Atlantis Unleashed (12 page)

Keely had learned, from long, painful years of experience, how to appear calm on the surface when everything was going clusterfark on the inside. Now seemed like the grand finale to all that practice; the PhD exam on maintaining order during chaos.

She'd never flunked an exam yet, and no way was she starting now. What would Gertrude Bell do? Not that one of the most famous female archaeologists of all time had ever had to contend with Atlantis. But Lawrence of Arabia had to have come pretty close.

She took a deep but unobtrusive breath, while she studied the group in front of her. Armed men and a woman with a bruised face wearing a—toga? sheet?—were standing, incongruously, on the greenest grass she'd ever seen. Jade melding into finest emerald, shading into nearly a dark teal beyond them.

Beyond that? Wondrous. Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole amazing. They stood on a worn, circular marble platform near the edge of the very same dome she'd seen in her vision.

Only deepest blue beyond the dome. A touch of claustrophobia strangled her for a moment, her scientific mind calculating the water pressure per square inch that must be pressing against that dome.

Thickly leaved trees clustered in small groves near the edge of the clearing and, in the distance, she could make out the tops of the same elegant domes and delicate spires she'd seen in her vision.

In spite of her deliberately measured breathing, her lungs hiccupped out her next breath. Atlantis.

It really was Atlantis.

Or at least someplace like none she'd ever been or imagined. Unbelievable. Even the scent of it was different. Exotic. Delicate floral hints overlay deep, lush greenery. Flora and fauna as imagined by ancient hedonism.

Except it was real.

Liam now held what looked like ancient daggers in his hands, although she had no idea where they'd come from. Hidden in his clothes, probably. It's not like the portal had been armed with a metal detector. Fascinated, she took another look at the daggers. The intricate scrollwork on the hilts dated from probably—

Focus, idiot. Now is not the time to try to place ancient weaponry, when a whole lot of the same is drawn and pointed at me by men who look like they know how to use it
.

After Liam, she should have been prepared, but what could have prepared her for this? Five towering men, each one of them more gorgeous—more menacing—than the one next to him.

Plus the requisite damsel in distress standing behind them.

“It's like I've wandered onto a film set,” she ventured out loud, hoping to defuse the tension so evident in the air. “Which one of you is riding to the rescue of the hapless maiden?”

She forced a slight smile and indicated the bruised woman with a nod of her head, as though it were an everyday occurrence for her to find heavily armed men surrounding a half-naked woman. A woman who'd clearly been beaten or else had been in a seriously bad car accident.

While wearing a sheet.

Yeah, lots of women head out for a drive wearing nothing but a sheet. A drive in, let's not forget,
Atlantis
.

Did they even have cars? Before she could scan the area for any evidence of Atlantean transportation, the sheet-wearing woman snorted, her mouth quirking up into a half smile. “Tiernan Butler, not hapless, definitely not maiden,” she said, with too much dry humor to be a victim. Something else, then.

Keely's tension lessened slightly, and she smiled in return. “Keely McDermott, lately of Ohio State. Go, Buckeyes, anyone?”

Years of anthropological studies, which complemented her archaeology, had shaped Keely into an astute student of body language. A certain nearly unnoticeable lessening of the tension in the men's stances signaled that maybe, just maybe, she wasn't about to get skewered on the point of one of those swords.

One of the men stepped forward. He was as tall as Liam, well over six feet, and had the same silken black hair. This man had the unmistakable bearing of command, however, and the aristocratic facial features to match. A general or leader of some sort. He was clearly as beautiful and as deadly as the weapons he carried and, although modestly dressed in a deep blue shirt and black pants, he may as well have been wearing king's robes or an admiral's uniform.

“I am Conlan, high prince of Atlantis,” he said, and she felt the small warmth of expectations met flare inside her. “I bid you welcome, Dr. McDermott. As you may have surmised from our . . . appearance, we find ourselves unprepared for guests.” His deep voice was courteous and surprisingly unruffled, as if he hung out with his friends, fully armed, all the time.

Which, for all she knew, he did.

Before she could speak, Prince Conlan turned his attention to Liam, dismissing her. “Please take Dr. McDermott and Ms. Butler to the palace.”

A second man, who looked a heck of a lot like the prince, stepped forward, shaking his head. “Better if Liam stays. Depending on what's lurking in the Void to follow Justice, we may need another set of blades.”

Liam bowed to them both. “Prince Conlan and Lord Vengeance, I am honored to serve as you wish, of course. However, you should know that Dr. McDermott saw Nereus in a vision when she touched the sapphire—”

“When you forced it into my hand, you mean, which is something we need to discuss,” Keely said, smoothly cutting across Liam's report. “Warrior guy or not, you need to know that ambushing me like that did not exactly make me thrilled to accept your invitation.”

The one Liam had called Lord Vengeance laughed, and his laughter changed him from forbidding warrior to pure, potent male. Every one of them radiated sexual magnetism so strongly that Keely felt she'd landed in some sort of fantasyland for women who'd been alone for way too long.

“Yeah, McHottie. Your bad, definitely,” Ven said, cutting into her woozy mental meanderings. “Too bad we don't have time to hear all about it.” He turned his gaze to her. “Call me Ven. Can I call you Keely?”

“Of course—”

“Great. Now is not a good time, Keely. As an archaeologist, I'm guessing you're pretty good at finding things. Head due north. In fact, just go straight toward that group of armed guards running toward us; see them?”

She nodded, assuming he was pointing to the slight haziness she could see in the distance down the tree-lined path to their right. Atlantean vision was superior to human, then, she noted and filed away the thought.

“Take Ms. Butler with you, if you would,” the prince said, dismissing her as he turned back toward the strangely distorted mirrorlike shape with the rest of them.

Liam bowed to her, that Old World courtesy still in place in spite of the apparent threat. “Thank you for your cooperation, Dr. McDermott. We will soon—”

A shout from the group at the mirror shape interrupted him and a booming noise thundered through the ground like a minor earthquake. Keely had experienced cave-ins before and had an archaeologist's instinctive and healthy fear of anything that could bring tons of dirt collapsing down upon her.

This time, for a change, she was aboveground, but she scanned the area for any unstable structures that might topple over and crush them. Seeing none, Keely glanced at Tiernan and noticed that the woman's face had gone dead white, and the bruises on her face stood out in stark contrast to her pallor.

“Not a lot of earthquakes where you come from?” she asked, as she crossed rapidly to Tiernan's side. “Maybe we should take their advice and get moving.”

Tiernan lifted one shaking arm and pointed. “I'm all for getting out of here,” she said, “but the guy on the other side of that mirror seems to be headed straight for you.”

Keely swung around to gaze back at the shimmering mirror, or window, or whatever it was, and gasped, taking a quick step back. Because the man she could see through it, covered with dirt and blood and worse, was snarling like some kind of feral predator. Her scientist's mind cataloged the details, even as she recoiled from the sight of him: His long braid of dirt-crusted hair swung behind him as he ran. The sword he held in attack position gleamed with cold, steely light from symbols on the blade. He was gaining ground, pounding across a landscape that couldn't exist in reality, and a ghoul-like creature shambled along behind him.

Although she couldn't hear him—the barrier must have trapped sound—he was clearly screaming. The eerie silence coming from the vision contradicted the evidence that was plain to see: his mouth was open, his teeth were bared, and the cords in his neck were strained taut as he screamed soundlessly. Or, at least, soundlessly to all of them on this side of the barrier.

Then she noticed one final detail, and her careful, dispassionate, scientific observation collapsed underneath the weight of a single fact. This predator, this terrifying attacker, was ignoring every one of the armed men surrounding the window and staring straight at her. And, somehow, he looked familiar.

First, there had been the faintest glimmer of light. Then, Justice and Pharnatus had seen what looked like a portal, in the distance. Stumbling at first, then moving more swiftly, they'd headed toward what would perhaps be freedom—or merely a mirage.

Justice could see Keely now. The sight of her inflamed and overwhelmed the remnant of sanity that laughter and the light from his sword had briefly returned to him. Some core of reason knew it might be another mirage. A false oasis sent by Anubisa to torment him.

She had done it before, Poseidon knew. Sent him images of his fellow warriors in the Seven, visions that were similar to the sight of them standing by the entryway now. Conlan and Ven, the brothers he'd never been able to claim. Christophe, smirking with his usual bad attitude. Alexios, standing strong in spite of the scarring Anubisa had left on his face and in his soul during captivity. Even Alaric, with whom Justice had so often traded harsh words.

All of them standing there, standing in front of Keely. Standing in front of the woman he knew belonged to him. He shook his head, denial and rage clashing in the battleground of his mind. Keely was
his
. Not a figment of his fevered imagination snaked into his mind by Anubisa.

Keely was
his
woman. His salvation.

This vision was different, in any event. Bastien was not there, nor Denal, the youngling. Brennan was missing, too. His calm countenance had been in the foreground of the false visions Anubisa had sent him before. Brennan was a puzzle to her, one she'd laughingly told Justice that she planned to solve. Justice had played along, at first. Pretended to have defected to her side, claiming violent hatred of his brother's regime. All those years of playing subject to Conlan's prince. Forced to pretend that he, too, was not royal by way of blood flowing through veins that were only half Atlantean. Forced to deny his Nereid mother.

Closer.

He ran and ran and the entryway appeared to grow in size as he approached it. Closer and closer.
She
came closer, and the sight of her nearly knocked his feet out from under him. Pharnatus was forgotten behind him.

Anubisa was forgotten.

There was nothing but Keely, with her red hair and green eyes and soft, luscious lips. He screamed her name.

She looked at him—directly into his eyes—and she flinched. Even so far away as he was from her, he saw her reaction, and for an instant he hated her. He hated her and yet he did not; she was his. No matter what it took, he would claim her.

Reason called out to him, flickering in the darkness of his soul. Sanity tried to force its way through the scar tissue on his psyche.
She could save us,
it claimed.
She could save us from ourselves
. But the pact of peace that had long ago been settled between his Atlantean half and his Nereid half had shattered when he'd broken his
geas
in that dank cavern underneath the mountains.

The two sides of his nature—both alpha, both dominant—battled for control of his mind. He knew the scope of his powers as Atlantean, but was only just coming into the range of his powers as a Nereid. He would either become stronger than he had ever been, or sanity would self-destruct on the rocky ground of the battlefield fought entirely inside his mind.

“Keely,” he screamed. “We are coming for you.”

Still running, still screaming, he caught and held her emerald gaze with his own. She was afraid, he saw. She was terrified, and some small, foreign part of him almost reveled in her fear. Self-disgust choked him. Had the Void turned him so far from himself? From duty?

From honor?

But she wasn't backing away. She wasn't backing down. She didn't run, as if she realized flight would trigger his prey instinct.

Perhaps she thought that his fellow warriors would protect her. Perhaps one of them had already claimed her. The thought of it slammed into him like a spear in his stomach, and he stumbled and fell onto the rocks, hard, feeling the skin in his hands and face as it shredded. Ignored the pain. Ignored the blood. Both were irrelevant.