Atlantis Redeemed (6 page)

Grace bowed to them all in return, but Brennan heard Alexios muttering, “Here we freaking go again.”

“The wolf is not Diana’s animal,” Alexios said, biting off the words. “The panther is. So I don’t want to hear any blather about consorts, honorary or otherwise, or I’m so going to kick your ass.”

Honey’s smile was suddenly sharp and full of teeth. “Trust me, you’d not be the only one doing the ass kicking.”

Lucas threw up his hands in protest, shaking his head. “Hey, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What consort? Also, who even says ‘consort’ these days?”

“Yeah, you’re the one who’s going to be getting
your
ass kicked if you don’t stop that,” Grace said, poking Alexios in the side, her embarrassment tangible. “It’s a long story and certainly one we don’t need to bring up again now. Or, you know,
ever
.”

Brennan decided the moment had come to rescue Grace, and perhaps they could dispense with the small talk and move on to the focus of this mission. He stepped forward to state that very premise, but before he could open his mouth to speak, a searing, slashing pain cut through the side of his throat, dropping him to his knees where he stood. “
Pain
,” he managed, gasping out the words. “Fear. Darkness.”

A tidal wave of fire and pain raged through his body, twisting him into an impossible contortion until his head slammed down onto the ground so hard it bounced. “He’s hurting her. Hurting her. Biting . . . blood . . . no. No!”

Alexios crouched into a squat beside him, grabbing his shoulders and lifting him. “Brennan, what is it? What in the nine hells is going on with you? Hurting who? Who’s doing the hurting?”

Brennan tried to answer, but a snarling roar was all he managed as the rage ripped at his insides until he was sure his ribs would explode out through his skin.
Lust
. He could feel the echoes of the vampire’s lust as his bite caught at the woman, threatening to pull her under. He caught Alexios by the arm and stared up into his fellow warrior’s shocked face.

The world swam red before his eyes, but he finally managed to form coherent words. “He bit her. He bit her, Alexios. He touched her skin with his godsdamned bloodsucking teeth, and now he’s going to die.”

“Bit who? Brennan, you’re not making any sense.”

Brennan stared at Alexios, looking right through him as the image of a woman in life-threatening danger seared his mind. “I don’t know who. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” he shouted, dragging himself up off the ground.

Before Alexios could answer, Brennan shoved him out of the way, launched himself into the air, and transformed into mist, shooting through the air in an unerring straight path toward his woman.

Must find the woman. Must find her
now
.

Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel

Tiernan closed the door and leaned back against it. Her room was standard-issue hotel: plaid bedspread on the king bed, phone, lamp, and Internet connection on the desk, and the room service breakfast menu propped up on her pillows. Clean, bright, and bland, but after all, nobody came to Yellowstone for the hotel décor. She crossed the room and sat on the edge of her bed, dropped her bag, and kicked off the stupid shoes, tossing them at the too-small wastebasket over by the desk. One crisis solved: she’d never wear the damn things again.

Now all she had to do was solve the mystery of the vamp who’d bitten her, the vamps who were enthralling shape-shifters, and the scientists who were helping them. With or without Atlantean help, she decided, as she checked her phone for nonexistent messages from what she’d come to think of as the underwater contingent. They weren’t much for modern technology.

The single window drew her across the room, and she checked and double-checked that it was locked, even though she was on the third floor. Everything she knew about vampires said that they couldn’t enter a home uninvited, but nobody knew for sure what the outer limits of that rule were. Nobody but the vamps, and they weren’t talking. Did a hotel room count as a home? She rather doubted it.

Worse, did the blood he’d taken from her allow him special privileges with her—
to
her? Would she become his Renfield?

She rolled her eyes, impatient with her own stupidity. Renfield.
Please
.

She took her toiletries bag to the bathroom and starting unpacking the little bit of makeup she’d brought with her. Sparkly eye shadow and glossy lips would help the scientists underestimate her. Fluffy reporters were nothing to worry about, after all. She’d already prepared the way through e-mails and phone calls so they thought she was there for a few sound bites on the wonderful medical breakthroughs humans and shape-shifters were making in the spirit of joint cooperation.

Yeah. Right. Maybe that was happening somewhere, but not with this group. They had a deeper, darker purpose, and it was up to her to find out exactly who, what, where, when, and why. She set the gleaming tube of mascara on the counter and made the mistake of looking into the mirror. The smear of blood on her neck highlighted the two small puncture holes, and the black circles under her eyes from weeks of restless nights made her look like she was half-vamp herself.

She wet a washcloth and poured half of the travel-sized bottle of antibacterial gel on it, then gritted her teeth and cleaned her neck. Once the blood was gone, the punctures were barely visible. A little makeup would cover up the evidence, so nobody at the conference would be able to tell she’d served as the equivalent of vampire Cheetos.

A little
snack
.

Bastard
.

Something scraped against glass, and she dropped the washcloth. The noise had been so subtle that she might not have heard it if her nerves hadn’t shot straight to hyper-alert during the encounter with the vamp.

He was back. He was back, and unfortunately, there were no wooden stakes in the dish with the complimentary soap and shampoo. Calling for backup would only get someone else killed with her; she knew the speed and strength of vampires very, very well. She grabbed the small glass tumbler and filled it with water, then whipped around and faced the window, ready to bluff.

Ready to lie. She was so very good at lying.

“I’m not an easy target now,” she called out, pleased that her voice remained so steady. “This is a glass filled with holy water, and I’m not afraid to use it.”

But it wasn’t the vampire’s face at the window. It wasn’t any face at all, but a strange fog that was almost corporeal, almost sentient, the way it moved back and forth across the outside of her window, as if it sought a way to enter.

She knew some vamps could fly, but could they turn into fog? Or was she hallucinating from blood loss?

Tiernan’s hand trembled a little, and the water in the glass rippled. “Whatever you are, stay out.”

As if it heard her, the fog froze to utter stillness, then receded. In the space of two of her rapid heartbeats, it vanished entirely from the window.

“This is where the stupid person walks over to the window to look out, and the zombie breaks the glass and eats her brains,” she muttered, putting the glass down with a little too much force on the counter. “If zombies could float.

“A brilliant investigative reporter, however, calls for help.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and took a step toward the door. But then she dropped the phone from nerveless fingers to the perfectly ordinary carpet in her perfectly ordinary hotel room as the fog, or mist, or whatever the heck it was—
not
perfectly ordinary, oh, no, not at all
ordinary
—streamed into her room through the nonexistent cracks in the seam between the window and the sill.

Her reporter’s brain toggled over to its “superobservant” setting, and she took in every detail, shaking her head back and forth, whether in denial or disbelief she had no idea.

The fog coalesced into a sparkling, shimmering shape—a large and broad shape—the shape of a man. The golden light from the lamps reflected off of tiny particles in the water, projecting a cascade of mini-rainbows across every flat surface in a brilliant light show. Then the cloud of mist exploded outward as if triumphantly hailing the man who stepped from it.

The man
. The man who, mere seconds before, had been nothing but a cloud. A fog. The man who now stood in the center of her hotel room, breathing hard, staring at her with his ice-green eyes.

Except they weren’t as icy as she remembered. No, this man’s eyes were pure green fire, and every inch of her skin burned as the heat of his gaze swept her from head to toe and then back, lingering on her neck.

“Brennan?” His name came out in a whisper, but he snapped his head up and stared straight into her eyes when she spoke. A brief whisper of danger sent a chill down her spine, and her senses translated the deadly stillness in his pose as that of a feral animal crouching to leap.

Feral and primitive. Wild and beautiful. His silky black hair fell in waves around a face that would cause the highest-paid TV anchor to weep with jealousy. Pure masculine beauty, with dark brows over those amazing green eyes. The cheekbones and bone structure all the Atlanteans she’d met had shared, as if they alone had posed for the most magnificent of the ancient Greek statues. And his mouth . . . oh, his mouth. How could a simple combination of lips and teeth make her wonder what it would be like to taste him?

As reality crumpled around her, some vestige of control snapped into place and Tiernan managed to force words from her suddenly dust-dry throat. “I’m guessing I missed a pretty spectacular entrance back in Boston when I was hiding behind that couch. I had wondered how you guys busted through that window so high off the ground, but I was more thinking ropes coming down from the roof.”

“You are Tiernan?” he demanded, ignoring her nervous chatter. “Tell me. Now.”

“Yes, I’m Tiernan. You know me. We—”

She gasped a little and stopped talking as he took a single step toward her, then another, his large, muscled body leaning forward as if he were stalking her. “He dared to touch you,” he growled, the words nearly unintelligible. “He put his mouth on you. I will kill him.”

She backed away, but the motion seemed to infuriate him even further, because he dove across the several feet separating them as if he really were that wild animal leaping for its prey.

“Brennan, stop! I don’t know what this is about, but you need to calm down so we can—” Memories of his crazed wildness the first time he’d seen her flashed into her mind, shutting down her powers of speech as he took the final step and slammed his hands flat against the wall on either side of her head, caging her against his body.

He wasn’t going to listen to her. She was in danger. Rick had been right. She should have listened, but no, she had to be tough, and now for the second time in an hour she was facing a predator.

“I’ll be damned if I’m going to be prey for a vampire or anybody else,” she shouted, shoving at his chest as he leaned farther toward her. It was like shoving a brick wall. A hot, hard brick wall that smelled like salt and sea and man.

He froze in place, then tilted his head to one side, pinning her with a long, considering stare. “Not his prey,” he finally said, his deep voice sizzling across her nerve endings.

She caught her breath, but before she could speak he lifted one hand from the wall to touch the side of her face.

“Not
his
prey,” he repeated, bending his face down to hers. “Mine.”

 

 

 

 

She’d been partially hidden; blocked by the door that had stood between them. The door that he would have ripped from its frame with his bare hands. But as Brennan had transformed back from mist into his body, the woman had stepped out into the room and he’d seen her face clearly. The face from the newspaper clipping he yet carried in his pocket. The face from those fragments of nearly forgotten dreams. He saw her face, and the entire world jolted and fell out of orbit. There was no sun. There was only
her
.

She was so very beautiful. Waves of dark hair framed her face, a perfect frame for her enormous dark brown eyes. The curve of her cheek must have inspired poetry. The curve of her lips must have inspired song.

The curves of her body—well. Those inspired something entirely different. He’d felt his heart pounding in his chest as his body reacted suddenly and fiercely, every inch of him going hard and ready.

She’d stared up at him, defiance and caution mingling in those dark, dark eyes as she met his gaze. That’s all it took. A single glance, and he was done. He was hers.

Then she’d spoken his name, and his calm had shattered. He’d leapt at her, desperate to touch her. To taste her. To take her and make her his and never, ever let her leave him.

She’d said something, shouted something, but only one word penetrated. Prey? Who would dare to make his woman prey? Not prey.