Atlantis Unleashed (15 page)

A soft noise caught his attention, the sound of denial made without words. It was her. It was Keely. The pain had nearly washed away his awareness of her presence. He looked up and directly into her eyes, greener than emeralds and deeper than the ocean currents that surrounded them. She was clutching one hand at her throat, and the silky warm skin of her neck entranced him. He wanted to hold her, to bury his face in the curve where her neck met her shoulder and never let her go.

When she spoke, the liquid cadence of her voice caught at something deep in his soul. In both of his souls.

“Don't do that,” she said, in a husky voice that sang heat and fire down his spine. “Don't belittle his gift to you. In all of history, there's no honor greater than self-sacrifice, and this poor man gave his life for you.”

He froze, both halves of his soul trapped by the sorrow in her voice. Every fiber of his being yearned toward her, desperate to know her. Desperate to hold her. Desperate to
have
her.

He would never, ever be worthy of her. But he was past caring.

“You wish me to honor him? Your wish is my command, lady,” he snarled, losing all control—only able to focus on her. On taking her. “I honor his sacrifice with that of yours to me.”

With those words, and nothing else beyond some vague knowledge of a Nereid power he'd never wielded, he sprang toward Keely, caught her up in his arms, and willed that they would be elsewhere. Just the two of them. Willed them to a sanctuary he had not visited in more than two centuries.

As a deep, blue-green mist swirled from nothingness to surround him, his last sight was of the shocked faces of Alaric and his brothers. Then, before she had a chance to protest, he tightened his hold on Keely and closed his eyes as the darkness claimed them.

Atlantis,
a cavern underneath the Temple of the Nereids

Keely's consciousness shattered and re-formed, over and over, brilliantly colored particles of matter swirling around her like a sandstorm conceived by an insane artist. It lasted for mere seconds—somehow she knew that—even though her sense of time and space was thrown off-kilter. She existed and did not exist simultaneously in several different realities, but in every one of them, she was held by arms like steel bands against a rock-hard chest.

If steel and rock were to throw off heat like a furnace and smell like blood and dirt.

Suddenly, the vortex disappeared and she landed on her feet, hard, on a stone floor. Only Justice's strength and balance kept her from falling. She waited, eyes clenched shut, taking rapid, shallow breaths, until she could trust herself to talk or move without danger of losing the contents of her roiling stomach.

The arms around her tightened, pressing her closer into his embrace, and fear overruled nausea. Her eyes snapped open and she pushed against his chest with all the strength she could muster. She may as well have saved herself the effort for as much effect as she had on him. It was like pushing against boulders in a cave-in; the same sense of sheer immovable weight.

Fear turned into frustration and an overwhelming feeling of having had way, way more than enough pulsed through her head with the beginning of a whiz-banger of a headache.

“Let. Me. Go,” she gritted out from between clenched teeth, staring determinedly at his chest. Although she was above-average height for a woman at five-eight, he was considerably taller, probably at least six-four. Somehow she knew she didn't want to look into his eyes. Not now. Not when he still held her trapped in his arms.

He finally spoke, still with that rusty hoarseness to his voice. “We are not sure that we wish to let you go, our Keely.”

Her mind stuttered over his odd use of the plural, but before she could figure out a response, his arms loosened and, in spite of his words to the contrary, he released her. She immediately stumbled back and away from him, refusing to look down at her own shirt and pants, now also streaked with the blood from his body. Nausea was winning, and she didn't need to give it a boost. Instead, she scanned her surroundings to try to figure out where she was.

Figuring out how she'd gotten there could wait till later.

The dark space was enormous, with the roof so high overhead that she couldn't see it. The floor was an intricately patterned mosaic that reminded her of the floor she'd seen in her vision of Nereus. The faint, not unpleasant scent of minerals hung in the slightly humid air. It reminded her of the hot springs in California.

“Where are we?” She'd start with the simple questions, since she wasn't at all sure how sane the wild man who'd abducted her really was. Simply because he was the man from her vision—or his evil twin—didn't mean that she was safe with him.

She involuntarily touched the carving through her shirt. The man she'd seen, sitting next to the fire, carving her fish . . . he was like an oddly distorted photographic image of this warrior. It made her doubt her visions.

It made her doubt herself.

Maybe this man, Justice, was a descendant of the warrior from her vision? Maybe.

“A cavern deep beneath the Temple of the Nereids,” he said. “Fitting, isn't it, since our Nereid half has finally assumed dominion over us?”

Okay. Time to tackle the obvious question. “Us? Who is us? Do you always talk about yourself in the plural?” Maybe not the best idea, to confront his psychosis head-on, but she was an archaeologist, not a shrink. After an entire childhood spent being dragged from one psychiatrist to another, she was uniquely qualified to know the difference.

Manic-depressive
.
Borderline sociopathy. Complete lack of any sense of reality
.

The diagnoses, professional sounding or not, burned through her mind like acid. Had she spent all those years trying to convince her parents she really was normal—really was sane—only to lose her grip on reality now?

She pushed the doubts aside and drew in a deep, shaky breath. Gathering up what remained of her battered courage, she finally looked directly at him. Up close, he was even more terrifyingly feral and—though it made no sense at all—even more compelling. Although he stood straight and tall before her, he gave the impression of a predator crouched to spring.

Which brought her back to the uncomfortable sensation of being his prey.

All those years of studying the past, and now she was confronted with primitive savagery in all of its raging glory. The man was an ancient warrior come to life, not one buried in the sands of history, as she'd always assumed.

The rags he wore seemed to be the remains of a simple shirt and pants that either had seen battle or else had been run through a shredder. His thickly muscled chest was clearly visible under the tattered fabric, although both were streaked with blood and dirt. Her stomach flipped threateningly and she quickly looked away from the blood.

She was tough; she'd always had to be tough. But right now her equilibrium was not happy with anything about her situation. It didn't make her a coward not to want to stare at that poor man's blood.

A leather strap crossed his chest and attached to the top of the sheath on his back. He'd wielded the sword as though it were an extension of his arm, and it was evident that he'd used it many, many times before.

The strands of hair falling around his face and the ragged braid that hung to his waist were blue, as she'd known. But no simple blue, this. The hues of his hair ranged across the entire spectrum—from deepest midnight to the pale blue of a summer sky. At least from what she could tell, underneath the dirt and blood that covered almost every inch of him.

The taut lines of his face were classically perfect. She'd seen Roman statuary that would have suffered in comparison. And his eyes were either black or so darkly blue that light didn't touch them at all. His lips curved in the merest suggestion of a mocking smile, and she realized that she'd been staring at him like some starstruck coed for longer than she wanted to admit.

Or like someone in fear for her life.

“I can provide more light, if you would examine me further, my lady,” he said, voice husky. “However, I find that my control is not what I might wish after the events of today, and your perusal is not helping me refrain from acting upon my baser impulses.”

“You don't sound insane,” she blurted out, then groaned. “I'm sorry. Really. I'm not trying to antagonize or upset you in any way,” she said, trying for a calm and level tone, even as she stepped back a few more paces. “Although, you've gotta admit that you have some explaining to do. But let's start with how we got here and how we can get out, okay? Then we can move on to more complex questions, like how it is that you know me.”

She considered showing him the carving and asking him about it, but decided against it. Not yet. Establishing some connection between them, no matter how tenuous, didn't seem wise considering his present state of mind.

Reason with the crazy man now; break down in hysterical panic later. Check. All those times she'd stayed up alone at night to guard against potential tomb robbers, she hadn't been scared then. Well, okay, she'd been scared spitless. But the experiences now allowed her to pretend a calm she was miles away from feeling.

He waved a hand, and a row of lanterns that circled the cavern lit up with softly glowing blue-green light. She gasped a little, not at the parlor trick with the lights, but at the vast expanse of space revealed, including a large pond-like body of water that must be the mineral spring she'd smelled earlier. Turning slowly in a circle, she studied the cavern and the sparkling gemstones built into the walls all the way around them, scientific curiosity almost overcoming her very sensible fear of what he might be planning to do with her. Or
to
her.

“Is it some kind of geode?” she murmured, mostly to herself, but he answered.

“Yes. Partially. The chamber directly above us is a geode and used in the healing rituals of the Temple. But this is a simple cavern, although the walls themselves are embedded with, as far as I remember, examples of every gemstone ever known to Atlantis,” he said, slowly moving toward her. “You are more beautiful than I'd imagined.”

The abrupt change of subject caught her off guard, and she snapped back into alert mode. “What? Why? Why did you imagine me? And why are we here, and who the
hell
are you? I heard the prince and his brother—the other prince?—say that you were their long-lost brother. So why aren't you at the big royal family reunion right now? Prodigal son and all that?”

His eyes narrowed. “You heard a lot. How long have you been in Atlantis? Long enough for one of them to claim you?” His words came out in a low, growling tone, and he visibly tensed, as if restraining himself from pouncing on her.

She backed up again, holding up her hands in an attempt to placate him and steer him away from whatever crazed ideas he was formulating. “Look, Mr. Justice, or Prince Justice if you prefer, I don't know what you're talking about. Nobody claims me. This is not the twelfth century. Your buddy Liam came to my office to offer me the chance to study Atlantis. I'm an archaeologist, and I—” She stopped, not really knowing how to explain.

He calmed somewhat, tense muscles relaxing for a moment, but then a wave of something that looked like either despair or loathing crossed his face, and he shuddered. “We seem to be unable to think clearly around you, Keely. Perhaps you might rest while we bathe, so that we can continue this discussion when we do not stink of the blood of Pharnatus's self-sacrifice.”

“Rest?
Rest?
” She heard her voice rise into a near shout, but couldn't seem to help it. “Are you kidding me? You've just escaped from someplace that can't exist, a pitiful man killed himself in your arms with your sword, you kidnapped me, you're talking about yourself in the plural again, and about claiming and baser impulses, and you want me to
take a nap
?”

She clenched her hands into fists and looked wildly around for something she could use to defend herself, jarringly aware that it was the second time in one day she'd had to do so. “If I ever get out of this, I'm buying a switchblade,” she snapped. “Or maybe a Taser. Or a gun. There is no napping. There is no resting. There is only
you
, getting
me
out of here.”

He lifted the sheathed sword over his head, and she figured she was done for. Her mother had always warned her that her mouth would get her in trouble.

Moderately famous archaeologist killed by ancient warrior come to life: reenactment on YouTube
.

But he simply placed the sword, sheath and all, on the ground, and then pulled off the remnant of his shirt. Blood and dirt streaked his skin, and she could see by the scar tissue in half a dozen places that he'd been badly wounded many times. Some of those looked like they should have been fatal.