Atlantis Rising (4 page)

The portal’s idea of a practical joke. If portals had emotion, this one was packing a vindictive sense of humor.

As he broke the surface and sucked in a lungful of air, an almost-tangible force smashed into him. Agony sliced through his head, then shut off as if by a switch. A bitter taste seared his mouth; a sourness like lemon soaked in brine.

Another wave of pain crashed through him, knocking him off balance. He nearly sank below the waves again, barely noticing the sands of the shores nearby.

He shook his head from side to side, trying to escape the fire inside of his head. He barked out a laugh. He’d had a lot of practice with pain, just lately.
Think, damn you.

Crazed thoughts swirled in his bruised brain.
If an Atlantean prince’s head cracks wide open in the ocean, does it make a sound?

He almost laughed again, but snorted water up his nose instead. Choking and coughing, he finally forced his limbs to cooperate and headed for the shore, eventually realizing he could touch bottom and walk.

His training kicked in, keeping him upright and coherent.
Analyze. Reason. Use logic.

A third wave of pain seared through him, driving him to his knees, face caught under the breaking waves. He fought his way back to standing, plunged forward toward the shore.

His boots hit dry sand, and he collapsed, stumbling onto his knees. He sent a mind call out to Ven.

Needed help.

But it wasn’t Ven’s familiar patterns that answered his call. Instead, a tiny pinprick of awareness deep in his mind sparked, sputtered like a candle in a back draft, and then focused.

An image of beauty sheared by pain. A woman with sun-colored hair.

Something slammed shut in his mind, and the woman and the pain vanished. Almost as if a mental door had closed.

And Conlan wasn’t the one who’d shut it.

Riley blinked at the EMT who was peering into her eyes while his fingers measured out her pulse. She looked away from him and scanned the room, knowing she looked as bleary-eyed as she felt.

He repeated his sentence, slower this time, as if she might not have understood him the first time. “You need to go to the ER and get checked out.”

She started to shake her head
no
, but stopped as the movement shot bolts of pain through her skull. “I don’t want to go to the ER. It was just a punch.”

She brushed his hand off his arm and stood up on unsteady legs, which probably proved his point, but what the hell. “I’ve had worse. I need to go for a walk. I need air.”

She’d already talked to the detective in charge of what was now a murder scene. Her part of it was done. And now the room was closing in on her.

It had been such a surprise to her at first, how many people show up at a murder scene. So many official types convened in a confluence of the mundane—photo taking, fingerprinting, tape measuring.

The profanity of death, obscured by the details of modern police work. It seemed wrong, somehow, as it always did.

She’d seen too much of it. Should have been a secretary, like her baby sister. Quinn never had to face despair. Or fists. Or blood on her clothes.

It was hell on the dry-cleaning bill.

The EMT stepped back and turned off the penlight he’d been shining in her eyes. “I don’t think you have a concussion, but you’re going to have a helluva shiner. You really should come and get checked out by the doc.”

Riley’s belly twisted, empty and nauseous. She moved away from him, tuning him out, and scanned the room again. The cheap apartment. The chaos left in the wake of violence.

The stench of death—blood and the body’s release of wastes. It had surprised her at her first death scene, that release. The final indignity. A soiled corpse left for the impersonal attentions of the morgue.

Riley heard the moaning sound, low in her throat, and choked it off. She was tougher now. Hardened to it.

Immune to any emotion.

That’s what she told herself, at least. Until she saw the bear. Propped up in the corner of the room, next to a bassinet, a giant teddy bear wearing a pink bow grinned foolishly out at the room, unmoved by the drama that had played out before it.

That damn pink bow sent her over the edge.

“I have to get out of here. Please, just get out of my way. Please.” She whirled around and shoved past the EMT, careful to walk around the personnel crouched on the floor taking pictures.

“Hey, Dawson. Where do you think you’re going?” The detective she’d spoken with earlier—
Ramsey? Ramirez?
—pulled on a fresh set of gloves, the lines in his face deepening as his gaze traveled to her face. “You look like shit. You should go with them to the ER.”

Riley didn’t stop; only slowed down a little. “I’m going to be sick. I’ve got to go get cleaned up and get some rest.” She glanced back over her shoulder at him. “I’ll call you as soon as I do.”

He opened his mouth, probably to protest, but she was beyond caring. What were they going to do, arrest her? They knew who she was and, if only by rep, that her word was good.

He nodded, resigned. Sympathy and something she didn’t want to define warmed his expression.
Pity?
He should save his pity for Dina and her baby. They’d need it. She was just doing her job.

This time she did laugh, even though it came out sounding . . .
wrong
. Yeah, doing her job. She was screwing up her job on a royal level.

Another day, another dead body. That made eight murder scenes this year.

He nodded. “All right. You’ve told us enough for now, anyway. Call me in the morning. You’ve got my card.”

She fingered the card she’d shoved in her pocket and headed for the door. The morning. She’d call him in the morning. Now she had to get to the water. To the beach. Her sanctuary. She felt the power and peace of the ocean calling her.

She needed to feel the caress of the waves, and she’d be fine.

 
Conlan stood alone in the dark, eyes closed, senses unfurled to seek out the presence of anyone nearby.

Friend or enemy.

Hell, he almost preferred an enemy. He was solidly in the mood to kick somebody’s ass. He bared his teeth in what passed for a smile. Then his eyes snapped open.

Because the door holding the emotion out of his mind had smashed open again. He staggered, fought to remain standing under the barrage of anguish. All he could do was try to ride it out and pray his brother or Alaric arrived soon. He closed his eyes again. Fought for focus. Turned to the portion of his training not conducted with swords and daggers.

He could almost hear Archelaus whispering in his head.
Use all of your senses. Never rely on your mind, alone. To underestimate your enemy’s potential to create illusion means death.

He focused, strained. Achieved detachment. His mind analyzed the problem of his own duality; emotionless calculation studied raging grief.

So, then. It was outside of him. Somebody—or some
thing
—broadcasted grief powerfully enough to shove through his mental defenses.

The enemy he’d been wishing for, maybe. It was sure as hell no friend. No Atlantean could send emotions to another. “Well, they say be careful what you wish for, right?” he muttered to himself, muscles straining with the effort of managing the flood of anguish.

He spared a thought for the source. Somebody, somewhere, was suffering all nine hells’ worth of hurt.

 
Riley trudged away from her old Honda, parked carelessly across a couple of spaces in the deserted parking lot, heading toward the beach. Not many beachgoers at this hour on a chilly October night.

The smell of sea air and salt water reached her, and she took a deep breath, a tendril of calm threading its fragile way through her. Her stomach growled a reminder that it had been more than fourteen hours since she’d eaten. Almost without thinking, she reached into the pocket of her jacket for one of the protein bars she usually carried around.

Regular meals were unpredictable in her line of work.

She started to peel a corner of the wrapper off the bar, and it hit her: Morris would never eat anything again.

The thought smashed into her, doubling her over. What was the magic number? How many times would she have to watch somebody die before she could be blasé about it?

And what the hell kind of person was she that she even wanted to?

Forcing herself to straighten up, she glanced at her watch, then swore under her breath. Nearly curfew. She knew all about curfew; she even had the requisite copy of the 2006 Nonhuman Species Protection Act taped up to a window of her home, as mandated by the new law. “I don’t care. I need this walk. Nobody will bust me for a few minutes past human lights out,” she muttered. The ocean meant healing. Solace. Her mind desperately needed both.

She kicked an empty can out of her way as she finally reached the sand and shoved the unopened protein bar back in her pocket. Maybe later.

The moonlight pirouetted on the surface of the waves, careless in its joy. Unaffected by human concerns. Riley glanced up, judging its phase. She hadn’t caught the lunar alert on the radio that morning.

Waxing gibbous. Good. Still a couple of days before the full.

They’d all gotten way better at keeping track of the moon since the shape-shifters had first announced their existence. Funny what a difference a decade made. She probably would have guessed a waxing gibbous had something to do with monkeys, before.

Life had been way easier when the moon was just something cows jumped over in storybooks.

Riley sank down on the sand near the water and gave in to the tears.

 
When a fresh wave of grief flooded his mind, Conlan raised his head, scenting the air.

He started walking, sped up.

Began to run. Flashed into molecules of pure water with the preternatural speed of his kind.

Must find her
.

Need, inexplicable but intense. Primal determination.

Must find her now
.

 
Riley heaved in a shaky breath, trying to surface from the currents of sorrow threatening to drag her under. Dina would go to jail.

Riley looked up at the impervious moon again and laughed bitterly.
Although, why do I bother? It’s not like the hundreds of prayers I’ve sent up before have made a difference. The baby is the worst of it. If she even lives, she’s going to a foster home.

Riley thought of a baby she’d just placed with a foster home; one of the better ones. Mrs. Graham loved all of her kids, but had a special affinity for the broken ones. The baby had peered up into Riley’s face as she’d handed his twitching, crack-addicted body over to his new caregiver. His tiny fingers had furled and unfurled like sea anemones searching for a sunlight that might never come.

She rubbed her arms, shivering. Mrs. Graham was at max capacity. Riley didn’t have anybody available who was as good. Dina’s baby probably would be raised in an even worse form of the culture of violence and poverty that had shaped both Dina and Morris.

If the baby even lives
.

Riley almost physically shoved the thought to the back of her mind. She couldn’t go there. Not now.

Not when she was so close to the edge of sanity.

Even as she clenched her jaws to stop the scream clawing its way out of her throat, some weird sixth sense picked up the danger. She caught a glimpse of them out of the corner of her eye, creeping across the sand, flickering in and out of sight in the shadows cast by the clouds.

Three of them. She jumped up into a crouch, ready to run, scanning the area for a way to escape.

Stunned that—for the merest split second—she’d felt too hopeless to even try to save herself.

Conlan swirled through the air faster than he’d ever moved, arrowing his focus to use the droplets of water in the sea air as a prism, until he could see the outline of her shape.

Shadows caught at the moonlight, obscuring her face. All he could see was a slender form, huddled on the beach. The impact of her grief magnified—trebled—when he saw her shoulders shudder.

She was definitely the source of the emotional grenade that had smashed into his defenses. No army. No vamp mind-control conspiracy.

One lone human female. And she was projecting
emotion
.

She was
aknasha
. Empath.

Stunned, disbelieving, he sent a tentative mind probe to her. Her mind clamped on to his probe, the energy of her thoughts rearing up, defensive. As if she sensed danger.

She thought he was a predator. He bared his teeth, nearly smiling. He’d been called worse.

He tried to shut down his mental shields, but she lashed out at him. Defense turned to offense—seeking to discern what the hell he was.

Get out of my mind!
Defiance. Courage.

Pure, heated emotion.

And, buried way down deep: a tendril of fear.