by Alyssa Day
The four of them sat around the kitchen table, Riley and Quinn holding mugs of hot, sweet tea. Conlan and Ven each had a beer. Conlan sat near enough to Riley that she could reach out and touch him if she wanted to.
It’s not like she needed to touch him.
Much.
Most of the other men had all stopped by, trailing in by ones and twos, some bringing food and beer, some bringing news.
None bringing results. Reisen had vanished.
Riley had tried to smile at each of them, especially Denal, who’d kneeled in front of her and presented an armload of flowers, then backed out of the room, careful to maintain a safe distance from Conlan and Ven.
Ven had made some crack about Denal’s schoolboy crush, but nobody’d even mustered up a smile.
Now they sat, each of them lost in his or her own private thoughts. When Justice appeared, it was almost a relief.
“So, the gang’s all here,” he said in that smart-ass way he had. Of course, anybody who could carry off a waist-length blue braid worn over a sword strapped to his back probably could be as much of a smart-ass as he wanted.
She’d seen what he could do with that sword.
“My lawn will never be the same,” she muttered.
Quinn looked up from contemplating her mug and caught sight of Justice. “You!” she gasped. “I thought you were an urban legend.”
Ven leaned back in his chair, balancing it on two legs. “Right. The nutball axe murderer who hangs out at Lover’s Lane, and Justice. Makes sense, really, when you think about it. Both of them give you a case of the ugly creepies, right?”
Justice ignored the ribbing and focused in on Quinn. “What exactly have you heard?”
“Oh, defender of the weak, modern-day Robin Hood, blah blah blah. You’re a little hard to miss,” Quinn returned, sweeping her gaze from his boots all the way up the six and a half feet or so to the top of his blue-plaited head.
Justice bowed slightly. “You, too, would be difficult to miss. Your fury and grief burn brightly enough to light up the city. You might wish to learn from your sister the technique of shielding your emotions.”
With that, he left the room, long strides eating up the floor, leaving Quinn scowling at his back.
Riley thought it was past time for her to intervene. “What is going on, Quinn? I’m getting the feeling that you’re not an administrative assistant for an insurance company, after all.”
Quinn’s laugh sounded rusty, as if it had been a long time since she’d found anything funny. “No, not for an insurance company. Like I said before, I need to know what the deal is with the Atlanteans before I tell you anything.”
She pinned Conlan with a stare. “What side are you coming down on?”
“Side of what?” Riley asked. “What are you talking about?”
“Side of the revolution, baby sister.”
Riley sucked in a breath. Sure, she’d heard rumors of a revolution against the rapid encroachment of the supernatural species into human society and government. But she’d stayed out of it. She wasn’t political—she had enough to do just trying to keep her clients healthy and fed.
And alive.
Conlan nodded slightly. “Okay. Here’s as much of the truth as I’m willing to tell you right now, and I do it on the condition that neither of you share this information with anyone.”
Ven’s chair came down on all four legs with a bang. “You can’t do this, Conlan. You can’t—”
“Riley has a right to know, since we are taking her home with us. And her sister must therefore know, as well.”
Riley felt the nerves in her neck go board rigid. “You said that before. Funny, I don’t seem to remember being asked to go anywhere.”
Conlan took her hand in his and squeezed it. “Do you trust me?”
“I—” She paused, thought back to the glimpses she’d had into his memories; into his soul. “Yes. I trust you. This aknasha thing we have between us—it may be overwhelming my common sense, but I do know that I can trust you. But where is home? Are you really talking about the lost continent of Atlantis?”
Ven snorted. “We were never lost. Just hiding from you fools.”
Quinn leaned forward, resting her folded arms on the table. “I’d watch who you called fools if I were you, fish boy.”
He grinned. “Wanna check me for gills?”
“Enough! Can we quit with the bickering and just get on with it?” Riley asked.
Conlan nodded. “Yes. We’re from the continent of Atlantis. More than eleven thousand years ago, the Seven Isles rode the surface of the waters as do your own lands. Our civilization and technology were far superior to that of the humans of the time, but we shared such knowledge of the sciences and the arts as we deemed appropriate.”
“So you condescended to help out us poor lowly humans?” Quinn sneered.
“Quinn. Not helping,” Riley murmured, and her sister rolled her eyes, but subsided.
“As often happens, the humans with whom Atlantis had always enjoyed a peaceful coexistence became greedy,” Conlan continued. “Not all; not even most. But a few corrupt ones in power. Enough to push the idea of conquering our lands and taking for themselves what was ours.”
“Yeah, like especially the gold and anything of value,” Ven growled.
“We could have worked it out. According to the ancient scrolls, we were on the verge of working it out. But that’s when the vamps decided to get involved,” Conlan said.
Riley shuddered. “You had vampires even back then?”
“The bloodsuckers have been around since the beginning, when the god Chaos bedded his twisted daughter Anubisa and began the whole foul—” Ven lapsed into a lyrical-sounding language that wasn’t the least bit recognizable to Riley.
“They may be aknasha, but they don’t understand ancient Atlantean, Ven,” Conlan observed, a wry grin quirking up the edges of his lips. Then the humor faded from his face and an expression so terrifyingly haunted took its place that Riley squeezed his hand, hard, to try to pull him out of whatever hell he saw in his mind.
It seemed to help, a little, but Riley still saw the stamp of a predator on the fierce cast of his face. She was careful not to reach out and touch his emotions.
She knew she didn’t want to visit whatever he saw in his mind.
“Anubisa,” he ground out. “The unholy union of Chaos and Anubisa, the goddess of death. Their offspring were the ancestors of all bloodsuckers. Anubisa is a vamp herself but, as near as we can figure out, she feeds on negative emotion more than blood. The more passionate, the better.”
“Like the pain of torture,” Riley whispered, suddenly understanding what she’d seen and felt in Conlan’s memories.
He pulled his hand away from hers and smoothed his expression to a mask of calm.
A false mask of calm, most likely. How could he have survived that? How could anyone?
With the thought came despair. “How can we defeat somebody who thinks she’s a goddess?”
“She is a goddess,” Ven said.
Riley shook her head. “Not to me. I’m monotheistic and only recognize one God. Not that I’m disagreeing with your beliefs in any way, but I have to have faith that she’s not all-powerful. In any event, if she has godlike powers, we’re in trouble.”
“You forget, we are also led by a god. Poseidon’s power exceeds that of Anubisa,” Ven pointed out.
Rage tore through her. “Well, where the hell was he when his own prince was being tortured nearly to death?” Riley shouted, shoving her chair back to stand. “Where was your stupid sea god then?”
Conlan pulled her into his arms for a brief hug, then smoothly pulled her to a seat on his lap, as if he’d been doing so for years.
“I am honored that you would defy Poseidon himself in your defense of me, mi amara aknasha,” he murmured into her hair.
The feel of his breath on her ear stirred something down low in her abdomen, and her thigh muscles clenched. If Quinn and Ven hadn’t been sittin
g right there, both of them staring with openmouthed disbelief, she would have turned in his lap and planted some major lip-lock on Conlan.
She might do it, anyway.
Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “Fine. So big problems with the humans, and then what?”
Ven answered this time. “Then the gods got into a big stink of a fight, and the Cataclysm happened. Big, ‘earth itself might be destroyed’ kind of catastrophic shit that happens when a bunch of children start fighting over their toys.”
Conlan’s voice was a rumble in his chest against Riley’s back. “Though my brother edges close to blasphemy, he is essentially correct. Atlantis was forced under the sea to protect itself, both from the humans who threatened and from the battle between the gods. First magic, then a mix of magic and technology have shielded us from discovery for these many years.”
Riley, suddenly feeling shy, slid off Conlan’s lap and back onto her own chair. “But you’ve been coming up to the surface all this time?”
“No, not always. It took time to learn the secrets of travel between our land and the surface. But we had sworn the oath as Warriors of Poseidon. The warriors of that time would stop at nothing to find a way to return to guard humans from the increasing vampire and shape-shifter threat.”
Conlan drained his beer, put the bottle back on the table with some force. “It’s our job to keep you safe, even when you do your best to hinder us.”
Quinn toyed with her mug and then seemed to reach a decision. Shoving her curls out of her eyes with one hand, she started to speak. “Okay. I’ve been scanning you both and, for what it’s worth, your emotions tell me that you’re giving us the truth. I say for what it’s worth because, if you really are Atlantean and an entirely separate species—”
She looked up for confirmation and Conlan nodded.
“Then it’s possible that my much-prized abilities to scan emotion are worth precisely nothing when it comes to you. Are your emotions even remotely similar to ours?”
Ven started to respond, but she held up a hand. “No, don’t bother. It feels true to me, and I have to go with my gut instinct, or I have nothing. And if I start doubting my gut now, the game, as they say, is up.”
Riley put a hand on her sister’s arm to confirm what her senses were telling her. Quinn was telling a truth that was very painful for her. Riley’s nerve endings flinched back from the anguish underlying Quinn’s words.
“It’s okay, Quinn. Whatever you need to say. I’m right here,” she murmured, sending waves of reassurance and love through their personal sister link.
“Well, tall, dark, and ugly over there called us fools. He’s right. Not all of us, but enough of us hid under a rock and let change happen without trying to fight it,” Quinn began, voice flat.
Riley winced at the echo of her earlier thoughts. Maybe Quinn thought she was a fool, too. “Not being political or marching on Washington doesn’t make a person a fool, Quinn,” she said. “Some of us try to make a difference on a local level.”
Quinn grabbed her in a brief hug. “I wasn’t talking about you, honey. You give twenty-four-seven to those losers you work so desperately to save. I’m talking about the people who sit on their fat asses and do nothing while vamps take over our government.”
“They’re not losers,” Riley said quietly. “They’re people who never had the basics to improve their lives. I try to help with that.”
“I’m sorry. I know you do. You’re right, they’re not losers. And you’re pretty much a fucking saint to do what you do. But my path is a little different.”
Ven suddenly whistled, staring at Quinn with admiration evident in his gaze. “Takes a street fighter to recognize another one. You’re in the rebellion.”
Quinn inclined her head, unsmiling. “Yeah. And telling you this could get me dead in a hurry, so consider it an even trade for what you told us about Atlantis.”
She paused, sucked in a deep breath. “I’m not just in the rebellion. I’m one of its leaders. And those wolves your pals killed? They were on my team. So I’m responsible for their deaths.”
Quinn snapped her mouth closed when Brennan walked into the room, staring at him with suspicion.
“It’s okay, Quinn, this is Brennan,” Riley reassured her sister. “He—”
“He has a nifty trick of burying his emotions way, way down, doesn’t he?” Quinn said, eyes narrowing. “I almost didn’t feel them at all, dude. Nice hostility, by the way. How’d you manage the emotional block?”
Chapter 23
Riley stared through the window into the night. “I can’t believe she left. I can’t believe my sister, the rebel leader, just took off into the night on an urgent mission. I keep thinking I’m trapped in a B movie, and I’m going to wake up any minute.”
Conlan couldn’t stay away from her any longer. He’d watched her courage as she’d learned and accepted everything he and her sister had thrown at her that day.
It had been far too long since he’d touched her, and his hands craved the feel of her skin. In two strides, he crossed the bedroom and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m so sorry, mi amara. I hate that you were forced into this rude awakening to the ugly reality of what’s going on now.”
She pulled away and turned to face him, hands fisted on her hips. “Ugly reality? You want to talk to me about ugly reality? My clients routinely kill each other in their homes. Their babies are born addicted to crack and then sometimes starve to death before I can get them any help at all, thanks to Senator ‘I’m a master vampire’ Barnes and his slash-and-burn job on social services for humans. So don’t tell me about ugly reality.”
He leaned against the wall, forcing himself to stay back from her, in spite of his body’s demands that he pull her close again. “Children are often the first casualties of war.”
She spun on her heel and walked away from him, then sank down to sit on the bed. Putting her head in her hands, she moaned. Then she looked him in the eyes. “When did it become a war? Nobody declared a war, not that I know of, and yet suddenly I’m on the front lines.”
He crossed to her, sat next to her. Everything in him rebelled against the words that he forced out, but she’d earned his respect with her courage.
She deserved her freedom.
“If you want out, just say the word. I believe that your empath power may be enormously helpful to us in our battle to protect your people. That is the truth.”
She said nothing, merely gazed at him, unmoving. Her emotions shielded from him.
“But this is also the truth,” he rasped. “Somehow, I have feelings for you beyond anything I ever dreamed possible. Even now, my body is raging at me to take you. To strip you bare and have you underneath me on this bed.”
She gasped a little, but didn’t move away. Conlan chose to take that as a hopeful sign.
“I need you, Riley. Yes, Atlantis needs you. We need to study this power you have and see if we can duplicate it. If Quinn hadn’t convinced us that her mission was so urgent, I would have tried to persuade her to come with us, too.”
“She felt emotions from Brennan, Conlan. That has to give him hope.”
“May it not be false hope. Brennan deserves better than what life has doled out to him.”
He tried to focus. Tried not to be distracted by the scent of her. By the desire swamping him. “The aknasha ability—we hope to discover if it can be used against us. Or maybe used for us. But, in spite of this need—both of these needs—in spite of my duty as future king of the Seven Isles, I would let you go.”
He clenched his hands together to keep from forcibly keeping her with him, prayed that he’d keep it together until she left. He was a man and had enough dignity to want that.
Not that he wasn’t close to begging.
“Once I would have taken. Now, knowing you, I ask. But you need to tell me now. You need to stand up and walk out of this room right now. I’ll ask Ven to take you anywhere you want—somewhere safe. But it has to be now.”
&
nbsp; He finally turned to look at her, his body clenched so tightly he thought he might snap. Burning with need, yet icy with fear that she would go. “Because if you stay, I’ll take it as a yes. Yes to Atlantis, to our cause, but—most of all—yes to me.”
She reached up to touch his face with one trembling hand. “Conlan—”
He yanked his head away from her. “Don’t you get it? My self-control is gone,” he snarled. “All I’ve got left is a bare shred of dignity over a furnace of want. You have to get the hell away from me now.”
He jumped up off the bed, away from temptation. Away from the woman who was, somehow, everything he’d ever wanted. He closed his eyes and stood, head bent, shoulders heaving with the effort it cost him to keep from stretching her out on the bed and taking her mouth with his own.
Taking her body.
Finally, finally, he heard her light footsteps as she began to walk across the floor. The footsteps that would carry her away from him. He flinched as a pain greater than any Anubisa had ever administered washed through him, searing the heart he’d thought gone forever.
Then the footsteps stopped.
And she stood in front of him, her eyes enormous in her pale face.
“I’m not going anywhere, Conlan. My answer is yes.”
Riley looked up at Conlan, aware deep in her heart that she’d just made the most important choice of her life. He stared down at her, eyes widening, then threw his head back, muscles in his neck straining, as he gulped in air like a drowning man.
Then he exploded into motion. He wrapped his arms around her and yanked her into his body so quickly she let out a little sound when her breasts pressed into his chest. He tightened one arm around her waist and lifted the other to wrap his palm around the back of her head.
“Thank you, mi amara,” he whispered, his lips inches from her own. “Thank you for this gift.”
She almost had time to worry—it had been so long, she didn’t really know him—and then his mouth came down on hers. And, as his emotions opened to her, she realized that she’d never known any man so well as she knew this one.
She wanted him with every ounce of her being. His lips were soft and firm and exactly right, and he kissed with the passion of a man who was starving for her. She pressed closer to him, desperate to feel all of him against her, wanting more and more and more.