by Alyssa Day
“Hold up there, babe. We want to have a little talk with you,” one of them called out in a thick voice. The others laughed, and the menace in their laughter sent a curl of fear shivering up Riley’s spine.
The air around her thickened, seemed to swirl with a darker black, as if an opposing force gathered itself, threatened.
But it didn’t threaten her.
The dark caressed her as it passed, then built into an ominous cloud behind her. She kept walking, faster, nearly jogging now, glancing back over her shoulder. The men had stopped, openmouthed.
“What the hell is that?” one of them said, rubbing his arms. His belly hung low over his belt and his greasy hair was combed over his balding scalp. An angry-looking red scar snaked up out of his collar to the side of his neck. He caught her looking at him and leered at her. “Yeah, you’re anxious to get a piece of me, aren’t you, chickie? Guess you’re not as tough as the other one.”
The men put their heads down, driving their way through the shadows of the barrier, and stumbled after her.
She shuddered. Started to run. The unseen threat in the air around her escalated.
Nothing human could do that. It was an intangible presence—but a very tangible threat.
Oh, no. Somebody please help me. It’s a damn vampire. Or a shape-shifter. I never should have broken curfew.
The sand seemed to mock her, catching her ankles, making her stumble. She heard her pursuers thundering closer and closer.
She shoved the panic away. Remember what you tell your clients. It’s rape—horrible, soul deadening, but you’ll be alive. It’s not murder. It’s only temporary. Nothing matters but staying alive. You can survive this.
An inhumanly vicious roar sounded through her head—no, it wasn’t just in her head. She heard it. She lurched to a stop, glancing behind at her pursuers.
The bastards behind her stopped, too. “What the hell was that, Red? You said none of those fucking werewolves hung out around here,” one of them whined.
Riley shook her head, trapped. Bones turned to liquid. She forced herself to keep moving.
Better to risk being lunch for an unseen vampire than victim of a gang bang. Too early for shape-shifters.
“Guess rapists these days aren’t up on lunar phases,” she said, hysteria threatening to overwhelm her.
The roar came again, stopping her in her tracks. Terror whipped through her. Nothing human made that sound.
She was going to die.
She choked on a laugh. Maybe they’d put her in a drawer at the morgue next to Morris.
A voice—a silken melody of sound—rang inside of her head.
The undead will never have you, little aknasha. You are too valuable to us. We need to figure out just how you acquired this interesting talent.
The velvet caress of the voice caught at her mental defenses, trying to insinuate itself into her mind.
Fascinated in spite of the situation, she tried a mental push of her own. Who are you? How can you talk to me like that? No vampire or shape-shifter has that power, do they?
She frantically scanned the skies, afraid of an attack from above, then looked behind her at the thugs.
Great. I get trapped in some mind-control games and they catch me. Brilliant, Riley. Why not just give up and lie down now?
The voice sounded in her mind again, gentleness gone, implacable ice in its place. Do not worry about those fools behind you. I’m in the mood to deliver a little death.
“Death?” Even as a small, dark corner of Riley’s soul stood up and cheered at the idea, her conscience wouldn’t go for it.
She’d seen enough death for one night.
She’d seen enough death for one lifetime.
“No. Whoever you are, no killing. Please, just help me get away,” she said out loud, realizing she was probably bargaining with a freaking bloodsucker.
Stand aside. Now. They’re already dead. I don’t like vermin who prey on helpless women. His melodic tones wrapped around her senses, raising her nerve endings to heightened alert, even as she bristled at his arrogant presumption.
You picked the wrong woman to order around, bud. And if you are some kind of preternatural badass, you picked the wrong woman to try to eat, too.
She whirled around in midstride, dropping into a defensive crouch, wondering how she could possibly defend herself against all four of them.
One of them with enough undead strength to pick up a house.
So fierce! Eat you? I’m no vamp, fierce one. But I must admit, for some reason the idea of . . . tasting you . . . isn’t making me all that unhappy. And I haven’t even seen your face yet. So who’s using the mind control here?
His silent laughter insinuated itself into her mind, simmering with . . . sex. A wave of heat washed through her, over her, around her.
“I hope you’re not waiting for an answer to that one,” she muttered, feeling her face flame and glad for the darkness. “What kind of moron feels sexy when her life is in danger? Next I’ll be putting on a slinky nightgown and going down in the basement with the serial-killing hockey players.”
She backed away from all of them—mind-control boy’s likely direction and the thugs. But one woman didn’t have a chance against all four.
Riley watched, fists clenched so hard her nails bit into her palms, as the drunks moved to surround her. The sour reek of their unwashed bodies tripled the nausea she was already fighting, and she gagged as her stomach tried to rebel.
She’d never be able to defeat all three of them, and escape was impossible, now. Not only from them, but from the stranger whispering in her mind. But she could at least punch and kick the crap out of any body part that came in reach.
They wouldn’t get her without a fight.
Be still. I’ll deal with these criminals. And then, aknasha, we’ll have a little chat about how you transmit emotions through the mind probe. Don’t even think about trying to get away from me.
Riley fell back a step as the stocky, muscle-bound man in front of her reached forward as if to grab her breast. She could smell the fumes on his breath—beer and the sour tang of something stronger.
“Come on, baby, give us a little kiss.” He puckered up and made a loud smooching sound, and the other thugs howled with laughter.
The nausea rose again in her throat at the idea of any of them touching her. She feinted back, then swung her foot with every ounce of rage inside of her right for the bastard’s crotch.
And it connected, hard.
He howled, clutched at his groin, and dropped to the sand like a big, ugly rock. Riley stumbled back, and the thug behind her grabbed her shoulders, his dirty fingers digging into her skin through her light jacket. She hissed in pain, and an answering hiss of sheer male fury scorched through her brain. From behind her, someone roared his outrage to the skies.
Not someone—him.
The man holding her gasped and backed away from her.
She whipped her head from side to side, trying to keep an eye on all three of them at once.
At least the guy on the ground didn’t seem to be going anywhere. He lay there, moaning and blubbering in a funny voice. Score one for her, at least.
And then she saw him. Black shadow coalesced into a tall figure running toward her so quickly it seemed as though his feet never touched the ground.
Power, raging and furious, swept over her. Her skin iced at the feel of it.
She was either saved, or she was utterly doomed.
Chapter 5
Conlan fought to breathe, nearly blinded by the red haze of rage that seared through him, choking him, threatening to obscure his vision. A berserker rage.
He welcomed it. Bring it on.
Raising his arms, he channeled the water from the sea. It funneled up into the air in shards, turning to ice as it rose. He shot the ice daggers at his targets—arrows from Poseidon’s bow.
The men fell back, screaming, as razor-edged death sliced into their flesh.
“You don’t touch her. Ever,” he snarled, as he raised his arms in demand. Poseidon’s oceans dominated the world.
Poseidon’s Warriors dominated the ocean.
He was high prince and the first of the Warriors, and he would destroy them for daring to touch her.
The surf boiled at the edge of the sand, crests of waves rising to impossible heights, seeming almost to seek their prey. Conlan slashed his arms down, aiming his focus. He commanded the frenzy of waves to rise, higher and higher.
His fury swelled, threatening his control. The red haze spread further over his vision. To have the ability to strike back again after so many years of powerlessness . . .
Anubisa’s mocking laughter sounded in his brain.
He was a fucking head case.
Then a touch—inside him. A touch of courage, of defiance.
Light to his dark. Compassion to his mercilessness.
His gaze swung to the woman crouched down in the sand, hands still up to defend herself from the bastards who’d attacked her. In the midst of it all, she’d spared the energy to respond to his madness.
He would smash them for her. Drive the water to strip the flesh from their bones.
Enjoy every last minute of it.
“No! What are you? Stop! You’ll kill us!” she screamed up at him, defiant still, in spite of the terror she projected.
Beyond reason, beyond compassion, he raised his arms again, then slashed them down, commanding the wall of water to crash down on the shore. To crush the men, where they lay bleeding and groveling.
He drove the wave toward the shore.
Her voice, broken, tentative, sounded in his head. Stop! Please don’t kill me! My sister . . . I’m all she has. And . . . don’t kill them. Please. Enough death.
Conlan marveled at her goodness, her courage.
Her light.
Even as she thought death was crashing toward her, she spared a thought for the garbage who’d tried to attack her.
He followed her thought back along its path to her mind. I would never hurt you. Trust me.
Or was he a damn fool? Maybe she was just a talented actress. Nobody that compassionate could be real.
But the red haze lifted, receded. Somehow her mental touch lent him calm. A measure of peace. He was inside her mind—she was projecting emotion. There was no deceit—no evil. Nothing but compassion wrapped up in terror. Sorrow.
Conlan focused his power at the water and the men in its path, speaking a single word. “Abate.”
In perfect symmetry, the water pounded the shore in an exact spherical shape around the place where she stood, leaving her untouched by a single drop. He felt her shock and wonder at the spectacle and could almost taste her awe as she reached out to touch the wall of water surrounding her.
She gasped—made a choked sound of laughter. Broadcasted her thoughts: All I can think of is the parting of the Red Sea, but you’re definitely not Moses.
Conlan crushed the water down on the little pricks, reining it in at the last possible second. He’d mitigate.
For her.
They might get a little broken, but they’d live. The wall of ocean pounded them to the sand, but left them with enough oxygen in their lungs to survive it.
Which didn’t make him all that happy.
As the waves receded, leaving the men crying, babbling, and damn near shitting themselves, Conlan stepped forward and raised his arms again. The waves eagerly leapt to do his bidding, and the surf boiled in anticipation of another strike.
He got a vicious pleasure out of watching them cower the way they’d wanted to see her cower.
Yeah, I can be a bastard that way.
He spoke with every ounce of rage in his body bubbling to the surface, arm muscles clenching with the strain of holding back the wall of water. “I command you to leave this place and never return. You will not attempt to harm another, or I will track you down and serve up the justice that only this woman’s compassion saved you from tonight.”
He swept them with his gaze, dropped out of formal speak. “In other words, you’ll be dead sons of bitches. We on the same page?”
They babbled their promises in broken voices, then ran off, stinking of fear and piss, when he gestured them away. His gaze only tracked them for a moment, then he turned, inexplicably drawn back to the woman. She had guts, or she had a death wish. Either way, she’d seen him command the ocean, and yet she was unafraid enough to stand her ground.
Trained warriors had cowered in front of him with less cause.
How the hell did one small human have such courage?
A fierce curiosity burned through him. He wanted, no, needed, to see her face, which was shadowed by her hair and hidden in the darkness. His fury was disproportionate—it didn’t make sense. The thugs were buffoons, easily enough cowed.
But for some reason, he’d wanted to slice the flesh off their bodies.
Maybe being tortured for so long would turn anybody into a sick, twisted bastard. Even the so-called next ruler of Atlantis.
A little logic might help. Use some of that much-vaunted Atlantean warrior training.
Yeah, logic. Logic dictated that he study his own reactions.
Logic counseled prudence.
She started to edge away from him.
Fuck logic.
He tried on a royal command for size. Come closer to me, woman. I have a need to see the face of one who bids me not to harm those who threaten her. Are you compassionate or merely a fool?
She tossed her head, long and tousled hair flying through the air, and something low in his body tightened. She ignored his mental query and his command and stood her ground. “Who are you, and how are you in my mind? You can quit with the ordering me around thing, too, buster. I know self-defense. I would have been fine.”
Her voice. It was lyrical, sensuous, music lilting into his ears and resonating through his body. Playing him like delicate fingers on the strings of a harp. His body tightened, straining.
Her body quivered with indignation, yet the emotion she still broadcast confessed the truth. She knew they would have put a big, bad hurt on her.
The emotion. Somehow, he kept losing track of the unexpected, unprecedented, unbe-fucking-lievable fact that she was broadcasting emotion. She knew she would have been seriously harmed if he hadn’t been there—he actually felt the knowledge and, with it, her residual fear and sorrow.
She sighed, and her body slumped. “I’m . . . sorry. I should be thanking you. Whoever—or whatever—you are, you saved me from those men. Thank you.”
Then she raised her head and peered at him. “You’re not going to drink my blood or rip my arms off, now, are you? Because my day has really sucked, and I’m so not up for that,” she said, suspicion ringing in her tone.
He blinked, bewildered by her apparent inability to carry on a logical conversation. He figured he’d try using simple sentences and speaking out loud. Maybe terror turned human women into babbling idiots.
Slowly, carefully choosing his words, he tried to explain. “I am not the undead, nor a shifter of shape to animal form. I am . . . other. You are entirely safe with me, aknasha.”
She planted her hands on her hips and stared at him. “You keep calling me that. What does it mean? What does ‘other’ mean? And why do you talk like you walked out of an old-time fairy-tale book?”
As he considered how to answer her, the bank of clouds overhead finally passed beyond the edge of the moon. The shimmer of moonlight on her features plowed a wave of sensation right through his gut. Nobody could be that beautiful.
He almost laughed. She’d been talking about fairy tales, and she looked like she’d stepped out of the pages of one. Her face shone with the perfection of a Nereid. The silvery light barely illuminated the red-gold waves that must burn like fire in the sunshine. Her eyes . . .
Not possible. No human has eyes like that.
“They’re cerulean,” he said aloud, unthinking. “Your eyes.”
Cerulean. The color of the royal house of Atlantis.
His color.
“They—my mother had eyes this shade of deep blue,” she whispered, one hand reaching up to touch her face.
Conlan caught his breath, feeling her pain. Something about her mother—
“She’s gone,” he murmured. Somehow he knew it. Felt it. He couldn’t understand the pull—as if the magnetic draw of the moon to the tides had infused him. He wanted to touch her.
He needed to touch her.
Almost without thought, he reached out to her face with his fingertips. She trembled, but didn’t move away, so he dared to caress the curve of her silken cheek with trembling fingers. Longing. Desire surging out of nowhere.
Healthy, clean desire. He hadn’t felt desire in more than a century. Certainly not for the past seven years.
Nothing pure. Nothing not twisted.
Damaged goods.
He yanked his hand away from her. “Aknasha means ‘empath, ’ ” he said roughly. “You’re an empath. The first in maybe ten thousand years.”
Riley stared up at the man who had saved her from assault and, probably, rape. Maybe worse. If her mind had conjured up her most erotic fantasy to save her from a grim reality in which she really was being attacked, it had done a bang-up job. The man was some kind of superhero come to life.
If they made superheroes who looked like very dangerous Hollywood movie stars, that is. He stood a good eight inches taller than her five foot ten, and his body was a nymphomaniac’s wet dream. Heavily muscled shoulders and arms, a broad chest that tapered down to a lean waist. God, his thighs had to be the size of her waist. The man was a mountain of muscle, improbably wearing a black silk shirt that tucked into elegant black pants.
She jerked her gaze up from going any further south and stared fixedly at his chest, her cheeks flaming to know that he’d caught her ogling him.
Although, really, the man must get ogled wherever he goes, so it’s not like he isn’t used to it.
His silky black hair brushed his shoulders in shining waves, framing a face that defied description. Beautiful. For the first time in her life, she used the adjective to describe a man.
He raised her chin with one finger, and she looked up at him again. He was smiling, amusement lighting up his dark eyes, almost as if he’d heard what she . . .