by Alyssa Day
He brushed a kiss on her forehead, and her knees nearly gave out from the tidal wave of longing she felt from just that brief caress. But after that—nothing. It was as if a metal shield had slammed down between them. Suddenly, she couldn’t feel even a hint of his emotions.
Perversely, she hated the loss of them. She looked a question at him.
“I’ve had hundreds of years to learn to block my feelings, mi amara. Even a powerful aknasha such as yourself cannot penetrate my defenses,” he said calmly. Or at least he sounded calm. For all she could tell, he might have been boiling with suppressed emotion, but not an ounce of it leaked out.
His words finally registered in her tired mind, and she pulled away from him. “Don’t call me your beloved, when you know we can never be together, okay? Aknasha is fine; we all know I’m an empath. But I can’t be your amara.”
She turned away and whispered, almost to herself, “Even if I want to be.”
Jack, as if sensing the tension in the room, lifted his lips away from his fangs and growled at Alaric.
“I’d almost rather he had enough fight in him to attack you,” she said.
“Thank you,” Alaric replied dryly. “Your concern for my safety is touching.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not worried about you. I’ve seen you in action, remember?”
Jack turned those huge golden eyes to her and growled again, almost as if he understood her. He and Alaric had thrown enough testosterone at each other since they’d met that the Jack she knew—human Jack—would never have put up with her comment. The fact that tiger Jack didn’t seem to like it either gave her another moment of hope.
Archelaus appeared in the doorway and nodded to her. “My lady, you want your privacy, I know, but our guest wishes to speak with the two of you.”
Quinn had to think for a second or two before she remembered what guest he was talking about. By then, Alaric had caught her arm in a firm grasp, as if to prevent her from moving. She pointedly looked down at his hand and then up at him.
“No. I don’t trust her,” he commanded.
“Of course you’re not talking to me, are you? You would know better than to try to give me orders, Your Royal Priestliness, wouldn’t you?” she asked in a voice so sweet it made Alaric blink.
“You—”
She cut him off. “Stop it. As far as I know, I’m still the leader of the North American rebel alliance, even after this hiatus. I’m not a helpless woman who needs the big, strong Atlantean to tell her what to do. Let’s go see this woman.”
“But—”
“The sooner we see her, the sooner we can find out who she really is,” Quinn explained, in her most reasonable tone. She figured reasonableness was better than pulling out her Glock and shooting him in the foot. He’d just heal himself, anyway, so it wasn’t like he’d learn a lesson in Not Being Bossy.
She yanked her arm out of his grasp and strode across the chamber toward Archelaus, surprised to find the older man grinning like a delighted child.
“Oh, Alaric, you are in so much trouble, aren’t you?” Archelaus said, shaking his head.
Alaric snarled something in a language that might have been ancient Atlantean, but whatever he’d said, it only made Archelaus laugh out loud. “Good luck with that, youngling.”
Quinn, who knew Alaric was at least five hundred years past being called a youngling, shot a suspicious look at Archelaus but decided she was too tired to care about the relative ages of Atlantean warriors. “Just take us to her. Jack, are you coming?”
Jack slouched down off the bed and padded after her as she followed Archelaus down the stone corridor toward a kind of courtyard. The area was enclosed by the walls of the cave, but high up on one side an opening allowed sunshine to stream into the space. The surprise at first had been the garden flourishing in the heart of a cavern, filled with fantastical flowers that she’d never seen before. She noticed a trace of a smile cross Alaric’s face and wondered at the source. She realized they’d never both been in the garden at the same time before.
She raised an eyebrow. “You like flowers?”
“It’s a miniature replica of the main palace courtyard in Atlantis, even to the tiny fountain burbling in the corner,” he said.
Archelaus nodded. “Yes. A bit of home I couldn’t resist bringing with me. My friends are always asking for cuttings and seedlings, so I fear I have introduced Atlantean life to the surface before Conlan was quite ready.”
“I doubt the high prince is concerned about this kind of population,” Alaric said dryly.
Quinn tilted her head and stared up at the jagged edges of the window, which was actually not much more than a cleft torn in the ground above. “Had any hikers fallen in recently?”
Archelaus smiled. “As you know, there is a powerful repellent spell in the area above. I may not have mentioned this before, but no hiker has come near the spot since the last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, came on a pilgrimage to the sacred Fuji-san in 1867.”
“The mountain is sacred to the Japanese?”
The Atlantean elder nodded. “Yes. Certainly more at that time than now, as so many of our gods and sacred places have lost their meaning in this modern age.”
“But not to you,” she pointed out, slanting a long look at Alaric. “Your god, Poseidon, is as real to you today as he ever was.”
Jack, who was prowling around the edges of the room, lifted his shaggy head and aimed his amber gaze at Alaric, growling softly.
Alaric ignored the tiger. He crossed his arms on his chest and stared right back at Quinn. “As real, and even more demanding. Yet not all of us will continue to dance to his tune forever.”
“You are his sworn high priest, my son,” Archelaus said, his face troubled. “What you speak is worse than blasphemy; it is akin to breaking an oath.”
Alaric turned away from the man, as if dismissing the topic, and pointed at the dark-haired woman sitting silently on a bench in the middle of the space. Her back was toward them, but Quinn recognized the cut of her hair and her slight figure.
“Yes, that is our visitor. Her name is Noriko, and it is also Gailea, as far as we can understand. She speaks in an odd language—a confusion of ancient Atlantean mixed with Japanese. Between my friend Mizuki and myself, we’ve managed to cobble together what we think she means, but she mostly has sat silent, as you see her, since she arrived, refusing to talk much at all. She was very ill when she arrived and now she appears to be somewhat better, but she will not allow us to examine her, nor will she allow Alaric near enough to attempt a healing.” Archelaus frowned. “I confess I do not know how to proceed with her. I am merely an old warrior, not wise enough in the ways of women or lost souls.”
The woman turned her head and pinned her dark gaze on Archelaus. “You are quite wise, and your heart is evident, Old One,” she said in perfect, lightly accented English.
Alaric stepped forward slightly so that he stood between Quinn and the woman. Probably thought he was being subtle about his protectiveness. Quinn rolled her eyes as she dodged around him.
“Now that you have deigned to speak to me, state your name and how you appeared in our portal,” Alaric demanded.
The woman rose gracefully to her feet and bowed, dark eyes flashing with a hint of defiance. “I needed time to discover the shape of my current reality. I am Gailea, the one you know as the spirit of the portal, and you, Alaric, are as arrogant as ever, I see.”
“The shape of your reality. Yeah, because that makes sense,” Quinn said, studying Gailea’s delicate Japanese features and raising an eyebrow, not caring that the other woman recognized her skepticism. “You look so much like the other ancient Atlantean woman I know. You and Serai could practically be sisters.”
Gailea bowed again, this time toward Quinn. “And I am also Noriko, the woman you see before you. She came to Mount Fuji to die. She recently discovered that she had an advanced stage of cancer, and having lost her family to the tsunami, she believed she had
no reason to live.”
Shame flushed Quinn’s cheeks with heat, but she knew better, after years of dealing with traitors, spies, and villains, to take anything that anyone said at face value. “And we should believe you why, exactly?”
Noriko/Gailea calmly said quite a long paragraph of . . . something.
Alaric snapped to attention, whatever it was that she’d said. His body tensed and he clenched his hands into fists at his sides.
“Poseidon’s long-term plans and schemes can no longer rule my life,” he snapped. “I don’t want to know what you think.”
Before Gailea could respond, Jack snarled viciously and leapt through the air toward her, knocking the woman/portal spirit to one side. As Noriko backed away toward the cave wall, Quinn automatically drew her gun and dropped into a battle-ready crouch; years of fighting with Jack at her side had trained her responses to his actions to be instantaneous. She followed Jack’s gaze up and up. The light in the chamber suddenly dimmed, and everyone else looked up at the opening in the top of the room, too, just in time to see the first of a wave of wild creatures with bared fangs and outstretched claws leap down through the air.
Quinn’s mouth dropped open. “Monkeys? Now we’re being attacked by flying monkeys?”
Chapter 3
Alaric didn’t even blink at the sight of a dozen or more man-sized brutish apes leaping down upon them. Their red faces contorted into feral grimaces as they shrieked and roared. After hundreds of years as a warrior and Poseidon’s high priest, veteran of thousands of battles and survivor of nearly as many deadly schemes, Alaric was surprised by nothing anymore. Especially when Quinn was around.
Not even flying monkeys.
“Quinn, get out of here,” he barked, as he called to his magic. First, he wove a powerful protection spell over the barrier to prevent further intruders from dropping down on their heads. Then he formed twin spheres of blue-green electricity in his outstretched palms, and he hurled the first with fatal accuracy at the lead ape. For an instant its brown fur shone with a luminous blue light, like a bizarre mammalian form of deep-sea creature. The light abruptly vanished as the ape collapsed and died.
The harsh bark of gunfire reverberated through the room, and the second ape dropped to the ground, dead, directly in front of Gailea. Alaric whipped his head around to glare at Quinn, who glared right back at him.
“Run from danger?” she called out, taking fresh aim at another attacker. “Have you met me?”
Alaric snarled out an Atlantean oath and whirled to protect Gailea, but she’d already thrown up a protective shield around herself in the form of a miniature dome of transparent energy. Two of the apes thudded against it as he watched, but it held firm.
Alaric spared a glance for his other companions, and discovered Archelaus wielding a sword he’d produced from somewhere, slashing and stabbing at the creatures in a whirlwind frenzy. Across the room, Jack tore into two more of them with the primal fury of an apex predator.
“Behind you,” Quinn shouted, and Alaric formed a sword of pure, flashing magic and spun around, slicing through the air and sending three of them to the nine hells. The echoing report of Quinn’s gun barked again and again, and only the sure knowledge that none of the creatures came even close to approaching her kept Alaric sane.
One of the apes jumped on Alaric’s back and dug its sharp claws deep into muscle and flesh. Alaric roared out in wordless denial, twisted his body enough to grab the large furry head, and wrenched it to one side. The thick neck snapped with an audible crack, and the ape fell heavily to the ground. After that, it was fur and fangs and blood for several long minutes until the final ape crashed into the cave and met Alaric’s grim brand of justice.
Alaric scanned the room and glanced up at the skylight entrance, but no new creatures appeared. The room was filled with dead and dying apes, but as far as he could tell, none of his companions were injured. He knew Quinn, at least, was unharmed. He could always feel everything she felt. Every single scratch. Even the tiniest bruise.
It was enough to drive a man mad.
“Jack, hold!” Archelaus ran across the room toward the snarling tiger far faster than his age seemed to allow. “We need one of them alive to talk.”
It was a futile attempt. Jack never even hesitated as he leapt up and bit down on the shoulder and neck of the final ape still attempting to fight. The tiger shook the ape in his mouth in a grim parody of a house cat with a rat, and then he hurled the dead ape across the room and roared; whether in triumph or defiance, Alaric was unsure.
“Damn it, Jack,” Quinn said, but her voice was filled with exhaustion, not anger. “What if they were shifters? They must have been. It would have helped if we could have coaxed one of the monkeys back to human shape long enough to tell us what is going on here.”
Jack bared his fangs in Quinn’s general direction but didn’t return to human form to argue with her, unfortunately. He might never again regain human form. But that was another problem, for another time.
The floor was covered with the bloody shapes of the current problem.
“They’re definitely shape-shifters, but they invaded the sanctuary,” Archelaus said. His face was drawn and pale, as though he’d aged a hundred years in an hour.
“The sanctuary,” he repeated. “We have had agreement here with the shifters and vampires alike for more than a century. What possibly could have caused them to break it?”
“What were those?” Quinn asked, shoving her guns into their hidden holsters under her shapeless shirt. “I’ve never seen apes that looked like that, outside of a horror movie.”
“They were a grossly distorted version of a Japanese macaque. The real thing has the same brownish fur and red face but runs about twenty-five pounds,” Archelaus said. He was breathing hard, and Alaric sent a silent, questing tendril of magic to discern the extent of his injury, if any.
Archelaus raised an eyebrow, and Alaric realized he’d been caught. “I’m just old, Alaric. Nothing you can do about that, unless you’ve suddenly learned how to turn back time.”
“I’m feeling rather old myself, Wise One,” Noriko said, finally emerging from behind her shield, which she let disperse slowly. The woman’s face was as pale as a snow-dusted grave. “I never had to deal with attacking apes in the portal. I must apologize for my cowardice. All of you fought the attackers, but I have no weapons, nor do I have knowledge of how to do battle.”
Alaric shook his head. “No one expected you to fight. You did well to protect yourself so we did not need to expend resources to defend you.”
Noriko bowed. “Arigato gozaimasu.”
Quinn abruptly sat down on the floor next to Jack and started laughing. “Don’t make me get my flying monkeys,” she said, shaking her head.
Everyone stared blankly at her, except Jack, who tilted his shaggy head, his tongue lolling out, as if sharing an inside joke.
Quinn looked up and saw them all looking puzzled. “Never mind. It’s The Wizard of Oz. It’s—never mind. So, what now? Attack by flying monkeys doesn’t strike me as a random act. Who’s after you, Archelaus? Or do they know we’re here, and it’s an attack against me or Alaric? Or even Jack? Plenty of targets to choose from in this room.”
Noriko collapsed down on a bench. “I thought the opportunity to be mortal again would be a precious gift. Instead, I find I desperately miss the power to be anywhere I want to be and nearly omniscient. What can I see—where can I go—trapped in this body?”
“Welcome to my life,” Quinn said, with only a trace of bitterness. “I’m surrounded by vampires, Atlantean warriors, and powerful shape-shifters, and all I’ve got is a gun or two and whatever street smarts I’ve picked up over the years. It’s like fighting the Spartan army armed with a toothpick.”
“I would challenge the Spartan army for you, Quinn,” Alaric said quietly. “You don’t always have to take it all on by yourself.”
“I didn’t,” she said simply. “I had Jack. And then, if o
nly for a little while, I had you and your prince and his warriors. Now I’m not sure I want any of it. I’m tired. Ten years of fighting the good fight should be enough for anybody.”
Jack sneezed and rolled over on his back, all the while keeping those orange eyes trained on Quinn.
She almost smiled. “No, I’m not giving up and showing the bad guys my belly, fur face. And if you want to give me crap about my decisions, you’re going to have to change back into a human and do it out loud.”
The tiger deliberately turned his head away, and a shimmer formed in Quinn’s eyes before she dragged one sleeve across her face.
Several white-robed people appeared at the entrance to the courtyard, wearing expressions of horror, disbelief, and even shock. Alaric attempted to view the scene through their eyes and realized it was, in fact, worthy of horror and shock. Dead, bloody bodies lay in crumpled heaps all over the floor. The peace of the sanctuary had been brutally invaded.
He was too tired, too jaded, or too hardened to feel horror, though. Just a grim resignation that now, yet again, the battle was on. Even when he tried to escape the fight, it followed him. As did skepticism, cynicism, and suspicion. Why were these people only arriving now? Had they been part of a larger betrayal?
One of them started babbling. “Archelaus, what happened? You— We heard— The portal—”
“I’d like to know that, too.” A calm voice interrupted the man’s broken words.
“Ven,” Alaric said. “I should have guessed.”
“Somebody needed to save you from yourself,” Ven said, striding into the room. “I figured it oughta be me.”
* * *
Quinn’s lips quirked into a grin as another six and a half feet of Atlantean warrior—this one a prince—joined the party. “Ven. Always a pleasure to see you. Do we need somebody beat up and I forgot?”
Ven laughed and scooped her up off the ground and into a bear hug. “Hello, little sister. Glad to see you in one place. What in the nine hells happened here?”