Wild Hearts in Atlantis Page 7

  He nodded, caught her hand in his and kissed her fingertips. “Yes, but all Atlanteans have free will, mi amara. It was my choice to serve as a warrior of Poseidon. The sea god marks each of us at our dedication ceremony,” he replied, touching a hand to the strange symbol marked high on the right side of his chest.

  She traced its outline with her fingers. “What does it mean?”

  “It offers testimony to my vow to protect mankind. The circle represents all the peoples of the world. Intersecting it is the pyramid of knowledge deeded to them by the ancients. The silhouette of Poseidon’s Trident bisects them both.”

  He smiled crookedly. “Even one good only for his strength has the opportunity to serve well in Poseidon’s service.”

  “Why do you do that? Why do you discount your intelligence?” she asked, brows drawing together. “Your strength is not all that you are. Somehow, I have seen inside you to the fierce intelligence you don’t admit even to yourself. You plan and question and plot strategy with the best of them, don’t you?”

  “But—”

  She cut him off, nodding sagely. “Oh. Your prince isn’t very smart, though, is he?”

  “What? Prince Conlan is a brilliant leader. His—”

  “Really?” she said, tilting her head. “So Prince Brilliant chose you as liaison, huh? Guess he must have known what he was doing.”

  He gently tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “You are also very wise, are you not? Fierce in your defense of one as unworthy as me. Had my heart not been captured to your will before, you would have just won it.”

  She trembled, unable to breathe. “Your heart?”

  “From the day of my vow until this night, I have never found reason to question my loyalty to my duty. But looking at you, holding you in my arms…”

  “And mi amara?”

  “Means my beloved.”

  Heat rushed through her at the words and at the expression on his face—that of stark possession mingled with fierce longing. “Shh,” she said, laughing a little, trying to pretend her universe hadn’t just turned upside down. “There is no need to question anything right now. We never question loyalty on an empty stomach, right?”

  He blinked, then shouted with laughter. Something chained in her heart broke free at the sound of his unfettered joy. “Ah, yes, my little cat. I am indeed hungry. But it is not for the food we purchased.”

  In an instant, he had her on her back and underneath him as he grinned joyously down at her. “I’m of a mind to sample my dessert first this night.”

  It was a long, long time before she was able to form another lucid thought.

  Bastien watched Kat as she lay sleeping and wondered why Poseidon had seen fit to bless him with this woman. He could never deserve her.

  No, but the gods do not give only what we deserve. It is the nature of their caprice. And perhaps she is not for me.

  Everything in him rebelled at the thought. Perhaps she was not meant for him, but that did not mean he would ever give her up. If Prince Conlan could break with eleven thousand years of tradition and marry a human, surely he—not royal by a single cell of his makeup—could make his own choice, as well?

  If she will have me, I will be hers.

  As he stared down at her, the emotion welling inside him forced the words up from his heart. From his soul. Words that he spoke in his native tongue, ancient Atlantean, as if to underscore his vow:

  I offer my sword, my heart, and my life to protect your own

  From now until the last drop of ocean has vanished from the earth

  You are my soul.

  She stirred in her sleep, but didn’t waken. Simply uttering the words had freed something in his heart and stirred his body to urgency again. He leaned over her, tempted to wake her and join with her once more, but decided to let her rest. To put her needs ahead of his own.

  Oh, boy. Next I’ll be taking out the garbage and shopping for curtains.

  Grinning, not nearly as bothered by the thought as he should have been, his thoughts turned to something nearly as important as love—food.

  He rose silently from the bed, intent on stealing into the kitchen and preparing a feast for her while she slept. She had mentioned a hunger other than the one they had sated so well together. Let her learn that he had other skills than death and justice.

  He was a fantastic cook. And what was the old saying? The way to a shape-shifter’s heart was through her belly?

  Laughing softly, he drew on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from his bag and headed for the kitchen. Humming to himself, enjoying the peaceful and contented aftermath of his body’s fierce spending in hers, he reached in a cupboard for a pan and nearly missed the quiet call of Justice’s voice in his mind. Bastien? You brick-headed ox, are you in there?

  He accessed the mental pathway that only Atlanteans knew, save for Riley and her sister, and reached out to his fellow warrior. I am. Do you have something to report?

  We’re on your front step. You’re going to want to hear this.

  He strode to the front door and opened it to find Justice and Denal waiting for him. The dangerous cast to Justice’s expression sent ice racing up Bastien’s spine. “What is it?”

  Denal looked him up and down and whistled quietly. “Ho, boy. What have you been up to? Or should I say who have you been up to?”

  Bastien never changed expression, but lifted the youngling into the air by means of a hand around his throat. “Perhaps you will refrain from any further disparaging remark about Lady Kat,” he said, mild voice at odds with his actions.

  Denal nodded slightly as his face turned red, and Bastien lowered him to the ground. Justice’s eyes narrowed. “Why does this smell like trouble, my friend? She is a shape-shifter and well you know it.”

  Bastien inclined his head. “There are few things I seem to know anymore, but one of them is that Kat is my destined mate. How I resolve the conflict that brings is between me and Poseidon.”

  Justice laughed, not unkindly. “Oh, Bastien. You have depths none of us dreamed of. And I’m guessing Alaric and Conlan will have a few things to say about it.”

  Bastien shook his head. “We will discuss this later, if at all. What news do you bring?”

  “It’s Organos,” Denal said, rubbing his throat and looking warily at Bastien. “His so-called alliance with Ethan is a lie, just as Alaric said. He plans to use vamp mind control to bring all the shape-shifters on the East Coast under his thrall.”

  Bastien leaned against the porch railing. “Mind control? This has never worked on large populations of shape-shifters, or we would have had armies of them to fight throughout the centuries.”

  “Evidently Terminus and Organos learned some new tricks from some scrolls Anubisa gave to them and Barrabas before Conlan and Riley dusted him,” Justice drawled. “They’re trying it out in a small way now. Today Florida, tomorrow the world, sort of thing.”

  “We need proof,” Bastien said, remembering his pledge to Ethan. “The alpha gave me forty-eight hours to bring him proof, or else he allies with Organos.”

  Justice swore under his breath. “Yeah, about that. We had a nice little bloodsucker who sang like an undead canary, but he was so terrified of what the big bad O might do to him that he staked himself.”

  Denal grimaced. “Yeah, right in the car. It was disgusting. I hope I don’t get charged for a cleaning by the rental company.”

  Bastien and Justice both turned to stare at the young warrior, who squirmed a little under their incredulous stares. “Okay, okay, I get it, end of the world more important than my rental car agreement.”

  Justice rolled his eyes, then turned back to Bastien. “In any event, we will need to go back to the source, so to speak, a dive bar in Miami, and get another songbird if you need proof.”

  “And keep any sharp wooden objects away from this one?” Bastien prodded. “In the meantime, I’ll arrange a meeting with Ethan to let him know what you found out and what’s going on now. Once you br
ing me the evidence, you can report back to Atlantis and relay the news to Conlan, Ven, and Alaric.”

  Justice grinned at him, not moving an inch.

  “What?” he asked, impatient to be moving. Doing something to protect Kat and her pride of panthers.

  “For one so reluctant to take up the mantle of authority, you wear it well,” Justice said, still grinning.

  Bastien paused, realization dawning. In the past, he might have looked to Justice to form their strategy. He glanced at the house. The knowledge that Kat slept inside, still wrapped in the scent of his body, had forged steel in his mind to match that in his spine.

  He was a leader now, and a leader could not give in to petty annoyances. He bowed slightly to Denal. “My apologies, my friend. I should have informed you of my feelings before expecting you to respect them.”

  Denal rubbed his throat again, more dramatically, then flashed his boyish smile. “No problem, man. It’s worth it to see the mighty warrior laid low by a kitty cat.” He ducked back, still grinning, before Bastien could smack the back of his head.

  Justice leaped off the porch first. “To work, then. We shall return with all haste with your proof, Bastien. Happy hunting.”

  Denal was close behind him. “Say hello to the lovely ranger from me, Bastien,” he called out. Then both shimmered into mist and soared over the trees toward the ocean.

  Bastien watched them for a moment, then went into the house to wake Kat. Middle of the night or no, he needed to visit the pride’s alpha. Now.

  Eleven

  Kat rose slowly through several layers of warm, contented languor to the sound of her name and the feel of hands gently rubbing her shoulders. “Kat, you have to wake up,” the husky voice insisted. Sexy voice.

  Bastien’s voice. Her eyes flew open, and she looked up at his face. Not a dream, then. It had been real. He was real. “What is it? When is it? I’m starved,” she murmured, reaching to touch his cheek with her hand. Then she blushed, remembering where the last conversation about hunger had ended up. “I mean, for dinner, not—”

  He smiled, caught her hand, and pressed a kiss into the palm of her hand. “I would love to hear more of your hungers. I had intended to cook for you, also. But we must call on Ethan for a meeting.”

  She sat up, instantly awake. “What happened?”

  He sat back, face drawn in harsh lines. “Organos. Perhaps Ethan will heed my warnings this time, now that I have learned the true nature of Organos’s plan.”

  “Which is?”

  “To mind-thrall your pride. First you, and then scores of others. Once you are imprisoned by the vampires, humanity will be unable to win free of utter subjugation.”

  She shot out of bed, mind whirling, and pulled on the nearest clothes to hand, a pair of khaki pants and an old T-shirt. “Slavery,” she said flatly. “Just what my father never wanted. If we enslave the humans, and the vampires enslave us, the world truly will end, won’t it?”

  In some corner of her mind, she distantly noted that by “us” she had aligned herself with her shape-shifter pride. Irrevocably.

  Startlingly, he smiled as he stood. “You forget Atlantis, which is perhaps normal, considering you have so little experience with us. But we will fight the bloodsucker plan with everything in us, and the warriors of Poseidon are not an easy foe to defeat. Even now, Justice and Denal are on their way to gain proof of this plan that will satisfy Ethan.”

  She ran to him and hugged him, suddenly afraid that their moment would never return. Tears burned her eyes at the thought, but she furiously fought them back. A warrior deserved a woman worthy of him.

  He kissed her, hard, and then grasped her shoulders and held her from him. “You need to get out of here. Now. I will not allow you to be in any danger. If you were to be harmed, my heart would shrivel within me, more barren than ever before.”

  The tears spilled over, but she was shaking her head no before he finished speaking. “Ask me anything else, Bastien. But I will not and cannot leave you, nor my family. If my gift for calm was ever good for anything, it must be now.”

  “Does it work on vampires?”

  She blinked for a moment, and then her heart plunged down to her feet. “I don’t—I’ve never tried it on a vampire. I don’t know if it works or not.”

  His mouth flattened into a grim line. “I would doubt very much that it will, Kat. Vamps are immune to much that affects humans, shifters, and the children of Poseidon. They are already dead and thus impervious to many weapons dangerous to the living.”

  She cast around for a response more reassuring than we’ll have to find out, or something equally inane, when they heard it. A high-pitched, female—or feline—scream.

  The meaty thud that followed it.

  The booming echo of a voice so purely evil that it burned the edges of her mind. “Come out, man from Atlantis. Come out, half-breed. It’s time to play.”

  Terror turned her blood to ice. “Bastien, I know that voice. I’ve heard it before. That’s Organos.”

  He shot over to the window to look outside, then turned to face her. “Stay here. Do not, under any circumstances, look outside. I would spare you that, at least.”

  Then, before she could protest, he pressed one last kiss to her lips, shimmered into sparkling mist, and vanished.

  Twelve

  Bastien shimmered through the house, stopping only to retrieve his weapons, then returned to mist to fly through the open doorway and into the sky in front of Kat’s house. He prayed to all the gods of his ancestors that she would listen to him and stay hidden. He did not want her to see the broken body on the ground. She’d held no love for Fallon, but Kat was far too compassionate to wish to see her like this, sightless eyes staring into the night.

  He cast his senses out, while still in mist form, in an attempt to find the master vampire. Finally, he was forced to admit defeat and return to his corporeal form as he spiraled down to stand, daggers ready, in front of the house. “Do you fear me, then, evil one?” he called, shouting out his challenge.

  The chilling laughter materialized before its source. “Fear you, Atlantean? I think not. You are a minor annoyance, a boil on my ass, nothing more. I didn’t even bother to bring any of my blood pride along to deal with such a minor irritant.”

  Bastien impassively measured the vampire who floated down to the earth not a dozen feet from him. From the ghostly white pallor of his skin to the red fire flaring in his eyes, this one’s every feature proclaimed his dangerous nature.

  “A cape? Really? Isn’t that a little out of fashion?” He kept his voice level and amused, knowing that nothing knocked a master vampire off balance faster than facing one who was unafraid.

  True to form, the vamp hissed with rage. “You dare? Do you see what I did to the pathetic alpha’s mate? She wanted to strike a bargain with me, can you countenance it? A puny female cat daring to match wits with one of more than a thousand years of power?”

  “She was a fool.” Bastien slowly dropped one dagger to the ground, retaining the dagger in his left hand, and drew his sword with his right. “I am not.”

  “Yet you do not ask the nature of the bargain,” the vampire mused, slitted eyes watching every move Bastien made. “Are you that confident or merely that stupid?”

  “Perhaps you should decide, undead one,” Bastien returned calmly, uninterested in being drawn into wordplay with the creature.

  The vampire laughed, and the sound of it skittered down Bastien’s spine like the chittering of a horde of death beetles in ancient Egypt. Death whispered in its wake. “Oh, but I want you to hear this. I smell the half-breed whore’s pussy on you, so you might find it of interest.”

  Snapping his head up, Bastien fought to contain his rage. Barely restrained himself from charging at Organos’s filthy head, sword raised to slice the undead head from its neck. He clenched his jaw and said nothing, but called water to form ice shards and flung them at Organos, aiming to slice the vamp’s head from its neck.
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br />   The vamp laughed and lifted one hand to deflect the ice. It melted in midair. “This one begged me to suck the life out of your half-breed. Although I killed Fallon for her boldness, it might amuse me to turn the ranger to my use. I can think of many uses for a beautiful woman in thrall, especially one who has the strength of both of her natures to help her survive my darker urges.”

  A haze of violent rage, so dark a red it was nearly purple, spilled over Bastien’s vision, as fury blazed through him. “You will not have her,” he roared. He leaped straight into the darkened night sky, calling upon the element of air to drive him toward his enemy.

  Organos sneered and waved a hand in front of himself before disappearing and reappearing directly behind Bastien. The agony of a dagger between the ribs brought Bastien crashing down to his knees on the hard ground, his sword falling from suddenly nerveless fingers.

  “Simple enough to defeat an Atlantean, then. I wonder at Terminus’s weakness, if the rumors are in fact true?” Organos said, voice filled with scorn and contempt as he floated down to stand before Bastien, then reached down to snatch his sword from the ground. “Perhaps I will preserve your head to grace my wall.”

  As the vampire raised Bastien’s own sword to kill him, the warrior gathered himself for one last, desperate attack.

  The sound of her voice stopped them both. “Oh, Organos, you can do better than that. You can have me, willing, if you let the Atlantean go.”

  Bastien looked up at Kat, standing defenseless before the ancient vampire, and his heart shriveled in his chest.

  Kat feigned bravery, when really all she wanted to do was curl up and hide. Fallon, though no friend, especially after what she’d just overheard, had not deserved to die like this. The first man she’d ever loved knelt, bleeding, on the ground in the shadow of a master vamp’s upraised sword.

  She admitted it to herself, though it made no sense. Somehow she’d already fallen in love with this fierce warrior. “There’s no way I’m going to let him die,” she muttered.