Atlantis Unmasked (10 page)

“Great. Just what the tourists need to see—a giant tiger roaming through the city,” she muttered as she finally headed for the stairs, dry clothes, and a mug of hot tea. “I wonder if we can blame it on escaped circus animals again.”

Later, after a hot shower in the temporary facilities set up in a corner of the courtyard, she took a mug of hot, sweet tea with her to bed and wrapped herself in blankets. One the few perks of being in charge: at least she didn't have to share a room. Hers was part of the old officer's quarters. The rest of them were bunking two or more to a room, and the recruits would be sleeping dormitory-style in the old guardrooms where Spanish troops had first slept more than three hundred years before.

Warm and dry, Grace continued to puzzle and poke at the possible meanings and implications of the two extremely odd conversations she'd had that night. Finally, she turned off her lamp, no closer to any answers but content to lie in the dark and listen to the rain and the waves crashing against the shore.

“Ten years, Robbie,” she whispered into the dark. “I know it's taken me ten years, but I'm finally getting closer to making a difference. I love you, Big Brother. Happy birthday.”

Alexios shoved his chair back and leapt up from the table. Not even a half dozen mugs of the finest Atlantean ale had kept him from dreaming about Grace, or from thrashing around in the sheets all night long until he'd woken up this morning hard and aching for her.

Now he had to deal with
this
?

“No. No way, no how. You can get somebody else to wipe runny noses for your baby rebels. I've had enough of humans for a while,” he said, the words coming out almost in a snarl.

Ven leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “You wanna run that by me again? I must not have had enough coffee yet, because I could have sworn I got up out of my very warm bed and left my very warm woman to come down here and give you your marching orders, and you just told me no.”

He made a show of rubbing his eyes. “Or wait—maybe I'm still dreaming,” he said, then squinted up at Alexios. “Nah, not with that face. More like a nightmare.”

Ven was the only one who'd ever come right out and teased him about his scarred face, but Ven teased everyone about everything. It almost made Alexios feel . . . normal.

“I'm sorry. Maybe I didn't put that very well,
Your Highness
,” Alexios gritted out. “I would prefer not to be assigned to the training fort in St. Augustine with Gr . . . with those humans.”

“You call me ‘your highness' again, and I'll kick your ass,” Ven said, but without any heat, as he studied Alexios's face far more closely than was comfortable. “What is this really about? I heard nothing but raves for this commander from Quinn. Grace, what was it, Hanson?”

“Havilland,” he corrected automatically.
Too
automatically, if the
aha
gleam in Ven's eyes meant anything.

“Is there a problem between you and this woman?”

Alexios stopped pacing and raised his chin. “There is no problem. I would just rather you assign someone else. Somebody needs to go to Europe and find out what's going on with this vampire claiming to be the long-lost Princess Anastasia. I'll volunteer.”

“Erin and I are going. She has some idea about tracking down other gem singers in a part of Switzerland that used to be a Fae stronghold while we're there,” Ven said, shaking his head. “I'm still not quite sure how I wind up saying yes to everything she wants.”

“Hard to argue with a woman who stopped a bomb from blowing up your thick skull,” Alexios said dryly.

Ven laughed. “Yeah, there is that. Anyway, there's more to it than a simple training mission. We hear that Vonos is hiding the Vampire's Bane somewhere near St. Augustine. Evidently he has some kind of super spidey fortress of stu pitude or something near there.”

Alexios whistled. “Now that
is
a prize. Is it true that the diamond does what the myths claim?”

“Quinn and Alaric saw Vonos use it to wipe out a whole crowd of vamps in seconds. The Bane exploded them clear out of their shoes, which sounds wicked cool. Vonos wasn't hurt at all, either, more's the pity.”

Ven stood up, stretched, and yawned. “I think I didn't need that twentieth toast to the baby's health. My head is pounding like there's a room full of hammers in my skull.”

“Nobody needed that twentieth toast,” Alexios admitted. He'd been trying not to move his own head too quickly ever since he woke up.

“Look, here's the deal. We need you. Denal is in some kind of black funk after that stunt he pulled, and we can't even get him to go see Riley and the baby. Brennan has already gone back to Yellowstone to find out what in the hells is going on with the wolves, because
that's
a big problem, Tiernan is in Florida, and you know she and Brennan can't be anywhere near each other.” Ven stopped to take a breath, and then continued. “Conlan's obviously not going anywhere, and would
you
trust Christophe with this? He's as likely just to stab the recruits and be done with it. Also, I don't know why I'm explaining all this to you. I serve as the King's Vengeance, not the damn social secretary.”

Defeated, Alexios ignored the jibe and simply nodded. “There was a time when being part of the Seven meant fighting shoulder to shoulder. We are Poseidon's chosen elite—the royal guard to High Prince Conlan. Together, we have battled humanity's oppressors for centuries. Now, it seems as though we are being torn further and further apart.”

“Maybe. Or maybe we're finally growing up, my friend. I have a new nephew now, and I intend to make the world as safe as possible for him. Especially since we're almost certainly taking Atlantis to the surface as soon as we find and restore all of the gems of Poseidon's Trident.”

“I will do my part, of course. I
will
find that diamond, and I will do my best to turn these humans into a fighting force worthy to stand at our side.”

“I know you will. Now, back to a more fascinating topic. Grace. Did you know the heritage there? She claims to be a descendant of Diana.”

“I've seen the bow she carries but only rarely seen her shoot it. She's very good when she does, though. I've never seen her miss,” Alexios was forced to admit. “We've fought on the same side often enough for me to know that. I'd trust her to have my back in a bad situation. It's not that she's not a good fighter, it's just—”

“Personal?”

“Yeah.”

“Get over it,” Ven advised. “We're fighting a war here; we don't have time for personal.”

“Is that what you told Erin? Before or after you took her to your bed?” Alexios asked, deliberately crude. He might be going along with this stupid pile of
miertus
plan, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

But Ven didn't take the bait. “Get over it,” he repeated. “Or, if it really is that way for you and Grace—like me and Erin—then may the gods help you. Because your life is about to get very complicated, my friend.”

Before Alexios could settle on a reply, the prince had left the room, no doubt returning to his warm bed and warm wife.

And maybe the gods
did
need to help him, because suddenly Alexios was picturing a warm and willing Grace in his own bed, and his cock got so hard that it ached. Five years of self-enforced celibacy and strict self-control vanished into the mist at the thought of all that glorious hair spread out on Atlantean silk. Those golden arms and legs reaching to him. Those dark eyes promising delights like none he'd ever known.

Just when he thought he'd go off in his pants like a green youngling, another thought made him laugh and eased some of the pressure: knowing Grace, she was more likely to offer to spar him over who got to be on top.

The gods help him, he may have finally met a woman whose mind intrigued him more than her body. The image in his mind shifted, transformed. Now it was Grace laughing, as she sometimes did with her friend Michelle, those lovely golden brown eyes alight with her generous sense of humor.

Grace serious, offering good counsel on matters of strategy.

Grace stern, arms set like stone as she braced her bow for target practice or battle.

Grace determined—selfless—courageous—as on more than one occasion when he'd seen her throw herself into harm's path to protect another.

Dozens of images whirled through his mind, tumbling around and around like the funnel of a treacherous sea spout.

Grace, Grace, always Grace. And, sadly, not even naked.

It was going to be an interesting mission.

“Grace, they're here.”

Grace looked up from her computer to see Sam standing in the doorway. Good old Sam. She'd known him for a while; he came and went as needed. Sort of a troubleshooter for rebel groups. He'd gotten in before dawn one day from Georgia, told her Quinn sent him to be Grace's go-to guy. Second in command, she guessed, came closest to a description, not that she even now was used to her new title. Commander. It was almost laughable.

It might have helped if she'd had any military training. Thank goodness Sam did. Rumor was that a few of the new recruits had been in the army, too, back in the days before all military actions in the United States fell under the direct command of the over-sec def. The over-secretary of defense, appointed by the president but only with the advice and consent of the Primus, was a vampire, by law. The vampires had argued, convincingly enough to carry the vote, that with centuries of experience in military campaigns, it only made sense that their representative was in charge of all matters military.

Plus there was the threat of foreign campaigns conducted by vampires—no human could know how to combat that. Or so they'd claimed. And they'd won that argument, too. Back before any of the rebels had mobilized. Before quiet stirrings of unrest had solidified into fear, and then concern, and finally defiance.

“Grace?” Sam's bushy white eyebrows drew together in a look of concern she'd seen from him far too often lately. “Penny for 'em?”

She smiled and shut the cover of her Dell. Time enough later to figure out encrypted messages about supply chains.

“My thoughts aren't even worth a penny, not that we have one,” she said, grimacing as she unbent her long legs from underneath the small desk. “Funny how you never think about revolutions needing money. In the movies, the good guys just seem to have a constant supply of shiny new guns and ammo, and they never actually have to eat.”

She walked to the doorway of her cramped office space, part of the officers' quarters of the old fort. When they'd requisitioned the fort for “theater group practice,” the city of St. Augustine had been glad enough to turn it over for a monthly fee. Ever since the vampires had shut the fort down as a tourist attraction—apparently it was politically incorrect to celebrate a fort where the Spaniards had once held mass vampire burnings; bet you never saw
that
in your Florida history books—the city had been operating in the red.

Kind of like the rebels.

“They never need to take a dump, either. Didja notice that?” Sam asked as he ambled along beside her. “Nobody in movies ever has to go to the bathroom unless it's some sort of girly bubble-bath thing.”

He snorted, whether at the idea of not taking a dump or bubble baths, she didn't know. Probably both. Sam looked and acted like an uneducated redneck when it suited him, but he'd been a colonel in the army Special Forces back before a new “undead bloodsucker of an ass-wipe general” had railroaded Sam out of the service for insubordination.