by Alyssa Day
But he had witnessed the real thing, and the prospect of her going through such trauma again, on a far grander scale, froze the marrow of his bones with terror. She’d promised him she could do it. That touching the cushion would be bearable.
Even he, fiercely protective of her as he was, had to admit that the cushion itself had never seen battle or committed a single blood-drenched act. So it made sense that it would be bearable for her. Also, Keely had sworn that if he held her hand and gave her his support, she could do this.
He could do no less than match her courage. But they needed to get on with it before his own courage faltered again at the risk she was taking, even though the fate of his own fractured mind might rest on discovering the location of the Star of Artemis.
Finally, she stopped walking and stood, head bowed, her fiery red hair falling forward to hide her face from view. His fingers ached to stroke the silken strands away from her forehead as he pulled her close to him.
His arms ached to hold her and never, ever let her go. Lean on her strength to help him fight the battle waging within him. Her calm was the check to his madness, her light the balance to his dark.
She was his Keely. Our Keely, whispered the Nereid. Ours and only ours, forever. Let her do this one small task, and then we will leave this place until we gain the strength to use our combined powers to conquer. It is our rightful place, as heir apparent to Atlantis.
Justice recoiled and drew on all of his mental reserves to lock the Nereid away in a far corner of his mind. He didn’t know how long he could keep it under control, but he would never listen to treasonous plans from the poisonous stranger who lived inside his head.
Inside his soul.
He was doomed, and he was damned, and the only faint hope he had of surviving with any of his sanity intact lay in the strength of this human female.
“I’m ready,” she said quietly. So quietly he almost didn’t hear her. “I’m going to take off my glove now and touch it, but only with one hand. Sometimes that lessens the force of the impact. I’m not sure why.”
Slowly, reluctantly, she pulled off her left glove and dropped it to the floor. Turning to Justice, she attempted a small, wavering smile. “Hey, wanna hold my hand?”
She lifted her right hand, still gloved, and he leapt forward to take it.
“Always,” he said.
Her green eyes briefly shone with a flash of happiness or, perhaps, hope. Then they darkened again with grim resolve. “Okay, let’s do this thing.”
She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths, visibly relaxing the tension in her body as she prepared herself. Then her eyes snapped open and she grinned. “Feels like I should say something important or ceremonial here, but I got nothing.”
Before he could think of a reply, she reached out with her left hand and grasped the edge of the cushion farthest away from the Trident itself. Then her eyes widened until he could see white rimming her entire pupils. Her hand clutched spasmodically at his, and then a bolt of pure energy shot through her body and slammed him across the room. He crashed down on his back but was up in a second.
Keely screamed so loudly and with such anguish that acid seared through his stomach as he shot across the room toward her. Ven, swearing a flaming streak in Atlantean, headed for Keely. Conlan dove at the cushion to yank it out of her grasp.
But some kind of completely transparent energy shield, like nothing Justice had ever encountered before, bounced them all away from her and on their asses on the cold, hard marble floor.
Keely, still standing there with her hand grasping the cushion so tightly that her knuckles were white, shuddered and shook, still screaming. Her eyes rolled back in her head until he could see nothing but white, and he snarled and leapt toward her again.
He must reach her. He must protect her. He’d promised to hold her hand, always, and he was failing her.
The energy shield smashed him back again, and this time his head cracked against a wall a dozen feet away. He put a hand to his scalp and it came away bloody, but it wouldn’t stop him if it took a hundred tries, or a thousand tries; by all the nine hells and even those deeper, he would save Keely or die trying.
Suddenly, her screaming stopped. The unexpected silence cut through them like the sharpest blade. Keely’s eyes returned to normal, but emerald fire blazed from them as though something or someone more than just Keely looked out.
“He took it,” Keely said, her voice steady and clear, in spite of the convulsions racking her body. “Reisen took the Trident so that he could become the king. The House of . . . Mycenae. The House of Mycenae should rule. Poseidon made him pay for his arrogance. He . . . something about his hand. The vampires took Reisen’s hand.”
“How could she know that?” Conlan asked, awe infusing his voice.
“Justice could have told her,” Ven said, but Justice saw the doubt in his brother’s expression. They were starting to believe.
Another shock visibly raced through Keely, and she threw her head back, the cords in her neck straining. Still, her voice came through in measured cadence, no hint of the stress her body was under showing in her tone or in the suddenly lyrical rhythms of her words.
“Atlantis must sink beneath the waves, in order to survive the Cataclysm. Ragnarok. The Doom of the Gods. The burning. We will rise again. Send a full measure of the best and brightest of us out among the humans. Send them to the corners of the world. Each of seven groups shall take one of the gems of the Trident. The Dragon’s Egg. The Nereid’s Heart. The Star of Artemis. The Vampire’s Bane. The Siren. The Emperor. And, finally, Poseidon’s Pride. Only when all are together again will Atlantis be allowed to rise. If the gems are not together and the Seven Isles attempt to rise to the surface, no matter the magic or technology of the future, Atlantis will be destroyed.”
As she spoke her final words, she released her hold on the cushion and sank, unconscious, to the floor. Justice dove for her as she fell and encountered no resistance. The energy shield had vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
“Now do you believe me?” he demanded of his brothers, as he cradled her limp form in his arms. “Now do you see that her visions are true?”
Solemnly, both Ven and Conlan nodded. Such simple words to convince them all.
Such simple words, spoken plainly and fluently, but not in English. Nor in any other modern language that Keely could possibly speak.
She’d delivered her chilling pronouncement—flawlessly—in the language of the ancient Atlanteans.
None of them could doubt her now.
Chapter 28
Atlantis, the war room
Keely woke from a fractured dream of glittering gems and sun-splashed jungle to the sight of Justice staring off into the distance. Dark circles lay like bruises beneath his eyes, which had changed color again and were now blacker than a tomb robber’s heart. Fury rode the hard planes and angles of his face, and she shivered.
At her movement, he realized she was awake. He stared down at her with a pained expression of joy, relief, and anger. Warmth and color swept across his face like spring following the icy dread of winter, and his arms tightened as he pulled her against his chest, murmuring something too quietly for her to hear. She realized she was sitting in his lap, on one of the couches back in the palace war room, but she was too exhausted to waste energy on being embarrassed at the intimate position. Someone had pulled her glove back on her hand, and she was grateful for that small kindness.
“So, I guess I survived the Great Cushion Experiment, huh?” She forced a grin, but nobody returned her smile. Ven and Conlan stood in oddly identical positions a few feet away, with their hands behind their backs in a sort of parade rest. At her words, though, Ven dropped into a crouch so that he was on eye level with her and blew out a huge breath.
“Hey, Doc, you scared us. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just a little shaky,” she said distractedly, already searching through her memories of the vision for somethin
g useful.
Justice lifted his head from where it rested on the top of hers. “Never again,” he said harshly. “Never again will we allow you to go through that.”
She lifted a hand to his face, and he stilled at her touch. “There you go with the allowing again. I’m not very good at taking orders,” she said huskily, her throat raw.
Why was her throat raw? Oh. Right. There’d been screaming. She’d been screaming. She’d almost forgotten the pain, in the wonder of the vision, although she couldn’t imagine how. Pain had sliced through her until she’d been sure her arms and legs were being wrenched off her body. Slowly. By somebody who was seriously pissed off.
“Dare to mess with a god’s toys, and see where that gets you,” she said, shuddering. “Anyway, as far as touching anything that is anywhere near the Trident, you don’t have to worry about me trying that again.”
“Worse, it was all for naught. We now know nothing more than we did,” Conlan said grimly. “I offer my sincerest apologies that our trial put you through so much pain, Dr. McDermott. It is even more regrettable since we’ve learned nothing new.”
“Well, that’s not exactly true,” Ven said. “We learned the names of all the gems. We knew we were looking for the Star, which is a sapphire, and the Vampire’s Bane, a yellow diamond. We knew that the emerald we already possess is called the Dragon’s Egg, and that the ruby is the Nereid’s Heart. But evidently the aquamarine, amethyst, and tourmaline still missing are called the Siren, the Emperor, and Poseidon’s Pride, although which is which is anybody’s guess.”
“Alaric may know more about the gem names,” Conlan said. “You are correct, of course. All knowledge is power, and now we have more of it. However, we still have no idea of the location of any of the missing gems.”
“That’s not exactly true, either,” Keely said. “I know where the Star of Artemis is. Or at least I know where they took it when they left Atlantis.”
“What?” Conlan and Ven said at the same time.
“Oh. Sorry. It wasn’t a typical vision,” she said slowly, trying to be as clear as possible so they would understand. “Usually I’m an observer to an event that had violent or deeply emotional resonance regarding the object. Sometimes I actually become part of one of the people in the room. It’s like I inhabit their body as an extra consciousness, if that makes sense.”
Justice loosened his arms a little so he could lean back and look at her. “Oh, I think I grasp the general concept,” he said dryly.
She blinked up at him for a moment, then the connection clicked in her frazzled neurons and she laughed. “Does this mean we were made for each other?”
The humor in his eyes deepened to some darker emotion. “Keely, you have no idea.”
She forced herself to turn away from the promise—or the threat—in his gaze, faced Conlan and Ven again, and even laughed a little. “You don’t know how wild it is to actually talk to somebody about this without them trying to lock me up in a rubber room. Anyway, this was different, as I was saying. It was like I was watching an insane version of TV where all the channels were playing at once in HD, three-D, four-D, or supersonic-D.”
She shoved a hand through her hair, pushing it away from her face. “I saw where all of the gems went, but mostly just in flickers. I didn’t recognize any of the places, except one. The ruby is in some dark, smelly cave, for example. A really damp place, but there’s no way for me to know where.”
Ven and Conlan exchanged glances and then looked at her with growing respect. “Yes, we found the Nereid’s Heart in a cave under a mountain in Washington state,” Conlan said.
“The only place I’m absolutely sure of is where they took the sapphire. The Star of Artemis. I saw the mural on the wall,” she said, remembering the vivid colors in the vision. “I have a print of that mural on the wall in my office. A colleague was involved in the excavation. It’s the San Bartolo site.”
From the blank expressions on their faces, she was guessing they didn’t get the archaeological trade journals down here.
“San Bartolo,” she repeated, going into lecture mode. “It’s a pre-Columbian Mayan archaeological site in northeastern Guatemala. It’s mostly jungle today, but there was a large population during the Maya Preclassic Period. Dr. William Saturno from the Peabody Museum discovered a mural room in the base of the pyramid in 2001. They carbon-dated the murals to 100 B.C., which made them a hugely exciting find. They were the oldest and finest Mayan murals that had been discovered at the time, and—”
She stopped, midsentence, and gaped at them. “Oh. Oh, that must be it. Your ancestors. The ones who settled all over the world before the Cataclysm. They must be behind some of the world’s creation mythology. There is always a flood, and—”
“We know of the creation myths,” Justice said impatiently. “What of San Bartolo and the Star?”
“The mural. It’s the Mayan creation myth. They show images of gods, sacrifices, and trees. One of the sacrifices is fish, which some believe represent the oceans of the underworld.”
The smooth weight of the fish carving resting against her chest seemed to warm, but she didn’t pull it out from under her shirt, just filed the impression away in a corner of her mind and continued. “The one I found very interesting was the maize god. He’s looking behind him at a kneeling female, while another female figure with flowing black hair floats above the kneeling woman. They—”
“Anubisa,” Justice gritted out. “She delighted in images of her dominance over the male gods.”
Keely gasped. “Really? You believe that could be her? Even from way back then?”
Justice shrugged, his powerful muscles tensing and then relaxing against her. “It’s not that long ago, right? You said 100 B.C.? Hells, we just defeated Barrabas, and he was young by her standards.”
“Fine. Glamour shots of Anubisa on a mural with the god of popcorn. We get it,” Ven said, standing up again. “But what about the Star? If it can really help Justice, we need to know where it is. Not to mention the part about Atlantis not rising without it.”
Keely leaned back against Justice, suddenly exhausted. “I’m sorry. I got distracted. The Star is hidden in a niche in the rock. It’s placed precisely behind the eye of a fish.”
Justice stiffened and then jumped up, still holding her in his arms as though she weighed nothing. “Then we go there. Now. We recover the Star and—”
“Not so fast,” Conlan cautioned. “There must be Guatemalan guards on site, and the excavating team. Not to mention how are we going to explain that we want to deface an important historical site to pull out our astonishingly valuable, enormous sapphire and remove it from the country? I’m sure the Guatemalan government will have something to say about that.”
Keely struggled in vain against arms like iron bands and finally gave up. She fixed her fiercest professorial glare on Justice. “Let go of me, now.”
To her surprise, he did. But he kept an arm around her waist, almost as if he couldn’t bear to lose contact with her.
To her further surprise, she didn’t mind that at all.
“Government, guards, whatever. It’s not like they can keep us out, with Poseidon’s magics on our side,” Ven said.
Keely shook her head. “You don’t understand. The government doesn’t control the site anymore. A band of rogue vampires took over the entire Peten region a few years ago. Nobody has been able to get them out, even Interpol’s P Ops division. Too much jungle and too many hiding places. Without burning down the entire jungle, there’s nothing anybody can do. The nearest village is only a couple of miles away from the site, and they’ve been cut off from civilization for some time. From what I understand, they’ve been given up for dead.”
Justice started pacing the room, tension in every line of his body. “It’s Nereid in origin, isn’t it?”
“What?” Ven said.
“The Star of Artemis. Doesn’t the legend hold that it was originally a gift to Poseidon from the Nereid high
priestess?”
“Yes, that’s true,” Conlan said. “Some of us paid attention in class, Ven.”
Ven rolled his eyes. “I paid attention when it mattered. Ask me about the twenty-eight ways to kill a vampire without a weapon.”
“Twenty-eight ways?” Keely started a mental count, but could only come up with five. “Really? Can you show me—”
Justice blurred across the room until he was blocking her view of his brother. “If you think you will ever get close enough to a vampire to try any of those techniques, you are sadly mistaken,” he said, his voice pure silken menace.
“Hey, some of the worst grave robbers are vampires—”
“If it is of Nereid origin,” Justice continued, cutting her off, again, which was really beginning to be a very bad habit, “then I may be able to track it. If I go to the Guatemalan jungle and find this San Bartolo, even if the Star has been moved, perhaps I will be able to sense it.”
“Unless somebody found it and stole it thousands of years ago and it’s long since been cut up and set in a couple dozen necklaces and earrings,” Keely pointed out, a decided bite to her voice. “Also, quit interrupting me.”
“In any event, it is of no matter,” Conlan said. “You cannot go anywhere until Alaric has time to . . . visit with you.”
“Time to trespass in my mind, you mean,” Justice said darkly. “I’m in control for now. I’ve reached an accord with the Nereid. Do not force me to do something that might breach the fragile nature of that agreement. I will travel to San Bartolo and see what I can discover.”
“If you’re going, I’m going with you,” Keely said, and all three of them glared at her, turning the full power of their arrogant Atlantean warrior attitude on her poor little human female self.
Boy, did they have a lot to learn.
“Not happening,” Ven said.
“I forbid it,” Conlan said.