Waterborne (25 page)
Authors: Katherine Irons
She saw the muscles of his throat tighten. “You took care of me all this time? Two weeks?”
He nodded.
“But what about Varenkov?” She remembered now. Alex had been watching the Russian’s yacht while she trailed Nick. “Did you kill Varenkov?”
Alex’s gaze hardened. “He slipped away again. By helicopter. I believe Nigel Kent—the man you know as Nick—must have warned him. I followed the helicopter to the airport, but Varenkov boarded right on the tarmac. He never entered the terminal. The two of them flew out in a private jet bound for Paris.”
“And Nick was with him ... when he got on the plane?”
“Yes. I caught up with him at the gate. That’s how I heard his name—
Nigel Kent.
The attendant welcomed him aboard. One of his hands was wrapped in a thick bandage, and he said something about seeking a prominent French surgeon.”
Nigel Kent.
The attendant welcomed him aboard. One of his hands was wrapped in a thick bandage, and he said something about seeking a prominent French surgeon.”
Ree had another flash of memory. The image of a flaming pistol and Nick’s cry of pain. “I did that. He was going to put a bullet in my head.” She closed her eyes and let the water current comfort her. “You say I have to be on land for periods of time?”
“Anuata told me it would be so. When you can no longer breathe in the water, I must take you to solid ground, and when you begin to struggle there, you must return to the sea. The periods grow shorter with each episode and your reaction grows stronger each time.”
“You’re right,” she murmured. “About Nick and I being more than partners. It doesn’t matter now. I was wrong about him. He was one of us, trained as I ... was trained.”
“He serves the Russian now.”
“Yes. Apparently, Nick has secretly worked for Varenkov for years.”
“A traitor.”
She nodded. “I thought he was dead ... but it was a ruse. He pretended to die to get away from ... from the people I work for.” She coughed. “Correction. The people I
worked
for. Nick says they think I’ve gone rogue. If they find me, they’ll kill me.”
worked
for. Nick says they think I’ve gone rogue. If they find me, they’ll kill me.”
“Then I’d better make certain they never find you.”
Something troubled her. She couldn’t remember what was so important, but she knew that ... “The children!” she cried. “The children. What happened to the children?”
CHAPTER 25
T
he memory of that house with the wall around it came flooding back. Like snapshots in an old photo album, she saw an image of the open gate, saw Anuata frozen in the act of throwing an unconscious man over her shoulder, and saw terrified children huddled in a bedroom. “Two weeks? It was two weeks ago?”
he memory of that house with the wall around it came flooding back. Like snapshots in an old photo album, she saw an image of the open gate, saw Anuata frozen in the act of throwing an unconscious man over her shoulder, and saw terrified children huddled in a bedroom. “Two weeks? It was two weeks ago?”
“Yes.” Alex tried to take her in his arms, but she pushed him away.
“No, that can’t be. It’s impossible.” Arms clasped tightly over her chest, Ree rocked back and forth, sickened by the pain of her failure ... her betrayal. “I promised to help them,” she said. “I promised.”
“So Anuata told me.” He grimaced. “Ree O’Connor, you are a great trouble to me. Will you never cease making bad situations worse?”
“How could I make it worse? I abandoned those helpless children. They could all be dead by now. Probably all murdered by that awful man and woman. Or sold to perverts.”
“As dead as those baby dolphins in the cove?” His voice grated. “The ones who heard their mothers being slaughtered first?” He checked himself. “Forgive me, Ree. That was cruel. What happened in the drive wasn’t your fault. It’s wrong for me to take out my anger on you. Your human children are all alive, or they were when we left Samoa. Whether they’re safe or not remains to be seen.”
“Where are they? What happened to them? Did Anuata summon the authorities?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized how ridiculous the idea was. How could a Lemorian warrior-woman dial 911 or whatever passed for an emergency call in Samoa? “Did someone call child welfare?”
Alex chuckled at the thought. “An interesting concept, but no, that’s not what happened.” He stroked his chin. “Lemorians don’t have the talent for illusion. Can you imagine what the police chief would think if he saw Anuata? At the least, he would have believed her a star traveler.”
“So?” Ree stared at him expectantly. “Don’t keep me in suspense. Tell me what happened. I blacked out. I have no idea how I got out of that house, let alone the children.”
“Anuata carried you, and the boy, I think. The girls followed. I believe she convinced them that you were some sort of angel come to rescue them. Or maybe she threatened them with beheading, but apparently, they trailed after her like ducklings.”
“But she did leave them in a safe place?”
Alex exhaled slowly. “That would have been the rational option ... what I would have done. Human children, human problem. But no. Anuata isn’t always rational. She took them.”
“How? Where?”
“I believe she tossed Varenkov’s two men out of the Zodiac, loaded you and the children into it, and motored you all back to the
faleo’o
on the beach where she’d left Dewi.”
faleo’o
on the beach where she’d left Dewi.”
“She drove the Zodiac?”
“Anuata’s resourceful. Or maybe one of the children knew how to operate the engine. Anyway, they got to the hut; she left the kids there and submerged you in the sea to keep you from going into shock and suffocating.”
Ree tried to follow what he was saying, but it didn’t seem possible that Anuata could have gotten her and the children out of the house and away without been seen or caught.
“Dewi came for me,” Alex continued. “By that time, I was on my way to the airport, but eventually we met up.”
“I don’t understand. Why would Anuata take the kids to the hut? There wasn’t another soul within miles.” She yawned. She was exhausted and desperately wanted sleep, but she had to know what had happened to the children.
“I told you. Anuata took them all.”
Alex wasn’t making any sense. “Took them where?”
“First to the hut where we stayed, and then into the sea. She convinced Dewi and Bleddyn that the young ones had no chance of surviving in the human world. Somehow she got the two of them to help her.”
“But how? The children aren’t Atlantean. They’d drown.”
“You didn’t drown, did you? Because you were with me, you had the ability to breathe under water, even before your transformation.”
“So why can’t I now? I’m still ...” She took another deep breath. “With you. Can’t you ... do whatever it was you did then?”
“You weren’t sick before. You were shot, maybe dead from Varenkov’s bullets when I carried you from the yacht, but you didn’t have the illness that you have now.”
“So where are they now?” She looked around, seeing the two dolphins but nothing else larger than a yellow starfish. “Are they here? With us?”
“Hardly. It takes a great deal of effort to keep humans alive under water. Usually, the transfer is done one to one, one Atlantean, one human. But there are five children. Anuata and Dewi are each helping two to adapt. Dewi is smitten with her, so I can understand that he could be persuaded, but Bleddyn is the one I count on to be sensible.”
Ree tried to imagine the three warriors caring for Julita, Remi, and the others beneath the surface of the sea. It was impossible to imagine. “But there were five children.”
“Bleddyn, who should have known better, is caring for the fifth. Their progress will be slow. They have to get out of Lemorian territory without being caught, and if they reach a portal to travel by seraphim, they’ll have to take the children through one at a time. It will be far less efficient than normal. We’ll reach Atlantis long before they do, if they make it at all with their small humans still alive.”
“But why? Why would Anuata take the risk?”
“Who the Hades knows?” Alex rolled his eyes. “Suppressed motherly emotions, a kind heart. Lemorian insanity?”
“My guess would be the kind heart. If she hadn’t helped me ...”
“I give her that. But you have to realize my position. I’ll have a great deal of explaining to do. First, I must tell my brother the king that I’ve failed to take down Varenkov again. Next I present him with a human hybrid who needs urgent medical care.”
“I’m sorry,” Ree mumbled.
“Wait, there’s more,” Alex continued. “And then, if he hasn’t ordered me banished from the kingdom for breaking more laws than I could relate to you in the turning of a water clock, there’s my turncoat captain of the royal Lemorian guard that I have to vouch for. Not to mention five human children that she’s bringing with her and insisting they be transformed into Atlanteans.”
“They can do that? Transform human children?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time. Actually, my niece, Poseidon’s daughter, was born human. But don’t mention it. She doesn’t remember any of it, and it would be an extreme lapse in manners to cause her distress.”
“If his own daughter was human once, your brother should understand.”
“Understanding is one thing. Ignoring the laws of Atlantis because his younger brother is the perpetrator is another. Poseidon may be sympathetic, but that doesn’t mean I may not face banishment or worse.”
“What could be worse?”
“Being sealed in an ice floe for five hundred years.” His tone grew husky. “Being separated from you, Ree. Being trapped in utter silence, unable to move a muscle and wondering if you’d survived. And if you still lived, if you’d forgotten me and taken another to your heart.”
“All along, I thought what we had was just ...” She wasn’t ready for this. She cared for him, cared more than she wanted to tell him, but commitment was such a frightening thought that she wanted to run.
“That it was just sex?” He chuckled. “That’s what I told myself. It was what it had always been with women, pleasure between two consenting adults. But right from the beginning, I knew that you were different.”
“Because I was human.”
“No.” He brushed her lips with his. “That was the hard part for me. I’ve spent my whole life resenting air breathers, hating them.”
“Because of your mother’s death?”
He nodded. “I couldn’t understand when my brothers fell in love with human women ... I thought they were forgetting our mother ... forgetting what happened to her. What is that human expression? Now I’ll have to eat gull?”
Ree smiled at him. “I think it’s
crow
not gull. You’ll have to eat crow.”
crow
not gull. You’ll have to eat crow.”
“And after I stopped caring that you were human, when you were just Ree, I reminded myself that it wasn’t fair to become involved with you, that someone in my line of work shouldn’t have a wife.”
Ree’s heart skipped a beat. “You’re right. It’s a big leap, from not hating me for being human to using that word. I can’t make a decision like that ... not yet ... maybe not ever.”
“Because we’re of different species?”
“No, hell, no. Because ...” How could she tell him that the people she loved died? Or betrayed her. Alex wasn’t Nick, but she’d thought she’d known Nick and she wouldn’t have married him. “I’m not the kind of woman who needs a husband,” she said.
“But if you were?” he persisted.
She sighed. “If I was, you’d be the first man I’d consider.”
“You’ll come with me to Atlantis, then? You aren’t angry that I brought you this far when you were incapable of deciding for yourself?”
“Is it far, your Atlantis? You never told me where it was.”
“We don’t. The location of our city is a secret, but you’ll know soon enough. Atlantis lies in the deepest trench of the Atlantic, between the British Isles and America.”
“I’d always heard that it was in the Mediterranean. Or in the Caribbean.”
“Outposts, colonies. Our kingdom stretches back to the dawn of time. We have fortresses and palaces scattered across the Atlantic. One of the oldest is off the coast of Wales.”
“But they’ve never been discovered in all this time?”
“Some have, but your scholars believe what they wish. They attribute the ruins to various civilizations—Mayans along the shores of Mexico and Central America, Mycenaeans near Crete. Atlantis is a myth. No serious archaeologist would consider that they’ve found one of our sites.”
Ree stretched. “I think I’m feeling better. I know I am.”
“At daybreak, when I carried you from the island, you were burning up with fever. It’s been almost impossible to get you to eat or drink. And when you do wake, you don’t remember being sick.”
“If I receive this miracle cure, what will I be? Human or Atlantean?”
“It’s complicated. The Lemorian treatments you received make you different from anyone I’ve ever heard of. You may be the first to carry the genes of all three species.”
She forced a smile. “That’s me, always different.” He still didn’t know the extent of her psychic abilities. “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “If you leave nature to take its course, you can avoid a lot of trouble.”
“Leave you?” His eyes narrowed. “You think I could do that? After what the two of us have been through together?” He shook his head. “You really don’t know me, do you, Ree?”
“You’re always talking about being rational. It would be the rational thing to do. You could go directly to France, after Varenkov.”
“He won’t get away. Eventually, he’ll make a mistake, and I’ll be there to finish him. But not until you’re safe, and now, not until Anuata, Dewi, and Bleddyn are cleared of charges. Without me, they might suspect her of being a spy and them of helping her.”
“And the kids? What will happen to them? If they’re transformed, as you put it?”
“With human children my people are understanding. They will take these small ones to their hearts. Every child is cherished in Atlantis.”
“But these kids are different. How can they forget what they’ve been forced to do? If anyone learns why Anuata stole them, they couldn’t possibly be accepted.”
“Atlanteans live many times longer than humans. We have time to learn from our mistakes. No person could blame an innocent child for the evil done to them. And the young ones’ minds will be wiped clear of the bad memories. They will forget, be reborn in body and mind, and there will be loving families eager to adopt them.”
“Is that how your brother got his daughter? He stole her?”
“No. In Danu’s case, my brother found her dying in the ocean. She’d been attacked by predators. He brought her back to life, much as I did you. Thus, he became responsible for her. Their lives will be always linked.”
“Are you responsible for me?”
“Yes.” Alex nodded. “But the bond that ties me to you is more than honor. I love you, Ree. As a man loves a woman, now and forever.”
She turned her face away. She wanted so badly to accept that love, to tell him that she loved him in return, but the words wouldn’t come. How could she trust her judgment? She’d been so wrong about Nick. How could she ever know what was the right choice again? And how could she pledge her love to Alex, when loving her might mean his death?
In his apartment in the Lemorian palace, Caddoc threw back his head, ripped out great handfuls of his hair, and howled in anguish.
Iorgos, the young nobleman who’d carried the news of the failed attempt on the throne of Atlantis, stared at his prince in horror. “What have I done?” he cried. “My brother Zotikos died for you. Have I lost my home, my wife, my family, and fortune to crown you Poseidon? Did I throw away a life of ease and splendor for some maimed madman who couldn’t govern an oyster bed?”
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