by Alyssa Day
Easy. I killed all of them but one, and he was eager to talk to me, then.
Griffin: Lucas! You can't act as judge and jury all on your own. You should know that by now…
Jake cut in: What did you do with the last one?
Lucas glanced over at Burns, belatedly realizing that he hadn't heard the gurgling breaths or moans for a minute or two. The man's eyes were fixed and open, staring forever into the eternity he'd undoubtedly spend in the worst of the nine hells.
Lucas shrugged, feeling nothing. Not triumph; certainly not regret.
I killed him, too.
That's when one of the dead shifters turned out not to be dead after all, as Lucas discovered when the blow smashed into the back of his head.
After that, all he saw was blackness.
3
Crackles Fish Market, near Green Cove Springs
The warehouse stank of fish and bad decisions.
Rhiannon Charles didn't have time to notice much beyond peeling paint on walls and giant tubs of ice before somebody shoved her. She stumbled and caught herself before she fell to the concrete, but she still didn't start fighting them until they turned a corner and she saw the cage. Then she stopped walking and started shaking her head.
No, no, no, no.
"Move,” the one she didn't know—dead eyes, deep brown skin, mahogany brown hair, shaped like a barrel--growled. "We don't have time for this.”
"No freaking way,” she said, whipping her head around, looking for a way out. Any way out, even though she knew their preternatural speed beat her pair of worn Keds, so running was a nonstarter. There wasn't much point in trying to fight off wolf shifters, anyway; they were far stronger than mere humans like herself, as they constantly, tediously, unceasingly liked to tell her. Even those who shifted into smaller creatures—birds or foxes or any of the smaller cats, like lynx or puma—carried superhuman strength in their human forms.
"You agreed to this,” Yardley growled, tightening his grip on her arm. Yardley--six feet tall and maybe three feet across, pasty white skin and horrifically bad breath--was a burly bear—literally—of a man. He was covered with thick, curly hair (even on his ass, or so his girlfriend had confided in a case of TMI) and had small, black, mean-looking eyes. "Remember what's at stake.”
She laughed wildly, almost hysterically, and he glared down at her.
Remember what's at stake.
As if she could ever forget. The thought of her precious daughter was the only thing keeping her sane right now. Stevie was only four years old and didn't know what was happening or why Mommy had to go "do some work for Uncle Yardley” instead of reading bedtime stories. Rhi gulped down a sob. At least Viola was at Rhi's apartment with Stevie. Viola was her one friend; the bond made almost against Rhi's wishes and certainly against her better judgment. But Viola had also watched and made no attempt to stop the shifters from taking Rhi away from her daughter.
Friendship was just another avenue of betrayal, and the closer the relationship, the deeper the hurt. Rhi had learned that lesson in such a hard, hard way.
But she was glad to have Viola now, or she would have been forced to trust one of the shifters with Stevie. She would have tried her best to kill them all before she'd have let that happen, and probably died in the attempt. Common sense didn't often win the battle against the ferocity of the mother instinct, though, so this was better.
Or so she tried to tell herself.
Except…the cage.
It was shining silver steel. Tiny blue sparks snapped and crackled in the far-left top corner. Electrified, then.
She froze. "What the actual hell? I said I'd help you; well, actually, you threatened my child, which forced me to help you, but nobody said anything about an electrified cage!”
Rhi was about a quarter-inch away from panic, and the roaring in her ears was the sound of her heart racing and her lungs serving notice that hyperventilation was next up on the evening's menu of horrors. "No. No, hell no, a thousand times no.”
"Now,” Yardley ordered, and he half-dragged, half-carried her to the cage and tossed her in. "You don't get a choice. Stay there. Your company will be here soon. Come on, Plusick. We need to go pick up the delivery.”
He snapped a heavy padlock into place, and they turned to go.
Rhiannon shouted at their backs as they left, but she might as well have been shouting at the fish. They never even looked back once. Still, she couldn't give up the...thought? Hope? Useless wish? that somebody might be around to hear her, so she kept shouting long after they left her alone in the cage. When her voice started to give out, she forced herself to think rationally and plot her escape.
That's how she'd managed to get away from Seattle, after all. Logic. Calm, logical planning, a small stash of emergency cash, and a jar of the peanut butter she'd craved so much during the early days of her pregnancy.
The corner of the cage was still sparking, so she stayed far away from the bars as she did a complete three-sixty turn and surveyed her surroundings for any possible help. The cage itself was a no-go. Steel bars were set deep into the concrete floor, and the bars would probably fry her eyeballs if she touched them. The battered warehouse still functioned as a working shop, clearly, though it was empty now. Late at night on a Wednesday, that made sense. After all, how many hours a day could you sell fish? Even on the east coast of Florida?
No convenient guns, knives, or baseball bats lying nearby. They'd taken the small backpack she used as a purse, which held her Swiss Army knife and her cell phone.
Viola! Maybe her friend was calling for help even now?
The brief flare of hope died a painful death. Viola was part of the shifter pack. She wouldn't—couldn't—disobey pack orders. Even for Rhi and Stevie, no matter how much V claimed to love them.
She heard conversation coming toward her and looked up to see Yardley and Plusick coming back, but this time they were carrying a man.
She moved closer to the cage door, trying to ignore her concern for the fate of the man they were carrying. It was easy to ignore uncomfortable twinges of conscience when the stakes were so high: Situational ethics at its finest.
She was disgusted with herself, but it wasn't going to change what she had to do. Stevie was all that mattered—all that could matter.
"Okay, you got him. Now let me out.”
Yardley laughed. "Not a chance. Now is when you earn your pay, so to speak. You need to find out who this Atlantean is working with and what their plans are. We don't have room for screw-ups with the H Prime job.”
"He's from Atlantis?”
"He's lucky he's alive, is what he is. The son of a bitch killed six of ours,” Yardley snarled. "Once we find out what he knows, he's a dead man."
Plusick unlocked the cage and they tossed the man in. He hit the floor hard, his head bouncing off the concrete with the boneless motion of someone who was well and truly out.
Or dead.
Hysteria climbed up the back of Rhi's throat. No way was she staying inside the cage with a dead body. She rushed the door, but Yardley pushed her back and closed and locked the cage.
"When he wakes up, find out everything he knows. Or else you're going to be in there a long time,” Plusick said, smirking.
A wave of fiery rage blasted through Rhi with a force that shook her body, and she screamed out her frustration and fury.
They laughed at her. They laughed.
"When I get out of this cage, I'm going to find a way to hurt you for this. Hurt both of you.”
And get the hell out of northeast Florida and try to find someplace—anyplace—in the world where there was no local shifter pack to take any interest in her daughter.
"Scream all you want. Nobody can hear you but the fish,” Yardley taunted.
The two men gave her one last, long smirk and then left the room. Rhi scrubbed angrily at her face to wipe away the tears she hadn't realized she was crying and then turned to look at the... Atlantean, so she could see if he was ev
en alive or not.
Dead men couldn't tell her anything, after all.
Her first impression: He was covered with far too much blood to be alive.
Her second impression: He was huge.
If he survived, and he woke up, she'd be stuck in a cage with a very large, muscular, wounded, and almost certainly enraged man who looked like he was a bad-ass soldier. She studied his face, and her eyes slowly widened.
Correction: a stunningly gorgeous badass soldier. Damn, but those cheekbones were amazing. And he was built like an action hero crossed with an orgasm. He had to be half a foot taller than her five six, and most of that was pure muscle.
And why was she noticing his looks, when he was going to wake up any minute and kill her? When did she turn into a stupid bimbo in a B movie?
He groaned and rolled over onto his side, and terror seized her throat again. When he woke up, he was going to be massively pissed off.
And she was trapped in a cage with him.
She ran toward the front of the cage again and shouted for Yardley, but neither he nor his thug friend Plusick came back. She was on her own, in an electric cage, with a man who very well might be a killer. He groaned again, and the sound shattered her attempt at rational thinking.
There was no way out.
She was going to die.
Stevie would be left without a mother.
She was—
The man opened his startling gray eyes and his gaze snapped instantly to her.
He started to scowl.
She started to scream.
4
Head: aching
Body: lying on cold stone
Mood: Pretty damn mad
Lucas stared up at the screaming woman and winced. "Can you maybe take it down a notch?”
Her mouth snapped shut and the horrible noise stopped, thank the gods. He rolled over and up to his feet and scanned the room as he slowly backed away from the human female who shared his cage. She might be small and loud, but deadly things frequently came in small, loud packages with humans, he'd found. Like guns and grenades.
She was quite likely to have a gun concealed in her jacket. After all, they were in Florida.
"Stay over there,” she said, narrowing her eyes. They were beautiful eyes, a luminous golden-brown, but they were also flashing an angry "I'd like to kill you” message at him.
Lucas winced and reached up to feel the lump on the back of his head. Stupid, stupid, stupid. If he'd taken two minutes to check that every shifter was all the way dead, he wouldn't be trapped in a cage with an aching head and an achingly beautiful, loud, and potentially dangerous woman.
The building was empty, but not abandoned. Large bins filled with ice were arranged around the huge room, and the smell of fresh fish permeated the air.
"Why are you in here?" He was pretty sure she wouldn't tell him the truth, since humans rarely told the truth. But the way she lied to him would give him some valuable clues as to what the hell was going on.
"I'm a prisoner, pretty much the same as you," she said.
"How long have you been here? Who put you in here? Where is here?" He reached out for the bars, wondering if he'd be able to simply bend them out of his way. Not all metal was created equal, and some he could bend with superior Atlantean strength.
"No!”
He froze.
"The bars have an electric charge running through them,” she said in a calmer voice. "You shouldn't touch them.”
Lucas blinked. Maybe he had a concussion from that lump on his head, because he should have noticed that. Now that he scanned the bars, he could see blue sparks snapping in the corner.
"Thanks. I appreciate the warning,” he told her, but she bit her lip and didn't respond, leaving him to wonder if she regretted giving him the caution. Smart choice, if so. After all, she was trapped in here with a warrior she knew nothing about.
He looked at her again—really looked at her this time—and almost whistled. She was beautiful. Curvy, lush body in a yellow-and-white dress that was short enough to show off tanned legs. White jacket that might be hiding a weapon. Orange shoes that told him she probably had a sense of humor. Burnished red-brown hair surrounded her face in a riot of curls and told him she was maybe a little bit wild. Those glowing golden eyes and a sprinkle of the cinnamon-colored marks the humans called freckles.
To his Atlantean sensibilities, she was exotic. To his male sensibilities, she was sexy as hell.
"What? Why are you staring at me?" She raised her chin and glared defiance at her, but she also folded her arms across her chest in a way that told him she was scared, and that gave him an unexpected twinge of remorse.
"I'm sorry. I'm just thinking," he said quietly, trying not to frighten her further. Instead, he tried to send out a call for help on the Atlantean mental communication pathway, which he should have done the moment he woke up, but his brain was so damn fuzzy.
Lucas? Griffin? Jake? Denal?
Silence. Not one of them answered. He tried again, with the same result, and then sent out a general call to all of Atlantis. At least some of the guards must be tuned in; the night shift at the docks, or the palace guard, surely.
Silence.
"This is not good,” he muttered.
"No shit, Sherlock,” the woman said, rolling her eyes.
"Lucas.”
"What?”
"My name is Lucas, not Sherlock,” he told her patiently, wondering who would name their kid Sherlock. Although most Atlantean names were rather … ornate, so who was he to cast stones?
She sighed. "Yes, I know your name isn't Sherlock. It means—”
He was instantly suspicious again. "How did you know that? Know what my name isn't, I mean?”
Huge golden eyes blinked at him. "Because nobody's name is Sherlock. Except the actual Sherlock…you know what? Never mind. Why are we even talking about this? I need to get out of here.”
"Good idea. Watch this and be amazed, human,” he told her.
He called to his magic, so he could transform into his mist shape, which would blow her tiny human mind. He called...and nothing answered. No mist, no magic.
Nothing. At. All.
He did not disappear, he didn't turn into mist, he didn't amaze or astonish the woman, except by his stupidity. Because Atlantean magic didn't work when the Atlantean trying to use it was surrounded by electrically charged metal. Neither did Atlantean mental communications.
Electricity was bad news; very bad news. Electricity was one of the few forces on or below the earth that had the power to interfere with Atlantean magic.
He was a complete idiot.
Damn.
He blew out a breath. "This is really not good."
The woman, however, was having a great time.
"Oh, boy. I'm so amazed,” she said, waving her hands in the air and dramatically widening her eyes. "Woot! Amazed. So, so amazed.”
"Don't test my patience,” he growled, suddenly having even less of that commodity than usual.
The amusement faded from her face and she stepped back a pace, putting as much distance as possible between them. He didn't know if she even realized she'd done it, but, clearly, he was intimidating her, maybe even scaring her. Not necessarily a bad thing—usually humans responded to fear--but perhaps not the best way to get information now, either.
On the other hand, he'd never been accused of being charming, so perhaps intimidation was his only card to play.
He glanced at her again; at her eyes glowing wide and frightened in the dim light, and suddenly all thoughts of intimidation faded away. So. He wasn't charming. He could at least try for reasonable.
He blew out a breath. "Let's start with the easy one. Where are we? Or were you unconscious when you got stuck in here too?”
"We're inside a fish market in Green Cove Springs, Florida."
"Strange that nobody ever noticed the cage with iron and silver bars built into their floor," he said dryly. "Or are there bigger, scari
er fish off the coast of Florida than I've ever heard of, so big that they need a cage?”
"You should know about scary fish,” she said, defiance clear in her stance. "You're the one from Atlantis.”
She said it like it was her trump card; as if he hadn't known he was Atlantean.
He laughed. "Yeah. Not a lot of fish inside the dome when we were underwater and none on Atlantis now unless they're in aquariums.”
She tilted her head, and he realized she was trying to get a peek at the side of his neck, so then it was his turn to roll his eyes.
"No. We don't have gills, and we're not mer-people. Damn, do all you people live your lives believing everyone you meet stepped out of the pages of a comic book? Please. I'd kick Aquaman's ass.”
The corners of her lips quirked up, and he realized she was fighting a smile. Good. Maybe she was letting her guard down. Time for the strip search.
Strip search? Where in the nine hells had that come from?
Gods. Suddenly, he had the mind of a horny adolescent. But, damn, she was pretty. Her eyes were so expressive, and she had such a seductive mouth with sensual lips that were made for him to...
What was happening to him? He was trapped in a fucking cage, and he was lusting after a strange woman? Poseidon was going to kick his ass, forget Aquaman.
"All right, talk. Who put us here? What's your name? Are the fish guys the ones who captured us?"
She clenched her fists and scowled in what he was pretty sure was an honest expression of real anger. "No. That was the shifters. My name is Rhiannon. The shifters put us both here. Now quit ordering me around and tell me who you are."
He took a step toward her, slow and careful. Nothing to cause her to pull the gun she might have in her pocket. Time to throw her off-balance.
"I'm Lucas. Yes, from Atlantis. Currently way too busy to be stuck here. You have beautiful eyes. I'm going to have to search you for weapons.” He took another step.
She blushed, and he tried not to be delighted by the rosy pink flush warming her cheeks, but he couldn't help himself. How long had it been since he'd seen a woman blush?