by Alyssa Day
Erin.
Riley.
And dark . . .
Anubisa.
Justice flinched, wheeling backward in the blackness of limbo. Anguish battled rage in the murky confines of his mind. Anubisa. Better not to think of her.
The sounds again. Something large moaning wetly in the dark as it lurched closer and closer.
But the face. The light. Her. The name. He fought for it; screamed silently into the endless emptiness of Night. Failing, always failing to achieve it. Her name.
Her.
The beast—beast? Monster? The nameless evil that approached him grunted out a series of growls, growing louder in its eagerness.
Focus. A name, not hers. Ancient wisdom passed down. Archelaus. A voice in his head.
Use all of your senses. Never rely on your mind alone. To underestimate your enemy’s potential to create illusion means death. Focus, or die.
Death. Was it his time? Would he even regret life’s passing? Philosophical thoughts unsuited for the eternal dark of Void, perhaps. Why not let death approach and conquer?
End the ceaseless pain.
An arrow of golden light shot through the dark, blinding him. Light after eons of darkness, burning through his retinas and stabbing into his brain, trapping him in its glory. Refusing to let him retreat.
The light centered around a face. Her face, surrounded by a flaming corona of red hair. Green eyes alight with a fierce intelligence, yet shadowed by remembered pain.
She was a conundrum. She was hope personified.
She was his.
Justice knew, and he was transformed. He roared out a challenge to the monstrous creature that approached him, even as the golden light seared through him again, nearly doubling him over with its heat and flame.
She was his. And her name was Keely.
Chapter 7
Archaeology Department,
The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
Keely folded her arms, realizing that both of the men in her cramped office could read her body language like a red warning flag, but not giving much of a damn. “I don’t care how prestigious it is, or what an honor, or which government is asking. I need a vacation.”
The powerful-looking man in the black suit opened his mouth to speak, but she held up a hand to stop him. “Look, Mr. Liam—”
“Just Liam,” he said, a trace of impatience in his voice.
She studied his chiseled cheekbones and the waves of silken black hair that were just a shade too long for him to be a standard-issue government flunky. The breadth of his shoulders and chest combined with his towering height didn’t add up to cubicle jockey, either. Not with that kind of muscle. But since when did civil servants start looking like ancient warriors?
Ancient warriors? Where did that thought come from?
Keely blinked, and suddenly she knew. The carving resting against her chest seemed almost to burn her skin. This Liam looked like him. Like her warrior. The one who had carved her fish. Something about the angle of the cheekbones, or the arrogant command stamped in the planes and angles of his face.
They could have been brothers . . . no, cousins, maybe.
Then again, jet lag could be making guacamole with her brain waves.
Almost as if he could see through her skull to her thoughts, Liam’s midnight-blue eyes narrowed and, for half a second or so, seemed to flash silver at her.
Right. The amazing changing-eye-color trick. Sheesh. She wasn’t just tired; she was at a whole new level beyond tired. Zombified, maybe. She suddenly felt in need of protection and glanced at her discarded gloves, which lay on her desk. But she didn’t need them; everything had been cleared. She was safe in her office. “Okay, Liam. Here’s the thing.”
She lifted her shoulders and rolled her neck to try to alleviate the tension that had knotted her up into hunchback status. “I spent eighteen months out of the past two years working the Lupercale, in three-month stints. Eighteen months, three cave-ins, one mugging, and two trips to the emergency room.” She shook her head. “You’d think my Italian would have improved more by now.”
George Grenning spoke up from where he hunched in a chair by the door, seemingly trying to fit his lanky frame into the smallest possible space. She’d worked with him for five years. George was a renowned researcher, frequent publisher, and Indiana Jones wannabe. Even though he was head of her department, therefore her boss, and had fifteen years of age and experience over her, he still didn’t have any self-confidence. “The Lupercale. The actual cave where a she-wolf nursed Romulus and Remus, the twin founders of Rome. I’d give my left arm to have been invited on that dig.”
Keely’s eyes narrowed, but George’s open, affable face showed only a touch of awe, no envy. Archaeology was a small world, and academic politics sometimes lent themselves more to backstabbing professional jealousy than any true camaraderie, as she’d learned, painfully, through her own experiences. Even though he outranked her in the office and in the field, her special . . . talent . . . meant that she was highly in demand.
Highly in demand, in spite of the fact that nobody she’d ever worked with had known that she was anything but normal. They all credited her with “amazing cognitive leaps” or, less generously, “women’s intuition.”
If she’d told them the artifacts literally talked to her, she’d be coordinating her future digs from the loony bin.
Liam turned the full effect of his “I am in command” stare on George, who shriveled even further. “Dr. Grenning, while I appreciate professional curiosity, I have very little time. Perhaps you could excuse us while Dr. McDermott and I discuss the parameters of our request?”
Keely almost laughed at the sheer nerve of the man. He’d just dismissed George from her office. “George stays,” she said flatly, lifting her Diet Coke and downing a healthy gulp. Maybe a little caffeine would help. “And you’re not the only one with very little time. I said no, so perhaps you should be on your way?”
Liam clenched his jaw, and the illusion of pleasant persuasion he’d worn like a mask faded, leaving stark arrogance and command stamped on his features. “I would be more than pleased to accept your denial, except that my high prince has tasked me with this mission,” he gritted out. “We are aware of your Gift, Lady Keely. We know you are an object reader, and as such you possess a Gift believed long lost in the waters of time. For that reason, and because of your reputation as a brilliant archaeologist of impeccable integrity, it is my honor to invite you to Atlantis.”
Keely’s laughter got trapped in her throat as she looked into his eyes, which now smouldered with pure liquid silver, distracting her. “How do you do that thing with the eyes? And, seriously? Atlantis? The lost continent? You—”
The beginning of his statement suddenly registered, and she shot an alarmed look at George, who was staring avidly at the psycho who claimed to be from Atlantis. “My gift? I don’t know what you’re talking about, and clearly you’re a nutcase. Atlantis, right. Sure, let me pencil that in.”
She pretended to scan her desk calendar, but the phrase “object reader” whirled in her mind, scratching at something buried deep. Ignoring it, she smiled sweetly and utterly insin cerely at Liam. “I can fit Atlantis in two weeks from now, right after I excavate Oz.”
Liam never cracked a smile. “I know not this Oz, but your priorities just changed.”
“Look, I’m going to call campus security,” she began, standing up and scanning her desk for anything she could use as a weapon if he got violent. The marble bust of Philip of Macedonia had possibilities, but it was too far away.
“Of course you must call whomever you wish,” Liam said. But in a movement too fast for her to actually see, he leaned across her desk and pressed something into her hand, then folded her fingers around it.
Instantly, the sheer age of the smooth stone in her hand registered in every one of Keely’s nerve endings. “No! No, my gloves—you don’t understand—”
Then the history enveloped her. Centuries
of presence whirled her into the maelstrom, and her body arched into a painful spasm as she fell across her desk, crying out, her last sight the slight hint of regret shadowing Liam’s face.
Unprepared—completely and utterly unprepared—she went under.
“I need you, my darling.” The words came from Keely’s lips but the voice was not hers. She looked down at the blue silken gown she wore over a voluptuous body and realized the body was not her own, either. As often happened, she was trapped in the vision—an active participant in the life of someone who’d had vivid emotions involving the object she held.
The object. Liam.
Memories of her office wavered in the back of her/their mind, misty behind the curtain of the vision. She looked down at the object, to see that she held an enormous sapphire that glowed as if tiny universes sparked to life inside it.
The sight of her/their hands drew her gaze away from the jewel. Rings adorned every finger and silver bracelets chimed like bells on her wrists as she moved her slender hands. Pale white hands that weren’t tanned or scarred with the remnants of countless scrapes from countless digs.
Hands definitely not her own.
Keely looked around the sunlit room, marveling at the exotic strangeness of it. Marble columns in corners were decorated with inlaid gems and a glittering copper-like metal. A bed large enough to fit ten people graced the center of the room, hung with sheer silk draperies in white, blue, and crystalline green. The room was open to a balcony that looked out on a city of crystal and marble towers and spires.
Then, beyond, a . . . dome. She/they knew the dome. It shielded the Seven Isles from the depths of the ocean. The Seven Isles.
Atlantis.
She dropped the gem from suddenly nerveless fingers, and a whisper of cold air sliced through the room to materialize before her as a man. Tall and outrageously handsome, his masculine beauty shivered a thrill of dark desire through her. He caught the sapphire before it touched the mosaic floor, then held it out to her. It caught the light and radiated sparkling shimmers of light from its heart. “It is unusual for you to be so clumsy, mi amara. Especially on such an important day. We crown our new king today.”
As if his words opened the gate to her other senses, she became aware of the distant sounds of many, many people shouting and calling out. Not in anger, but with a celebratory tone. The scent of roasting meat wafted through the room, unexpectedly making her stomach rumble a bit.
The man grinned, his eyes lighting up with wicked humor. “We must do something about your hunger, love, although it is other hungers I had hoped to satisfy before we must leave.”
Keely felt her cheeks warm, but she smiled at him, a bystander inside someone else’s body. “There is not time. You crown the new king, my love. As high priest to Poseidon, it is your duty and honor.”
He bent to press a kiss to her lips, and she caught her breath at the melting heat that swirled through her body. “It is my joy. As it will be your joy, I know, to gift this small complement to the Star of Artemis to his queen. Even as the Star itself is said to heal a warrior’s fractured mind, this has the power to soothe a wounded heart.”
“But what will heal the wounded heart of a kingdom that must remain buried beneath the sea?”
His brows drew together as his expression turned grim. “Not even Poseidon will venture an opinion on that. The seven gems of the Trident were scattered to every far corner of the earth before the Cataclysm. Until they are returned to their rightful setting, Atlantis cannot rise. The magic will turn against itself and the dome will be destroyed.
Keely gasped, the man/her husband’s words drumming a dire threat through the room. For an instant, Keely was positive that his words held great significance for her own time, but the realization faded as her host’s mind wrestled for control of its own consciousness and Keely’s own scientific mind perked up at the idea of gemstones with powers.
He grasped her shoulders lightly. “You must never speak of this, for none but the king and I, and now you, know the truth of the Trident. If it were to be widely known, our populace would lose all hope.”
She instantly thought of a dozen questions, and when better to ask them? Searching her host’s mind for the knowledge she knew was there, she formed the name on her lips. His name. “Nereus.”
As if the name held power, her host body’s consciousness took command of Keely’s speech. “Nereus, my love, my life. I wish them every happiness that we have enjoyed.”
As the man took her into his arms, his black eyes began to glow with a blue-green flame in the exact centers of his pupils. “As do I, Zelia, my wife. As do I.”
Keely lifted her face to receive his kiss, and when she closed her eyes, the world swirled down to black.
“Dr. McDermott! Keely!” Someone was shouting at her, the sound muffled by the ocean waves rippling across the surface of the dome. The dome . . . Atlantis.
Keely opened her eyes to the sight of Liam’s face framed by the shabby ceiling tiles in her office. Shocked to full awareness of where—and who—she had been, she stared into the dark eyes of the man who’d put her through it. “You look just like him.”
Liam’s arms tightened around her, and she realized that he held her in the air, cradled like a child. Her face burned with embarrassment. “Put me down, Atlantean. Now.”
With obvious reluctance he lowered her until her feet touched the floor. “Are you well?”
“As if you cared, you bastard. Do you have any idea—” She cut off in midsentence, a horrible thought crossing her mind. George. If he saw . . . all of her years of careful hiding . . .
Keely frantically scanned the room and was enormously relieved to see that George was gone. Unless he’d gone to find the people from the funny farm.
That would be bad.
She returned her fury to the man who deserved it. “Do you have any idea what it does to me to touch ancient objects with no preparation?”
She took slow, deep breaths to try to prevent the reaction, but it was hitting her hard. Her entire body shook so fiercely that she could barely stand, but when Liam reached out to steady her, she flinched away from him. “Take your damn sapphire, too.”
She threw it at him, and he caught it with the same preternatural speed and reflexes that the man in her vision had demonstrated. “Nereus. You look just like him,” she repeated bitterly. “Too bad you’re not a gentleman like he was.”
The Atlantean flinched back as though she’d struck him, then leaned toward her. “Did you say Nereus? You actually saw Nereus? There were rumors, but . . . that memory would have been embedded in the gem more than eight thousand years ago.”
She shivered and tried to make it to her chair, but he caught her and lifted her gently onto the battered old couch in her office. Before she could protest, he’d whipped his jacket off and placed it around her trembling shoulders.
“What can I do, my lady?” he asked her, crouching down before her. “What helps in this situation? Be assured you will have my utmost apologies, but they must hold until we have secured your well-being.”
She blinked, bemused by his sudden concern. “I don’t . . . well, tea. Actually, some hot tea with lots of sugar would help. George can—” She looked around, remembering that George was gone. “Where did he go?”
Liam’s mouth flattened into a grim line. “He ran like a scared rabbit when you collapsed. I assumed he wanted to go in search of an authority figure or for medical assistance. I was compelled to prevent that.”
She was instantly alert. “What did you do?”
“I did him no permanent harm, my lady. He is merely resting, and his memories are somewhat altered. It is a small talent that I possess.” He gestured with one hand, and she whipped her head around to see George lying flat out on the floor behind her desk, passed out cold, his skin bearing an alarming resemblance to the stark white of his shirt.
“You’re sure he’s all right? We need to call—”
“I swear to you on
my life and honor, and we will call for assistance for him in a few minutes.”
She subsided, since he was clearly able to stop her from going for help and George’s complexion did seem to be pinking up. A couple of minutes later, after the trembling subsided enough for her to be sure she was thinking coherently, she went after the facts. “You picked an interesting way to try to persuade me to accompany you.”
He raised his head in an arrogant gesture that made her suspect he really did have a high priest in his bloodline. “You have been chosen as one of only five human scientists to be allowed into Atlantis while we prepare to make the announcement of our existence to the world. Do you really need persuasion, Dr. McDermott?”
She stared at him for a long moment, knowing there was no way she could turn him down. Atlantis. What archaeologist wouldn’t drop everything to be among the first to explore its wonders? She’d give everything she owned for the opportunity, just as she’d always done. Sacrificed friendships and relationships for the thrill of the quest. The excitement of the discovery.
If she’d do that, maybe risking her job by ignoring her boss, for the Lupercale, what wouldn’t she do for Atlantis?
There was no doubt that it existed. Not after that vision. Or at least it had existed, thousands of years ago. Keely’s visions had never, ever been wrong.
Still, believing it was there to be found today was a leap in both faith and logic. The former was no strength of hers; the latter told her to stay put and escort Liam to the door.
But . . . Atlantis. The mere thought of it caused her jet-lag-induced exhaustion to vanish. Even the chance it was something more than a fantasy-fevered dream of every archaeologist, historian, and scholar in the world was worth pursuing. She knew she’d made her decision the moment she’d seen those crystal spires.
Still, it ticked her off to give in so easily, especially after he’d knocked her sideways with that trick with the sapphire. “I’ll give you my decision in forty-eight hours,” she said firmly.
A gleam of amusement lit his dark eyes. “Unfortunately, I need your decision in the next forty-eight seconds, or I’ll have to wipe your memory clean of this encounter and go on to the next archaeologist on my list. A man by the name of Lloyd, I believe. He does not have your Gift, but . . .” He left the threat hanging, unspoken, in the air.