by Alyssa Day
And the pain. Oh, she'd never forget the pain.
"Conlan, not that I encourage this tree swinging and chest beating, but I think—I think it's not a problem," she ventured. "After all, I kinda forgot that your brother was just in the room. He even looks like you, and he must have a lot of the same superpowered Atlantean DNA, right?"
Conlan smiled a little and nodded, still clenching his hands together.
"Well, there was nothing. Zip," she said, shrugging. "I mean, he's great-looking and all—"
Conlan made that strange growling noise low in his throat again, and she held up her hands, palms out. "I meant to say that he's okay-looking and all, but I didn't have any urge to strip his clothes off and lick him all over or anything," she finished, smiling.
Then she realized what she'd just said, by implication.
Oh, crap.
Conlan hadn't missed it, either, if the expression on his face was anything to go by. The look that said he wanted to lick her right back.
Heat spiked through her center, making her actually clench her legs together against the wetness that threatened to spill out.
Okay, this is bad. Thoughts of hunky prince licking anybody—er, anything—are off-limits.
He shoved a hand through that delicious black hair of his and shot up out of the chair. Then he started doing a little pacing of his own. "Riley, until we understand why we're reacting like this to each other, it's perhaps better if we stay away from each other."
"Yeah, okay, that's fine. In fact, why don't you take me back to my house—or just call me a cab, a cab would be good, and I'll get out of your hair," she said, inexplicably hurt by his having voiced the same thing she'd been thinking only moments before.
He stopped pacing and turned to stare down at her. "I'm sorry, but you're not going anywhere."
Hurt changed in a flash to pissed off. "What do you mean? Look, buddy, you may have the right to order your Atlantean flunkies around, but I'm an American citizen. You've got zero rights where I'm concerned."
He strode over to the bed and sat next to her before she could move. "It's not about rights, aknasha. It's about your own protection. The vampires who attacked us at your house—why were they there? Were they after us? I suspect so, given the nature of the attack."
Taking her hands in his, he continued. "But now they know you live in that house. They're going to be wondering what connection you have to us. You won't be safe there anymore."
She looked down at their hands, wondering if he even realized that his thumb was caressing the back of her hand. Wondering how such a small gesture could make her bones turn to liquid.
Suddenly afraid that he was using some sort of Atlantean version of mind control on her.
She yanked her hands away from his. "So what you're saying is that you've ruined my life."
"No," he said softly. "I think what I'm saying is that you've complicated mine."
Scooting back from him on the bed, she tried to be rational. "All right. Let's back up. Tell me what I need to know about Atlantis. Tell me why these vampires are after you. Tell me what aknasha means, and why you're so freaked out that I might be one. I work better with information, so give me some already."
Conlan smiled, and some of the tension seemed to leave his shoulders. "Information is definitely something I can give you. You deserve it. First, my homeland. Atlantis. It would take years for me to tell you about Atlantis. Much of the myth, some of the legend, and even some of the fantasy is true."
"But no gills?" Riley couldn't help but return his smile, her own a little mischievous.
"Definitely no gills. We are much like you."
"So, human, then, with special powers?"
He shook his head. "No, not human. A cousin to your species, certainly. Closer to humankind than to the shape-shifters. Far different from the undead. We lived in harmony with your kind for many thousands of years."
"And then you sank below the water, and now you live in a bubble, right?" Riley knew she was being flippant, but a girl had limits as to how much she could absorb in one night.
That unbelievably sensuous smile quirked the edges of his lips, and he leaned back against the headboard of the bed. "No, no bubbles. No mermaids, either, before you ask. Hollywood movies aren't really a source of historical fact, Riley, in spite of what my brother might think."
"Hey! I loved mermaids when I was a little girl. I wanted to grow up and have a dolphin for a pet and swim with my fish tail and the whole thing," she said indignantly.
He leaned forward, suddenly intent. "You were at the beach tonight, after experiencing traumatic events, instead of retreating to your home. Why was that?"
Suddenly uncomfortable, Riley shifted on the bed, looking anywhere but at him. "I don't know," she admitted. "I've always been that way. I go to the ocean for solace, for solitude. For healing."
The starkness of her words hung in the silence between them for a long moment, and then he leaned back against the headboard again. "That may be important, Riley. I don't know why, but it feels like something important. Maybe Alaric will know."
The name sounded familiar, and she squirmed a bit. "Alaric? Is he the scary one who looked at me like I was a bug stuck to the end of a pin? I kinda threatened to hurt him."
His eyes widened, and then he grinned. "Oh, I'd give half the royal treasury to have seen that."
Riley laughed, trying not to freak out about a guy who calmly said things like "half the royal treasury." Holy crap.
He raised one eyebrow, and seemed to get tense all over again. "You're not going to tell me that you thought he was great-looking, too?"
"He looked like a convicted felon," she said flatly. "He made me want to call for backup. So, no worries, not even the slightest hint of an attraction there."
He leaned forward so quickly she almost didn't see him move and lifted one of her hands to his mouth, kissed it briefly, and released it. "Thank you for that, Riley. I don't understand why—and I have to be honest, I don't like it one bit—but I seem to have a need to know that you're not attracted to any of my warriors. To any other males at all."
She rolled her eyes. "Look, Conlan, I know you might think otherwise, because of the way I reacted to you, but it's not like I'm some kind of nymphomaniac."
"And that would be bad because…" he drawled, the gleam coming back to his eyes, and the intriguing blue-green flame in his pupils flashing at her.
"Don't be a pervert," she said, laughing. "Okay, and that's another thing. Why do your eyes get that blue-green flicker in the middle of them, like right now?"
He sat up fast, ramrod straight. "My eyes do what, exactly?"
"Sorry, didn't mean to upset you. It's just that your pupils are so black, until you get that blue-green flame in them. I was a little bit curious."
Conlan shot up off the bed. When he turned around to face her, she noticed that his eyes had gone black again. When he spoke, his voice was icy. "It's very late, Riley. I need to discuss strategy with Alaric before I rest. You should also get some rest, because we'll undoubtedly be leaving early in the morning."
He strode toward the door, leaving her gaping in his wake. "What the hell just happened? Do you Atlanteans have split personalities or something? And why do you think I'm going anywhere with you in the morning? You still haven't explained anything to me, Prince Conlan, or whoever you are," she said, temper rising.
He stopped at the doorway, looked back at her. "I am Conlan, high prince of Atlantis," he said, voice flat. "I need explain myself to no one. The Warriors of Poseidon have been the defenders of humanity for more than eleven thousand years, and I have been their leader for centuries."
He yanked the door open, took a step, then stopped. "My reaction to a human female, aknasha or no, changes nothing."
Before she could even begin to think of a response blistering enough to peel strips off his hide, he was gone, slamming the door shut behind him.
"You—you jackass!" she yelled, jumping up to run fo
r the door. But before she could reach it, she heard the unmistakable click of a lock. Momentum carried her the rest of the way and she yanked on the handle, but only confirmed what she'd known when she heard the noise.
That arrogant, overbearing, dictatorial scumbag of a prince had locked her in the room.
Oh, he was so totally going to pay.
Chapter 15
Conlan leaned back against the door to Riley's room, shaken more than he wanted to admit, even to himself. His eyes got a blue-green flame in them?
When he wasn't channeling the elements—or any power at all?
Oh, he was screwed.
Something was seriously wrong with this scenario. Eyes didn't display the flame of Poseidon except when the person whose skull the eyes happened to be stuck in channeled power. Called the elements.
Not when sitting around chatting with a female.
A human female.
Unless… The thought that had driven ice through his veins flashed back into his head, refusing to be ignored. His mother's bedtime stories about ancient Atlantean lords and their ladies. Stories of fierce battles and enduring love.
Tales of the legendary gift of the soul-meld between an Atlantean and his mate, which branded a warrior's heart and soul as surely as Poseidon's mark branded his body.
It was impossible. The soul-meld was a legend, a fable. A fanciful bedtime story. Nothing more. Soul-melding did not exist.
Like empaths don't exist, right?
Oh, damn. He needed Alaric to figure this one out. Soon. As soon as the Trident was retrieved. After they'd figured out why the hell those vamps had attacked, and how to find the Trident in the first place.
Or even what to do about Reisen.
Yeah. All the subjects he'd forgotten to raise with Alaric and the Seven earlier.
He was screwed.
At dawn the next morning, Conlan woke from a fractured sleep to the smell of coffee and the sound of low, male laughter. For a minute or two, before he moved from the bed he'd fallen into, exhausted, late the night before, he lay completely still, examining what he was feeling. Actually, what he wasn't feeling. It was a kind of absence. The lack of something—what!
His eyes snapped open as the truth came to him. What he'd felt—what was missing—was rage.
Fury.
He'd needed the flames of anger to defeat helplessness. To goad him into living for the long years that he'd been Anubisa's captive. He'd fed those flames with memories of his parents and thoughts of his brother and Atlantis when despair or pain threatened to overpower the rage.
But now, in spite of the vampire threat, and even in spite of Reisen's treason, he'd let loose of some inner core of fury that had shored up his foundation for so long. His thoughts turned inward, examining, focusing on the building blocks of his psyche.
Of what Alaric had called his uncompromised soul.
It had been close. Damn, but it had been close. There had been so many times when he'd wondered why he bothered to try to stay alive. Why he kept fighting her.
Why he didn't let death take him.
Conlan thought back to the concrete floors and the ten-inch-by-ten-inch metal grate in the floor.
"The better for the blood to drain into," she'd said, fangs flashing in the light of the dozens of candles that ringed the room. "It's not like I'm going to drink it all, princeling. There will be much to tempt my blood pride down below."
Her blood pride. More like her coven of minions from hell. He'd heard them wailing and gnashing their fangs in the cavern below his cell every hour of every day.
Every hour of every night.
Until the day she released him.
"And that's what pisses me off the most, isn't it?" he snarled, sitting up and swinging his feet off the bed. "That she released me. That I didn't escape on my own. In the end, I turned out to be no better than any of the rest of her pets, didn't I?"
Just like that, it was back. The empty, barren landscapes inside his soul were filled with wrath.
He welcomed it. Hell, he and rage were old buddies.
Conlan? A delicate touch in his mind. Are you okay?
Riley.
For a heartbeat, the lyricism of her voice and the sparkling blues and golds of her emotions combined to drive the flames from his mind. He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, sure that he could smell her clean, fresh scent. Flowers and the ocean.
Surer now—definitely louder, her voice pounded through his head: Conlan! If you're okay, get your ass over here and unlock this door, or I will pound on your head!
He started laughing at the contradiction. Ah, his delicate flower. Never one to say the expected, was she?
Nope. And she wasn't his anything, either. Better for both of them if he didn't forget it.
Sobering, he sent his reply back to her: On my way. Try not to chew through the wall, okay?
He felt a slight trace of her amusement sparkle through him in colors of warm honey and gold. Then that peculiar slamming sensation in his head, which cut off any trace of her.
Oh, yeah. She was pissed. This ought to be fun.
Not.
Reisen looked up from his contemplation of the object in his hands, eyes still dazzled, when the thud of heavy-soled boots thundered down the hall toward him. Micah strode into the room, followed closely by several more warriors.
"My lord," Micah said, breathing harshly. "While patrolling, we discovered a nest of shape-shifters based in a tattoo parlor in Virginia Beach."
Reisen laughed. "That seems a little odd, doesn't it? Do you think the tattoos come back after they take animal form and then return to human?"
Micah folded his arms over his chest, staring at Reisen with his usual implacable expression. "My lord?"
Shaking off both the whimsy and the near-trancelike state he'd gone into while staring at the hen's-egg-sized emerald in his hands for the past hour, Reisen stood up. "And? What did you do about it?"
Micah shrugged. "We returned here to tell you about it. I wasn't sure if our quest allowed time for battling a bunch of furballs. Especially after the Council's decree that we only destroy shape-shifters proven of wrongdoing."
Reisen carefully replaced the emerald in its silk pouch and gently tucked the pouch back inside its small wooden box. The leaders of the East Coast cell of the Platoists had been only too anxious to give him the emerald, when they'd learned the truth of their organization's central tenet.
Atlantis was real.
Moreover, Reisen was an Atlantean prince. They'd treated him like a god. He hadn't exactly hated it.
He'd thought the human was going to piss in his pants. Luckily for all concerned, the man had managed to contain his excitement long enough to retrieve the emerald and gift it to Reisen.
Who now had to figure out how to use it. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. But some things were easy. "We all swore a sacred vow to protect humanity. It gains us nothing to restore Atlantis to its rightful place in the world, if that world is overrun with bloodsuckers and shape-shifters. In this, as in so much else, the Council is wrong."
Micah nodded, smiling. "I was hoping you'd say that," he said, with his hands on the handle of his battle-axe. "All this tension has me in the mood to kick some shape-shifter ass."
The warriors ringing Micah nodded and growled their agreement. Reisen carefully packed the small wooden box and the fabric-wrapped bundle of the Trident into a leather carrying bag. One of the warriors stepped forward. "May I carry that for you, my lord?"
"Thank you, but this is one burden that I'm honored to carry myself." With that, Reisen led them to the main room of the house to do some planning. He still had more than a day before the scheduled meeting with the Platoists.
Plenty of time to kick some shape-shifter ass.
Chapter 16
Riley was still grumbling under her breath a good ten minutes after Conlan had shown up and unlocked the door to her room. She'd read him the riot act. Just when she'd started to trust h
im and believe in all his crazy Atlantean royalty stuff, he'd pulled a prison warden act on her.
But after he'd sketched out the bare-bones truth about the vampire threat, some crook named Reisen who'd stolen a precious artifact, and apologized five or six times, she'd calmed down.
It was insane, but she knew she could trust him. Amazing how being able to feel a man's emotions cut through the doubt. This was mainly about protecting her.
She'd switched to subverbal grumbling after tasting the coffee he'd brought as a peace offering. It was hot, sweet, and delicious.
Words that could also describe Conlan. She peeked up at him through her lashes. How unfair was it that the man looked even better in the morning? All that muscle hadn't diminished one bit in the light of day. Worse, she noticed new things about him. Like the faint blue highlight to his black hair. It didn't look like a salon job, so it must be an Atlantis thing.
She tightened her hands on her coffee cup, mostly to keep from reaching out to touch his hair.
It was a compulsion. A craving. It felt the way her addict clients had described the need for their drug of choice.
Conlan paced back and forth in the room, mostly ignoring her. Or at least not looking at her. Considering the tension in his massive shoulders, she'd bet big money that he wasn't unaware of her.
She was clean, at least. The small bathroom attached to her room—her prison cell—was well stocked with an assortment of soaps, shampoos, and conditioners. Brand-new toothbrushes wrapped in plastic lay in rows in a drawer under the sink.
The thought of it pissed her off all over again. "So, bring a lot of women here, do you?"
He stopped pacing and whirled around to face her. "What? What are you talking about? I haven't been to this house in more than a decade. It belongs to my brother."
She nodded. "It figures. Like brother, like brother, right? You're just a couple of good old boys who kidnap women and drag them to your evil lair."