Atlantis Rising

Okay, so she could stay in the temple.

With the priests. The celibate priests.

Away from Alaric, oath of celibacy or no.

Riley took another step back, and he still could sense her confusion. She doubted her sanity. Exhaustion was overwhelming her. The night's events had battered her—he'd battered her.

He couldn't regret touching her. Kissing her. But he regretted pushing her already stretched resources even further. An alien sense of tenderness washed through him. He wanted to protect her.

Even from himself.

He smiled down at her, but it wasn't enough to reassure her. Riley nearly stumbled in her haste to get away from him. 'I have to go home. It's late. The curfew and all. I have to—good-bye.'

As he moved to follow her, he sensed that Ven and the Seven had finally broken through the waves, and that Alaric was close behind. He knew that he could track her from a distance. He'd scanned the area to confirm that the attackers were long gone.

But it took everything in him to stand still and let her go.

Just long enough for her to reach her home. She'd want to pack some of her things.

He didn't know how long he'd keep her in Atlantis.

Something deep inside him protested at ever letting her go.

Not for long, this time at least. I'll be at her side in less than an hour. The rest— the rest I'll have to figure out later.

He refused to think of his duty. Of his intended queen he'd never met.

As he watched her run from him, his mind supplied her name, almost caressing the syllables. He whispered it aloud. 'Riley.'

When his body hardened even further at the mere sound of her name, a stark truth slammed into him. She was no mere empath.

She was his.

Conlan shook his head. Stupid. Futile. His duty was clear. Noble lineage. Destined royal breeding program.

His lip curled. Royal stud farm.

His gaze went back to Riley, spotlighted on the edge of the beach where she'd turned to stare back at him. Tentatively, her mind reached out to his. Good-bye, Conlan. Thank you.

You're welcome, Riley. But there's no way that it's good-bye.

As she disappeared into the night, he raised his arms and hurled a wave of fierce joy into the sea, and a family of passing dolphins threw themselves into the air in celebration—an arabesque of shared delight. The air resonated with the vibrations of Poseidon's power.

Then, without warning, weakness and dizziness crashed through him. Conlan stumbled backward and then fell to the sand.

And fear for Riley shot through him.

He shook his head back and forth, trying to clear it. He hated the idea, but he had to do it.

He had to call for aid.

Ven! I need… 7 need your help.

Chapter 7

Some hundreds of miles away, the Lord High Vampire Barrabas raised his head, scenting the air. Something —what! Just for an instant, he'd felt a disturbance in the elements beyond anything…

'But, Senator Barnes, as leader of the Primus, you must—' the human said, cringing.

Barrabas hissed at him, hating the false name. Barnes. A pathetic excuse for a name.

He knew, however, the ill-advised nature of claiming his legacy. Many still remembered his history-cursed name, and the events that Pontius Pilate had set in motion that day.

Soon. Soon he would come into his own, and then the name of Barrabas would be hated and feared with such magnitude as to make what went before seem as nothing to these sheep.

The sheep in front of him prostrated himself right there on the concrete floor of the Primus's central underground chamber.

'As leader of the Primus, I must do whatever I want to do,' he sneered. 'The other two houses of Congress will do exactly what I tell them, won't they?'

The human groveled and crawled backward out of the room, probably considering himself lucky, given what he'd witnessed.

The vampire's gaze flicked to the congressman from Iowa and the senator from Michigan who had been causing such problems. They dangled, feet off the floor, arms threaded through the shackles bolted into the wall.

The females of his blood pride flitted around them, slicing delicately into the skin of the chained men and sucking at the blood running down their naked forms. The Iowan still moaned, though the other had long since gone silent.

Barrabas considered and discarded conclusions regarding the relative strength of their party affiliations based upon their stamina, and then he flung himself into his thronelike chair. Eyes narrowing, he focused on the disturbance he'd felt in the elements.

'What could have such power?' he muttered, fingers drumming on the arm of the chair.

The door to the chamber slammed open and his second, Drakos, soared into the room. 'Did you feel it, Barrabas?'

Barrabas nodded, a nearly imperceptible movement of his head. 'I felt it. What was it?'

Drakos floated down to the ground, silvery hair settling around his shoulders. Barrabas was not unaware of more than a few of his women sneaking avid gazes at his general.

Something will have to be done about Drakos. He grows nearly powerful enough to challenge me. Perhaps it is time for a new second.

But aloud he only replied to the spoken question. 'Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Send out the vanguard. We cannot afford to be distracted now.'

'Anubisa?'

Barely, just barely, Barrabas contained the shudder. 'She has been… unavailable as of late. Not that she ever tells us anything of what she knows.'

'Still, if we defy her—' Drakos clenched his jaw.

'Enough,' Barrabas roared. 'Do as I say.'

'As you command, so it will be done,' Drakos responded, averting his gaze and bowing low. 'I will lead them.'

'No. I need you here,' Barrabas said. 'Send another. Send Terminus.'

Drakos raised one eyebrow, but otherwise his face was entirely unreadable. Unsurprising for a more than nine-hundred-year-old vampire, but inconvenient nonetheless.

Barrabas stood up in a movement of pure blurred speed that might have terrified the chained Iowan, if one of the women hadn't just sliced through his jugular.

'Good politicians are so hard to find these days,' Barrabas observed. 'They all lack a certain endurance.'

Stepping around the spray of blood and inhaling the thick, coppery smell with pleasure, Barrabas waved a hand to his general. 'I have a more important task for you, my second. I need another telepath. I was, perhaps, oversolicitous in my affections with my last one.'

He thought back to the lump of inanimate flesh he'd left on the floor of his bedchamber, with more than a little regret.

Drakos spoke emotionlessly. 'Telepaths are few and far between, my lord, and growing ever more difficult to