by Alyssa Day
Conlan looked in the rearview mirror, making sure that Justice and the others were behind him in the Hummer. “Not exactly inconspicuous vehicles you picked, are they, Ven?” he said drily.
Riley made a small sound in her throat, and her hands clenched around her tiny telephone. “We need to get there, fast. They’re close now. I—they must be in the park. This is the road to First Landing State Park. I’d heard that the local Shape-shifter Appreciation League had a forum there.”
Ven snorted. “Great. Now the bastards have an appreciation league? When they spend most of their time finding ways to eat you people?”
Riley turned her head to look at him, eyes troubled. “I don’t think that’s entirely true. Both shape-shifters and vampires have made a considerable effort to integrate peacefully into society.”
It was Conlan’s turn to be disgusted. “Are you all fools? For thousands of years, both races have considered humans as sheep—their personal food supply. Suddenly, they come out into the daylight—metaphorically speaking—and the first thing they do is try to take over. How is that integrating? Peacefully or otherwise?”
“I, well, I sort of agree with you.” She sighed. “I always thought it was a little freaky that only a few years after we even knew vampires existed, suddenly they’re running their own house of Congress. I mean, how did that happen without some sort of mind control?” she said.
“Mind control or physical threat,” Alaric said smoothly. “It seems that many of your dissenting voices have met with untimely accidents or disappeared. Did none of you notice the pattern in that?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Riley said. “There hasn’t been anything about that in the news.”
“You mean the shape-shifter-controlled media? I wonder how that could be possible,” Alaric returned, sarcasm heavy in his voice.
Conlan pulled into the park’s entrance and found a spot for the car, vicious thoughts whirling around in his brain. As he slammed the car into park and shut down the ignition, he shifted in the seat and stared at Alaric. “Do you suspect that they could be teaming up? After so many centuries of blood feud, do you really believe that the shape-shifters would help the bloodsuckers?”
Alaric returned his stare calmly, although Conlan noticed that the priest’s eyes had begun to glow. “You’ve been gone for most of the decade, Conlan. There does seem to be a spirit of cooperation between them that was never there before. It worries the Council a great deal.”
“Hell, it worries me a great big fucking deal,” Ven snarled. “If we—
Riley shrieked, in a high-pitched, shrill tone that Conlan had never heard before. She clutched her head and screamed. He pulled her into his arms, trying to comfort her. Needing to comfort her.
Needing to make that inhuman sound stop. “Riley! Riley, what is it?”
She abruptly stopped shrieking and stared up at him, eyes vacant and turned inward. “They’re here. They’re here and they’re killing. Murdering. Violence and death and pain . . . No! No, that’s not possible!”
She started to scream so loudly Conlan thought his eardrums would rupture. He took her by the shoulders and shook her a little to try to pull her out of the hell she was clearly experiencing. “Riley! You’re safe. You’re here with us. You have to shield from those emotions,” he said roughly.
She shook her head back and forth. “No, no, no, you don’t understand,” she moaned. “It’s Quinn. Somehow, they’ve got my sister. I can feel her—I can feel her, and she’s dying.”
Ven and Alaric jumped out of the car and slammed their doors shut, then Ven yanked Conlan’s open. Conlan lifted Riley onto his lap and pulled her out of the car with him. He helped her to stand, arm firmly around her waist. “Tell us. Point us to where they are, Riley. You know we can help her if you do.”
She looked up at him, still clutching her head, still dazed. “What? Pain, Quinn, nooooo!”
Alaric’s head snapped up, and he pointed down a path. “There. I can sense the Trident now. It’s blazing with power. And—I don’t know how, but I can sense her sister, too,” he said, lips drawn back in a snarl. “I can feel her inside my skin. Riley is correct. If we don’t get there fast, she’s going to die.”
The Hummer pulled into the parking space next to them, and the warriors piled out. “Hey, cool place. So, what’s the scoop?” Christophe called, then he stopped, frozen, as he caught sight of Riley. His face hardened, and he headed toward them, followed by Bastien and the others.
“We go after them now,” Conlan commanded. “Riley, you stay here out of danger, and—”
“No! She’s my sister!” she snapped at him, seeming to come briefly out of her daze. “I’m coming with you.”
“We don’t have time to argue about this,” Alaric said. “And we’re attracting unwelcome attention.” He nodded to a group of campers who were openly staring at the leather-clad group of warriors. Then his entire body jerked, as if he’d taken a blow.
“Now. We go now,” he ground out, green eyes glowing more brightly than Conlan had ever seen them. Walking, then running, Alaric took off down the trail into the woods.
Ven looked to Conlan, who nodded. “Follow him. All of you. I’ll be right behind you.”
As the warriors pounded down the trail after Alaric, he looked down at Riley, who still leaned against him. “You remain behind, where it’s safe, or I swear I’ll stay here and sit on you,” he growled.
She blinked. “Yes, okay. I’m feeling very weak, suddenly. But will you bring Quinn back to me right away?”
“I promise,” he said, then opened the car door and helped her back inside. She leaned back against the seat, clearly exhausted, and he felt a wave of concern for what the empathy must cost her.
He bent down to her and pressed a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll bring her right back to you.”
She looked up at him, eyes huge in her pale face. “Then go. Go now.”
As she closed her eyes again, he gently shut the car door, looked around to see that the tourists had moved behind their large camping vehicle, and then he shimmered into mist. He’d get there more quickly—and unseen. And may the gods forgive anyone who had dared to harm Riley’s sister.
Because Conlan had no mercy in him.
Chapter 19
Riley waited a few seconds, then peeked under her lashes in time to catch the sight of one massive Atlantean prince dissolving into a shower of mist.
“What the hell?” She blinked, then rubbed her eyes. “Great. The Atlantis version of Houdini.”
But she didn’t have time to worry about him and his stupid tricks—Quinn’s pain was scorching through her. She shoved the car door open and jumped out, then took off down the path in the direction the Warriors had run just minutes before.
“As if some stupid man could keep me from Quinn when she needs me. Not now, not ever.” She started to run, sending up a prayer of thanks for the old running shoes she’d thrown on the night before and still wore.
Another bolt of pain from Quinn shot through her. She doubled over for a moment, then straightened and ran even faster, sending reassurance to Quinn the only way she knew how.
I’m coming, Quinn. I’m coming. Don’t you dare die on me—you’re all I’ve got.
Conlan had just passed Ven and the Seven running down the trail when the path widened and turned to the left. As he rounded the corner, body still in the form of translucent mist, he came upon a scene of violent death.
The shock of it destroyed his concentration, and he transformed back into his body with a nauseating jolt. Roughly a dozen bodies, bloody, mutilated, and torn, littered the path. He felt the bile rising in his throat as the Warriors thundered up behind him. The peaceful, sunlit forest trees served as a mocking contrast to the grisly sight.
“This is wrong,” Ven snarled from beside him. “This is way beyond wrong.”
Justice shouldered his way up on Conlan’s other side, sword drawn and lips curled back from his teeth. “
Do you see Reisen? Is he one of the dead?”
Alexios walked past, then, and he and Conlan started to examine the fallen bodies. The others followed, daggers and guns at the ready, eyes scanning the forest constantly for a hint of returning danger.
“This one is a shape-shifter,” Conlan called out, seeing the telltale eyes. A shape-shifter’s eyes reverted to animal shape and color in death. The one lying in hacked-up pieces at his feet had been some kind of wolf.
Then he jerked his head up and looked around for the one who should have been there before him. “Alaric, where are you?”
“I am here, and I need your assistance,” Alaric replied from behind him. Conlan swung around to see the priest, emerging from behind a fallen tree, and started toward him, then stopped, midstride.
Alaric’s face was cast in harsh, feral planes, his eyes wild and fiery green. He spoke again, his voice promising brutal death to the architects of this destruction. “She is beyond my help. She will die.”
A frantic pounding of feet interrupted whatever response Conlan might have been able to think of, and he and Alaric both turned to see Riley running full speed around the corner.
She saw the scene and screeched to a halt, shaking, and began to scream. “Quinn! Where are you?”
Conlan ran to her, but it was Justice who caught her as she went down. He swept her up in his arms and handed her carefully to Conlan, then made a slight bow. “Your human, my prince.”
Conlan ignored the trace of mockery in the warrior and bent his head to Riley. “Shh. She’s not gone yet. You have time to say good-bye.”
She gasped in heaving breaths and started screaming again, pushing and clawing at him to try to get down. “No! Not my sister. Let me down. Let me down now!”
Instead, he pulled her closer, turning her face toward his chest, so she wouldn’t have to look at the carnage surrounding them. Then he strode over and around the bodies toward Alaric.
When he reached the deadfall of trees, he relaxed his hold on Riley and set her gently on the ground. Alaric was kneeling in front of the body of a woman. A wound in her shoulder was pulsing blood. Conlan scented the air. The sulfur smell of gunpowder.
She’d been shot.
Quinn had short dark hair, instead of Riley’s gold, but her silken white skin and delicate facial features were stamped with Riley’s strength and beauty.
Riley threw herself on the ground and put her arms around her sister, sobbing. For an instant—a split second that passed so quickly Conlan wasn’t sure he’d actually seen it—Alaric tensed, fingers curling into claws, as if he were going to attack Riley.
Even as Conlan moved to place himself between the two, the moment faded. The green flames in Alaric’s eyes muted slightly.
“Help her!” Riley lifted her sister’s head carefully onto her lap and stared at Alaric. “Help her! I know you can do it. You healed poison and sword wounds and broken heads. You can surely heal a little—oh, my God, it’s a gunshot wound. Please, please,” she begged, somehow sobbing and issuing a command all at once.
Alaric shook his head back and forth, a dazed expression on his face. His eyes were wild, almost rolling around in his head. Conlan had never seen him like this.
“I can’t,” he muttered brokenly. “I can’t reach her. I can only feel the pain she’s sending out. I can’t get past it.”
Conlan dropped to one knee beside Riley and put his arms around her, hoping to give some comfort. She elbowed him viciously and shook him off, never for a moment looking away from Alaric. She curled her lips back from her teeth and snarled so ferociously she almost looked like a shape-shifter herself.
“You can, and you will, because I will push you past it.” With that, she grabbed Alaric’s forearm in a viselike grip and forced his hand down to her sister’s shoulder. “I’ve seen healings on TV. Witch healings. They need to touch in order to do it. I’m guessing it’s the same with you.”
As Conlan watched, somehow Riley managed to win the struggle with Alaric, combating his reluctance with sheer desperation. As the priest’s hand passed through the last inch of space separating it from Quinn’s shoulder, Conlan saw an aquamarine glow pass from Alaric’s palm into Riley’s sister.
When Alaric’s fingers finally touched Quinn, her body, resting in Riley’s lap, jumped at the contact, and her feet drummed into the red-and-gold pile of fallen leaves in which they lay. Riley, still holding tightly to Alaric’s arm, closed her eyes.
Alaric threw his head back, flinching, the cords in his neck standing out in stark relief as every muscle in his body seemed to tighten.
Conlan lifted his hands to Riley’s shoulders, but an electric shock slammed him back away from her. For the space of several seconds, the three—Alaric, Quinn, and Riley—were frozen in a painful tableau, limned in a luminous blue-green light.
Then, as one, Riley and Alaric slumped forward, gasping for breath. Conlan caught Riley before she could fall forward onto her sister, gently taking her chin in his hand and searching her face for signs that she had been harmed.
Alaric caught himself, one hand on his knee, the other still in place on Quinn’s shoulder. “I do not know why you were caught up in the healing process, Riley. I have never channeled the healing powers like that before. Are you harmed?”
Before Riley could respond, a quiet, slightly husky feminine voice cut across the sound of rasping breaths. “If you move that hand one inch closer to my boob, I’m going to cut it off.”
Alaric took one look into Quinn’s eyes as they opened and fell back away from her. Shooting to his feet with such speed that Conlan almost wasn’t able to track him, Alaric backed away from them, shaking his head and muttering something to himself.
Conlan was unable to make out the words, but he heard the cadence of ancient Atlantean and wondered at it. He stroked Riley’s hair, a brief touch more for his comfort than hers, and stood to follow Alaric.
He caught the priest on the other side of the path as Alaric began to shimmer into mist. “Stop,” he commanded. “Where in the nine hells do you think you’re going? What just happened?”
Alaric reverted to corporeal form and whirled around to face him. “You want to know what happened?” he asked, wild fury in his voice, desperation dark in the harsh lines of his face.
“You want to know what happened?” With two steps, he was right up in Conlan’s face.
“I’ll tell you what happened, my prince,” Alaric continued, rasping out the words. “What happened was I sent my healing energy inside Quinn. Inside that human. And she grabbed hold of me.”
He shoved a hand through his hair and laughed a little wildly, eyes flaring green and hot.
Savage.
“She dug her mental claws into my balls, is what happened. I healed her, and she destroyed something in me. Shredded it.”
“What—” Conlan never got the question out.
“My control,” Alaric snarled. “The absolutely rock-hard control that I’ve spent centuries perfecting. Your little girl-friend’s sister reached out with her emotions, or her witchy empath nature, or what the hell ever, and all I wanted to do was fuck her.”
Conlan moved back half a step at the ferocity in the priest’s voice and dropped his hands to his dagger handles. For an instant, icy death menaced in the air between them.
Alaric laughed, bitter again. “Oh, you don’t need your blades. In spite of the fact that I wanted her more than I’ve wanted anything in my life, I won’t touch her. Although, even now, my mind tortures me with images of pounding into her body, right there on the ground in the mess of her own blood, fucking and fucking her until I drive myself into her soul.” Alaric viciously kicked at a tree and shards of bark flew into the air, then disintegrated in the green energy bolts he shot at them.
This was new and dangerous territory, and Conlan attempted to proceed with caution. “Alaric, you must—”
“Yes. I must. I must never succumb to any lusts, or my power is ended. Certainly, I would be of
no further use to you or to Atlantis. No use to the jealous bastard of a sea god whom I serve,” the priest said flatly, his voice suddenly devoid of the rage and passion that had infused it moments before.
“I must get away from her,” he continued. “Now. From this place. I am ruined for this day, in any event. This . . . this energy drain has voided any hope I had of re-scrying for the Trident until I recover. I will meet you back at Ven’s safe house tonight.”
Conlan grasped his friend’s shoulders, shaken by the blasphemy he’d never heard from him before. “Alaric, know that your use to me and to Atlantis goes far beyond the powers you gained from Poseidon. Your wise counsel has served me well for centuries, and I will need you when I ascend to the throne.”
Alaric stared over Conlan’s shoulder toward Riley and her sister. “These empaths. They signal a treacherous difference in our ways, Conlan. I can sense it. Change is coming. Peril that comes from within our very souls.”
With that, he took two running steps and leapt into the air, transforming into sparkling mist that quickly vanished.
Conlan watched the air into which Alaric had disappeared for a long moment, considering his parting words.
But Alaric had been wrong. Change wasn’t coming.
It’s already here.
Chapter 20
Twenty minutes later, Conlan stood with Ven, grimly contemplating the pile of bodies they and the rest of the Seven had pulled behind the deadfall of trees. Centuries of serving as a warrior had yet to inure him to the foul stink of death, and his stomach growled an urge to reject its contents. He scrubbed at his hands with leaves, then realized the futility of the effort and called water from the surrounding leaves and a tiny stream some hundred yards away to cleanse his hands.
The mist became fluid in the cupped bowl of his hands and he washed the blood from hands and forearms, wondering how Reisen and his remaining warriors had escaped undetected after surviving this carnage. They must have been spattered with gore.