Atlantis Rising (11 page)

Another one of them who looked an awful lot like Conlan nodded his head, face grim, then barked out a laugh. “She sure pegged you, Temple Rat.”

Laughing Guy dropped to a crouch on one knee before her, smile fading to somberness, and bowed his head. “Your courage is unknown to us in humans, lady. You offered yourself to protect my brother. But you must let our healer help him.”

She clutched at her head, trying to keep it from cracking open, shocked into silence as she recognized the source of the driving pain. It was
him
. The one kneeling in front of her.

No, not exactly. She looked at them all, wonder drowning out fear. It was
all
of them. Their emotions. Their rage and pain.

Riley reached out one hand to the huge man who claimed to be Conlan’s brother, gently touched his arm, and then flinched back. “Pain,” she whispered. “Fear for your brother. Fury and vengeance . . . who is
Terminus
? . . .”

As the man’s eyes widened, mirroring her own shock, she scanned the rest of the group. Colors, too many colors, pain, the percussion, the drums of their fury pounding in her brain.

Pounding in her heart.

Pounding in her
soul
.

Too much. Too much.
Toomuchtoomuchtoomuch
—

She smiled her best, most professional “Hello, I’m your new social worker” smile and primly clasped her hands together. “I’ve had enough now, thank you,” she whispered.

Then she closed her eyes and, for the second time that night—the second time in her
entire life
—she slipped into unconsciousness.

But she heard him—Conlan’s brother—as she fell down the dark well of silence into the black. She heard the shock in his voice.

“She read me, Alaric. My emotions. And she may have been thought-mining me. She was reading us
all
.”

 
Barrabas lifted his head, hissing. Drakos raised his gaze from the maps on the table of Barrabas’s private chamber. “My lord? What is it?”

“It’s Terminus,” Barrabas snarled, smashing the lamp off the table and to the floor. “He is dead.”

“But—”

“
Permanently
dead. His connection to me snapped. I felt his violence and rage, as a master vampire will feel all of his bloodline.” It was an unsubtle reminder. Drakos was not of Barrabas’s bloodline, and so Barrabas always faced a twinge of doubt about him.

“Something—something new, Drakos. We’re facing something new, and whatever it is—
who
ever it is—has the power to manipulate the elements.”

Drakos turned his head to regard the steel vault door built into the wall. “Is it Anubisa? Are you still convinced that she seeks a return to Ragnarok?”

“The Doom of the Gods. Maybe. She is daughter-wife to Chaos. What else would she seek? She feeds not on blood, but on terror and despair.”

Drakos interrupted his master’s thoughts. “Is it time to consult the scrolls?”

Staring at his most brilliant general, Barrabas pondered for a moment.
Is he loyal? Can I trust him? Or, does it matter? If he helps me discover the answers I need, he can meet with an accident easily enough.

Barrabas crossed to the vault. “I think, perhaps, that it is.”

Conlan’s nerve endings burned, pain searing through his body. He came awake with a roar, clutching the throat of the figure in front of him. “Death to the apostates of Algolagnia!”

And looked into Alaric’s pitying eyes.

He released his viselike grip on the priest’s throat, looking away. Pity was the one thing he’d never stand for—not now, not ever.

He needed—he
needed
—

“Riley?” he asked, voice hoarse. The healing process always burned the body, left the throat sore as if parched. Glancing down at his torn and bloodied shirt and the smooth, unbroken skin where he’d last seen a sword point piercing through, he knew he’d required a little help from Alaric.

Another debt to pay.

Alaric exchanged a glance with Ven, who stood on Conlan’s other side, then looked back at Conlan. “She is unharmed,” he said.

Conlan dragged himself up to sit on the edge of the bed, scanning the familiar room that he recognized as part of one of Ven’s safe houses. It hadn’t changed much in the years since he’d last seen it. Same utilitarian furniture. Same movie posters on the walls.

A couple of predators snarled down at him from the
Komodo vs. Cobra
film poster opposite the bed. Conlan looked from the giant beasts to his advisors and nearly laughed. He’d give even odds if the K or the C came up against his brother or Alaric.

On second thought, the reptiles wouldn’t stand a chance.

“Yeah, she’s all right
physically
,” Ven added cryptically.

Conlan stood, swung around to face his brother. “What do you mean, ‘yeah, physically’? Is she hurt? Did one of the vamp bastards get to her with some kind of mind trick?”

He was breathing hard with the effort of remaining upright, but damned if he wanted them to know. It was bad enough that Alaric got a free pass to his mind with every healing.

Ven shook his head. “No, in spite of the part where she threw her body in front of a vamp’s foot to protect your thick skull. Or—hey,
this
is good—the part where she jumped on the back of the bloodsucker who skewered you.”

Conlan’s blood rushed out of his face, and the weakness in his knees doubled. “She put herself in danger for me? Where is she? I must see her now. I’ve got to—”

Alaric smoothly interrupted. “Perhaps you might say a word to young Denal, who believes, in spite of being outnumbered three to one—”

“Yeah, and in spite of his
head wound
,” Ven interjected.

“That he has failed his prince,” Alaric continued, his eyes snapping green fire at Conlan. “Perhaps you might consider the well-being of your men above that of a
human
.”

Conlan clenched his fists, a berserker rage spiking inside him. He forced it down. “Perhaps,” he mocked, “
perhaps
you might tell me where they all are, so I can go see for myself.”

Ven motioned with his hand toward the doorway of the room, and Conlan headed toward it, first stumbling, then gaining strength as he walked. When he reached the doorway, he paused and looked around at Alaric. Remembering his duty, no matter how much the words stuck in his throat. “My thanks for the healing. And maybe, instead of berating me, you can figure out why my mind is full of nothing but this
human female
I just met.”

Ven laughed. “Hell, Conlan, I can tell you that. She’s freaking hot—”

Conlan whirled around, his hand rising without his volition to grasp the front of Ven’s shirt. “You’d better stop right there, brother,” he snarled. “Compare her to your whores at your own peril.”

Ven whistled, clearly unimpressed, then peeled Conlan’s fingers off his shirt. “
At my own peril
, huh? If she’s got you using formal speak on
me
, big brother, I guess she really is special.”

“Special, definitely. I’d say dangerous, as well,” Alaric said quietly.

Conlan ignored him and headed out the door, finally clearing the fuzz out of his brain long enough to remember that he could reach out to Riley’s mind. But when he tried, he got nothing.

Which didn’t help with his peace of mind, by a long shot.

Ven led him down a short hallway to one of the house’s several bedrooms and pushed open the door. Conlan could see a form huddled under the quilt, unmoving.

Fear pierced him. He clutched Ven’s arm in a steel grip, as much to keep from running to her as for support. “You told me she was unharmed.”

“Relax. She just seemed to shut down, mentally. Processing overload or something. And no wonder, after what she did.” Ven sketched in the details of the battle, including Riley’s part in it.

Conlan stood there and listened to how a fragile human had put her life on the line for him, and pain stabbed into his chest. Right in the vicinity of the heart he thought he’d lost.

When Ven got to the moment when Riley had stood up to Alaric, Conlan’s eyes gleamed. “That must have put a sword-fish up his ass. A ‘mere human’ standing up to Poseidon’s high priest? Damn, but she’s brave.”

Then he shuddered, self-loathing crashing through him. “Of course, I should have been protecting her. And the rest of you, too.”

Ven put a hand on his shoulder. “Relax, bro. We had no way of knowing the vamps were sheathing their blades in poison these days. That sword wound wouldn’t have even slowed you down without it.”

Dragging his gaze away from Riley, Conlan looked at his brother. “And the rest of the Seven? Is anybody hurt?”

“Come on, I’ll show you while Riley sleeps for a while. Mostly nicks and bruises, nothing they wouldn’t get in a good game of
Tlachtli
,” he said.

Conlan almost laughed. Trust Ven to compare a deadly battle to the ancient Atlantean game of court ball. Well, the Aztecs had sacrificed the losers when
they’d
played it, right?

They headed back down the hallway toward the room Ven had turned into a games and TV room. “Denal got bashed pretty hard in the head. Luckily, his skull is damn near as thick as yours. Plus, he’s got a big-ass case of ‘I failed my liege lord’ going on. You may want to say something.”

Conlan clenched his jaw. “I’m a big boy. I don’t care about me. But you—all of you—need to protect Riley for me.”

Ven’s mouth dropped open, then he snapped it shut. “So. I’m gonna wanna know how this chick brought you to this state in—what?—a few
hours
?”

Conlan blew out a breath as they rounded the corner. “Yeah. I’d like to know that, too.”

The six warriors lounging in the room came to various forms of attention when Conlan and Ven walked in. Justice, his ever-present sword sheathed on his back, leaned against the far wall against the
Godzilla
movie poster. He paused from studying the view outside the room’s single window, flicked a mocking two-fingered salute Conlan’s way, then turned to look outside again.

Bastien and Christophe were doing battle on the air hockey table in the corner. Bastien’s huge hand swallowed the mallet he used to strike the puck. They looked up at him, but didn’t stop knocking the yellow disc back and forth across the table.

Brennan muted the sound on the television, then slowly rose from the couch to stand. He gazed at Conlan, dispassionate as ever. Poseidon had cursed Brennan for a minor transgression involving a Roman senator’s daughter by removing his emotions.

Except maybe having no emotions wasn’t a curse, but a blessing.

Conlan wasn’t entirely sure. Especially with his mind continually trying to reach out to Riley, who still lay unresponsive.

Alexios ducked his head, a new habit. Then he defiantly raised it and shook his hair away from his face. The terrible scarring caught the glow of the lamps; the light shadowing twisted ridges and valleys of flesh.

Conlan remembered how Alexios, with his dark blue eyes and long mane of brown and gold hair, had always been forced to fight off the women. His eyes returned to the scarred left side of the warrior’s face. Would a woman be repelled by it or drawn to the pain haunting his eyes?

It wasn’t a question Conlan would have thought to ask. Not before—not now—but for the awareness of Riley sheltered in his mind.

Conlan met Alexios’s gaze. “Never be ashamed of scars you earned defending me from Anubisa and her plague of vampire guards, my brother.”

Alexios made a sound, nearly a growl, low in his throat. “Scars earned
failing
to defend you, you mean, my lord. As we failed to protect you again, tonight.”

A small sound, abruptly cut off, swung Conlan’s attention around to the far corner of the large room, where he saw Denal half sitting, half reclining against the back of another couch.

“Denal, are you healed?” Conlan asked, striding over to talk to the youngest of his guard.

Denal grimaced. “I am healed. Tired, but healed. Except for my heart, my prince. My heart is desolate for having failed you.”

Placing his hand over his heart, Denal looked up at Conlan. “Please take my life now.”

Conlan blinked. “Do
what
?”

Ven snorted, standing just to the right and behind Conlan. “He’s read too many old scrolls. Plus, this is his first trip topside.”

Ven dropped into an easy crouch beside the younger man. “Dude, you’ve got to haul your vocab into the twenty-first century.”

“Dude,”
the warrior bit off. “However you phrase it, the truth remains the same. I was nearest to Conlan when that vampire attacked him. I should have taken the blade.”

Conlan reached out to lay his hand gently on Denal’s head for an instant. “However, from Ven’s account, you were battling three vampires on your own, including another one who’d tried to gut me, right? And you took an axe to the side of your head?”

Denal dropped his eyes, but nodded. “It was only the flat end of the axe, my lord.”

Bastien interrupted, his low voice a rumble. “Yeah, at least it was his
head
. Nothing important in there to damage. We’re golden.”

Conlan felt the laughter rising in him at Bastien’s familiar teasing, but knew Denal was far too earnest to understand that his prince wasn’t laughing at him. He bit back his humor and turned a serious face to his youngest warrior. “Thank Poseidon that it was the flat end of the axe, or your head would be split in two. And enough with the ‘my lord’ and ‘my prince’ stuff. Call me Conlan.”

He turned in time to see Justice snort and roll his eyes. “Do you have something to say to me, Justice?”

The warrior pushed himself away from the wall, uncoiling like a leopard preparing to strike. Strange that he’d always reminded Conlan of a jungle animal. Even with the blue hair.