Atlantis Rising

Chapter 15

Conlan leaned back against the door to Riley's room, shaken more than he wanted to admit, even to himself. His eyes got a blue-green flame in them?

When he wasn't channeling the elements—or any power at all?

Oh, he was screwed.

Something was seriously wrong with this scenario. Eyes didn't display the flame of Poseidon except when the person whose skull the eyes happened to be stuck in channeled power. Called the elements.

Not when sitting around chatting with a female.

A human female.

Unless… The thought that had driven ice through his veins flashed back into his head, refusing to be ignored. His mother's bedtime stories about ancient Atlantean lords and their ladies. Stories of fierce battles and enduring love.

Tales of the legendary gift of the soul-meld between an Atlantean and his mate, which branded a warrior's heart and soul as surely as Poseidon's mark branded his body.

It was impossible. The soul-meld was a legend, a fable. A fanciful bedtime story. Nothing more. Soul-melding did not exist.

Like empaths don't exist, right?

Oh, damn. He needed Alaric to figure this one out. Soon. As soon as the Trident was retrieved. After they'd figured out why the hell those vamps had attacked, and how to find the Trident in the first place.

Or even what to do about Reisen.

Yeah. All the subjects he'd forgotten to raise with Alaric and the Seven earlier.

He was screwed.

At dawn the next morning, Conlan woke from a fractured sleep to the smell of coffee and the sound of low, male laughter. For a minute or two, before he moved from the bed he'd fallen into, exhausted, late the night before, he lay completely still, examining what he was feeling. Actually, what he wasn't feeling. It was a kind of absence. The lack of something—what!

His eyes snapped open as the truth came to him. What he'd felt—what was missing—was rage.

Fury.

He'd needed the flames of anger to defeat helplessness. To goad him into living for the long years that he'd been Anubisa's captive. He'd fed those flames with memories of his parents and thoughts of his brother and Atlantis when despair or pain threatened to overpower the rage.

But now, in spite of the vampire threat, and even in spite of Reisen's treason, he'd let loose of some inner core of fury that had shored up his foundation for so long. His thoughts turned inward, examining, focusing on the building blocks of his psyche.

Of what Alaric had called his uncompromised soul.

It had been close. Damn, but it had been close. There had been so many times when he'd wondered why he bothered to try to stay alive. Why he kept fighting her.

Why he didn't let death take him.

Conlan thought back to the concrete floors and the ten-inch-by-ten-inch metal grate in the floor.

"The better for the blood to drain into," she'd said, fangs flashing in the light of the dozens of candles that ringed the room. "It's not like I'm going to drink it all, princeling. There will be much to tempt my blood pride down below."

Her blood pride. More like her coven of minions from hell. He'd heard them wailing and gnashing their fangs in the cavern below his cell every hour of every day.

Every hour of every night.

Until the day she released him.

"And that's what pisses me off the most, isn't it?" he snarled, sitting up and swinging his feet off the bed. "That she released me. That I didn't escape on my own. In the end, I turned out to be no better than any of the rest of her pets, didn't I?"

Just like that, it was back. The empty, barren landscapes inside his soul were filled with wrath.

He welcomed it. Hell, he and rage were old buddies.

Conlan? A delicate touch in his mind. Are you okay?

Riley.

For a heartbeat, the lyricism of her voice and the sparkling blues and golds of her emotions combined to drive the flames from his mind. He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, sure that he could smell her clean, fresh scent. Flowers and the ocean.

Surer now—definitely louder, her voice pounded through his head: Conlan! If you're okay, get your ass over here and unlock this door, or I will pound on your head!

He started laughing at the contradiction. Ah, his delicate flower. Never one to say the expected, was she?

Nope. And she wasn't his anything, either. Better for both of them if he didn't forget it.

Sobering, he sent his reply back to her: On my way. Try not to chew through the wall, okay?

He felt a slight trace of her amusement sparkle through him in colors of warm honey and gold. Then that peculiar slamming sensation in his head, which cut off any trace of her.

Oh, yeah. She was pissed. This ought to be fun.

Not.

Reisen looked up from his contemplation of the object in his hands, eyes still dazzled, when the thud of heavy-soled boots thundered down the hall toward him. Micah strode into the room, followed closely by several more warriors.

"My lord," Micah said, breathing harshly. "While patrolling, we discovered a nest of shape-shifters based in a tattoo parlor in Virginia Beach."

Reisen laughed. "That seems a little odd, doesn't it? Do you think the tattoos come back after they take animal form and then return to human?"

Micah folded his arms over his chest, staring at Reisen with his usual implacable expression. "My lord?"

Shaking off both the whimsy and the near-trancelike state he'd gone into while staring at the hen's-egg-sized emerald in his hands for the past hour, Reisen stood up. "And? What did you do about it?"

Micah shrugged. "We returned here to tell you about it. I wasn't sure if our quest allowed time for battling a bunch of furballs. Especially after the Council's decree that we only destroy shape-shifters proven of wrongdoing."

Reisen carefully replaced the emerald in its silk pouch and gently tucked the pouch back inside its small wooden box. The leaders of the East Coast cell of the Platoists had been only too anxious to give him the emerald, when they'd learned the truth of their organization's central tenet.

Atlantis was real.

Moreover, Reisen was an Atlantean prince. They'd treated him like a god. He hadn't exactly hated it.

He'd thought the human was going to piss in his pants. Luckily for all concerned, the man had managed to contain his excitement long enough to retrieve the emerald and gift it to Reisen.

Who now had to figure out how to use it. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. But some things were easy. "We all swore a sacred vow to protect humanity. It gains us nothing to restore Atlantis to its rightful place in the world, if that world is overrun with bloodsuckers and shape-shifters. In this, as in so much else, the Council is wrong."

Micah nodded, smiling. "I was hoping you'd say that," he said, with his hands on the handle of his battle-axe. "All this tension has me in the mood to kick some shape-shifter ass."

The warriors ringing Micah nodded and growled their agreement. Reisen carefully packed the small wooden box and the fabric-wrapped bundle of the Trident into a leather carrying bag. One of the warriors stepped forward. "May I carry that for you, my lord?"

"Thank you, but this is one burden that I'm honored to carry myself." With that, Reisen led them to the main room of the house to do some planning. He still had more than a day before the scheduled meeting with the Platoists.

Plenty of time to kick some shape-shifter ass.