Atlantis Unmasked (38 page)

But one glance at Grace showed him that they
were
different. She was staring at him with similar, openmouthed shock. Their clothing had changed, entirely. Grace was now clad in a long gown of shimmering turquoise, which glowed like a jewel against her honey-gold skin. Her hair was piled on top of her head in some fancy arrangement, and the diamonds at her ears and throat were certainly huge enough to gain them entry to a very posh party.

“You are beautiful,” he said, awestruck. The subtle touch of cosmetics, when added to the overall effect, turned her into a goddess and he felt like an unworthy supplicant. It wasn't a feeling he much liked, and he reached up to loosen his tie.

His
tie
?

“You're not bad yourself,” she teased, and he looked down to see that he wore the formal dress that the humans called a tuxedo. He noticed that his hair was pulled tightly back from his face and tied, too.

“Well, I don't think you'll see me in one of these again,” he began, but then she gasped, cutting him off.

“Alexios! Your face!” Her own had gone dead white, and he raised his hands to his face, afraid suddenly that he would find that the right side—the only whole side—of his face had been scarred, too.

But instead the feeling underneath his fingertips was so unfamiliar that he couldn't quite comprehend it. “What—”

“The scars,” she said. “They're gone.”

Still walking, they suddenly stepped through a curtain of shimmering light and found themselves on yet another beach. Only this time the beach was a private stretch of sand in front of a true monstrosity of a mansion.

It could only be one place.

“Vonos's house,” Grace said, a sneer on that lovely face. “Welcome to McMonstrosity.”

“It's just a glamour,” Rhys na Garanwyn said, appearing before them from thin air, as he apparently loved to do. “The scars. I'm sorry, but I have no magic to heal Hellfire.”

What surprised Alexios the most was that the Fae appeared truly regretful, almost like someone who didn't have a slimy guttersnake for a soul.

Almost.

He went for his daggers, but grasped empty air and a fistful of fabric.

“Ah, yes,” the Fae said. “Your weapons would have been inappropriate for a human reporter at a fancy dress ball, don't you think?” He pointed to a gray silk bag lying on the sand at their feet. “However, you will find everything you need in there.”

Grace carefully managed to crouch down in her gown and heels so she could examine the contents of the bag. “My bow and full quiver and your daggers and sword,” she reported tersely.

“And what exactly in the nine hells makes you think that we would help you, after that stunt you pulled last night?” Alexios demanded.

“I believe you will help me because in return I will help you. I can get us into that house, and I doubt you could manage that without my glamour. Certainly the security team will have been warned to be on the lookout for Atlanteans, and your description is somewhat unique.”

“Why me?” Alexios wasn't moving another step until he had the answer to the question that had been digging at him since he'd first talked to Lucas. “Why are the Fae interested in me, particularly?”

Rhys shrugged. “What makes you think we are? My lovely Grace could have just as easily brought only Alaric or another of your kind.”

“And that wasn't an answer, although anybody not familiar with the Fae's truth without honesty techniques might have accepted it as such,” Alexios said. “So I'll ask again. Why me?”

Grace put a hand on his arm. “Alexios, is this really the time? We're starting to attract attention, and—”

“I need to know, Grace. So?” He directed a challenging stare at the Fae lord, who would either respond or not. At least he knew that Alexios was on to him.

Rhys stared right back at him, and a lesser man would have dropped it. Good thing Alexios had never considered himself to be “lesser” at anything.

“We are interested in you,” the Fae finally admitted. “You withstood the not-so-tender ministrations of Anubisa's hideous acolytes for two long years and emerged sane. We believe your experiences may prove . . . beneficial to know.”

“You planning to get yourself imprisoned and tortured by the Apostates of Algolagnia?” Alexios bit off the words as the rage swelled up inside him. “Figure to use me as an experimental eel?”

“Eel? Really?” Grace smiled up at him, clearly trying to defuse the tension. “Not ‘guinea pig'?”

Both men stared at her. “Humans,” Rhys finally said, “are disgusting.”

Alexios caught himself nodding and quickly scowled. “I'm thinking you don't have room to talk. What obscene tortures have you performed over your lifetime?”

“Okay. Enough. I'm going in now, with or without you,” Grace said, pasting a brilliant and horrible fake smile on her face. “You can continue your pissing contest out here or help me find this diamond and learn what we can about Vonos's plans.”

Then, never looking back to see whether he and Rhys were following her or not, Grace picked her way across the beach in those ridiculous shoes toward the mansion. Alexios sighed and started after her. After a few paces, Rhys fell into step beside him.

“You're in for a very interesting future with that one,” the elf said, staring straight ahead at Grace's very lovely backside.

“Yes, I am,” he said. “Now you were talking about security, and my ‘unique description' before we got side-tracked?”

“Yes. If you can move past my unfortunate abduction of you so we can work together, our mission will have a much better chance of success.”

As much as Alexios wished it different, he couldn't argue with the Fae's logic. And he needed the Vampire's Bane far too much to let a snit over their sleeping arrangements interfere with this chance to find it.

He gestured toward the house. “Lead on.”

Grace walked into the mansion with her head high and her heart in her throat. She'd never been so terrified in her life, and it didn't help that Rhys had been forced to conceal their weapons in a planter just inside the enormous wooden front doors. His glamour had held long enough for him to smuggle them in, and then the plant seemed to take over, acting as a coconspirator, brushing its thick, leafy fronds down and around the bag until even Grace, who knew it was there, couldn't see it.

“Just in case,” she whispered, hoping they'd be able to reach the weapons if they needed them.

“Wonder what Sam would say?” Alexios said, grinning. “Nervous as a one-veined redneck in a roomful of bloodsuckers?”

She laughed in spite of her jacked-up anxiety, and a few vampires near the door looked up and offered pleasant smiles. “Great, just great,” she whispered. “Now they've noticed me.”

“You're a reporter, remember,” Rhys murmured, startling her. She'd almost forgotten the Fae's presence. “You're supposed to be noticed. Now go ask them some interview questions, so they don't wonder why you're not doing your job.”

She rolled her eyes. “I'm a reporter, huh? The first reporter with no press pass, no notebook, and no tape recorder, but wearing diamonds that would buy and sell this house a couple of times over. Nice job helping me fit in, Sherlock.”

Rhys waved a hand, and her necklace turned into a press pass and suddenly a small notebook and pen were in her left hand. “Now go investigate,” he said from between clenched teeth.

“Fine,” she snapped.

Alexios looked a question at her and she nodded. She was fine. She would be fine.

She hoped she would be fine.

He vanished into the crowd, his unscarred face and tied-back hair attracting little to no attention. Vampires were preternaturally beautiful, too, if scary pale. So the only one who would attract notice would be Grace Havilland, country mouse and human. Luckily, there were plenty of humans at this shindig. Hard to hide from a roomful of vamps when you were the only one with a pulse.

She sighed, ready to play Nancy Drew, and then she began threading her way through the crowd, asking a question here, making a comment there, and generally trying to look as much like a nosy, intrusive reporter as possible.

Alexios had only two worries: one, that he would be too far away to protect Grace if danger came, and two, that he wouldn't find the Vampire's Bane before Rhys's glamour wore off and Vonos realized who he was. The last thing Alexios needed was for Anubisa to come after him again.

The pain in his hands finally alerted him that he'd clenched his fists together so tightly that they were aching. He forced himself to relax and, smiling and nodding at one and all, began searching for a doorway, alcove, or other possible entrance to a treasure room.

The usual rich folk and hangers-on were at this party, but not until Alexios turned a corner behind the dessert table did he meet a real thug.

“You tell me why you're trespassing back here, no?” The Russian accent, the thug-like expression. Prevacek.

“I got lost on the way to the bathroom, man,” Alexios confided quietly. “Have had to pee forever but this old woman with orange hair didn't want to let me get away. Peter Parker, reporter.
Orlando Sun Times
.” He stuck out his hand with a friendly grin and hoped the old Russian mobster had never watched Spidey movies.

“Yes, yes, do not bother me now,” the vamp muttered, lurking in front of a plain wooden door. “Am very busy and important. You move along.”

“Yeah, sure. Bathroom?”

Prevacek pointed off toward the back of the hall. “That way. You go now.”

As Alexios moved off, he saw a sleek, well-fed-looking human approach Prevacek. Instead of pushing him away as he'd done with Alexios, though, Prevacek pasted a smile full of teeth on his face and, looking quickly in both directions, pulled the human through the door, shutting it firmly behind him.

A touch at his elbow nearly had Alexios whirling around to attack, but Grace's voice murmured in his ear. “Ease down, big boy. What did you find?”

“Found Prevacek, but he was awfully eager to get rid of me. He found somebody he liked more, though—a human man who reeked of money.”

Her brows drew together in a frown. “Was that monkey-looking guy Prevacek? Because that was Snyder, the real estate mogul who took over from Fuller, who went through that door with him.”

“So the plot thickens,” Rhys said, appearing from nowhere, again. “This Fuller had a nasty habit of chopping down forests to create parking lots and shopping malls. He was on our list, and now that he's dead, Snyder will be watched. Especially now that he's shown up here in very nasty company.”

“You have a list?” Alexios wanted to hear this. “Who else is on it?”

“Well, the lovely Grace could be on it, naked, if she'd ever regain her sanity and dump you,” the Fae said so smoothly it made Alexios a little nauseous.

He shot a glance at Grace and was pleased to see she was having the same reaction.

“You want me, naked, on the same list that had slime-ball Carson Fuller on it?”

Alexios grinned at the sound of the acid in her tone, but they didn't have time for this. “Focus, you two. Garanwyn, I'll kick your ass for you later. For now, we need to find that treasure room.”

“It's almost certainly in the central panic room the architect designed, but we'll have to get through double default doors to get to it,” Rhys said.

“And you know this how?”

“The architect and I had a little chat.” The Fae grinned, a wicked leer on his face.

“I just bet you did,” Grace said, rolling her eyes. “Was she a blonde or brunette?”