Atlantis Awakening (8 page)

Still dazed from Ven's kisses—from the power of the gemsong that had poured through her; through them both—Erin sat on the grass and stared up at the man who'd just pronounced her death sentence. He was huge, like Ven. Tall, broad-shouldered, and with muscles straining the shoulders and sleeves of the black silk shirt he wore so elegantly. He even had long black hair like Ven. But his features were so different. The sharp-cut planes of his face, his aristocratic nose, and his high cheekbones all shouted haughty arrogance. Not to mention the whole death penalty thing wasn't making him look warm and fuzzy.

Ven flashed up off the ground to stand in front of her so fast she almost didn't see him move, and a horrible freight train of sound roared from his throat. Was he…
growling
?

“Touch her and die, Priest. Come near her, harm a single molecule of her being, and—Poseidon's chosen or no—you will die screaming,” Ven said, his low voice far more menacing than another man's shouting would have been.

Erin jerked her head back and forth to snap out of the weird daze she'd been in since Ven had touched her. Then she scrambled to stand up next to Ven, and she glared at them both. “If we're going to talk about my death, perhaps I can be involved in the conversation?” she said, holding her hands out loosely at her side, in case she needed to call to her power quickly.

The man Ven had called “Priest” pointedly glanced down at her hands and bared his teeth at her. His eyes glowed a fierce emerald green that was shocking in its intensity. She'd never seen any creature but a vampire whose entire eye glowed like that, and that was usually right before it ate somebody.

“I am Alaric, high priest to Poseidon, gem singer, and this is my realm. Think you that your puny earth magic will work against one such as myself, the greatest power Atlantis has ever known?” For all the arrogance in his words, there was none in his voice; merely the calm assurance of somebody who knows his own worth.

She glanced up at Ven, who'd pushed his way between them and stood, feet planted, blocking her bodily from the priest. “You can back off, Ven. I am a ninth-level witch of the Seattle Circle of Light and can probably hold my own.” She tried for a casual tone. “It's not like he's going to strike me dead right here, is he?”

Neither man so much as looked at her, and her nerve faltered a little. “Um, is he?”

A female voice from behind her answered. “No, he most certainly is not.”

Erin whirled around to see a tall, pale woman with strawberry-blond hair walking toward them. The woman smiled at her, but the smile didn't quite reach her eyes. Then she looked at Alaric and sighed. “Alaric, please stop scaring our guests. Don't you have some super-secret Poseidon adventures to work on?”

Erin whirled to see how the scary “the penalty is death” guy was going to take being teased, or if he'd even realize that he was. Alaric's lips quirked up in a brief smile, and he bowed to the woman, who'd reached Erin's side.

“As you wish, my future queen,” he said, and his hard features softened for an instant before he turned back to Erin and Ven and did the glowy-eye thing again.

Which, frankly, is working for him, because he scares the crap out of me,
Erin thought.

“Perhaps you will refrain from the use of your earth magic here in Atlantis, at least until such time as we might discuss how you can rein it in sufficiently. You may not care that you caused repercussions across the Seven Isles with your wild burst of magic—”

“No!” she said, too terrified of what she might have done to care that she was interrupting him. “The Wilding? I called the Wilding and didn't even realize it? I am so very sorry; I never thought…it never occurred to me—”

Alaric stopped her in midbabble, catching her chin in his fingers and staring into her eyes. Ven moved to stop him, making that weird growling noise again, but Erin held up her hand between them. “No, Ven. Let him look. Perhaps he can see that my intentions were never to hurt anybody. Especially not you.”

Alaric's eyes glowed so fiercely that she was sure her skin must be burned from it, but after flinching for a moment, she stared right back at him, falling, plunging, spiraling down into the black whirlpools in the centers of his eyes.

This must be how it feels to be enthralled by a vampire,
she thought, and then suddenly he released her and she staggered, nearly falling, until Ven caught her in his arms.

“She is innocent of any evil intent,” Alaric said, raising his head to pin Ven with his piercing gaze. Then he looked back at Erin, but the glow in his eyes had faded until the green was almost human.

Almost.

“You will tell me more of this Wilding, I hope. Although I learned some of it from the fears you hold on the surface of your mind for Ven, I would learn more of how such a powerful magic can be channeled by one so young.” He nodded his head to her and then bowed again to the other woman.

Finally he faced Ven. “Your role by birthright and by battle challenge is to act as the King's Vengeance, my friend. Consider well how your feelings for the gem singer will interfere with those responsibilities before you tread farther down this path.”

Ven took a step toward the priest. “You are and have been my friend, Alaric. But be warned. If you threaten Erin again, I will come after you with everything I've got.”

“Hey! Not so helpless here,” Erin said, indignant, but the queen-to-be put a hand on her arm and shook her head.

Alaric and Ven never even spared her a glance, still caught up in some kind of intense, silent communication with each other. Finally Alaric nodded. “So that is the way of it. I had my concerns when I saw the Flame of Poseidon in your eyes. We need to discuss this in a war council before you go any further with helping the witches against Caligula. It may be that she will be your fatal weakness.”

Erin was tired of being talked about as if she weren't there. She shook the woman's hand off her arm and moved forward to confront Alaric. “What is the Flame of Poseidon? And if you're going to discuss anything that has to do with Caligula and our alliance, you'd better be damned sure that I'm part of your war council.”

A tiny noise had the three of them whirling around to see the queen bent over, clutching her stomach, clearly in pain. “Alaric, Ven, please…please help me,” she cried out. “Something is wrong—I can feel it. Something is wrong with the baby.”

Before she'd spoken the second
please
, Ven had swept her up in his arms. “Shh, Lady Riley,” he murmured against her hair. “Shh, my dear one. All will be fine. The maidens of the Temple will help you and the baby.”

He shot a glance at Erin and Alaric. “Please bring her to the Nereid Temple, Alaric.” With that, he leapt up into the air in one powerful bound and shimmered into mist around Riley, so that it looked as though an iridescent, fast-moving cloud carried her rapidly away from them.

Erin gasped at the sight. “It's so beautiful when he—” She stopped midsentence and shook her head at the irrelevant thought, then looked up at the priest, whose narrowed eyes told her he was extremely anxious about Riley. “Will she be okay? And the baby?”

A horrifying thought seared into her mind, and she thought she might vomit up all that ocean water she'd swallowed a few hours earlier. “I didn't—I didn't cause this with my magic, did I?”

He shook his head, the grim look in his eyes softening for a brief moment. “No, you did not, though it goes far to reassure me as to your character that it would count among your concerns. Riley is having a difficult pregnancy and, for all my power, I am helpless to assist in her healing.”

She had the feeling he hadn't really meant to share quite that much with her, because the lines in his face deepened as he clenched his jaw shut.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” she offered, knowing that if a powerful high priest of Poseidon couldn't fix it, there wasn't going to be much she could do.

At least he didn't laugh in her face. He just shook his head, closing his eyes as if to keep her from seeing too much of his pain. “No, there is nothing—”

His eyes snapped open. “Wait. There may be something. The history of the Nereid Temple…You are a gem singer—”

“What? First my coven leaders told me I was a gem singer, but they didn't know much more than that. I'm part elvenfolk and, well, maybe part Atlantean. But what does it mean? What
am
I?”

Ignoring her questions, he grabbed her arm and said, “Hold on.” Then he swept her into his arms and leapt into the air just as Ven had done with Riley. Erin let out a huge
whoop
of surprise and grabbed on to his neck with all her strength. But instead of carrying her in a cloud of shining mist, Alaric went one better and did some kind of stomach-wrenching Atlantean transporter thing. Because not two seconds later, they were touching down in front of a white marble temple inlaid with jade and sapphires and amethyst, and Erin was trying yet again to keep from tossing her cookies on the pristine lawn.

A wave of sound emanating from the Temple reached out to her; tentatively, at first, and then with an all-encompassing full-body wave. “Oh!” she cried out as, with a rush of pure, diamond-sharp joy, she felt it. She
felt
it. The music from the gemstones soared into her and through her and she felt it, she lived it, she was one with the music, the rich, powerful symphony of the stones pouring into her soul.

She stood there as the music trumpeted through her bones and blood and sinews, and for the first time since she'd been a tiny girl in her mother's arms, Erin opened her mouth and she sang.

 

The high, clear notes of song soared into the open, airy receiving room of the Temple, and Ven turned toward the doorway—toward the source of the sound—and began to walk toward it, still carrying Riley in his arms. The First Maiden of the Nereids, Marie, dropped a ewer of water with a startling clatter and, leaving it there, rose from her kneeling position by the side of the cushions where Ven had been about to lay Riley's huddled form.

Marie followed him to the doorway, but Ven couldn't have said if any of the other maidens followed in their wake. His eyes were straining to see the notes of the music, which must have been written in golden script on the air of the Temple. No sound so unbearably lovely could exist only as an intangible; no gift of such unutterable grace could vanish with the breath of the singer.

Marie spoke from very near his right side, where Riley's head lay cradled on his arm, and her voice was hushed with awe. “The legend of the gem singer of the Nereids. She has returned to us.”

Ven didn't respond—couldn't respond. He followed the music, a Pied Piper's melody of enchantment calling to him.

Calling him to peace and calm. Calling him to healing.

He bounded to the top of the three wide stairs.
Must reach the music; must touch the music; must…

But the music was
her
. Erin stood, arms held up to the sky, head thrown back. A silvery light played around her body and soared upward from her hands as the notes she sang soared upward from her throat. She sang a wordless melody of love and loss and homecoming. She sang and somehow, deep inside Ven's soul, he knew she sang of healing.

Of
healing
.

Riley.

He glanced down at her pale, still face, resting on his arm in the same unconscious state into which she'd lapsed when they'd arrived at the Temple. He didn't think, didn't worry, didn't wonder.

He simply acted. In one leap he flew from the Temple doorway to the bottom of the outside steps. In another leap he stood in front of Erin and placed his precious bundle on the ground at her feet. Kneeling in front of her, he turned his face in supplication up to Erin, to the gem singer from legend who had somehow sung her way into his heart, and he spoke a single word.

“Please.”

The song continued to pour from her lips, but she slowly bent her head to gaze at him. Wildness raged in the burning intensity of her blue eyes, and the planes of her face were cast in glowing marble. She was suddenly more goddess than witch: terrible and beautiful and pitiless. She looked down upon him, and she sang.

He tried again, tried to reach the softness—the humanity—buried below the hardness of the living gemstone she had become. He tried again because he loved Riley as a sister. Loved her and her child more than his own life.

He tried again because part of his soul demanded that he do so.

“Erin,” he said, wondering how the simple voice of a warrior could be heard through a song fit to grace the stars in the night sky. “Erin, please. She's dying.”

Slowly, ever so slowly, Erin knelt down until her face was a mere handspan from Riley's abdomen, and put her hands over the exact place where the tiny baby grew inside. The silvery light poured forth from Erin's mouth and from the aura surrounding her and over and around Riley. Somewhere, far distant, Ven thought he heard Alaric shouting, or maybe Conlan, but he didn't care, it didn't matter, all that mattered was the light burning in Erin's incandescent blue eyes.

She sang to Riley, and she sang to Riley's baby, and it lasted mere seconds. Or it lasted through the birth of a universe. But moments later—millennia later—she finally stopped singing. Ven was instantly bereft, as though his still-pulsing heart had been ripped from his body, and his throat ached at the loss of her song.

Erin lifted a hand to touch his face. “Oh, Ven,” she began, and then her eyes rolled back in their sockets and she pitched forward. He caught her and lifted her up and away before she fell on Riley, and he touched his lips to Erin's forehead.

“Please,” he said, but this time he said it for an entirely different reason, one that he didn't quite understand himself.