Wild Hearts in Atlantis (3 page)

“So, the rumors are true,” Organos concluded. “The lost continent of Atlantis is evidently more than a fairy tale for pathetic humans to tell their children. These warriors attacked and destroyed Barrabas and his blood pride, and it is said that Anubisa has gone into hiding.”

Ethan smiled, deliberately showing a lot of very sharp teeth. “Hiding? Or did the Atlanteans kill her, too?”

Organos hissed, and his own fangs slid down into place. “You will speak of our goddess with respect, or this alliance will end before it begins. No human could ever defeat Anubisa. She plans strategy far beyond our understanding.”

Ethan raised an eyebrow. “Really? She doesn’t share strategy with you, either? How exactly is this shape-shifter–vamp alliance going to work if we don’t even know what’s going on?

“You will know what I know as soon as I know it. Surely you agree that our goal of complete human subjugation is worth a little uncertainty.”

Studying the vampire’s face was an exercise in futility. Organos gave nothing away with his expressionless features. He could have been made out of cold white marble.

Or else rigor mortis set in about, oh, two or three centuries ago.

His cat shuddered inside him, registering a predator’s distaste for carrion. Ethan sent his thoughts inward, soothing and calming the beast.
Soon. We’ll be out of here soon, and I’ll set you free to roam.

The cat snarled but subsided within him, a reminder of the constant need for control. The most powerful of the dual-natured stalked the precipice edging total conversion at all times. The danger of going wild was always present. There were too many who had never come back from animal form. Too many of his friends who had fallen prey to the damn humans and their illegal hunting.

When he’d seen the obscenity in Nelson’s shop, he’d roared out his anguish and vowed vengeance. Then he’d run outside, gotten as far away as he could before he puked his guts up.

That’s
when he’d finally agreed to meet with Organos. After he’d seen his cousin—his closest boyhood friend—in his cat form, stuffed and mounted in a taxidermy shop.

No shape-shifter remained in animal form, but for his eyes, after death. That trick required the foulest of black magic. The humans—and at least one black-hearted witch—were going to die.

Growling, he shook his head a little to try to rid himself of the image seared into his brain. He pinned Organos with his gaze. “Total subjugation. Yeah, they’ve gotta pay.”

The vampire glided closer, held out a thin, white-fleshed hand. “Partners?”

Ethan tried not to think about how Hank Fiero would be rolling in his grave at the idea. Tried not to think of Kat Fiero at all. Held out his own hand, repressing his cat’s violent revulsion. “Partners.”

“What in the nine hells is this?” Bastien rocked back on the heels of his boots and jammed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “We’re meeting a potential liaison to the southeastern shape-shifter contingent at a bar?”

Denal read the words off the rickety-looking neon sign. “It’s not just a bar. It’s
Thelma’s Bar and Grill.
”

“Looks like a shithole to me,” Justice snarled. “Remind me why, again, I had to come along and babysit you?”

Bastien’s lips twitched at the idea of Justice babysitting him. “Right. Your puny six-and-a-half-feet-tall self and what army?”

Justice’s pale green eyes gleamed with power, and he raised one hand, palm up, to display a glowing ball of electricity. “None but the priest channel the elements so well as I do, buffoon. Standing nearly seven feet tall merely means you’ll make a bigger hole in the ground when I knock you on your ass.”

Denal rolled his eyes. “Whatever. If you’re done playing, let’s get inside and meet this woman. I could go for a beer and five or six cheeseburgers, too.”

“You’re always hungry, boy,” Bastien said, resisting the urge to ruffle Denal’s hair. Denal was a man of more than two hundred years, not the boy Bastien had grown accustomed to
thinking him. And Denal’s death and rebirth had aged the warrior in subtle but very real ways.

Justice brushed by them both and strode toward the door. “Yeah, and anyway, this is shape-shifter country. They probably only serve their meat raw.”

As Denal grumbled under his breath and then followed Justice into the bar, Bastien scanned the parking lot again. His senses, honed from intensive training and concentration, picked up the vibrations of both human and shape-shifter alike. Clusters of each, but never together. The residents of Big Cypress were quite markedly segregated.

Question was: By whose design?

Shaking his head again, still baffled that Conlan had chosen him for the delicate job of ambassador, Bastien headed indoors.

Right into the middle of a bar fight.

He ducked a bottle that flew through the air at him and scoped out the room as the bottle smashed on the doorframe behind his head. Justice leaned against the far wall, arms folded negligently in front of him. The blue braid—and the sword hilt rising behind his shoulder—probably accounted for the circle of calm that surrounded him.

Everything about Justice shouted badass. Bastien still couldn’t believe he’d thrown a hockey puck at the warrior’s head, after Justice had backed him up in countless battles against all manner of shape-shifter and vampire.

A body came flying through the air, and Bastien held out one arm to block the human…yes,
human
, he didn’t smell like shape-shifter, although it was hard to tell in this craziness. The man’s shoulders struck Bastien’s arm, and he bounced off and smashed into a table.

“Bastien! Over here!” Bastien turned at the sound of Denal’s shout and tried to be surprised to find that the youngest member of the Seven had gotten himself smack in the middle of the battle. Even as he watched, Denal punched one man in the eye, as yet another grabbed the young warrior around the throat.

Denal grinned, lip bleeding. “Finally! A little fun!” he shouted.

Bastien shook his head and moved in a blur of Atlantean
speed to one side of the door, as he caught sight of a man pulling his arm back to throw a dagger in his direction. The door suddenly opened, and the woman who walked through drove all conscious thought out of his brain.

Just the scent of her made him hard.

Her eyes widened as she stared in front of her, and he remembered the dagger. Shot out a hand to catch it. Winced a little as the blade cut his palm, but never took his eyes off her.

As she turned her shocked gaze to him, he bowed deeply. “Lady Katherine Fiero. I am Bastien of Atlantis at your service.”

Kat stopped breathing the second she scented him. Her cat purred inside her, seemed almost to stretch and curl its form under Kat’s skin, as though the beast wanted to come out and play after all these years of hiding.

It was
him.
The giant of a man she’d met only once, briefly, nearly two years before. The one who’d protected her from a biker gang of vamps intent on making her the object of their bloodsport. He’d cut through them like a panther in its prime through a field of deer, then ignored her fervent thanks and walked away from her. He’d never looked back, striding out of that abandoned building and off into the sunset like some fabled folk hero from childhood stories.

And so he must be, this man she’d never forgotten. He must be the one from Atlantis. When Quinn had described him…she hadn’t dared to even hope. But it was
him. Bastien.

And he was bowing to her. Bowing and…
bleeding
?

She spared a moment to look around the bar. The human–shape-shifter violence that had been roiling in the air for the past several months had come to a head, yet again.

This time, the fools were taking poor Thelma’s place apart. It had to stop.

Kat
had to stop it.

She looked at the man again—Quinn had said they called themselves Poseidon’s Warriors. There could be no doubt to anyone with eyes that the man was a warrior. He had to be seven feet of pure battle-honed muscle. Nobody looked like
that
from working out at a gym once a week. He had thighs the size of tree trunks in that worn denim. And, oh please keep her from drooling, his chest and shoulders were a wall of muscle. God, his biceps were the size of her thighs, and she was no little thing. And his face—oh, his face. Men were not supposed to be so beautiful. It screwed up the natural order of things or something. The cheekbones, and all that luscious black hair that was just a little too long, and…

Great, Kat, you’re having lustful fantasies while these men are beating each other up and trashing Thelma’s bar. Do something, dammit.

Kat’s panther snarled inside her, making its desires plain.

The beast wanted to play. It wanted to play wild and dangerous games with this warrior. The panther wasn’t chained by the strictures of duty or etiquette. It wanted heat and biting and wild, ravenous sex.

Kat felt the wetness between her thighs, and she flinched a little at the friction caused by her nipples hardening under her shirt. Her face flushed, and she tried, yet again, to focus on the battle raging all around her. She looked up at Bastien, drew in a raspy breath. Opened her mouth and closed it again.

Fierce intelligence burned in his black eyes. Intelligence and something more primal. Was that…was that possibly desire?

For her?

Her knees weakened at the thought of it. The seconds that had passed while she stood there, frozen, seemed like hours.

The bottle that crashed against the wall snapped her out of it.

“Damn them. They know this place is Thelma’s whole life. Excuse me, sir, but I have to stop this.”

He literally snarled. If she hadn’t known better, she would have believed he was a shape-shifter, too, from the ferocity of his expression. “There’s no fucking way I’m letting you get in the middle of that. In fact, why don’t you get out before you get hurt? I’ll drive you home, and we can talk about whatever in the nine hells liaisons are supposed to talk about.”

He blocked her from the room with his big body, and for one brief second she felt protected. Cherished. Cared for in a way she hadn’t been in so long.

Then she pushed that feeling away. She had no time for weakness.

“Thanks for the thought, but this is my job. Now get out of my way,” she said, grim purpose in her voice.

His eyes narrowed, and the planes of his gorgeous face hardened even further. He slammed his hands against the wall on either side of her head, pinning her into place with the protection of his body. “You’re not—”

“Oh, but I am,” she interrupted. Then she held her arms out to her side, palms up, and she let the noise and the fury of the room drop away. She swirled down into the currents of the smooth, clear pond inside her mind. Crystal, liquid peace.

Serenity lapping at the edges of her mind as the waves of the ocean. Even, rhythmic, calming waves.

She inhaled deeply and, as she exhaled, she channeled the peace and calm from within her secret pool and sent it swirling out from her mind and breath and into the air around her.

She opened her eyes and watched the effects. First to succumb, since he was nearest, the warrior staggered back half a step, as though he’d been struck. Then the harsh set to his mouth relaxed, and a measure of calm returned to his eyes. She smiled at him, laid a hand on his arm when he tried to speak, and shook her head. Pointed to the rest of the room.

He turned to face the bar, still protecting her with his body. They watched as Kat’s infusion of peace spread through the room. Fists unclenched. Men blinked as though dazed, and put down the bottles, knives, and other weapons they’d been wielding. A collective sigh of unspent rage dampened the roaring emotional ambiance of the room from lethal fury into lethargic lassitude.

A white-haired head popped up from behind the bar, and the tiny woman peered around the room. “Is it over? Kat, that you?” she called, in a slightly shaky voice. “Aw, of course it is. Nobody else has the gift like you do to calm this bunch of jackasses.”

Kat ducked under Bastien’s arm and started across the room toward Thelma. “Just lucky timing, Thelma. These fine gentlemen were calculating how much money they were going to owe you for the damage, weren’t they?”

A pair of the fiercest combatants she’d seen in the brawl hung their heads and nodded. One human, one shape-shifter. So, the crisis was coming to a head faster than she’d thought.

“Thelma, you’ll let them know how much to pay? And I think you can all help her clean up this mess, anybody who doesn’t need to head over to the ER,” she said, pitching her tone to inject an edge of command. Another of her “gifts” she hadn’t told anybody about.

“Oh, I’ve got it covered, Kat,” Thelma said. “I’ll let you know if anybody doesn’t pay up. But why don’t you get out of here now? No need to stick around, and you probably ought to get to the meeting.”

Kat stifled her bitter reply and managed to smile. “Okay, if you’ve got this under control.”

She knew the residual effects of what she’d done would last for a few hours on all who’d been in range. She wasn’t sure exactly how far that range was, but undoubtedly there were some animal predators for a couple hundred yards of the perimeter of the bar who wouldn’t feel like doing anything with their prey but snuggling, at least for a short while.