Atlantis Rising

Chapter 19

Riley waited a few seconds, then peeked under her lashes in time to catch the sight of one massive Atlantean prince dissolving into a shower of mist.

"What the hell?" She blinked, then rubbed her eyes. "Great. The Atlantis version of Houdini."

But she didn't have time to worry about him and his stupid tricks—Quinn's pain was scorching through her. She shoved the car door open and jumped out, then took off down the path in the direction the Warriors had run just minutes before.

"As if some stupid man could keep me from Quinn when she needs me. Not now, not ever." She started to run, sending up a prayer of thanks for the old running shoes she'd thrown on the night before and still wore.

Another bolt of pain from Quinn shot through her. She doubled over for a moment, then straightened and ran even faster, sending reassurance to Quinn the only way she knew how.

I'm coming, Quinn. I'm coming. Don't you dare die on me—you're all I've got.

Conlan had just passed Ven and the Seven running down the trail when the path widened and turned to the left. As he rounded the corner, body still in the form of translucent mist, he came upon a scene of violent death.

The shock of it destroyed his concentration, and he transformed back into his body with a nauseating jolt. Roughly a dozen bodies, bloody, mutilated, and torn, littered the path. He felt the bile rising in his throat as the Warriors thundered up behind him. The peaceful, sunlit forest trees served as a mocking contrast to the grisly sight.

"This is wrong," Ven snarled from beside him. "This is way beyond wrong."

Justice shouldered his way up on Conlan's other side, sword drawn and lips curled back from his teeth. "Do you see Reisen? Is he one of the dead?"

Alexios walked past, then, and he and Conlan started to examine the fallen bodies. The others followed, daggers and guns at the ready, eyes scanning the forest constantly for a hint of returning danger.

"This one is a shape-shifter," Conlan called out, seeing the telltale eyes. A shape-shifter's eyes reverted to animal shape and color in death. The one lying in hacked-up pieces at his feet had been some kind of wolf.

Then he jerked his head up and looked around for the one who should have been there before him. "Alaric, where are you?"

"I am here, and I need your assistance," Alaric replied from behind him. Conlan swung around to see the priest, emerging from behind a fallen tree, and started toward him, then stopped, midstride.

Alaric's face was cast in harsh, feral planes, his eyes wild and fiery green. He spoke again, his voice promising brutal death to the architects of this destruction. "She is beyond my help. She will die."

A frantic pounding of feet interrupted whatever response Conlan might have been able to think of, and he and Alaric both turned to see Riley running full speed around the corner.

She saw the scene and screeched to a halt, shaking, and began to scream. "Quinn! Where are you?"

Conlan ran to her, but it was Justice who caught her as she went down. He swept her up in his arms and handed her carefully to Conlan, then made a slight bow. "Your human, my prince."

Conlan ignored the trace of mockery in the warrior and bent his head to Riley. "Shh. She's not gone yet. You have time to say good-bye."

She gasped in heaving breaths and started screaming again, pushing and clawing at him to try to get down. "No! Not my sister. Let me down. Let me down now!"

Instead, he pulled her closer, turning her face toward his chest, so she wouldn't have to look at the carnage surrounding them. Then he strode over and around the bodies toward Alaric.

When he reached the deadfall of trees, he relaxed his hold on Riley and set her gently on the ground. Alaric was kneeling in front of the body of a woman. A wound in her shoulder was pulsing blood. Conlan scented the air. The sulfur smell of gunpowder.

She'd been shot.

Quinn had short dark hair, instead of Riley's gold, but her silken white skin and delicate facial features were stamped with Riley's strength and beauty.

Riley threw herself on the ground and put her arms around her sister, sobbing. For an instant—a split second that passed so quickly Conlan wasn't sure he'd actually seen it—Alaric tensed, fingers curling into claws, as if he were going to attack Riley.

Even as Conlan moved to place himself between the two, the moment faded. The green flames in Alaric's eyes muted slightly.

"Help her!" Riley lifted her sister's head carefully onto her lap and stared at Alaric. "Help her! I know you can do it. You healed poison and sword wounds and broken heads. You can surely heal a little—oh, my God, it's a gunshot wound. Please, please," she begged, somehow sobbing and issuing a command all at once.

Alaric shook his head back and forth, a dazed expression on his face. His eyes were wild, almost rolling around in his head. Conlan had never seen him like this.

"I can't," he muttered brokenly. "I can't reach her. I can only feel the pain she's sending out. I can't get past it."

Conlan dropped to one knee beside Riley and put his arms around her, hoping to give some comfort. She elbowed him viciously and shook him off, never for a moment looking away from Alaric. She curled her lips back from her teeth and snarled so ferociously she almost looked like a shape-shifter herself.

"You can, and you will, because I will push you past it." With that, she grabbed Alaric's forearm in a viselike grip and forced his hand down to her sister's shoulder. "I've seen healings on TV. Witch healings. They need to touch in order to do it. I'm guessing it's the same with you."

As Conlan watched, somehow Riley managed to win the struggle with Alaric, combating his reluctance with sheer desperation. As the priest's hand passed through the last inch of space separating it from Quinn's shoulder, Conlan saw an aquamarine glow pass from Alaric's palm into Riley's sister.

When Alaric's fingers finally touched Quinn, her body, resting in Riley's lap, jumped at the contact, and her feet drummed into the red-and-gold pile of fallen leaves in which they lay. Riley, still holding tightly to Alaric's arm, closed her eyes.

Alaric threw his head back, flinching, the cords in his neck standing out in stark relief as every muscle in his body seemed to tighten.

Conlan lifted his hands to Riley's shoulders, but an electric shock slammed him back away from her. For the space of several seconds, the three—Alaric, Quinn, and Riley—were frozen in a painful tableau, limned in a luminous blue-green light.

Then, as one, Riley and Alaric slumped forward, gasping for breath. Conlan caught Riley before she could fall forward onto her sister, gently taking her chin in his hand and searching her face for signs that she had been harmed.

Alaric caught himself, one hand on his knee, the other still in place on Quinn's shoulder. "I do not know why you were caught up in the healing process, Riley. I have never channeled the healing powers like that before. Are you harmed?"

Before Riley could respond, a quiet, slightly husky feminine voice cut across the sound of rasping breaths. "If you move that hand one inch closer to my boob, I'm going to cut it off."

Alaric took one look into Quinn's eyes as they opened and fell back away from her. Shooting to his feet with such speed that Conlan almost wasn't able to track him, Alaric backed away from them, shaking his head and muttering something to himself.

Conlan was unable to make out the words, but he heard the cadence of ancient Atlantean and wondered at it. He stroked Riley's hair, a brief touch more for his comfort than hers, and stood to follow Alaric.

He caught the priest on the other side of the path as Alaric began to shimmer into mist. "Stop," he commanded. "Where in the nine hells do you think you're going? What just happened?"

Alaric reverted to corporeal form and whirled around to face him. "You want to know what happened?" he asked, wild fury in his voice, desperation dark in the harsh lines of his face.

"You want to know what happened!" With two steps, he was right up in Conlan's face.

"I'll tell you what happened, my prince," Alaric continued, rasping out the words. "What happened was I sent my healing energy inside Quinn. Inside that human. And she grabbed hold of me."

He shoved a hand through his hair and laughed a little wildly, eyes flaring green and hot.

Savage.

"She dug her mental claws into my balls, is what happened. I healed her, and she destroyed something in me. Shredded it."

"What—" Conlan never got the question out.

"My control," Alaric snarled. "The absolutely rock-hard control that I've spent centuries perfecting. Your little girlfriend's sister reached out with her emotions, or her witchy empath nature, or what the hell ever, and all I wanted to do was fuck her."

Conlan moved back half a step at the ferocity in the priest's voice and dropped his hands to his dagger handles. For an instant, icy death menaced in the air between them.

Alaric laughed, bitter again. "Oh, you don't need your blades. In spite of the fact that I wanted her more than I've wanted anything in my life, I won't touch her. Although, even now, my mind tortures me with images of pounding into her body, right there on the ground in the mess of her own blood, fucking and fucking her until I drive myself into her soul." Alaric viciously kicked at a tree and shards of bark flew into the air, then disintegrated in the green energy bolts he shot at them.

This was new and dangerous territory, and Conlan attempted to proceed with caution. "Alaric, you must—"

"Yes. I must. I must never succumb to any lusts, or my power is ended. Certainly, I would be of no further use to you or to Atlantis. No use to the jealous bastard of a sea god whom I serve," the priest said flatly, his voice suddenly devoid of the rage and passion that had infused it moments before.

"I must get away from her," he continued. "Now. From this place. I am ruined for this day, in any event. This… this energy drain has voided any hope I had of re-scrying for the Trident until I recover. I will meet you back at Ven's safe house tonight."

Conlan grasped his friend's shoulders, shaken by the blasphemy he'd never heard from him before. "Alaric, know that your use to me and to Atlantis goes far beyond the powers you gained from Poseidon. Your wise counsel has served me well for centuries, and I will need you when I ascend to the throne."

Alaric stared over Conlan's shoulder toward Riley and her sister. "These empaths. They signal a treacherous difference in our ways, Conlan. I can sense it. Change is coming. Peril that comes from within our very souls."

With that, he took two running steps and leapt into the air, transforming into sparkling mist that quickly vanished.

Conlan watched the air into which Alaric had disappeared for a long moment, considering his parting words.

But Alaric had been wrong. Change wasn't coming.

It's already here.