Riley shook her head. "We"re not even dating. I only met him last night. And yet I know him more than I"ve ever known anyone. Except for you. And when we"re together, well-"
Quinn whistled again. "You don"t even have to say it, little sister. I can tell by the color your face just turned that you and he set off some serious heat. Did you sleep with him?"
"No! I didn"t! I just met him. But, well." Riley bit her lip, considering. "Okay, here it is. If I"d had a chance, I probably would have. I"ve never felt that kind of attraction to any man. Ever."
She stopped mid-thought. "Wait a minute! Forget my nonexistent s.e.x life. We"re talking about you here. What on earth were you doing with a band of shape-shifters? And what is this tough-guy act? It"s not like you"re... I mean-"
"I know what you mean. Poor, fragile Quinn, who everybody always has to protect," Quinn said bitterly. "Well, sometimes you have to grow up. And I didn"t bother to let anybody know that I"d changed, because being weak and useless is a good cover. Think Zorro or the Scarlet Pimpernel."
"But when... what..." Riley"s voice trailed off. She wasn"t sure how to ask her sister what needed to be asked.
She wasn"t sure she wanted to hear the answer.
"Later. I"ll tell you about it later. Maybe." Quinn stared at her for a long moment, then swung her legs off the bed and bent to pull on her boots. "You"re better than I ever was at measuring the character of a person by their emotions, Riley. So I guess I"ll take your word about this Conlan. But only on the condition that I get to test him myself."
A knock on the door saved Riley from responding. "Go away, Denal. I told you I don"t want any food," she called.
The door swung open, framing Conlan in the doorway. "It"s not Denal, and as much as I think you should eat something, it"s more important that we talk. I need to know what your sister knows."
Riley tried to see behind him to the hallway. "Where is Denal? I thought he"d never leave."
Conlan shrugged. "I think Ven might be holding him upside down out a window right about now. He seems to have forgotten that I"m his high prince, in his zeal to serve you."
Only the hint of the smile at the corners of his lips gave away Conlan"s reluctant amus.e.m.e.nt at his warrior"s defection.
Before Riley could respond, Quinn stood up and strode over to stand toe to toe with Conlan. "Prince, huh? If you"ve pulled a fast one on my baby sister, you will answer to me. And I"m the type of girl who will kick your Atlantean a.s.s."
With that, faster than Riley had ever seen her move, Quinn placed her hands on Conlan"s temples. "Let me in, let me in, little fishy," she said in a singsong voice.
Conlan, staring at Riley over Quinn"s head, never moved. Riley knew how fast he could move. He could have snapped Quinn"s hold in a heartbeat. Heck, he could have snapped Quinn"s arms in a heartbeat.
But, instead, he smiled at Riley, then closed his eyes. There was utter silence in the room for nearly a minute. Then Quinn dropped her hands and stumbled back and away from Conlan.
"Who are you? How could you possibly survive that kind of torture?" She kept backing away from him, until she reached the bed and dropped down onto it next to Riley.
"Quinn, are you all right?" Riley reached out to her sister with her emotions. But, for once, she couldn"t reach her. She jumped up to face Conlan. "What did you do to her?"
"No, it"s what did you do to him ?" Quinn said from behind her. Riley turned to look at her sister, but Quinn"s attention was focused on Conlan like a laser beam. "Somehow, Riley, you"re inside his soul."
Heat swirled through Riley. She looked into Conlan"s eyes, opening her emotions to him. Feeling the truth of her sister"s words.
Not quite ready to let him see that he was inside her as well.
Footsteps thudded down the hall toward them. Ven"s voice preceded his entrance. "Conlan, we"ve got a problem. Or maybe I should rephrase that. h.e.l.l, we"ve got a b.u.t.t load of problems. This one is new though."
"Consider me to be another problem, Atlantean," Quinn snarled. "Because until I find out why your people attacked mine, I"m going to be all over your a.s.s."
Ven looked Quinn up and down and grinned. "Honey, I"d consider that the best part of my week. h.e.l.l, maybe my entire f.u.c.king year."
An icy voice swept into the room an instant before Alaric shimmered into a hard, menacing presence between Quinn and Ven. "I bid you fair warning, Vengeance. If you touch her, I will destroy you."
Riley jumped up, with some thought of protecting her sister from Alaric, who was the scariest man she"d ever seen.
A man who just happened to have magic powers of death going for him.
Inexplicably, Quinn started to laugh. The sound shivered through the room, high and wild. "Welcome to the tea party, fish face. I have a strange feeling that you and I need to talk, especially after you practically had your hand on my b.o.o.b," she said, still smiling that eerie smile. "At the very least, it seems like you owe me dinner."
Riley looked at them all-Conlan, Ven, Alaric, and her sister-and slowly shook her head. "Has the whole world gone insane?"
Chapter 22.
Reisen limped down the stairs of the abandoned warehouse Micah had located for them. Thank Poseidon that the Trident was safe, still strapped to his back under his coat.
He"d been lucky.
Luckier than five of his men. Five warriors slain, and for what? To protect a human population stupid enough to welcome the shape-shifters and the bloodsuckers with bared necks?
The only possible glimmer of light in the black f.u.c.king tunnel of his day was that there hadn"t been any mention of the battle in the media. Of course, the furry-a.s.sed controlled the media since they"d taken over CNN and the broadcast networks, so he guessed it wasn"t enormously surprising.
Still, he decided to take it as a point for his side. After all, Alaric couldn"t follow a news story that he never heard.
The priest would be tracking the news. Alaric would make it his life"s mission to find a way to track Reisen down and separate his b.a.l.l.s from his body.
Slowly.
He glanced at the glowing numbers on the face of his father"s silver pocket watch. It was ironic that the only remembrance he carried of his father was the one rendered unstable by the powers he channeled.
Watches didn"t like the powers of the elements, much. He pulled his cell phone out of his pants pocket, grimacing at the blank screen.
Not much machinery did, come to think of it.
But he wouldn"t need to confirm his appointment with the Platoist Society. It wasn"t a meeting they were likely to forget.
And when the Trident was whole and in his control, the five he"d lost today would be avenged.
His father, too.
The land walkers would burn.
Conlan positioned the players in his impromptu meeting quite deliberately. Alaric leaned against the wall on one side of the room.
Riley sat with Quinn on a couch directly across the room from Alaric.
He and Ven took the other two walls, so it looked like some weird game of four-player Atlantean chess, using real game pieces.
Come to think of it, he"d felt a h.e.l.l of a lot like a p.a.w.n ever since his return.
That s.h.i.t was over.
Quinn stretched her legs out and crossed one boot over the other, in a clear display of studied nonchalance. She was every bit as tough as her sister but-unlike Riley-Quinn knew she was a hard-a.s.s. She owned it.
And for a few seconds, when he"d allowed her inside his mind, he"d felt the black stain on her own soul. She had secrets, Quinn Dawson did.
Dangerous ones.
"Are we talking or just staring at each other all night?" Quinn drawled. "Not that you aren"t all a fine bunch of eye candy, but I"ve got things to do, people to kill."
Riley stared at her sister in disbelief. Conlan sent a light touch to Riley"s emotions, checking for any false note.
No, nothing. She was completely bewildered by Quinn"s presence in this disaster.
Conlan folded his arms over his chest. "Interesting choice of words. Perhaps you"re ready to tell us what you were doing with those shape-shifters you call "your" wolves."
Alaric said nothing, merely stared at Quinn, unblinking, eyes glowing a hot green.
Quinn laughed. "Yeah. Right. Well, you show me yours and I"ll show you mine, as they say."
"Hey, what exactly do you want to see? I"m game," Ven said.
At the words, the room trembled, as if an undersea fault line threatened. Conlan felt the icy wind shear past his face toward his brother, and knew what caused the temblor.
Or, rather, who .
"Cut it out, priest," he growled. "Whatever you"re playing at, we don"t have time for this s.h.i.t. We need to put our respective cards on the table, now."
It was as if he hadn"t spoken.
"You want me to show you mine?" Alaric stalked across the room toward Quinn and Riley, but stopped a half dozen paces away, before Conlan or Ven had a chance to move. "Well, how about this?"
Eyes glowing hotter than Conlan had ever seen, Alaric casually lifted first one, then the second, of his hands into the air. In tandem with the motions, Quinn and Riley were lifted off the couch until they were levitating inches from the ceiling, still in seated positions, resting on glowing b.a.l.l.s of blue-green light.
"How"s that?" Alaric demanded. "Or how about this?"
He sliced both hands in a downward motion, then raised then, palms up, muttering something under his breath. The women plunged down toward the floor, then a fountain of water caught them and gracefully lifted them both back onto the couch.
With another abrupt hand movement, the water disappeared. Neither Riley nor Quinn had a drop on them.
Riley gasped a little. "Wow, that was pretty... that was-"
"Cute parlor trick, fish face," Quinn said. Then she feigned an enormous yawn. "Are we done with the smoke and mirrors? Or, excuse me, that was water and mirrors, right?"
In the s.p.a.ce of a single heartbeat, Alaric was lifting her off the couch and up against him. "Don"t push me, female. We would both regret it."
But it wasn"t anger that Conlan heard in Alaric"s voice. It was an almost-pleading desperation.
When Quinn answered, her voice was so quiet that Conlan could barely make out her words. When he did, they didn"t make any sense.
"Forget whatever you think you saw in me, beautiful one," she murmured. "I am ruined."
What she did next sent both Conlan and Ven rushing across the room to protect her. Because she lifted her hands and put them on Alaric"s face.
A sound Conlan had never heard before issued from the priest"s throat, a hard, choked sound filled with soul-destroying pain. A shock wave of a sound that literally smashed Conlan and his brother backward, landing them hard on the floor.
In the seconds it took for him to catch his breath and look up, Alaric was gone. Quinn stood alone, hands still frozen in place where Alaric"s face had been.
Tears running down her own.
Riley jumped up and put her arms around her sister. "Maybe we should put this off until the morning," she said, glaring at Conlan. "I think Quinn has been through enough today. We"ve both been through enough. I need to take her home, Conlan."
Before Conlan could utter a word of protest, support came from an unexpected source. Quinn wiped the tears from her cheeks with the backs of her hands, then cleared her throat.
"No," she said. "I think you should stay with them."
The four of them sat around the kitchen table, Riley and Quinn holding mugs of hot, sweet tea. Conlan and Ven each had a beer. Conlan sat near enough to Riley that she could reach out and touch him if she wanted to.
It"s not like she needed to touch him.
Much.
Most of the other men had all stopped by, trailing in by ones and twos, some bringing food and beer, some bringing news.
None bringing results. Reisen had vanished.
Riley had tried to smile at each of them, especially Denal, who"d kneeled in front of her and presented an armload of flowers, then backed out of the room, careful to maintain a safe distance from Conlan and Ven.
Ven had made some crack about Denal"s schoolboy crush, but n.o.body"d even mustered up a smile.
Now they sat, each of them lost in his or her own private thoughts. When Justice appeared, it was almost a relief.
"So, the gang"s all here," he said in that smart-a.s.s way he had. Of course, anybody who could carry off a waist-length blue braid worn over a sword strapped to his back probably could be as much of a smart-a.s.s as he wanted.
She"d seen what he could do with that sword.
"My lawn will never be the same," she muttered.
Quinn looked up from contemplating her mug and caught sight of Justice. "You!" she gasped. "I thought you were an urban legend."
Ven leaned back in his chair, balancing it on two legs. "Right. The nut ball axe murderer who hangs out at Lover"s Lane, and Justice. Makes sense, really, when you think about it. Both of them give you a case of the ugly creepies, right?"
Justice ignored the ribbing and focused in on Quinn. "What exactly have you heard?"