Atlantis Unmasked (22 page)

Together, they slammed down to the concrete, knocking the wind out of both of them, but a split second later the cat was bucking and twisting underneath him. He could see it snarling and distantly hear that it was screaming, but no sound could fully penetrate the percussion of his rage thrumming through his skull, through his spine, through every nerve in his body.

His fists took up the beat, took up the rhythm, and he started pounding on every inch he could reach, beating the shifter with every ounce of his strength behind each punch.

“You. Hurt. My. Woman,” he said, reduced to nearly incoherent speech. Grunting, caveman-like utterances. Me Alexios. Her Grace.

Hurt her and die.

His fists pistoned forward, over and over, catching the beat of the drums in his head, and then there was screaming or shouting or someone calling his name, but he couldn't hear it over the drums, couldn't understand it through the beat of the drums, except the sound was different. Silvery and musical and lovely, even while shouting. It was her. It was Grace. And she wanted something . . .

She wanted him to stop.

He blinked and suddenly the sound of her voice—pleading and demanding and
Grace
—cut through the drums, and he looked down at his fists and there was redness and stickiness and the cat lay lifeless underneath him. If he hadn't killed it, he'd come damn close.

Grace grabbed his arm and shouted in his ear. “Alexios, damnit, you stop it right now!”

He fell to the side, rolling and shoving and scrambling to be away from her and away from the cat's bloodied body, but even as he moved, the cat shimmered with the oncoming Change. In seconds, the cat was gone and a man lay in its place, bloodied and broken but still breathing.

Still breathing.

Alexios didn't know whether to be relieved or sorry.

Grace stared down at the man she'd thought she knew. The man she thought she might be falling in love with, who she'd finally convinced during the day and at dinner to give her a glimpse of the man behind the mask. His true self that lay hidden behind his warrior persona.

But maybe
this
was his true self. Maybe centuries of battle, no matter that it was always on the side of right, was enough to scour any trace of humanity from a man's soul. But was humanity even the right word to use?

Perhaps these Atlanteans started from a baseline that didn't contain any gentler emotions. Maybe there was lust and rage and the cold, steely calculation of battle strategy, but no room for kindness, hope, or love.

Maybe wanting to take a step forward into the future with him meant nothing more than exchanging one battlefield for another. She'd become a warrior before she'd grown into a woman, and now she wondered if she would ever make that metamorphosis. Perhaps it was something missing in her. Maybe her own lack of gentler emotions drew this type of man to her.

She took a step back, as if some long-dormant flight-or-fight response had finally kicked in on the side of flight. She would never run from the monsters, but she could run from this man who might break her heart.

She took another step back and hit something hard. A pair of strong arms steadied her and Sam's voice spoke softly in her ear. “I saw the end of that. He did it for you, Grace. He did it because that damn panther hurt you. He saw your blood, and something inside him busted right past any civilized thought.”

She pulled away from him, shaking her head. Disagreement, maybe. Denial.

But Sam spoke again, stronger. “He's a man, Grace, and whether you want to admit it or not there's something between the two of you. His need to protect was burning so fiercely through his belly and brain that he probably couldn't think straight. But it's better this way. At least he got to you before it was too late. Not all of us have been so fortunate.”

Grace flinched at the pain rasping in Sam's voice. Something in his past trying to bubble to the surface. She wanted to ask, but took a look at the way his face hardened and thought better of it. She owed him more than to pry into his personal life.

Alexios made a noise—a small, strangled noise—and slowly pushed himself up to stand, bracing himself against the wall with one hand. He winced a little as his bruised and battered hand touched the wall, but then he leaned heavily against it. “I'm sorry,” he said, his voice hoarse. “It hurt you—the drums, if only—but it hurt you. So sorry.”

His broken speech touched her in a way that any chest-thumping never would have done. But it simply wasn't there, the arrogance or triumph she might've expected had he been the monster she'd been near to thinking him. Her adrenaline-driven terror had drained away, and she saw him, really saw
him
in the moonlight. Clearly, with all of her senses fully charged.

He was a man, and he'd called her his woman. Defending her from the panther who'd been poised to attack her didn't make Alexios a monster. It didn't make him a hero, either, on a pedestal and unattainable.

It simply made him a man who wanted to protect his woman. Even though she wasn't the type to need protecting—in fact, was usually the one doing the protecting—she understood. Accepted. Something inside her, something cold and hard that had huddled alone in the dark for far too long, unfurled a tiny, cautious tendril of warmth.

Holding her wounded side with one hand, she held the other out to him. His eyes changed, widened a little, as if he'd been afraid to hope. But then he came to her and carefully pulled her into his arms, as though she were fragile and he were afraid that she might break with rough handling. He bent his forehead to hers and just rested there for a moment, leaning into her, and she felt an awakening. Finally, perhaps, that metamorphosis.

As though she'd finally come home.

Sam cleared his throat. “Let's get our friend here down to one of the cells and locked up. We've got two dead, Grace.”

“No!” The words sliced into her as if digging a dull blade into her wounded side. “No, oh, God. No. Who?”

“That young guy from Texas, they called him Armadillo?”

“Reynolds,” she said automatically, though she hadn't had time to know him well. What she did know of him sent pain shooting through her at the realization that she'd never again hear his Texas-is-bigger jokes; never again share a smile with the friendly, kind man who'd been so dedicated to the cause.

But Sam had said
two
dead. “And the other?”

“Smith,” he said, his face going dark and hard. “Alexios took care of the one who got her, but it was too late. She . . . well, it was quick, if that's any comfort.”

Grace's lungs suddenly couldn't expand. Not Smith. Though it was stupid and ridiculous and Smith's death was in no way about Grace, she couldn't help but remember her last, unkind thoughts about the woman. Just because Smith had been friendly to Alexios.

“She was so young,” she cried out, the hot, burning tears sliding down her face. “She couldn't have been more than twenty-five.”

Sam cocked his head to the side and stared at her with a curious expression on his face. “Honey,” he finally said, his voice gentle. “So are you.”

She couldn't respond, couldn't explain. Could only stand there mutely shaking her head back and forth in denial and sorrow.

Sam took a step toward her, but then appeared to think better of it. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Michelle and I are going to take the injured to see a doctor friend of mine. Just so happens I know a retired army doc who has a little place not too far from here. He said give them a call anytime I need them, so I took him up on it. He and his wife are expecting us. She's some kind of big deal in Florida politics, and I know for a fact they've been to the house of that Vonos son of a bitch. Maybe I can get a little information while our friends are getting patched up.”

Grace nodded, trying desperately to think. To focus on what still needed to be done. “He's still unconscious,” she said, gesturing toward the fallen panther. “We're going to have to carry him.”

“I'll do it,” Alexios said. “It's the least I can do.” He bent down and scooped the injured man, now fully human, up off the ground.

Sam stopped him with a hand on his arm and a look. “It doesn't have to be only you, son. We may not be from Atlantis, but we do the best we can, and we're on your side.”

Alexios stopped, and a trace of a smile crossed his face, perhaps at being called “son” by a man centuries younger than he. “Trust me, my friend. If I were able to bestow honorary Atlantean citizenship, your name would be very high on my list. You're a magician with that Glock. But this thug's weight is nothing to me. If you'd show me to the cell you think would best hold him, I would appreciate that. And then we need to get you and the wounded to your doctor friend's place.”

Grace started walking, proud that she could stand mostly upright, despite the jagged tear still seeping blood from her side. “Okay, let's do this.”

With that, she headed down the stairs in front of them, her heart in her throat as she saw how many of her people were wounded—and how badly. Michelle knelt on the ground near Smith, weeping. Shame tasted like bile in Grace's mouth as she realized she'd never even known Smith's first name.

She trudged over to Michelle, but stopped when she reached Reynolds's broken and bloody body. His neck tilted his head at an unnatural angle to his shoulders, and his arms and legs sprawled like a discarded child's toy. She knelt down next to him and gently, so gently, moved his shoulders and limbs and repositioned his head so that it lined up with his body. Although it was an observation she'd made before, it surprised her again how very heavy it was, a dead body. Or perhaps the weight was some extra burden that death conveyed when the lightness and buoyancy of the soul fled for what she still believed to be heaven.

A place she would never see. She could never expunge the stains on her soul. Her tears dripped steadily down her face, falling on the dead man's shirt, until Michelle knelt down beside her and gathered Grace into her arms for a hug.

“I know,” Michelle said brokenly. “I know. They didn't know enough to face this—”

Epiphany struck. Grace pulled away from the offered comfort and climbed slowly and painfully to her feet, trying not to grimace or actually shout the word
ouch
like an idiot. “That's it. That's what has been biting at the back of my lizard brain. How did they know?”

Michelle looked up, tilting her head. “How did they know? They didn't—”

“No. Not the recruits. How did the shifters know to come after us? We've done everything possible to make everybody believe we're actors and battle reenactors. We even spent a day last week putting fliers up all over town for our debut performance in two months. Why would they come after us?”

Alexios and Sam walked out of the cell block just then, minus their prisoner. Sam had his dog on a leash. Blue. She'd forgotten all about him.

“Where was he?”

“I'd shut him in my room while we were at dinner and hadn't let him out yet,” Sam said. “He damn near tore my room apart, probably trying to get out here when he heard those cats.”

Blue started baying, a deep bass boom of a bark, and straining at his leash to get away from Sam and explore.

“Blue. Down.” Sam rapped out the command and the dog instantly sat, then lay down at Sam's feet.

“I'm glad he's okay,” Grace said, a tiny thread of relief winding its way through the crushing sorrow. “And I know it doesn't make sense to be so happy about a dog when humans are dead, but there it is. Nothing tonight makes sense. I was just asking how they knew we were here.”

“That's a damned good question,” Sam said. “Somebody knows something they shouldn't, or somebody talked.”

Alexios lifted his shoulders and let them fall in apparent nonchalance, but the expression on his face promised a slow and painful death to whoever had betrayed them. “There are always traitors in war. We find them. We deal with them.”

Michelle scrubbed tears from her face. “Perhaps it was a coincidence.”

“I don't believe in coincidence,” Grace and Alexios replied simultaneously. They shared a glance filled with understanding and something more.

Implacable determination, maybe.

“I set a guard,” Sam said. “Donaldson is watching over the prisoner, but we've got him locked in real tight. Neither man nor panther can get out of that stone cell. One thing those Spaniards were good at was building a fort.”

Grace nodded. “Okay then. You need to get going.”

She moved forward, helping Sam and Michelle escort the injured through the door built into the portcullis and out of the fort to the two Jeeps. Alexios brought up the rear, hands on his daggers and eyes constantly scanning the area for further threat.