Atlantis Awakening (17 page)

But Quinn only looked back at Alaric with such sadness that it was almost a tangible presence in the room. “Don't you understand by now? That's what I do. I risk my life, in order to perhaps one day redeem it.”

Alaric started to rise out of his seat, but then closed his eyes and sank back down into his chair, silent. Quinn quietly stood up and started to leave the room, shoulders bowed under some immeasurable weight. At the doorway she paused, then glanced back at Ven. “Your guy Reisen serves with us in the same way, Ven. He calls himself a dishonored warrior, and takes every suicidal mission he can come up with to help the rebellion. He's hoping his death will redeem some wrong he says he's done you—some weird Atlantean stuff about ‘restoring honor to the House of Mycenae.' If you ask me, he's one of the bravest men I've ever known.”

Ven said nothing. There was nothing to say. He'd be damned if he'd ever forgive the warrior who'd stolen Poseidon's Trident for his own personal glory.

Quinn shook her head. “Right. Whatever. Just thought you should know. I've got to get some rest. Somebody call me when it's time to go.” She cast one last, brief look at Alaric, then left the room.

Ven filled Christophe and Denal in on what Daniel had told them about Caligula's goals, and Christophe whistled. “If his goal is to convince the humans to turn the clock back to the days before the undead and shape-shifters had any rights under law, I'd say he is well on his way. We saw a mob gathering at the federal courthouse downtown, and they weren't talking about peace, love, and forgiveness, if you get my drift.”

“This is going to affect our timetable for rejoining the world of the landwalkers,” Ven said grimly. “Atlantis will be needed far sooner than we'd planned if this continues.”

“They don't deserve our help,” Christophe sneered. “Why protect the sheep who welcomed the wolves into their herd? Do you know there are clubs where humans go to voluntarily get bitten by a vamp? What kind of madness is that? If they want to die so badly, let them.”

“And then what?” The force of Alaric's fury was a tangible thing. “Once they have turned more and more humans, even witches, to join the ranks of the undead? Then what? The entire surface of the earth will eventually belong only to those who can never face the sun.”

Erin suddenly laughed, a shrill, sharp sound that held no humor. “Yeah, you do the math. If two vampires are on trains traveling in opposite directions, and each of them turn two humans, who then each turn two more humans, and so on and so forth, which train full of the walking dead will get to St. Louis first?”

Ven's eyebrows shot up. “What are you talking about? What trains?”

She laughed again, but despair stared blindly at him from behind her eyes. “Nothing. It's a child's math problem, it's…nothing. I think Quinn's not the only one who needs to rest.”

Ven shoved his chair back and stood. “We all need to rest. Alaric, we will gather our wounded in one room so you can open a portal.”

Alaric shook his head. “I am too drained from the events of this night and the healings. I tried earlier to open a portal and was unable to call it to me. I must rest for at least twelve hours, perhaps more, before I even try again. And Alexios and Brennan are far too badly wounded to be moved, let alone dropped into the ocean to attempt to make the water crossing. We must stay here this night and trust to the witches' warding.”

Gennae bristled a little. “We will post guards, as well. Between the guards and the warding, we will be safe. Also, dawn will be here in less than an hour, and the sun means the vampires have to go back to their holes for the day.”

Ven watched Erin droop in her chair, barely able to remain upright, and came to a swift decision. “You will all stay here and rest and heal until you can open a portal, Alaric. I'm taking Erin away to someplace safe. Someplace nobody but me knows about, so there's no chance of any traitor revealing its location.”

“Far away from Caligula, I would hope,” Gennae said.

Erin's head jerked up, and he saw the fire in her eyes as she prepared to argue the point.

“No,” he said. “Quite the opposite. We'll go where they'd never expect. We're heading right for him.”

Point Success,
elevation 14,158 feet, Mount Rainier

Caligula crouched on the balls of his feet, knees bent, and surveyed the predawn landscape from one of the highest points on what he had come to think of as
his
mountain. “It amuses me to think that this spot is named Point Success,” he told her, “when so much of my own success has been plotted here. Perhaps when the world has turned, I will rename this entire mountain in my honor. Mount Caligula. I would enjoy that, I think.”

Deirdre did not respond, not that he'd expected her to. After the first hour, her broken cries had become wearisome, and he'd caught her mind in his, allowing her to experience all of the pain and terror but not to vocalize any of it.

She trembled, naked and bruised, on the snow in front of him. But when he lifted her chin to drink in her surrender, it was not fear he saw in her eyes, but hate.

He smiled. “Fear, hate, it all means the same to me, my love,” he said, tracing the edge of one bleeding cheek with his fingertip. “The darkness of violent emotions pleases me well, regardless of their source.”

He cast a measuring glance at the sky. Perhaps twenty minutes, no more, until the sun rose. He was ancient enough to countenance some of the day's light upon his skin, but she would burn and die, and he would never risk her. Twenty minutes, though, was long enough for the dessert he'd planned.

He caught her around her waist with one arm and pulled her to him until her delicious ass nestled against his groin, then slammed his cock into her with one hard thrust, feeling something inside of her tear at his brutal entry. She opened her mouth and screamed a long, utterly silent scream, and he threw back his head and laughed. “Yes, twenty minutes is surely long enough,” he said out loud, making certain that she heard him over the wordless sound of her own agony. And then he fucked her until he came, howling out his own completion mere minutes before the dawn.

The backcountry, Mount Rainier

Ven watched Erin trudge along next to him on the snow-covered path, her eyes on the ground in front of her feet, weariness clear in every stumbling step she took. She'd kept insisting she could carry her own backpack until he'd overruled her and simply taken the damn thing. Still, traveling the mile or so from where he'd stashed the nondescript sedan Gennae had loaned him had taken more energy than she had.

“I'd travel as mist and carry you, but Alaric warned me that even channeling that much Atlantean magic so close to Caligula's hideout might warn him that we were here. We can't afford to take the chance,” he said for the third or fourth time.

She nodded, not bothering to respond. He probably sounded like an old woman, hovering around her. All he wanted to do was protect her, cherish her, make love to her for the next century or two, and here they were walking right into the belly of the beast, so to speak.

As they came to the top of another rise, Erin stumbled again, and he caught her before she fell, then lifted her into his arms. “I've had enough of this. Your exhaustion is beating at me.”

She didn't argue with him, which scared him more than anything else had. Simply looked up at him with the skin around her eyes bruised dark and purple, then rested her head against his shoulder. “It sings to me, Ven. Can't you hear it? The Nereid's Heart sings so loudly, calling me. It needs me to rescue it from the dark.”

He listened, focusing his Atlantean hearing on the sounds of the mountain dawn, but heard nothing out of the ordinary. “I'm sorry, Erin, I don't hear it. Is it unpleasant?”

“No, it's beautiful. Magical, even. If my gemsong is apprentice music, this is the sound of the master. So lovely…” Her voice trailed off, and he glanced down to see her eyelids fluttering as she tried to stay awake.

“Don't fight it,
mi amara
, just rest. We're here now.” He stopped in front of a tiny wooden cabin that was so well camouflaged by the trees surrounding it that it was invisible from a distance of more than eight or ten feet. Setting her gently down, he untied a complicated series of knots in a rope pull that held the door closed, and then pushed the door open. Entering before her, he was greeted by a slightly musty scent, but no errant wildlife had made the cabin into a den, so it was as clean as it had been when he'd last used it, more than eighty years ago.

Erin walked into the one-room structure behind him and stopped, staring around. “What is this place? It doesn't seem like an official park structure.”

“I'm not sure the park even recognizes its existence,” he said. “It's been here for more than a century, I'd guess. Maybe it was a trapper's cabin. The tradition among serious hikers is to keep it clean and use what you have need of and leave what you can spare for others.” He strode over to the crude wooden shelves built onto one wall and checked out the supply of tinned goods. “Most of this is fresh enough that it will be edible, and I can always catch some game.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I know it's stupid, but I can't stand the thought of any more death right now, not even a rabbit or bird.”

He didn't argue, simply nodded and dropped their bags on a bench, then refastened the door from the inside. The two small windows were boarded shut against the winter, but there were cracks in the walls and the room was icy.

“We need to make a fire. There's chopped wood in the fireplace, but I don't see any matches.” He searched the shelves, swearing under his breath at his failure to bring any with him.

“No matter,” Erin said. She moved her fingers gently in the direction of the fireplace, and the kindling under the logs sparked and flamed until a steady fire crackled.

She raised one eyebrow. “It's a simple enough trick that even first-year novices can raise fire. Isn't it something you can do with Atlantean magic?”

“Fire is the forbidden element, the only one Atlanteans cannot channel. But I'm not completely useless.” He grinned and pulled a clean-looking metal coffeepot and a deep copper pot off a shelf and put them on the table. Then he chanted the words Alaric had made him repeat, over and over, sensing the magical warding that surrounded the cabin as he called it.

“You've warded the cabin,” she said, eyebrows raised. “Sealed it magically?”

“Alaric taught me that trick before we left. He believes that Caligula may be able to sense Atlantean magic, and certainly Anubisa can, if she's around.”

She nodded and closed her eyes, mumbling something under her breath, and he sensed the power of his warding being reinforced. “That should help, too,” she said, then unzipped and pulled off her heavy coat.

Ven stared at her, trapped in the tangled emotions rushing through him, damning himself as a randy fool for wanting nothing more than to strip the clothes from her and bury himself in her, to prove in some primitive way that she was alive and unharmed. To claim her as his, for now and always.

“Ven? The water?”

“Right,” he said, almost dazed. He shook his head to break free of the lust-and longing-induced daze, raised his hands and called to the elements, called to the water that was as natural and necessary to his spirit as the air he breathed.

It came immediately, spiraling in through the chinks in the walls in shimmering sheets of droplets, then coalescing into waves and curls of shining water that heated in the air under his gaze and filled the pots until it boiled and bubbled inside them.

“Gennae gave me some coffee when we were packing our provisions,” he said, then bent to rummage through his backpack. When he finally found the coffee, which had somehow ended up on the bottom of his pack, and turned back to Erin triumphantly, he promptly dropped the bag from suddenly nerveless fingers. Because she stood there, in the middle of the cabin, wearing nothing but her socks.

“My feet are cold,” she said, biting her lip, as if unsure of his reaction.

“I'll warm them,” he promised, silently thanking Poseidon yet again for the gift of this woman, this witch, as the heat seared through him, clawing into his gut and his balls and his heart. “I need you, Erin,” he managed to get out in a voice gone rough and husky with hunger. Trying to be chivalrous. Trying to show restraint. “I need you so much that I can't promise to be gentle. Are you sure?”

“I don't want gentle. I just want you.” She held out her arms, and restraint vanished under a maelstrom of fierce, desperate need. He used his last remaining moments of tightly leashed control to cast the magical Atlantean wards Alaric had made him practice, and then he leapt across the small room and pulled her into his arms, exultant, exhilarated.

Erin watched him come toward her with his eyes fixed on her in the fierce, focused gaze of a predator and felt a tiny shiver of unease mixed with excitement. She'd unleashed something by her words and her action, and now she stood, bare to him in more ways than one, ready to accept the consequences. She needed to know he was alive on a visceral level, needed to erase the image of the wound in his side, the pulsing blood, that continued to haunt her.

Staring at her, capturing her in his gaze, he ripped at his clothes and piled them, along with their coats, on the wooden bench that must serve as a bed. Then he yanked the thermal sleeping bag from the bottom of his pack and spread it out. The glow from the firelight caressed the muscles of his legs as he bent over the makeshift pallet.

A humming noise started deep in her throat as she watched him, and her emeraldsong rose to meet it. His shadow shimmered across the wall and it trembled slightly. Suddenly she realized the extent of the power she had over him and she almost took a step back. Somehow, impossibly, their desires had become entangled together, and they'd become more vitally important to each other than she could understand.

He stood from arranging the bed and turned to stare at her, naked emotion in his eyes. She calmed, finally realizing on a soul-deep level that mere time had nothing to do with the need she felt for this man. It transcended the mundane reality of minutes or hours or days. Her soul called to him, and his answered.

Caught in this stolen, carefully warded moment, she didn't need anything more.

Ven pulled her over to stand in front of the fireplace with him. The heat from the flames licked at their legs, but it was nothing compared to the heat clawing at him from inside. He bent his head to kiss her, and it was a fierce branding of possession, nothing gentle in it. He drove his tongue into the heat of her mouth the way he planned to drive his cock into her body. He wanted everything that she was, and he planned to take it. May the gods help them both if she would not surrender.

Erin clung to him, melting, helpless before the primal onslaught of his passion. Some distant part of her recognized that he was staking a claim to her, but she could only comply, accept, surrender. She shivered as his hands lifted her breasts and his thumbs flicked at her nipples, gasping her delight into the heat of his mouth. He pulled his head back and stared down at her, the blue-green flames flickering in the centers of his pupils, his lips curved into a triumphant smile. “You're mine,” he said, voice husky. “I'm going to taste every inch of you.”

She shuddered at the stark desire in his voice and then moaned as he knelt in front of her and fastened his mouth on the side of her breast, sucking and almost biting at the skin until she was sure that he would leave a mark. She pulled back a little, suddenly afraid of the desperation in her own response to him, but he looked up at her and growled a warning before he caught her nipple in his mouth and sucked hard. The sheer electric pleasure of it buckled her knees, and she would have fallen if he hadn't caught her, steadying her thighs in his hands, pushing them apart and pulling her closer.

He released her breast and stared down at her body with such intensity that her skin sizzled in the wake of his gaze. Then he moved one hand to draw a finger through the damp curls between her thighs and she gasped again, remembering his promise to taste her.

“Ven, no, I want to please you,” she began, but he laughed, cutting her off, and her words trailed off at the sound of his laughter.

“Oh, you will please me, my little witch, my gem singer,
mi amara
,” he said. “You will please me well when I have the taste of you coming in my mouth.”

The words shot a thrill of sensation through her body, centering between her legs, pooling in a rush of creamy liquid desire. Then he lowered his head and put his tongue on her and she went insane, helpless to do anything but stand there, bucking against his mouth, until he drove two fingers inside of her and caressed her with the long, hard strokes of his fingers.

She screamed, and she shattered.

When Erin screamed, Ven felt her orgasm sear through her, through him, through the room. The music from her gems soared into a crescendo, and the tension in his cock and balls tightened to a fever pitch until he thought they might explode with the force of his painful, frantic desire. He licked at her and sucked on the center of her heat, continuing to plunge his fingers in and out of her until he felt the tension build to an impossible level in her limp body. She clutched at his hair and moaned. “No, Ven, I can't take any more. Please—”

He lifted his mouth from the ecstasy of her wet heat and stared up at her, his fingers stilling inside her where her tight sheath clenched around them, clutching at them as she would soon clench around his cock. “Yes, you can. You will. I am going to make you come so hard and so often this night that you will never get the taste and feel and scent of me out of your mind or body. Just as I will never have the taste of your passion out of mine.”

He bent his head to her again, licked around her swollen clit, then fastened on to it with his lips and sucked, hard, as he renewed stroking inside of her with his fingers. Erin's entire body went stiff under him for an instant, and then she screamed his name, shaking and shuddering out her release into his mouth, her creamy wetness dripping down his fingers.

His own body screamed at him for his release, and he stood on shaky knees and lifted her into his arms. He strode over to the pallet and lay her down, then yanked her thighs apart and stared down at her. “Tell me what you want, Erin,” he rasped out.

“I want you,” she whispered. “I need you, always you, only you, Ven. I need you inside me.”

The words broke the final thread of his control, and he centered his cock over her slick, wet opening and plunged in so far his sac slammed against her as he thrust in to the hilt. He stood, holding entirely still for a long moment as his body quivered with the furious pressure for him to take and take and fuck her harder and faster and then harder still.

She quivered underneath him and lifted her arms to him. “Now, Ven. Come for me, this time.”

“Mine,” he growled, pulling back to plunge back into her, harder and faster and deeper. “Say my name again. Tell me that you know it's me who is fucking you, claiming you, taking you for my own.”

“Yes,” she said, arching her hips up to meet his furious thrusting. “Ven. Yes.”

Her beautiful blue eyes, blue of the sky, of innocence, of the magic she'd wrapped around his heart and soul, stared up at him, and he felt a tingle of her magic wash over him. Then the song of her gems burst forth from the control she must have been keeping them under and swept him away, swept her away, in a fierce tsunami of passion, of heat, of powerful hunger and need.

He came harder than he ever had, so hard he thought something in his balls must be rending, pumping his seed into her for what seemed like forever, and she came with him, clenching and spasming under him and around him, milking his cock with her feminine muscles, until finally, finally, he collapsed onto her and the world faded as her music sang exultation around them.

“If that's the soul-meld, how can we ever survive it?” she whispered, her voice trembling.