Atlantis Unleashed (32 page)

His eyes narrowed and he made a low, threatening noise deep in his throat. “We have claimed you, Keely. Perhaps now, when our grasp on calm and balance is so precarious, is not the time for your jokes.”

She sighed, but said nothing. He was back to the claiming again. When she'd done what she could for him and for Atlantis, she was going to have a long talk with him about the twenty-first century. Or maybe she'd send him a nice, safe e-mail from a safe few thousand miles away.

Safely.

Not that she feared Justice. But the Nereid was an unknown quantity, and it was better that he and she weren't in the same time zone.

She ignored the pain in her chest that accompanied the thought and started walking again. Toward Ven and the room that evidently held the Trident.

Was it blasphemy to go poking around at the sacred objects of a god, even if you didn't worship that god? She touched the fish carving that rested under her shirt on its chain and wished that she'd added a gold cross to the necklace. A symbol of her own faith. Although the fish could do double duty. Didn't a fish also serve as a symbol of Christi anity? Jesus fed all those people with only two fish, after all.

She briefly closed her eyes and offered up a prayer that she would survive whatever lay in front of her. Survive and be able to help Justice. As if he could read her thoughts, he squeezed her hand briefly and a shiver of heat flared between them. She trembled as the sensation shuddered through her body, and the memory of his kiss back in the cavern shot into her mind, so powerful and potent that she stumbled.

The memory flashed heat through her, but it wasn't sexual or even sensual. It was the warmth of simple joy: the taste of icy lemonade on a hot desert dig, the sight of a brilliantly colored sunset over the ocean waves, the sound of bells sparkling in a child's laughter.

The warmth of coming home. To the kind of home she'd always wanted.

He caught her before she could fall, and she shook her head at the question in his eyes. How could she tell him that her heart had chosen now, of all inconvenient and inappropriate times, to fall fearlessly over the edge?

Taking a deep breath, she put her Dr. McDermott face back on, gently pulled her hand free from his, and strode through the open door to face whatever lay inside.

Justice and the Nereid watched from their shared eyes as Keely slowly circled the pedestal upon which the Trident rested on its peacock-blue silken cushion. She'd done nothing else for what seemed like a very long time. Simply walked round and round the pedestal, never taking her gaze from the Trident, with its five gaping holes where the remaining of the seven gems should rest.

None of them seemed to want to be the one to disturb her concentration, though. There was something in the way she held her body; her muscles clenched so tightly that he could see her hands trembling and her chest barely rising and falling with the shallow breaths she was taking. If he hadn't seen the real thing, he would have guessed that she was in a trance now.

But he
had
witnessed the real thing, and the prospect of her going through such trauma again, on a far grander scale, froze the marrow of his bones with terror. She'd promised him she could do it. That touching the cushion would be bearable.

Even he, fiercely protective of her as he was, had to admit that the cushion itself had never seen battle or committed a single blood-drenched act. So it made sense that it would be bearable for her. Also, Keely had sworn that if he held her hand and gave her his support, she could do this.

He could do no less than match her courage. But they needed to get on with it before his own courage faltered again at the risk she was taking, even though the fate of his own fractured mind might rest on discovering the location of the Star of Artemis.

Finally, she stopped walking and stood, head bowed, her fiery red hair falling forward to hide her face from view. His fingers ached to stroke the silken strands away from her forehead as he pulled her close to him.

His arms ached to hold her and never, ever let her go. Lean on her strength to help him fight the battle waging within him. Her calm was the check to his madness, her light the balance to his dark.

She was his Keely.
Our Keely,
whispered the Nereid.
Ours and only ours, forever. Let her do this one small task, and then we will leave this place until we gain the strength to use our combined powers to conquer. It is our rightful place, as heir apparent to Atlantis
.

Justice recoiled and drew on all of his mental reserves to lock the Nereid away in a far corner of his mind. He didn't know how long he could keep it under control, but he would never listen to treasonous plans from the poisonous stranger who lived inside his head.

Inside his soul.

He was doomed, and he was damned, and the only faint hope he had of surviving with any of his sanity intact lay in the strength of this human female.

“I'm ready,” she said quietly. So quietly he almost didn't hear her. “I'm going to take off my glove now and touch it, but only with one hand. Sometimes that lessens the force of the impact. I'm not sure why.”

Slowly, reluctantly, she pulled off her left glove and dropped it to the floor. Turning to Justice, she attempted a small, wavering smile. “Hey, wanna hold my hand?”

She lifted her right hand, still gloved, and he leapt forward to take it.

“Always,” he said.

Her green eyes briefly shone with a flash of happiness or, perhaps, hope. Then they darkened again with grim resolve. “Okay, let's do this thing.”

She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths, visibly relaxing the tension in her body as she prepared herself. Then her eyes snapped open and she grinned. “Feels like I should say something important or ceremonial here, but I got nothing.”

Before he could think of a reply, she reached out with her left hand and grasped the edge of the cushion farthest away from the Trident itself. Then her eyes widened until he could see white rimming her entire pupils. Her hand clutched spasmodically at his, and then a bolt of pure energy shot through her body and slammed him across the room. He crashed down on his back but was up in a second.

Keely screamed so loudly and with such anguish that acid seared through his stomach as he shot across the room toward her. Ven, swearing a flaming streak in Atlantean, headed for Keely. Conlan dove at the cushion to yank it out of her grasp.

But some kind of completely transparent energy shield, like nothing Justice had ever encountered before, bounced them all away from her and on their asses on the cold, hard marble floor.

Keely, still standing there with her hand grasping the cushion so tightly that her knuckles were white, shuddered and shook, still screaming. Her eyes rolled back in her head until he could see nothing but white, and he snarled and leapt toward her again.

He must reach her. He must protect her. He'd promised to hold her hand, always, and he was failing her.

The energy shield smashed him back again, and this time his head cracked against a wall a dozen feet away. He put a hand to his scalp and it came away bloody, but it wouldn't stop him if it took a hundred tries, or a thousand tries; by all the nine hells and even those deeper, he would save Keely or die trying.

Suddenly, her screaming stopped. The unexpected silence cut through them like the sharpest blade. Keely's eyes returned to normal, but emerald fire blazed from them as though something or someone more than just Keely looked out.

“He took it,” Keely said, her voice steady and clear, in spite of the convulsions racking her body. “Reisen took the Trident so that he could become the king. The House of . . . Mycenae. The House of Mycenae should rule. Poseidon made him pay for his arrogance. He . . . something about his hand. The vampires took Reisen's hand.”

“How could she know that?” Conlan asked, awe infusing his voice.

“Justice could have told her,” Ven said, but Justice saw the doubt in his brother's expression. They were starting to believe.

Another shock visibly raced through Keely, and she threw her head back, the cords in her neck straining. Still, her voice came through in measured cadence, no hint of the stress her body was under showing in her tone or in the suddenly lyrical rhythms of her words.

“Atlantis must sink beneath the waves, in order to survive the Cataclysm.
Ragnarok
. The Doom of the Gods. The burning. We will rise again. Send a full measure of the best and brightest of us out among the humans. Send them to the corners of the world. Each of seven groups shall take one of the gems of the Trident. The Dragon's Egg. The Nereid's Heart. The Star of Artemis. The Vampire's Bane. The Siren. The Emperor. And, finally, Poseidon's Pride. Only when all are together again will Atlantis be allowed to rise. If the gems are not together and the Seven Isles attempt to rise to the surface, no matter the magic or technology of the future, Atlantis will be destroyed.”

As she spoke her final words, she released her hold on the cushion and sank, unconscious, to the floor. Justice dove for her as she fell and encountered no resistance. The energy shield had vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

“Now do you believe me?” he demanded of his brothers, as he cradled her limp form in his arms. “Now do you see that her visions are true?”

Solemnly, both Ven and Conlan nodded. Such simple words to convince them all.

Such simple words, spoken plainly and fluently, but not in English. Nor in any other modern language that Keely could possibly speak.

She'd delivered her chilling pronouncement—flawlessly—in the language of the ancient Atlanteans.

None of them could doubt her now.

Atlantis, the war room

Keely woke from a fractured dream of glittering gems and sun-splashed jungle to the sight of Justice staring off into the distance. Dark circles lay like bruises beneath his eyes, which had changed color again and were now blacker than a tomb robber's heart. Fury rode the hard planes and angles of his face, and she shivered.

At her movement, he realized she was awake. He stared down at her with a pained expression of joy, relief, and anger. Warmth and color swept across his face like spring following the icy dread of winter, and his arms tightened as he pulled her against his chest, murmuring something too quietly for her to hear. She realized she was sitting in his lap, on one of the couches back in the palace war room, but she was too exhausted to waste energy on being embarrassed at the intimate position. Someone had pulled her glove back on her hand, and she was grateful for that small kindness.

“So, I guess I survived the Great Cushion Experiment, huh?” She forced a grin, but nobody returned her smile. Ven and Conlan stood in oddly identical positions a few feet away, with their hands behind their backs in a sort of parade rest. At her words, though, Ven dropped into a crouch so that he was on eye level with her and blew out a huge breath.

“Hey, Doc, you scared us. Are you okay?”

“I'm fine. Just a little shaky,” she said distractedly, already searching through her memories of the vision for something useful.

Justice lifted his head from where it rested on the top of hers. “Never again,” he said harshly. “Never again will we allow you to go through that.”

She lifted a hand to his face, and he stilled at her touch. “There you go with the
allowing
again. I'm not very good at taking orders,” she said huskily, her throat raw.

Why was her throat raw? Oh. Right. There'd been screaming.
She'd
been screaming. She'd almost forgotten the pain, in the wonder of the vision, although she couldn't imagine how. Pain had sliced through her until she'd been sure her arms and legs were being wrenched off her body. Slowly. By somebody who was seriously pissed off.