silver knife.

  Everything in Alexios pushed at him, hard, to turn to mist, go to Grace, and fly with her clear off the roof to safety, only then coming back to rejoin the fight. But if he did, if he left Michelle and Sam and they died, any feeling Grace might have for him would die with them.

  He stayed. He fought.

  Sam continued to fire his gun to deadly effect, and now Michelle had a gun, too. Sam must have had a backup. Two more of the panthers, these a tawny reddish brown, leapt in tandem for Alexios’s head while another came in low and hot toward his legs.

  “I am not in the mood to have my nuts bit off by a panther,” Alexios shouted. He leapt up to meet the two coming by air, but he transformed during his leap so that the panthers passed harmlessly through his mist form and crashed into their companion on the ground. Sam and Michelle fired shots steadily, and first one, then the second, then all three panthers lay dead.