Atlantis Rising

Chapter 2

Virginia Beach

"Dina, think about your baby." Riley Dawson crouched down next to the room's single window, hands loose and open at her sides.

Nonthreatening, nonthreatening, nonthreatening.

Riley forced her facial muscles to relax into an expression of calm, as she watched her massively pregnant sixteen-year-old client jam the lethal end of the very large and very ugly pistol farther down the unconscious man's throat. His skin was pasty white, but she could see his chest move in shallow breaths.

He's not dead. Let's keep him that way, Riley.

"I'm thinking about my baby, Riley. Stay out of it! No way my baby is gonna grow up with a skanky alley cat like this for a daddy." Dina's gaze darted around the room, skittered off Riley's face, then back to Morris, lying still and pale on the edge of the bed.

Riley could see that his chest was moving. He was still breathing, in spite of the force of the gun crashing into the back of his skull that she'd witnessed as she'd walked in the open door for her monthly visit. But she'd been in enough rooms crowded with the noises of EMT personnel and the smell of death to know that a life could end in an instant. And Dina's hand was trembling on that gun.

"Dina, listen to me. I'm sorry you found Morris with another girl. He made a terrible mistake. I'm sure he's very sorry about it. But you have to think about your baby. She needs you, Dina. If you hurt him, you'll go to jail, and then who will raise your baby? You know your mother can't do it." A cramping pain burned through Riley's leg muscles, protesting at squatting on the floor for so long. She shifted a little, careful not to make any sudden or abrupt movements.

Dina barked out a laugh that sounded rusty from disuse. "That crack ho? She ain't no mother. She ain't getting near my baby."

"That's right. You know you're the best person in the world to take care of your baby. Have you thought of a name for her yet?"

Keep them talking. Distract them with more pleasant topics; ones with which they feel a personal connection. The voice of the lecturer from one of Riley's hundreds of hours of training pounded in her head.

Right. Pleasant topics, when she's got a gun jammed down his cheating throat. And how about the fact that I'm going to pee my pants any minute? The manuals never mentioned that little fact.

Dina smiled a little. "I'm going to call her Paris. Like that city in France? With the tower? It's so beautiful. We learned about it in school. I'm gonna take her there someday. Paris Marguerite, after Grandmama."

"That's a beautiful name, Dina. Paris Marguerite. Now please give me the gun. You don't want Paris Marguerite to grow up without her mommy, do you?" Riley slowly straightened up off the floor, ignoring the screaming muscles in her thighs. She stretched her hand out, palm upward.

"Please give me the gun. I'll help you. We'll figure this out together. Please give me the gun, so Paris Marguerite grows up with her mommy to take care of her." She held her breath as Dina wavered, looking back and forth from Riley to Morris.

A man's life balanced on the wavering edge of a teenager's indecision. Nope. That hadn't been in the damn manual, either.

Dina took a huge, shuddering breath, and her shoulders slumped a little. She yanked the gun out of Morris's mouth and held it out toward Riley. Riley felt the breath she'd been holding for the past half hour seep out of her lungs.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, I can't—

Morris's eyes snapped open. He burst up off the bed, blood running down his face from his mouth, and slammed a fist into Dina's jaw. "You hit me over the head, bitch? You pull a gun on me? I'll show you who pulls a gun on Morris."

As Dina fell to the ground from the force of the blow, Morris aimed a kick at her belly. Riley launched herself out of the corner and toward them, screaming, "No, no! Morris, no! Don't hurt her! Don't hurt your baby!"

The room kaleidoscoped into a fractured image of movement and cacophony of sound. Almost in slow motion, Riley saw the kick land with full force against the side of Dina's huge belly. She heard Dina screaming, Morris screaming, someone else screaming—was that her!

She jumped him, not caring that he had to outweigh her by a hundred pounds. "No, no, no. Don't hurt her. You have to stop. Morris, you have to stop—"

Morris yanked a handful of her hair viciously, snapping her head back. "Nobody tells me what to do. Especially not some worthless social worker."

He raised his fist. Move. Gotta move.

She yanked her head to the left, just as his huge fist slammed into the side of her face. Just enough. Maybe. Please God, don't let my neck be broken. Room going black. Fight, Riley. Fight to stay conscious.

Fist coming again. "No, please…"

But he ignored her, face twisted with rage beyond hearing, beyond reason. His fist exploded again, except it wasn't his fist.

It wasn't her face.

Thunder? Is it thunder? So black…

As Riley fought the blackness, the hand in her hair loosened. Morris's face changed in a caricature of slow motion from a grimace of violent hate to one of surprise. They both looked at the scarlet stain blossoming, blooming, spreading over his shirt. Even as Riley touched a questing finger to the dark stickiness that splattered her face, the room went black.

Conlan opened the portal, focusing on the East Coast of the United States. Virginia, to be precise. Ven had been "collecting intel," according to Alaric.

Translation: beating information out of scumbags for miles in every direction. His brother always had favored the direct approach.

Now Ven was calling the rest of the Seven to him to accompany Conlan to the surface. Except Conlan was in no mood to wait. Not even for his brother. Maybe especially not for his brother. If he saw even a glimmer of pity in Ven's eyes, he'd—

Well. Forget that. Focus on the portal.

Seven years of disuse, and the magic was rusty. Or the portal, temperamental on a good day, was playing with him, Conlan discovered, as he stepped through into water.

Lots of water.

Luckily he'd instinctively heaved in a deep breath before plunging through the shimmering opening. There was another lesson learned the hard way: the portal had its own power, independent of the Atlanteans who had first harnessed it more than eleven thousand years ago.

They ought to hang a "User Beware" sign on the capricious thing. He kicked off and headed for the surface, judging he was about ten meters deep from the looks of the shallow-water flora and fauna that shimmered in the diluted moonlight.

But distances could be tricky in the sea.

And then, there was the problem of where the hell the shore might be. He wouldn't be the first to end up treading water in the middle of the ocean.

The portal's idea of a practical joke. If portals had emotion, this one was packing a vindictive sense of humor.

As he broke the surface and sucked in a lungful of air, an almost-tangible force smashed into him. Agony sliced through his head, then shut off as if by a switch. A bitter taste seared his mouth; a sourness like lemon soaked in brine. •

Another wave of pain crashed through him, knocking him off balance. He nearly sank below the waves again, barely noticing the sands of the shores nearby.

He shook his head from side to side, trying to escape the fire inside of his head. He barked out a laugh. He'd had a lot of practice with pain, just lately. Think, damn you.

Crazed thoughts swirled in his bruised brain. If an Atlantean prince's head cracks wide open in the ocean, does it make a sound?

He almost laughed again, but snorted water up his nose instead. Choking and coughing, he finally forced his limbs to cooperate and headed for the shore, eventually realizing he could touch bottom and walk.

His training kicked in, keeping him upright and coherent. Analyze. Reason. Use logic.

A third wave of pain seared through him, driving him to his knees, face caught under the breaking waves. He fought his way back to standing, plunged forward toward the shore.

Vamp mind powers? Doesn't feel like it. They could trap your mind, but not project pain like this. Could it be Reisen? Did the Trident give him some kind of mental power we don't know about?

His boots hit dry sand, and he collapsed, stumbling onto his knees. He sent a mind call out to Ven.

Needed help.

But it wasn't Ven's familiar patterns that answered his call. Instead, a tiny pinprick of awareness deep in his mind sparked, sputtered like a candle in a back draft, and then focused.

An image of beauty sheared by pain. A woman with sun-colored hair.

Something slammed shut in his mind, and the woman and the pain vanished. Almost as if a mental door had closed.

And Conlan wasn't the one who'd shut it.