by Alyssa Day
Yardley. And he was laughing.
The list of people she planned to kill was growing longer every minute.
"No!” she shouted. "Please! You can't leave me in here. I have to get home to Stevie! You know her, Yardley. Please, she'll be so scared.”
A loud electric-sounding thump sounded, and then all the lights in the room went out.
They were leaving her and Lucas alone in here all night. Alone in utter blackness.
Rhiannon drew in a deep breath and screamed, as long and as loud as she could. "Help! Help! Helllllpppp!”
Silence was her only response. Then the sound of the large, metal door clanging shut.
"They're really leaving us in here,” she said to Lucas, feeling like her head or heart or both would explode any minute from a volatile combination of fear and pure, unadulterated, fury.
A light in the far corner of the room flickered on; it was the light from a low-wattage emergency sign over a small side door. At least they weren't totally in the dark.
"Good,” he said evenly. "Alone is better for us to figure out a way to escape. I need you to stay calm, okay? Stay calm and help me think.”
"Stay calm? Stay calm?” She whirled around to face him. "I am calm! Why wouldn't I be calm? I was kidnapped, taken away from my daughter and then shoved in a cage with a man—no offense—who I'm told is a murderer, and then a guy I thought was a friend, or at least friendly, yanks me out of the cage and beats the shit out of me.”
Lucas started to speak, but she held up her hand. "And now I'm trapped in the dark in the cage in a warehouse that smells like fish and my daughter is alone with a traitorous bitch—literally—and the bars are electric, and you tell me to be calm.”
She paused to catch her breath, pointed at him, and started shouting. "You listen to me, buddy. I. Am. Calm!”
Lucas studied her face for a long moment and then finally nodded. "Okay, but English is my second language. So maybe 'calm' doesn't mean what I think it means?”
Rhiannon blinked, startled out of her rant. Then she threw her hands up in the air and started laughing. It was laugh or cry, and she'd be damned if she'd cry even one more tear over this situation. It was time to take names and kick asses.
I'm coming, Stevie.
"Right,” she said briskly. "What do we do first?”
Lucas studied the bars, his face shadowed in the dim light. "First, I try to electrocute myself.”
6
Jacksonville Beach earlier that night, in a cottage rented by Savannah Hastings …
Jake, one of Poseidon's newest warriors, stared at Savannah. She loved him. He'd felt it—the true and profound love that the soul-meld had revealed to them both.
"You love me, too," he said wonderingly.
She had tears running down her face. "I saw inside your soul. Of course I love you."
Jake shouted out a laugh and pulled her to him, so her body was on top of his. "No matter what else happens, this is the best February in my entire life."
Savannah laughed and looked over at the clock on her bedside table. "Sorry, my love. It just switched over midnight, so it's not February anymore. It's March."
Jake kissed her again and rolled out of bed, with some idea of getting her something to drink or dancing around the room with joy like a drunken sailor, when a powerful mental blast of pain and terror knocked him to the floor. Griffin, the mage who was also a fellow Poseidon's Warrior, was roaring out his rage and pain on the Atlantean mental pathway, shouting directly into Jake's brain, which felt like it might shatter under the strain.
IT'S LUCAS! THEY'VE GOT LUCAS, AND I'M GOING DOWN. JAKE, YOU HAVE TO FIND PINE. HE KNOWS WHERE TO…
And then Griffin's voice cut off, and no matter how hard Jake tried, he couldn't reach him again. He tried Lucas—nothing. Atlantis was still unreachable.
Savannah was next to him, holding him, crying. "What happened? Your nose started bleeding."
"They're in trouble, Savannah. They're all in trouble, and I've got to go." He filled her in while he dressed on his body.
She grabbed for her clothes. "Then I'm going with you. We'll find them together."
Jake didn't even try to argue. He needed her with him if he was going to find a way to cure her. If Griffin and Lucas were dead—and Atlantis unreachable—she might die in the Transition. The falcon shifter had deliberately scratched her, knowing she'd be vulnerable.
Knowing that most human females died when their bodies attempted to Transition to shifter shape for the first time.
Jake was damn well going to try to stop it, but without a strong healer or—better yet—a mage, he'd have no chance. There was no way he'd leave Savannah to face the shift alone.
He slammed a fist into the wall. "It's turning out to be the worst March in my life."
Savannah, all long, lean muscles and tanned skin, paused with her shirt half-buttoned and flashed those striking blue eyes at him. Then she glanced at the bed, still mussed from the intensity of their lovemaking.
"Not all bad, though, is it?" She raised an eyebrow and almost smiled, but then her face returned to its somber expression. "Never mind, we'll talk about that later. Or, you know, not, if I go all feathers and talons."
She pulled the sun-streaked length of her blonde hair back out of her face and quickly tied it off in a waist-length braid. "Probably I'll be able to fly, though. That would be cool. Sort of like Superman, but not. Superbird!"
Her face crumpled, and she inhaled sharply, clearly trying very hard not to weep. "Now…now I'll have to worry about hunting season, right? If I'm not actually d—d—dead," she managed, and he yanked his own shirt over his head and practically leapt across the space between them, so he could take her in his arms.
"No. No. I won't allow it," he told her, and he'd never meant anything more. "I just found you. I won't let you leave me. Not now, not soon, not ever. You are the breath my lungs need to breathe—you are the blood my heart needs to beat. You're mine, mi amara, and I protect what is mine."
Savannah took a deep, shuddering breath and then nodded. "Yes. I believe you. Also?"
"Also?"
She stared into his eyes, her own gaze a shiny, drowning blue, and then she put her hands on his face, leaned in, and kissed him, hard and deep. A claiming kiss; a branding kiss, and with it she put her mark even more indelibly on his soul.
"Also, you're mine, and no mermaid is going to get you."
He blinked and then—despite the situation, despite the terrible danger they faced—he laughed. That she could make him laugh at a time like this…He wanted to worship her as a goddess.
He'd settle for loving her for the rest of their lives.
"It wasn't a mermaid. It was a Sea Fae. And she wanted to kill me, not--"
Savannah grinned and then pushed him away, so she could grab her shoes. "Sure, that's what you think. But I bet she wanted to play footsie with you first. Or would that be tailsie?"
Jake shook his head, but he knew what she was doing. Humor in the face of danger was one of the oldest coping mechanisms on the planet and beneath the waves. Suddenly, the idea of her facing all that danger swamped his nerve endings, and he wanted to take her and run, far away from Humanity Prime and rogue shifters and …
He couldn't run away from the change happening inside her body.
Still, he had to try to keep her safe.
"You could stay here--"
She cut him off with a glare so fierce he fell even more in love with her, his warrior princess.
"Forget it, buddy. Anyway, if we're going to find out what happened to Griffin and Lucas, we may need our cover at the H Prime retreat. If they find out I escaped, they'll just kill you and it's all over." She yanked a soft, hooded jacket off a peg by the door and put it on. "Let's go. Now. My best chance to reverse the Transition is finding Griffin, right? The pretty-boy mage with the icy silver eyes and the gorgeous white hair?"
"He's not that pretty," he growled.
Her lips quirked up in
a shadow of a smile. "I never liked pretty boys, anyway. I like hunky surfer guys who look exactly like you."
He closed his eyes and contemplated the immediate future—the possibility of losing his soul's mate as soon as he'd found her—and forced his knees not to buckle. Then he studied the woman who'd so quickly become more to him than anything or anyone in his life since the plague took his family.
How could he survive her death? The answer was simple: He would not.
"You will survive," he commanded. Then he pulled her into his arms and kissed her long and hard and deep.
When he finally pulled away, they were both trembling.
"Now?" Her eyes held a question, but they were also filled with love.
For him.
"Now," he said grimly. "And may the gods help anybody who tries to get in our way."
She opened the cottage door and waved him ahead before she turned and locked the door. "Are we going to fly again? The mist thing, I mean?"
"Absolutely." He closed his eyes and transformed into the most delicate magical shape that any Atlantean could access, that of water mist, and then held out his hands and pulled her close to him. "Ready to fly?"
A glimmer of excitement lit her eyes and a smile flashed across her beautiful face. "Let's do it!"
He launched them into the sky, faster than he'd moved when they'd left the H Prime compound, and with less consideration of concealment. It was dark. Nobody would see them. After all, as he'd told her, people never looked up.
And if they did? Well, to the nine hells with them.
Jake had to save Savannah, rescue Griffin and possibly Lucas, and figure out what was going on in Atlantis and why Denal wasn't answering their call. They had a mission to finish, and children and innocent adults to save.
And only a little more than eighteen hours to find a way to save Savannah from facing the Transition and possible—probable—death.
No problem.
He'd faced down a deadly Sea Fae and an entire ship's crew, hadn't he?
Damn straight.
"I love flying!" Savannah shouted over the sound of the rushing wind. "Maybe…maybe I won't hate being a falcon."
Jake tightened his mist-shrouded arms around her but said nothing.
Please, Poseidon, may she never, ever have to find out.
7
Savannah crawled through the window to their assigned room in the Humanity Prime compound, both relieved and amazed that, in fact, nobody had looked up. None of the H Prime thugs or the rogue shifter had gotten even a glimpse of one exhilarated girl from Ohio flying.
She'd managed to keep from shouting out the pure, exhilarating joy bubbling up inside her, but only just barely. Somehow, she'd left the terror of her immediate future—and maybe even her forever future—far down on the ground below them.
Now, though, back in the room that smelled like moldy concrete and broken dreams, the weight of their situation crashed down on her like an anvil off a cliff in an old cartoon. She stumbled a little when her feet hit the floor, but Jake was there to catch her.
Jake. Her personal Atlantean hero—a warrior who looked like a surfer boy—hair in wild waves of sun-streaked brown, skin tanned so dark from his adventures on that ship, and those brilliant green eyes that stared out at her from an incredibly gorgeous face.
"It's not fair that you're so beautiful," she blurted out.
He blinked, and then that sinfully sexy grin of his slowly spread across his face. "Pot, cauldron."
"What?"
"You calling me beautiful is the pot calling the cauldron black." He shrugged. "It means—"
"I know what it means. It's just that we say pot calling the kettle black. Or skillet."
"The skillet calls the kettle black?" He glanced back over his shoulder as he roamed the room looking for more listening devices.
She sighed. "No. The pot calls the kettle—never mind. What are we doing now?"
Those brilliantly green eyes iced over. "I'm going to search for Griffin. You're going to stay here, safely out of danger, with the door bolted."
Not a chance.
"Bzzzt! Wrong answer. You will not collect two hundred dollars or pass Go, my friend. Where you go, I go. Now let's find your friend." She started for the door, but he leapt across the room in one bound and stood, blocking her path.
"You are in danger here. I can't even believe I allowed you to return with me. If it hadn't been for the possibility that Griffin can help you, I wouldn't have--"
"Let me? Let me?" She poked him in the chest. "You're lucky you're gorgeous and make me have multiple orgasms, or I'd be forced to punch you. First, you don't let me do anything. Second, we're wasting time. You said Griffin was probably badly hurt. Are we going to help him now or argue about how Atlantis somehow missed all these centuries of women taking care of themselves?"
He grinned. "Multiple orgasms?”
She threw up her hands and blew out a breath. "I'm going. Now.”
Jake's grin disappeared, but then he got that faraway look on his face that usually meant the others were communicating with him telepathically. She wasn't sure she'd be a fan of people being able to beam their thoughts directly into her brain, but she couldn't deny it came in handy sometimes.
Like now, apparently.
"He's in a storage room on the main floor. He's been shot and he's wavering in and out of consciousness. For Griffin to be incapable of healing himself, he must be suffering from severe blood loss. I—" He glanced down at her and sighed. "We need to get there. Now."
He quietly opened the door and scanned the hallway. "All clear. They put one guard on our door, but he's asleep and probably drunk. Let's go."
Savannah took a deep breath and told her courage it was time to match her bravado. "What if he wakes up?"
Jake was already out the door. "He won't wake up."
She followed him just in time to see him land a powerful punch to the guard's jaw that knocked the man out of his chair and onto the floor.
"He might not wake up for days," she agreed, edging past the sprawled form. "And he's going to have the headache from hell."
"He'll blame it on the booze, probably, if he's still here to blame it on anything," Jake said, grabbing her hand. "Hopefully our P-Ops backup will get here soon, and we can take these shifters down."
They ran quietly down the stairs, watching for guards or anyone else up and about, but apparently the man at their door hadn't been the only one partying. Everyone else must have retreated to their rooms to sleep it off or else rest up to build their energy for another day of mayhem and murder.
Jake stopped at the bottom of the stairs and put out a hand to stop her forward momentum. "Griffin is over there, behind that door marked storage. We need to get to him, fast. He's losing strength as fast as he is losing blood."
A grim expression carved lines on his face and Savannah felt a sudden pang of sympathy. "Have you been friends a long time?"
"Two months."
Before she could respond to that puzzling reply, Jake released her hand and sprinted across the courtyard. She started after him, but then she remembered his claim that nobody ever looked up, so she raised her gaze to the rooftops and was instantly glad she had. One of the guards patrolling on the walls of the compound was staring down in her direction. She froze in the shadows by the wall for several long seconds until the guard tossed a cigarette down and turned to call out to one of his companions.
Savannah's breath escaped in an explosive sigh, and then she looked across the courtyard to see that Jake was opening the door. She glanced up again and then made a run for it, reaching the door just before Jake closed it behind him.
"I thought you weren't coming."
"The guard looked down – never mind. Oh, no. Griffin." She dropped to her knees next to the huddled form of the Atlantean mage. He was lying on his side, and she could see the bullet wound in the back of his shoulder. "Jake, here. He has a head wound, too. If they shot him in the head –"
/> But Jake was way ahead of her, already examining Griffin's injuries. "This isn't a bullet wound in his head. He must've struck it on something when he fell. Head wounds bleed a lot, so maybe this looks worse than it is."
Hopefully that was true, because it looked awful. Griffin's long, white hair was stained red, and blood was still dripping from the cut on his forehead. As for the shoulder…the shoulder wound looked like it might kill him.
Savannah gulped in a breath of air. "What can I do?"
"I have a small amount of healing magic. We all do. Not enough to heal this entirely, but I'm hoping I can get him to a place where he can help. Griffin has enough magic to easily heal these injuries, so I'm hoping that, with a little help from me, we can get this done."
Savannah didn't know how to heal anybody with magic, but she knew basic first-aid. She pulled her sweatshirt over her head, folded it into a small thick square, and used it as a pad to put pressure on the shoulder wound. "His head. Can you start with the head?"
Jake nodded. "I'm going to start with that. If I can heal the head wound, the odds are better that he can help with the shoulder."
He placed his hands, palms down and fingers splayed, a few inches above Griffin's head. A shimmering silver-blue light began to glow in the space beneath his hands. Savannah sucked in a breath and then held it, not wanting to make a sound that would disturb the process. As she watched, the injury to Griffin's forehead closed right before her eyes. She began to breathe again, relief and hope combining to make her almost dizzy.
"That's a miracle," she said, shivering a little in the thin t-shirt she'd worn under the sweatshirt.
"That's Atlantean magic, and I don't even have that much of it. Now for the hard part. We need to wake him up enough to help me with the shoulder, and when he comes back to consciousness he's going to feel just how much he hurts."
Again, Savannah didn't know what to do –how to help--so she did the only thing that came to her instinctively. Continuing to hold pressure on his shoulder with one hand she took Griffin's cold hand in her other. She didn't have any magic, but she had reassurance and comfort to offer. Maybe it wouldn't help at all, but she had to try something.