Atlantis Unleashed (28 page)

After years of archaeology, Keely was no stranger to dealing with foreign governments. This one might be more foreign than any of the other ones she'd encountered, she thought with grim amusement, but the principle still held true.

The room was a simple one, bare of any trappings of royalty. This was a working space, it was clear. She glanced around, openly curious. “This is some kind of strategy room, isn't it?”

The prince's brother nodded, but still no one spoke. So much for small talk.

“Justice,” she hissed, “I'm not making much headway here. You need to help me out.”

Conlan and his brother slowly lowered their weapons, identical expressions of shock on their faces. They exchanged a glance she couldn't decipher, and then Ven tossed his sword on a table.

“You're here, and you're safe,” Ven said fervently. “Thank the gods you're both safe.”

Conlan bowed his head, and Keely saw his lips moving but couldn't hear the words. When he looked up, he smiled at Justice. “I, too, thank the gods that you have returned safely from the Void, my brother. And my apologies, Dr. McDermott. Are you well?” He sheathed his daggers and took a step toward her, and Justice's growl ratcheted up a notch to an actual snarl.

“I'm not hurt,” she said. “Although I wouldn't turn down a hot meal and a bath. But we need to talk first. Justice is having a hard time, as you can see. I don't really understand it entirely but he had to make a deal with the Nereid half of himself in order to figure out this matter transference thing that allowed him to transport us here.”

“From where? Where did you go?” Conlan ran a hand through his hair in a gesture of pure frustration. “We cannot begin to tell you how sorry we are for this. Certainly we did not mean for your visit to Atlantis to be marked by kidnapping. Are you sure you are unharmed?”

Keely noticed that Ven never took his eyes off Justice. Ven's pale face and tightly clenched jaw told her that he carried his own load of guilt over his brother's sacrifice to Anubisa.

Beside her, the growling noise abruptly shut off. “Are you so unconcerned for
my
welfare, Brother?” Justice asked, mockery in his roughened voice. “After four long months in the Void, do you not query after me?”

Keely saw the anguish that shadowed Conlan's face. He took a step forward, toward his brother, but Justice backed away, pulling her with him. “Forget it,” he sneered. “We are unimpressed by your efforts on our behalf. We spent far too long as captive of the vampire goddess, but you know something about that, don't you, Conlan? She seems to have a preference for Atlantean princes, doesn't she? Even when one of them is the unwanted bastard who was never acknowledged by his own family.”

“We never knew,” Ven said through gritted teeth. “We never knew. Damnit, Justice, don't you know us better than that after hundreds of years fighting side by side? I've called you brother even not knowing about the blood tie. Could you possibly think that, knowing it, I'd do any differently? Any less?”

Keely noticed that Conlan was less direct. He studied Justice but said nothing, and he'd schooled his face to blankness.

“Must be something they teach you in prince school,” Keely said, trying to lighten the unbelievable tension in the room. “That poker face.”

Conlan laughed, surprising her. “You are the second woman to bring up poker in our war room in the space of a very short time. Perhaps this table would be more suited to games of cards, rather than games of countries and kings.”

Justice put an arm around her and pulled her close. Only the knowledge that he was so near to losing control kept her there, in spite of her frustration at his caveman tactics.

She'd noticed the recurrence of the word “we” in what he'd said. The Nereid was growing stronger, then, and she wasn't sure she wanted to see what would happen if
he
took over.

“Aargh! Now I'm doing it,” she said, glaring up at Justice. “I'm even
thinking
of you as two separate people. You need to get hold of yourself, or your
selves
, as best you can. We need to tell them about the Star.”

Conlan jumped on it. “The Star? The Star of Artemis?”

Beside her, Justice drew in a deep, shuddering breath and seemed to gather his self-control along with the oxygen. “The Star, yes. The one that we've long been taught has the power to heal fractured minds. Its value was far greater than even we knew, however. We need to find the Star—we need to find all the lost gems of the Trident. Without them, Atlantis cannot rise.”

Justice's words fell, echoing like falling stone in a newly unsealed tomb. He watched grimly as Ven and Conlan physically recoiled from their meaning.

Conlan recovered first. “What do you mean, Atlantis can't rise without all of the gems returned to the Trident? It cannot be true. When the ancients sent the gemstones to the seven corners of the globe, they had not discovered the portal at that time. If only the use of the gems together with the Trident would allow Atlantis to ascend to the surface, they had in effect just doomed the Seven Isles.”

“There's no logic in it,” Ven said. “Conlan is right. Without those gems, how could the ancients ever have hoped to return to the surface? It doesn't make sense, Dr. McDermott.”

“I don't know,” Keely said. “I don't know about logic, or your ancients, as you call them, or any of that. Politics has never been my forte. Maybe they saw the future and knew you'd find a way to travel to the surface. But I saw it in the vision, and my visions have never, ever been wrong. That sapphire must be in place in the Trident, along with all of the other gems, or you will destroy Atlantis when you try to ascend.”

The skepticism was plain in their faces. They didn't know Keely. They hadn't seen her nearly crushed in the throes of one of her visions. They were going to need proof.

Even as everything in him balked at the idea, Justice realized that, in their place, he'd want the same.

But the Nereid inside him scoffed.
Everything you do will always be less, to them. Why should they take your word for any of it?

Keely sighed, and her shoulders slumped. “You're not going to take this on faith, are you? You don't know me from Adam—or maybe from Poseidon would be the better expression—and you're going to want evidence.”

The resignation in her defeated posture touched Justice deep inside, in a place he'd believed long buried. “No. No, they do not want or need evidence. Your word is good.”

He folded his arms and confronted the men he still hadn't become accustomed to calling brothers. “You haven't seen her during a vision. You haven't heard the truth and the history that spills forth from her lips.”

He put his hand behind his back and briefly touched the hilt of his sword. “She's an object reader, and she read my sword. She named it. It's called Poseidon's Fury, and our father gave it to me.”

Ven and Conlan exchanged glances and suddenly he reached an unpleasant conclusion. They were unsurprised by the news.

“You knew? All these years, you knew?”

Conlan shook his head. “No, not that. We never knew that you were our brother. But the sword, yes, of course I'd seen my father with that sword. At first he told us he lost it, but then one day I saw a stringy little blue-haired boy carrying a sword that was far too big for him, and I recognized it.”

“I wanted to take it away from you,” Ven said, a faint grin playing at the edges of his mouth. “We were about the same size. I told Conlan I was going to kick your ass and take that sword back.”

“But I was the wiser, as usual,” Conlan interjected dryly. “I dragged Ven back home so that we could ask our father about it.”

“What did he say?” Justice leaned forward, though he despised himself for his eagerness to hear even a single kind word from his long-dead father.

They looked uncomfortable. “Is it really the time to talk about the past, when Atlantis's future rests on the truth of Dr. McDermott's vision?”

Keely laughed, but it was a bitter sound. “Trust me, Your Highness. My visions are all about the past. And from what I've seen of what your father put Justice and his mother through, it's no wonder you don't want to talk about it.”

“His mother? What do you know of his mother?” Ven asked.

“It was in my vision,” Keely said. “I saw her, lying in pain—in labor with Justice—on the floor of what must be your throne room. Carved dolphins on the back of the throne?”

“Justice could've told you that. Hells, Liam could've told you that,” Ven challenged.

Justice felt his tenuous grip on his temper fading. “You, who plan to wed a gem singer who stepped straight out of the waters of time, question the word of an object reader?” He looked from one to the other, realization dawning. “That's why you wanted her to come here as an archaeologist, isn't it? I wondered at the choice when you announced the list of invited scientists. What is there to excavate on the Seven Isles?”

Keely pulled free of his hold. “Is it true? Only for that?” Raw anger edged her voice. “Only for something I hate in myself? How did you even know?”

“As to how we knew, one of your colleagues on the Lupercale dig is a friend to Atlantis. As to the second, do you always hate your Gift, Keely McDermott?” Conlan's voice was gentle. “I would have thought it served you well in your chosen profession. Why would you choose to explore the past if you are so determined to deny yourself?”

Keely clenched her fists against her legs and slowly inhaled and exhaled a very deep breath. “Okay, I can't deal with this right now. I'm running on adrenaline and pancakes. Here's what you need to know.”

She turned to Justice and looked up at him, a question in her eyes. He knew what she was asking and, although he despised the idea that his brothers would hear about the humiliation that had destroyed his childhood, he nodded assent.

“I think I need to sit down for this,” Keely said.

Conlan hastened to indicate that she should sit, apologizing for his lack of manners. Justice remained at her side, sitting next to her on the battered couch that had seen so many planning sessions.

Almost without meaning to, he found himself taking her hand in his own. He needed the contact. Needed the warmth of her touch in order to endure the revelations she was about to give.

Conlan poured tall glasses of water from the tray sitting on a sideboard and carried them over. Keely took a long drink of the sparkling cold liquid, and then she began to talk. Quietly, concisely, and in chronological order, she told them of the visions she'd had. She began with the one Liam had forced upon her, of the Star of Artemis.

Ven interrupted at one point. “Nereus? But—”

Conlan waved him to silence. “Later,” he told his brother. “Please continue, Dr. McDermott.”

The telling seemed to last for an eternity, especially when waves of shame washed through Justice with the heat of Hells-fire. Keely finally finished her recounting and drained the water from her glass, then looked up at Conlan and Ven.

“So. Any questions?” Defiance underscored the weariness in her voice.

“I have so many questions that I don't even know where to begin to ask them,” Conlan said. “But I have a feeling that you need rest. Food and rest. So we'll adjourn this meeting and postpone our questions until the morning. Perhaps by then our high priest will have returned.”

“Alaric is gone?” Justice asked, surprised by the news.

“He couldn't reach you, so he went to St. Louis to help with a certain matter that required his assistance,” Conlan said, leaving the details to Justice's imagination.

Justice knew there were deeper reasons that Conlan wished for Alaric's return. The high priest had the role of testing anyone suspected of being compromised by the vampires. Even Conlan himself had undergone it.

Justice was sure that he was next. What he wasn't sure of was what Alaric would make of his dual nature.

Do not worry about this priest,
the Nereid whispered in his mind.
We will present a united front for the testing.

A hint of relief winged its way through Justice at the thought, and wary caution followed closely behind. Now, so soon, he was planning to deceive his fellow Atlanteans for the foreign presence that squatted inside of him?

Better to cut it out of himself like a cancer.

You cut me out and you die,
the Nereid reminded him, arrogant command in his tone.
I would have expected gratitude, not censure. We are out of the cavern, are we not?

Yes. There was that.