by Alyssa Day
Then he shut up, because something was finally happening. A purple-blue shimmer surrounded Savannah and, moments later, she shifted back into her human shape. Her clothes were back in the building, of course, and within seconds all four warriors tossed their shirts over her. She curled up in Jake's arms and covered herself, and Jake looked up at his comrades--his brothers--and nodded his head in thanks.
And they were his brothers. What had started as a lark had turned into so much more over the course of these missions. He would die for them, and he knew they'd do the same for him.
"I flew! I flew!. Did you see me? I actually flew," Savannah said.
"I saw you. With the bomb," Jake said sweeping her up onto his lap. "Please never, ever do anything like that again."
Savannah raised an eyebrow. "I promise I'll never, ever do that again until the next time a roomful of children is being threatened by a crazed shifter with a bomb."
"Good enough." And then Jake had to stop talking, because he needed to kiss her with all the jumble of love, relief, happiness, and hope that was overwhelming him.
When they finally stopped to draw breath, Savannah pulled on one of the shirts and wrapped two of the others around her waist to form a skirt. Then they stood up, still holding onto each other.
"I have an idea," Savannah said, wrapping her arms around his neck. "How about we go to Madagascar?"
He laughed and held her even tighter. "Sure. But how about we go to Atlantis first? "
They were still locked in an embrace five minutes later when an exasperated Denal pushed them through the portal into Atlantis.
"Welcome home," Jake said.
She smiled and looked around, her eyes wide with wonder, but then she snuggled closer to him and looked into his eyes. "You are my home, forever and always."
He gloried in the sound of it. "And you, mine. Now, let me show you Atlantis."
"Do you have lemurs?"
He laughed. "No, but let me tell you a story about a sorceress who had a basilisk problem…"
13
The riverbank outside the H Prime compound, two hours later…
Lucas stood staring into the water as the river flowed by. It was a moment of peacefulness in a span of days that had been anything but. The adrenaline was just now beginning to calm down from the battle.
From the berserker.
From what he'd done--what he'd had to do.
He felt, more than heard, Denal walk up behind him, since his senses were still on high alert. "You all right?"
Lucas shrugged. "Why? You want to talk about your feelings?"
Denal punched him in the arm. "Shut up dumb ass. I'm trying to do this leader thing the best I can, despite not wanting anything to do with it."
Lucas bent down to pick up a rock and skimmed it across the surface of the water, before answering. "Yeah, whatever. Look. I did some… things. There's going to be a problem. A nest of those shifters--there's nothing left of them the blood and bones and. It's a mess. And there are two more in a fish warehouse. I can give you directions.”
Denal nodded. "I heard, actually. Our Interpol contacts are taking care of that, but we need to talk about your berserker mode. You can't go off like that. It's chaos, and it's crazy, and I've got no time for it."
"Until it helps you in a battle, right?" Lucas heard the bitterness in his voice, but he was too tired to give much of a damn right then, even if he'd given much of a damn in the first place.
He hadn't.
"So, what now?"
Griffin suddenly floated down and landed next to Denal. "I'd like the answer to that, too," the mage said.
"Lucas and Savannah have gone back to Atlantis with the guards. April, our new warrior, is having a conversation with Pine, our Interpol contact, but it looks like she's a heartbeat away from murdering him. My money will be on April, if it comes to a fight," Denal said, grinning.
Denal could smile. Shocking. Lucas half expected lightning to strike them.
"There's nothing left for me to do here, " He told them abruptly. "I need to… Do something. Take some time. There was a woman--"
"There's always a woman," Denal said, and Lucas heard more than a little bitterness in his tone.
"There was a person, then, who helped me escape the shifters this morning. She shut down the electricity to the cage. If she hadn't, I might not be here now. They were going to kill me, after they took me apart one piece at a time, and there was nothing I could do because the cage had electric bars."
"That's why we couldn't hear you or reach you," Griffin said, shoving the mass of his long white hair away from his face. "I assumed you were dead."
"I almost was, but this person—Rhiannon--although she was terrified for her daughter, she took the time to help me on her way out. I think she's in trouble, and I think her kid might be in trouble. I feel … I feel compelled to help her. To repay the favor and at least make sure her kid is okay. It's stupid. You don't need to say anything, I know it's stupid. But it's going to dig at my gut until I do something about it."
Denal turned his head and stared at Lucas. "Are you asking my permission?"
"Do I need to?"
Denal thought about it for a moment and then shook his head. "No. This mission is over, and we got the humans out with very few casualties. The ones who did get injured or killed were belligerent H prime members trying to prove their superiority over the supernatural, so I'm not gonna cry a lot of tears for them."
Griffin shook his head. "Sometimes I wonder why we bother to do what we do. Perhaps we should just leave them all to kill each other and then take over the planet."
"That's not exactly realistic," Lucas told him. "For one thing, we are vastly outnumbered by the humans."
A dark shadow suddenly surrounded them, and the sky looked as though night had fallen, although there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Lucas looked up and was mildly alarmed to see that Griffin appeared to have grown three feet taller and about four feet broader.
And he was glowing.
In a deep, thunderous voice that came from every direction at once, Griffin spoke. "In this case, the equation is not simply about the numbers."
With that, the mage subsided to his normal size and shape and stopped glowing, thank Poseidon. "I'm shaking in my boots," Lucas said. "Maybe for your next trick, you could do balloon animals. I hear that's a hit with the kids."
Griffin leaned forward. "How about I turn your neck into a balloon animal?"
Denal stepped between the two of them. "All right settle down. We're a team, remember?" He shook his head. "And somehow, Conlan made this shit look easy. Lucas, head out and do your thing. Check in periodically so we know what's going on, okay?"
Griffin's icy silver gaze locked on to Lucas. "I, too, would like to hear from you. If you need help, contact me. We are a team, as Denal points out. Beyond even that, I would not let any child come to harm.”
Lucas felt a surprising warmth climb up his face, but he didn't know why. Anyway, it was time to go.
"Done," he told them and then he leapt into the air, transforming to mist on his way, and arrowed off in the direction that had been pulling at him ever since he left that fish market behind. Somehow, he knew where Rhiannon was, and he knew she was on the move and heading out of town fast. So, either she was escaping with her daughter, or something had gone very wrong. Either way, he was determined to find out; determined to see once more this woman who had both betrayed him and rescued him.
That was a conversation he was very much looking forward to having.
Rhiannon's eyes kept drifting shut despite the four super Venti triple espresso coffees she'd chugged down at the start of her drive. She still had another hour or so to get out of Georgia and cross into Tennessee, and she was already exhausted. Not a great way to start a 3,000-mile road trip, but she'd had little to no sleep the night before, and terror and fury were volatile emotions that drained energy in proportion to how much they fueled action.
Basically, she was
all wired up to go, go, go, but her tired body wanted to stop, stop, stop.
What she really, desperately, needed was a nap, but she refused to give in to exhaustion. Not while Stevie was in the hands of those wolves. Not while there was still a chance that she might catch up to them before they made it back to Washington. She was sure they were driving – wolves hated airplanes. The lack of control made them crazy, and since that time a werewolf with altitude sickness had shifted and killed three flight attendants and six passengers on a flight from Denver to New York, airplanes were leery of letting any of them on board. Shifters could try to hide what they were, but it didn't always work. All the TSA departments had specially trained dogs now that could sniff out a shifter just as well as their counterparts could sniff out drugs and bombs.
So, yes, they were almost certainly driving a car with her daughter in it, but she wasn't sure which route they would've taken, so she was going with the straightest path. She wasn't sure what kind of car they were driving, either, but it was almost certainly a sports car or a truck—the two favorites of all Washington wolves, from what she remembered--that was leagues better and a million times faster than her own five-year-old Toyota. Shifters didn't need as much sleep as she did, either, unless they'd been fighting or shifting a lot. So, she was out-gunned on all fronts, except for one.
She was a mother, and she was going after her child.
Still, she needed more coffee. She exited the freeway and pulled into the parking lot of the first coffee shop she saw, then wearily trudged in and stopped in the restroom to freshen up, before she placed an order for the biggest cup with the most possible coffee inside. She threw in a couple of scones to go with it. She wasn't hungry, but she knew she needed to keep her energy up.
As she'd done at each stop before and would do at each stop on the way, she showed the workers a picture of Stevie. "Have you seen this little girl? Maybe with a few men?"
As had happened each time before, they shook their heads. Offered to call the police or put out an Amber alert. Either of which would just get some well-meaning citizen, or some police officers hurt or killed. She couldn't risk it, not with Stevie possibly in the cross-fire. She managed a smile and told them no, it was just a family thing.
While she waited for her order, she gradually became aware of first one, then another and another of the female and one of the male customers gawking at something outside the front window. Mildly curious, she turned around just as the woman next to her whistled.
"He could eat croissants in my bed, honey," the woman said, grinning.
"Damn, he's fine," the barista said. "We don't get many who look like him in here."
It took Rhiannon's tired eyes a moment to focus, and then she gasped. No. It was impossible.
The man, all gorgeous muscles, perfect cheekbones, and hypnotic gray eyes, locked his gaze on her, and a slow smile spread across his face. She thought the woman next to her was going to faint.
"Oh my goodness, is he here for you? You lucky, lucky girl."
Rhi shook her head. "No, I don't—no." She turned away from the window, grabbed her coffee and scones, and headed for the door. The side door. The one where Lucas, the Atlantean crazy man who liked to electrocute himself when he wasn't killing people, stood.
By the time she made it to the door, however, he was holding it open for her.
"How did you… Never mind. Why are you here? What do you want? How did you know where I was?"
He smiled again, and despite the bizarre situation, she could've sworn her ovaries jumped up and started dancing. Damn the man, anyway. Was a serial killer supposed to look like People's sexiest man of the year? Definitely not.
"Now you're the one asking all the questions," he said, in that ridiculously sinful voice of his. "To answer, in order: I'm here to help you, if you need it. I want to be sure you're safe and your daughter is safe. And…" A puzzled expression flashed across his face so quickly she wasn't sure she'd really seen it. "I don't understand how I knew where you were, just that something was compelling me to travel in this direction and that same feeling pointed me to this place.”
She stepped around him and started walking to her car. "Well, you can just get back in your car and go back to Atlantis or wherever you're going, because I'm fine and I don't need your help.”
He measured his stride to hers. "Perhaps. But does Stevie?”
Rhi stumbled to a halt so suddenly that she nearly dropped her coffee on his boots. Was she being a fool to turn him down? This man was a force to be reckoned with—couldn't he help her? Wouldn't she be better off with an ally when she confronted what was sure to be a wall of claws and fangs?
But was he an ally?
Or was he a killer?
She thought about it for a while, wrestling with the question and trying to find an answer. When one came, it surprised her in its simplicity:
Couldn't he be both?
"It's a debt of honor,” he said quietly, breaking into her silence. "You must allow me to pay it. If you hadn't turned off the electricity to the cage, I would almost certainly be dead now. Your betrayal was more than paid by that simple act, and I must return it in kind. I would like to help you. I see your daughter isn't with you, which tells me that there is a serious problem, because I'm sure that you immediately went to her.”
Conflicting emotions welled up in her throat. Guilt at what he saw as her betrayal—what was her betrayal—and a shivering sense of relief and comfort that he wanted to help her. To help Stevie. But, still…
"Lucas—”
"To an Atlantean, honor is sacred. You must let me pay this debt,” he insisted, softly but firmly, and she remembered how safe he'd made her feel on the cold floor of that cage.
How safe he might make her feel again.
How he would be so much help in a fight. She had a gun, but one gun against a group of shifters was like taking a knife to a nuclear missile fight. She'd be hopelessly outmatched and yet…
She didn't want Stevie to see her mother die.
"Yes. Yes, you can come with me. Do you want any coffee?”
He smiled, a look of purely masculine triumph on his face, and she almost backed off her agreement, but then she remembered all those magical things he'd claimed to be able to do, and she glanced into the car and saw Stevie's bear.
"I don't want any coffee, but I want to drive. You look like you're ready to collapse.” He opened her car's passenger door and stood waiting for her to enter. She didn't move, thinking of all the ways this could go wrong.
"You're from Atlantis. Do you even know how to drive? Or do you just swim around places?”
He raised a brow. "That would be difficult on highways."
"So, you can drive?"
"Yes," he said, patience and amusement making his sensual lips quirk up. "I even have one of those pieces of paper you humans love so much. It officially allows me to drive.”
She sighed, but she gave in and slid into the passenger seat and put her coffee in the cupholder. He closed her door and then walked around the car and dropped into the driver's seat. He was so large, though, up close and in a small space like this. So large and so male, and so…just so much, that she caught her breath. When she turned her head away, so she wasn't staring at him, she glanced out the windshield and saw the barista and two other women lined up and grinning at her from behind the store window. The one who'd mentioned the croissants gave her a thumbs-up, and Rhiannon shook her head but grinned despite herself.
"Your friends?” Lucan inclined his head toward the trio.
"No. Your fan club.”
He pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road, and then she had to spend the next five minutes explaining 'fan club.'
"Ah. Naturally,” he finally said in silky tones. "They were overwhelmed by my natural charisma.”
She closed her eyes and banged her head back against the head rest a couple of times. "You are insufferable, you do know that, right?”
"It's part of my charm
.”
After that annoying conversation, Rhi was more than content to ride in silence for a while, especially after he neatly snagged one of her scones right out of her hand just as she was about to take a bite. When the speedometer started to climb toward ninety, though, she realized she hadn't asked one important question.
"Lucas?”
"Yes? Do you have any more of those pastries?”
"No. Forget the pastries. I have a question for you. Where exactly did you get your driver's license?”
"Earth, of course.”
Her mouth fell open. "I know—of course—wait. Are there other planets you know about that give driver's licenses?”
He glanced over at her. "No. Unless you know something different?”
"No, I don't—stop changing the subject! Where on Earth is your license from?”
"We don't have such things in Atlantis. No cars.”
"Yes, I get that, so where…?”
"Oh. Now I understand. In which region of topside?”
By this point, she was gently banging her fist against her forehead. "Yes. Which region. Topside. On Earth.”
"Italy.”
"Italy?”
"Yes. Rome, to be exact. The drivers there are very confusing, though. I much preferred to travel by mist.”
She didn't know what to do with that comment, so she let it slide right past her. "You don't have a U.S. driver's license of any kind?”
"Do I need one?”
She sighed, suddenly too tired to argue about it or even care. She just wanted to get to her daughter. "Maybe slow down to the speed limit, then, so we don't go to jail. I really can't take ever being in another cage again.”
"That won't happen. If the authorities should attempt to arrest us, I will merely fly us both away from them.”
"Oh,” she said faintly. "Merely fly us away. Of course. Why didn't I think of that?”
While she was considering the implications of Atlanteans and flying and Italian driver's licenses, she fell asleep and dreamed of her daughter, safe in her arms while they flew through the sky over the marble and gilt palaces of Atlantis, eating spaghetti.