Atlantis Rising

wall of water to crash down on the shore. To crush the men, where they lay bleeding and groveling.

He drove the wave toward the shore.

Her voice, broken, tentative, sounded in his head. Stop! Please don't kill me! My sister… I'm all she has. And… don't kill them. Please. Enough death.

Conlan marveled at her goodness, her courage.

Her light.

Even as she thought death was crashing toward her, she spared a thought for the garbage who'd tried to attack her.

He followed her thought back along its path to her mind. I would never hurt you. Trust me.

Or was he a damn fool? Maybe she was just a talented actress. Nobody that compassionate could be real.

But the red haze lifted, receded. Somehow her mental touch lent him calm. A measure of peace. He was inside her mind—she was projecting emotion. There was no deceit—no evil. Nothing but compassion wrapped up in terror. Sorrow.

Conlan focused his power at the water and the men in its path, speaking a single word. 'Abate.'

In perfect symmetry, the water pounded the shore in an exact spherical shape around the place where she stood, leaving her untouched by a single drop. He felt her shock and wonder at the spectacle and could almost taste her awe as she reached out to touch the wall of water surrounding her.

She gasped—made a choked sound of laughter. Broadcasted her thoughts: All I can think of is the parting of the Red Sea, but you're definitely not Moses.

Conlan crushed the water down on the little pricks, reining it in at the last possible second. He'd mitigate.

For her.

They might get a little broken, but they'd live. The wall of ocean pounded them to the sand, but left them with enough oxygen in their lungs to survive it.

Which didn't make him all that happy.

As the waves receded, leaving the men crying, babbling, and damn near shitting themselves, Conlan stepped forward and raised his arms again. The waves eagerly leapt to do his bidding, and the surf boiled in anticipation of another strike.

He got a vicious pleasure out of watching them cower the way they'd wanted to see her cower.

Yeah, I can be a bastard that way.

He spoke with every ounce of rage in his body bubbling to the surface, arm muscles clenching with the strain of holding back the wall of water. 'I command you to leave this place and never return. You will not attempt to harm another, or I will track you down and serve up the justice that only this woman's compassion saved you from tonight.'

He swept them with his gaze, dropped out of formal speak. 'In other words, you'll be dead sons of bitches. We on the same page?'

They babbled their promises in broken voices, then ran off, stinking of fear and piss, when he gestured them away. His gaze only tracked them for a moment, then he turned, inexplicably drawn back to the woman. She had guts, or she had a death wish. Either way, she'd seen him command the ocean, and yet she was unafraid enough to stand her ground.

Trained warriors had cowered in front of him with less cause.

How the hell did one small human have such courage?

A fierce curiosity burned through him. He wanted, no, needed, to see her face, which was shadowed by her hair and hidden in the darkness. His fury was disproportionate—it didn't make sense. The thugs were buffoons, easily enough cowed.

But for some reason, he'd wanted to slice the flesh off their bodies.

Maybe being tortured for so long would turn anybody into a sick, twisted bastard. Even the so-called next ruler of Atlantis.

A little logic might help. Use some of that much-vaunted Atlantean warrior training.

Yeah, logic. Logic dictated that he study his own reactions.

Logic counseled prudence.

She started to edge away from him.

Fuck logic.

He tried on a royal command for size. Come closer to me, woman. I have a need to see the face of one who bids me not to harm those who threaten her. Are you compassionate or merely a fool?

She tossed her head, long and tousled hair flying through the air, and something low in his body tightened. She ignored his mental query and his command and stood her ground. 'Who are you, and how are you in my mind? You can quit with the ordering me around thing, too, buster. I know self-defense. I would have been fine.'

Her voice. It was lyrical, sensuous, music lilting into his ears and resonating through his body. Playing him like delicate fingers on the strings of a harp. His body tightened, straining.

Her body quivered with indignation, yet the emotion she still broadcast confessed the truth. She knew they would have put a big, bad hurt on her.

The emotion. Somehow, he kept losing track of the unexpected, unprecedented, unbe-fucking-lievable fact that she was broadcasting emotion. She knew she would have been seriously harmed if he hadn't been there—he actually felt the knowledge and, with it, her residual fear and sorrow.

She sighed, and her body slumped. 'I'm… sorry. I should be thanking you. Whoever—or whatever—you are, you saved me from those men. Thank you.'

Then she raised her head and peered at him. 'You're not going to drink my blood or rip my arms off, now, are you? Because my day has really sucked, and I'm so not up for that,' she said, suspicion ringing in her tone.

He blinked, bewildered by her apparent inability to carry on a logical conversation. He figured he'd try using simple sentences and speaking out loud. Maybe terror turned human women into babbling idiots.

Slowly, carefully choosing his words, he tried to explain. 'I am not the undead, nor a shifter of shape to animal form. I am… other. You are entirely safe with me, aknasha.'

She planted her hands on her hips and stared at him. 'You keep calling me that. What does it mean? What does 'other' mean? And why do you talk like you walked out of an old-time fairy-tale book?'

As he considered how to answer her, the bank of clouds overhead finally passed beyond the edge of the moon. The shimmer of moonlight on her features plowed a wave of sensation right through his gut. Nobody could be that beautiful.

He almost laughed. She'd been talking about fairy tales, and she looked like she'd stepped out of the pages of one. Her face shone with the perfection of a Nereid. The silvery light barely illuminated the red-gold waves that must burn like fire in the sunshine. Her eyes…

Not possible. No human has eyes like that.

'They're cerulean,' he said aloud, unthinking: 'Your eyes.'

Cerulean. The color of the royal house of Atlantis.

His color.

'They—my mother had eyes this shade of deep blue,' she whispered, one hand reaching up to touch her face.

Conlan caught his breath, feeling her pain. Something about her mother—

'She's gone,' he murmured. Somehow he knew it. Felt it. He couldn't understand the pull—as if the magnetic draw of the moon to the tides had infused him. He wanted to touch her.

He needed to touch her.

Almost without thought, he reached out to her face with his fingertips. She trembled, but didn't move away, so he dared to caress the curve of her silken cheek with trembling fingers. Longing. Desire surging out of nowhere.