Atlantis Rising

Chapter 10

Riley looked at the clock again, for the third time in an hour. She'd slept for what? Maybe twenty minutes? After leaving two practically incoherent voice mail messages on Quinn's cell phone, that is.

She rolled over and sat up. Not really surprising that she wasn't sailing through fluffy dreamland, considering. Her thoughts flashed to Dina and the baby, then to Morris. She shuddered as the delayed reaction finally hit her.

"That could have been me. He was trying to kill me," she whispered, then clasped her arms around her knees and rocked back and forth. A shudder worked its way down her body till she sat trembling, tears sliding down her cheeks.

"And he wasn't the only one. Those men tonight—if he hadn't been there…"

Conlan.

Just thinking his name conjured his face in her mind. Elegant, aristocratic cheekbones. A strong jaw. Lips that must have been sculpted by the most artistic of angels.

A frisson of heat curled through her abdomen. That kiss. That was… something.

Oh, get over yourself, Riley. Angels, sheesh. It's not like you haven't seen beautiful men before.

"Nobody like him," she whispered to the darkness of her bedroom. "Never any like him. Never anybody who could step inside my mind."

Except Quinn. She and her sister had always been able to share an almost telepathic form of communication. They'd never thought much of it; everybody knew about twin speak. Ten months apart was close enough to be almost twins.

But never with anybody else. Never a stranger. Never an incredibly gorgeous man who had saved her life—or at the very least, saved her from a hideous assault.

Conlan.

Then a voice, gentle but insistent, inside of her mind.

Yes, I am here.

Then came his concern, sharp and ferocious. Do you need me? Are you in danger?

She held a hand up, almost as if she could touch the colorful emotions swirling inside of her. Not her emotions.

His.

"Since it's a dream, I may as well answer you. Because this has to be a dream, doesn't it? Just a little PTSD to round off my day." Riley scrubbed tears off her face.

Yeah. That had to be it. None of it had really happened. Nobody could cause the ocean to act like that. Not even vamps.

What is PTSD? And why are you lying to yourself? You know I'm real, aknasha. You hear me in your mind. You feel my emotions, although I have no idea how that is even possible.

Riley laughed. She couldn't help it. His voice was like cool ocean waves caressing her nerve endings and soothing jagged edges.

And spiking her calm to excitement in ten seconds flat.

How was that even possible?

"Okay, Mr. Figment of My Imagination. What the hell. I'll go with it. PTSD means post-traumatic stress disorder. Which is what I've got going on after Morris nearly shot me to death."

She laughed again. "One hell of a case, from the looks of it. I mean, no pink elephants for me. I have to conjure up a drop-dead gorgeous man who can share his thoughts and emotions with me."

She stood up and headed for the bathroom. "I've gotta have some drugs somewhere. Maybe just a small Valium?"

Then the fire again, as his emotions darkened. Someone shot at you?

Low, dangerous. A different kind of shiver caressed her at the stark male command in his voice.

Not that she was the type to go all tingly over some hunky alpha male. "I'm fine. He's dead, so get over your 'I'm the law' thing."

But his voice came again, freezing her in her tracks, something smug and purely masculine in the words.

You think I'm gorgeous, hmm?

Riley rolled her eyes. Evidently, even in Hallucination Land men had enormous egos. She wondered idly what else about him was enormous, then caught herself when her face got hot. Don't go there, Riley.

Perhaps I am simply a figment of your imagination, he said, shades of reasonableness and amusement tinging his words in her mind. Perhaps you should not look out your window.

"What?" She ran to the window and yanked her blinds up, staring wildly down at her tiny garden. Four, no five, men stood below, standing in a loose ring around Conlan. She noticed that they were all the size of Conlan, and all dressed in black, before she wrenched her attention to the figure standing alone in the midst of them.

Looking up at her.

"Oh, holy crap, it's you," she whispered, placing her palms on the window, trapped in his gaze.

Yes, it is definitely me. If I'm only a figment of your imagination, can the figment say that I'd really appreciate it if you'd… rethink… your clothing before you show up in front of my men?

His voice in her mind took on a husky tone. Not that I don't appreciate your choice of nightwear.

Glancing down at herself, Riley's cheeks burned. She wore only an old and worn green tank top—that had Smart Girls Rock traced on it in faded gold thread—over a pair of lacy underwear.

A rather teensy pair of underwear.

Face flaming, she backed away from the window, uncertain of whether to be afraid, embarrassed, or excited that he was real.

Real and standing outside of her house.

She settled on a combination of all three, her breathing suddenly shallow and fast. But she'd seen inside his heart, his memories, even his soul, somehow, and there had been honor and integrity—no hint of serial-killer tendencies.

Well, if she wasn't going with Option A: Figment of Her Imagination. Damn, this was confusing.

Either way, she had some questions for him. She was a social worker, for Pete's sake. She put herself in danger as a matter of course. And she'd been inside this man's mind. She knew he had no intention to hurt her. She wasn't sure how she knew, but she knew.

As she dragged on a pair of jeans, she laughed without much humor. "Danger is my middle name."

The voice sounded in her mind, amused again. Glad she could provide so much entertainment for him.

She could literally feel his laughter curling inside her as he spoke. Or sent her thought waves. Or whatever.

Really? I would have guessed Trouble.

She grinned before she realized she was doing it. Her first smile in a long time. "You'd better be prepared for trouble, Conlan, if you can't give me a good explanation for what you're doing in my front yard."

The smile faded from her face. Great, there was an Option C. He was some kind of freakish stalker. Like she hadn't had enough to deal with, for one night.

For one lifetime.

But she wasn't a coward. Or stupid, either. Riley yanked a sweatshirt over her head then grabbed a phone, the better to dial a quick 911 with. Then she ran down the stairs and peered through the peephole. Yes, he was still there. Conlan and some men who were clearly also from the Land of Hunks.

Taking a deep breath, she pulled open her front door. And that's when all hell broke loose.

Vampires. It was raining materializing vampires.

She'd seen them before, sure, everybody had. Not just on CNN either. She'd seen them up close and personal, prowling the alleys and the backways of the city. Looking for victims who were all too willing, dangling the elusive promise of immortality, luring the young, the weak, the hopeless.

But she'd never seen a full two dozen of them, swooping down from the air, arrowing in on the tiny patch of lawn in front of her house.

The same lawn where Conlan stood with his men.

She snapped out of her shock; shouted a warning. "Watch out, Conlan! Vampires!"

But he and his men were already looking up, unsheathing daggers of some sort. The blades flashed like copper fused with diamonds, beautiful and deadly.

Sort of like the man himself.

Riley, get back! Conlan thundered in her mind. Close that damn door and hide.

But she stood there, frozen, the phone forgotten in her hand. The silence was surreal—battle scenes in the movies were always full of clashing armor and shouting.

The battle scene before her was all the more terrifying because of the near cessation of sound.

The largest of the vamps landed in front of Conlan, sword drawn. Conlan crossed his daggers to block the blow, then sliced down viciously, striking the vamp's left arm. With an upswing, he drove his dagger into the attacker's heart, and the vamp slumped to the ground.

More men came running from around the corner of her house. They were dressed in black leather and long coats, like some terrifying biker gang. One of them, hair in a long, blue braid to his waist, broke the silence. He roared—a name, a challenge—something that sounded like "Poseidon!" then flew into the air in a wild leap, a sword and dagger held up and out in front of him. He landed on top of a vamp who'd tried, but failed, to twist out of the way.

Blue-hair thrust both his weapons into the vampire's neck, twisted his clearly powerful arms, still yelling fiercely, and then yanked the blades back out.

Riley stood, unblinking, hand-to-hand combat and sword-play crashing through the night around her.

Focused only on the vampire's head.

The head that fell off his body and rolled to a stop a few feet away, right next to her dormant azalea bushes.

She clutched at the door frame with one hand, slowly shaking her head back and forth, swirling fog threatening to obscure her line of sight…

Well, that didn't happen, did it? Because nobody decapitates vampires on my lawn, right? Can't be good for the grass. Or the azaleas.

She recognized the symptoms, objectively. She was going into shock. Numbness, graying vision, a spreading cold—

Then she looked up and met Conlan's gaze. He'd felt her terror. It must have distracted him, because she could tell he didn't notice the vampire who leapt at him from behind, aiming his sword at his back.

Her numbness shattered.

"Nooo!" she screamed, hurling herself off the porch and toward the two of them. Unthinking. Urgency driving her. She had to help him. Had to protect him.

Must protect him.

"Leave him alone!" she shouted. She jumped on the vampire's back, reaching around his neck to grab at his throat. Throttle him.

But it was too late. The vampire hissed at her as he pulled his sword back, dripping with Conlan's blood.

"You leave him alone now!" she repeated, mindless with rage. Her self-defense classes kicked in, fingers reaching, digging, in a barely remembered tactic.

Go for the eyes, Riley. No matter how big they are, you can always go for the eyes.

She dug her fingers in, gagging against the feel as her nails dug into squishiness. The vampire screamed with agony and twisted, heaving her arms away from him.

Smashing her to the ground.

He turned, clawing at his streaming eyes, and Riley tried to crawl backward to escape. Then the vamp roared out his anguish again, spittle flying from his cracked and twisted fangs, and focused on Conlan, lying so still next to her. The vampire reared back one booted foot, clearly planning to kick Conlan in the head.

Riley sucked in a torrent of air and screamed with everything she had in her. She launched herself in front of the vampire to somehow block his foot from crushing Conlan's skull.

And a hailstorm of coppery blades sliced through the air above her to land in the vampire's chest and throat. His foot wavered, and he staggered.

An arc of blue fire—or electrical current—or something not human, no, never human, not even vampires had blue fireballs, what the helll—shot from the hands of one of Conlan's men and incinerated the vampire's head.

Incinerated.

Demolished.

As Riley collapsed back onto Conlan's still form, she started to laugh.

Then she couldn't stop.

She laughed and laughed, not registering when the laughter turned to sobs, finally looking up and seeing the ring of men looking down at her, blades drawn. Her head throbbed, ached, seemed as if it would split open from the reverberations of… what, exactly?

The one standing a little apart from the others tilted his head and pinned her with his icy green gaze. He was beautiful, like the rest of them, and yet his eyes were flat. Dead. In her job, she'd seen hardened recidivist criminals with more emotion in their eyes than his had.

"Conlan is not seriously harmed. The blade was coated in poison—the dose would have been fatal to a human," he stated, imperiously looking down his nose at her. "It will be little trouble to clear it from his blood."

She hiccupped a little, caught her breath, and then glared her defiance up at him. "You look like a serial killer, buddy. But whoever you are, unless you really can help Conlan, you'll have to come through me to get to him."

A collective gasp went up from the others, all six, no, all seven of them—she'd almost missed the one lying on the ground, blood dripping from his head as he raised it to look at her.

"She seeks to protect him where we have failed," he gritted out, wiping blood out of his eyes with one hand. "And we, sworn to his service."

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—whoever 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."

As I would if only I could, and more and more as the years pass.

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."