Atlantis Redeemed Page 24

  Memories of just how hot his body temperature was flashed into her mind, and her cheeks warmed up quite a bit. He smiled that slow, seductive smile of his, and she was afraid that he knew exactly what she’d been thinking about.

  “Tell me about Susannah,” he said, surprising her. “If you can bear to talk about her.”

  She thought about it before responding, but realized she really did want to talk about her friend. She never had before, except for the basics, to Rick and a few others. She’d had a friend who was a shifter. Who’d been killed in a confrontation with police.

  Tiernan had never really told anyone about Susannah. She discovered that she wanted to share her friend with this man whom she might actually have been able to love, under different circumstances.

  “She loved coffee, which was a great quality in a roommate. All day long, not just in the morning,” she said, smiling at the memory. “All of those fancy, flavored kinds, you know. Irish cream and gingerbread spice. She’d surprise me on the weekend with breakfast in bed, sometimes, always trying to get me to try a new kind of coffee.”

  “She sounds like a wonderful friend,” he said. “I cannot imagine Alexios bringing me breakfast in bed.”

  She laughed a little at the idea, but her smile faded as reality crushed in on her. She was trapped in a cell that she might never escape with her mind intact. She’d—she’d—

  “I killed that man,” she whispered, the image of his bloody body vivid in the forefront of her mind. “How can I live with that?”

  She stared at Brennan, searching his face for answers. “How do you live with it?”

  “You live with it because you have no choice. He was attacking you, and you were defending yourself. You did not intend to kill him, even though you had just seen him torturing your friend.” He held out a hand, as if to reach for hers, but then lowered it before it touched the bars. “Tiernan, you have no blame in this.”

  “I know you believe that, but I definitely have blame,” she said bitterly. “I dragged you into this through my arrogance that my crack undercover reporting would get us in, get the story, and get us out. All the blame goes on me.”

  Brennan’s face hardened and, if possible, grew even grimmer. “And I am a warrior with centuries of experience in dangerous situations. Is not mine the greater fault?”

  “But—”

  “No. Enough of fault, please. Tell me more of Susannah. You said she brought you breakfast in bed. Was she a good cook?”

  She pulled his shirt more tightly around her shoulders, sinking into its warmth and his clean, seawater scent for a moment before she answered. “I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to distract me.”

  “Is it working?”

  “A little,” she confessed. “The mind has an amazing capacity for denial, doesn’t it? If I think about Susannah, I don’t have to think about what might happen to me tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow Alexios will arrive with Lucas and reinforcements, and we will be safe,” he said, his eyes glowing hot again. “Tonight you will tell me about Susannah and then rest.”

  So she did. Susannah, who’d had an odd quirk of her own: she never lied. She was, in fact, a psychology major, studying lies and human behavior. Everyone else had seen her as rude and abrasive; total honesty was nearly impossible to live with in polite society. But it had been a wonderful quality in a friend and roommate for Tiernan. So peaceful to be around someone who never jangled her nerves with the discordant clamor of lies.

  Tiernan had even liked Susannah’s boyfriend. He was a nice guy. Easygoing. The only lies he’d ever told, at least around Tiernan, were of the “your hair looks great with that new cut” variety.

  It had been a glorious, golden time. “Peace,” she said, “is vastly underrated. Silence, too. For nearly four entire years, I spent most of my time, other than class or working, with Susannah, and toward the end of that time, with both of them. So much silence and peace and—even better—the musical beauty of utter truth.”

  “You had no other friends?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t need any other friends. I tried, but I always had to escape when they’d start lying. I couldn’t bear it anymore, you know? I’d been so spoiled by Susannah. She had a few other friends, which was great, since I enjoy time to myself, sometimes, so I’d hang out in our apartment when she went out.”

  “But something happened,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

  “Something happened. Yeah, that’s one way to put it.” She clenched her hands together, hoping to stop them from shaking. “Something happened, and then she died.”

  Brennan needed to comfort his woman. He would have given his sword arm for the ability to break through the bars and lift Tiernan into his embrace, then vanish through the portal to Atlantis before the guards could raise a finger, let alone one of those damned guns. But the portal wasn’t answering his call, he couldn’t reach Alexios, and he was alone, completely powerless, trapped in a concrete cage far underground and far, far away from the haven of the Seven Isles.

  If—no, not if. When he got her out of here, he was going to tie her down to keep her from taking any more risks. Just the thought of what she must have done before she met him was enough to turn his heart over in his chest. She was fearless and stubborn—a bad combination in a warrior, but at least a warrior had weapons training and the skills to get himself out of corners. A journalist . . .

  He stopped, forced to admit the flaw in his logic. He was a warrior of great renown, and what good had training and skills done him? He was just as trapped as she.

  “She was a shifter, as you saw upstairs before all hell broke loose,” Tiernan said abruptly. “A fox shifter. But guess what? I lived with her for four years, and the first time I ever saw her in fox shape was on that video. The first time I even knew what she was?” She turned an anguished face to him. “The night she died.”

  “She never told you?”

  “She hid it. I don’t know how she managed, because she never lied to me, but she did. I never suspected a thing.” Tiernan laughed a little, but it was a bitter laugh with little humor in it. “I never asked her, ‘Hey, do you turn furry at the full moon and run around eating rabbits?’ after all, but, still, you’d think one of those times she was out all night I would have caught something off about her story when she came home.”

  “It’s not a normal thing to wonder about one’s friend,” Brennan said gently. “You should not blame yourself for not suspecting.”

  “It wasn’t a normal thing until about eleven years ago. But now everything is normal. Friends who are shape-shifters. Police officers who are vampires. Vampires in Congress, for God’s sake. Don’t you think Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers are rolling in their graves?” She narrowed her eyes. “Did you know Thomas Jefferson?”

  He smiled, but shook his head. “No. I did, however, meet Sacajawea once. You remind me of her. The same fearless, adventurous, questioning nature. She would have liked you.”

  Tiernan’s eyes widened, but he could tell she liked the idea. It pleased him to distract her, even for an instant, from the pain of her story and her fear about their current situation.

  “That’s the oddest, yet maybe the best, compliment I’ve ever gotten,” she finally said.

  He remembered something she’d said to him. “Stick with me, kid. You’ll have a new experience every day.”

  Recognition dawned in her eyes, and she smiled. It was just a tiny smile, and it faded instantly, but it had been real. Real enough to let him know that she was strong and resilient and could survive this, just for a while longer. Long enough for Alexios to find them.

  He refused to think about how, exactly, Alexios would find them when Brennan could not reach out on the mental pathway. Somehow, Alexios and Alaric would find a way. No matter if they didn’t, either. All he needed was the slightest opening.

  “That’s the look,” Tiernan said, lowering her voice even more as two new guards came in t
o relieve the pair on duty. “Your predator face. Oddly enough, it makes me feel safe.”

  They fell silent then, closing their eyes and pretending to rest, as the new guards spent some time near the bars, taunting them. It was easy enough to ignore them. They were nothing. Litton was the one in charge. Of the thugs, only Smitty had the power and the brains. None of the others had anything to say that Brennan felt it necessary to hear.

  Brennan watched Tiernan through barely open eyes, afraid to close them for too long. Afraid that even a few minutes without her in view would trigger the curse. She was pretending to doze, but every line of her body was tense and held in readiness to defend against an attack. She had courage, his woman.

  His mate.

  He would never let her be harmed.

  Time passed, perhaps half of an hour, and the guards grew bored with their games and retreated to the comfortable chairs over by the far wall, where they pulled out drinks and snacks and began a discussion of sports and women. Or women playing sports. They mentioned something called roller derby, but Brennan had no reference for the term.

  It was irrelevant anyway. All that mattered was that they leave Tiernan alone, so perhaps she could get some actual rest. Her shoulders were slumped down and she seemed to be relaxed, so perhaps she truly had fallen asleep. He was glad of it. She needed rest.

  She opened her eye, proving him wrong. “Susannah wasn’t just a fox shifter. I mean, that wasn’t all she’d been hiding from me. She was pregnant, too.”

  He took a second to get his bearings in the story that she’d taken up as though they’d never been interrupted. “Pregnant? This is hard to hide, even for humans, yes?”

  She smiled a little. “Yes. Or, at least it’s hard to hide after a certain point. She was still in her first trimester, and her belly was almost perfectly flat. I never would have guessed for quite a while, with the loose dresses she liked to wear anyway. It’s not like we walked around the apartment naked, having slumber parties, right?”

  Brennan lifted his head from his folded arms. “Could you perhaps elaborate on that last?”

  She tilted her head. “What part? Oh, trimesters? It’s—”

  “No. The naked slumber parties, please.” He flashed his best fake leer, and she laughed, just like he’d hoped she would.

  “Been watching too many Atlantean Girls Gone Wild videos in your lonely old age?”

  He nodded, heaving a deep sigh. “Alas, I am severely deprived of wild girls in any form or manner.”

  “How do you do it? How do you make jokes when we’re . . . when things are so dire?” Her voice was steady, but her eyes were pleading.

  “I do it because things are dire,” he told her. “When the situation is at its most bleak, you discover your inner resolve. Laugh in the face of danger, life is darkest just before the dawn, and all of those horrible clichés that are no less true for being overused.”

  He cast a surreptitious glance at the guards and then eased the tiny vial Alaric had given him out of his pocket. “Also, I do it simply because I can. I have never been able to make jokes in two thousand years. You cannot imagine the tonic effect the simple sound of your laughter has on my wounded soul.”

  “Was that a joke, too? Your wounded soul?” She stared at him, all humor gone from her beautiful face. “Your speech patterns are so different. Sometimes you sound almost modern, and then you’ll toss in one of those ‘two thousand years’ comments or ‘wounded soul’ and I’m thrown off.”

  “I cannot help that. Imagine if you had lived the first decade of your life in France, the next decade in Spain, and the next in Germany. Your French would have German and Spanish words mixed in, don’t you think?”

  She nodded. “I’ve heard you speaking another language. Is that Atlantean?”

  He shot a look at the guards, but they were laughing about something and paying their prisoners no attention. “Yes, but let’s keep that between us.”

  “Conlan told me as much, when I swore my oath of secrecy the first time I visited.” Her gaze dropped to his hands, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “What is that?”

  He slowly pulled the stopper free and shifted position, pretending to yawn and stretch, then he coughed. While his hand covered his face, he squeezed two drops of the potion onto his tongue. It immediately burned its way down his throat like liquid fire.

  Whatever was in it, it certainly felt like it was working.

  He shifted position again, stoppering the vial and hiding it back in his pocket. Hopefully they would not force him to strip again. He’d been lucky the first time, hiding the vial in his mouth when he’d tossed Smitty his clothes, but he doubted he’d get something past the mercenary a second time. Unfortunately, there had been intelligence in those cold, dead eyes.

  Tiernan was still staring at him, but her eyes were narrowing and he could tell she was about to demand answers, so he forestalled her with a dollop of information and another question. “Alaric gave me a little pick-me-up to keep me from falling asleep. I can’t afford to take the chance, after what happened this morning. Tell me more about Susannah. Was she happy to be with child?”

  “Will it be enough?” she whispered, ignoring his clumsy attempt to change the subject. “Will it work?”

  “I don’t know, but I feel a surge of energy even as we speak,” he said, and it was true. A wave of tingling heat was washing over him, shimmering sparkles through his vision until Tiernan appeared to have been dipped in silver gilt. The image made his cock jump in his pants, which made him groan at the exceedingly inappropriate timing for his libido to make an appearance. Desire apparently did not care to give way to danger or even sheer impossibility.

  “Brennan? What are you thinking?”

  “Trust me, you do not want to know,” he said, then turned the conversation back to somewhat safer topics. “Alaric gave me the potion, so it is almost blasphemy to think it would not do exactly what he ordered it to do.”

  “Do you really want to hear more about Susannah?”

  “Only if you want to tell me.”

  Tiernan took a deep breath. “The main thing left to tell is that she’s dead, and I killed her.”

  Chapter 29

  Tiernan remembered that evening as clearly as if it had happened only the week before. Forcing the words past the lump in her throat was entirely another matter. The shock on Brennan’s face for the few seconds before he’d schooled his expression back to his normal impassivity goaded her on, though. He needed to know.

  She needed to tell it. Finally, finally tell it.

  “I was working on a story. This story, in fact. The rumors of enthralled shifters had just started working their way around, and I had a source, and, well, I was hot on the trail. Staying up all night, fresh out of college, chasing down leads. The high—I can’t begin to tell you what it’s like. Believing you’re a champion for the greater good—” She stopped, mid-sentence, realizing what she was saying, and to whom.

  Brennan’s lips were turned up at the edges. “I think I might have an idea,” he said.

  “Of course you do. Well, then, you get it in a way few people outside of journalism, or I guess police work or medicine, can. It’s a calling. A need to help, to be part of something bigger than yourself. To right society’s wrongs.” She stopped and rolled her eyes. “Whatever. I’m babbling. But I was in the zone, on that high, and it was big. I could tell it was huge, and there was a Boston link. I had proof that a local scientist was involved in a conspiracy to abduct shifters and experiment on them.”

  Brennan leaned forward, his hands clenched into fists on his thighs. “You ran willingly into the middle of this?”

  “More than willingly. It was my story. I was the lead, I wouldn’t even share, for fear of being scooped. That night, I was supposed to meet a bear shifter who’d lost a friend to the abduction ring and had some information for me.”

  “A bear,” he said, biting off the words. “A bear shifter, one of the most dangerous kinds of shif
ters.”

  She nodded, watching him carefully in case he made a move to slam his head into the bars again. His muscles had all gone tense and hard, like he’d be happy to thunk her head into the bars. She understood the cause, because she’d seen inside his soul. He had a protective streak a mile wide.

  Except when it came to her. With her, it was as wide as the ocean itself.

  It scared her even as it sent a thrill through her. Nobody had cared enough to want to protect her for a long time, except maybe for Rick, and even with him, the story always came first.

  “Anyway, moving on,” she said, “Susannah picked that night to tell me about the baby. I was thrilled for her and she was so happy and her boyfriend was so happy, and I guess she decided to just put everything on the table, so she told me she was a shifter. A fox shifter.”

  Brennan nodded. “This made you unhappy?”

  “Not that she was a shifter. I thought that was kind of cool, had a million questions for her. But my mind couldn’t get past the fact that she’d hidden it from me, for all those years. She’d known she was a shifter since she was thirteen years old—and for four of those years, she’d hidden it from me. Her best friend.” She shoved a hand through her hair, frustrated, wanting him to understand. “We’d lived together, and all that time she never trusted me enough to share her deepest secret with me.”

  “It hurt you.”

  “It nearly broke me,” she admitted. “I had a childish temper tantrum, to be honest. Yelled at her that she wasn’t my friend, how could I trust her when she clearly didn’t trust me, that kind of thing. I hadn’t slept much in weeks, on the track of that story, and everything just exploded in my skull.”

  “You left for the meeting?” Brennan asked, his clear green gaze holding sympathy and something deeper. Shared pain. Of course. Corelia and the baby.

  She nodded. “I did. The last thing I ever said to this woman who was closer to me than any sister could have been was that maybe I should just move out and leave them to be one big, happy family.” She felt the hot, bitter tears slide down her face but didn’t bother to wipe them away.