Dark and Deadly: Eight Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance (30 page)

Atlantis, six months later

Rose and her husband sat on a low stone wall and watched, from a safe distance, as a flock of basilisks ran and played in the fantastically beautiful palace garden.

“This was the perfect solution,” she said, leaning against him, still a little drunk on the high of their most recent round of lovemaking, which had taken place in their very own guest suite in the Atlantean palace. She almost had to pinch herself to believe that it was true, but then Queen Riley walked by carrying her son and waved.

To Rose.

“A queen of a mythical lost continent just waved to me,” she said wonderingly. “To me, little Rose Cardinal of the Cardinal witches from Ohio.”

Alejandro grinned. “Not so mythical or lost anymore. Maybe you should wave back.”

“Oh! Right!” She did, enthusiastically, and then her gaze returned to the basilisks, and the shimmer of the magical force field around their enclosure. “They’re perfectly safe here, and they can’t hurt anyone.”

Alejandro shook his head. “Who would have believed that the head gardener of this wonderland could actually be almost legally blind?”

“He sees with his magic, not his eyes,” Rose told him, although he already knew, of course. “Basilisks will never be able to affect him, and he told me he actually likes them a lot. Treats them as pets.”

Alejandro pulled her closer and kissed her again, and her heartbeat sped up like it did every single time he kissed her.

“Speaking of pets, I think we should get a dog to play with Bob,” Alejandro said. “I’ve always wanted a dog. And you owe me, since Gianni glares at me every time we go for pizza.”

It was true. Gianni had never gotten over his initial dislike of Alejandro. Maybe someday. The man
was
more than a hundred years old. It might just take some time.

“Dog?” Alejandro prompted.

“We can,” Rose said slowly. “But we might be a little busy in a few months, so maybe we can adopt an older dog who won’t be as demanding.”

Alejandro, enjoying his first vacation from his new job at the Cincinnati office of P-Ops, looked puzzled. “What do you mean? Big witches conclave? Granny secretly planning to learn how to drive race cars?”

Rose smiled and shared another, altogether different secret, and then she had to kiss away the single tear that her big, strong, alpha male husband let fall as he placed his hand on her belly and the new life starting inside her.

“Together, forever,” he said, his voice husky, repeating the words he told her every single day. The words that were inscribed inside her wedding ring.

“Maybe our baby can be friends with the little prince,” she said, and then she froze. “Do you remember--”

“Your grandmother’s prophecy?”

“Oh, no. ‘Your eldest child will rule in an isle of myth’,” Rose said. “You don’t think—surely not?”

“This we worry about much,
much
later,” Alejandro said firmly.

She laughed and kissed him with all the love in her heart, and then she shared another secret. “So, you know how I’ve been talking about going into business with a line of potions for every conversational need? I found a possible business partner, and I set up a meeting for when we get home. I’d love for you to meet him, but you have to promise not to shoot him.”

Alejandro tilted his head. “Why in the world would I even think about shooting your new business partner?”

Rose grinned at him. “Mac told me you might try to shoot him. Because, and keep an open mind here--”

“Just
tell
me,” her wonderful, sexy, impatient husband urged.

“He’s actually kind of a troll.”

The End

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Alejandro’s Sorceress
. I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it.

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.

Hell is empty

And all the Devils are here.

--
William Shakespeare,
The Tempest

Capitol city of Atlantis, Present Day

Conlan waved a hand in front of the portal and briefly wondered whether its magic would even recognize a warrior who hadn’t passed through its gateway for more than seven years.

Seven years, three weeks, and eleven days, to be precise.

As he waited, up to his chest in the healing water, death taunted him -- flickering at the edges of his vision, shimmering in the deep blue ocean currents surrounding him, pulsing in the scarlet blood that dripped steadily from his side and leg. He laughed without humor, propping himself up with a hand on his knee.

“If that bitch-vamp Anubisa couldn’t break me, I’m sure as hell not giving up now,” he snarled to the empty darkness surrounding him.

Iridescent aqua lights flashed as if in response to his defiance, and the portal widened for him. Two men – two
warriors
– stood at guard, widened eyes and parted lips mirroring identical expressions of shock as they stared through the transparent membrane of the portal. He shouldered his way through the portal’s opening, which enlarged to fit whatever or whoever it deemed worthy of passage.

“Prince Conlan! You’re alive,” one said.

“Mostly,” he replied, then stepped into Atlantis. He drank in the first sight of his beloved homeland in more than seven years, lungs expanding to taste the freshness of sea-filtered air. In the middle distance, the gold-veined white marble pillars fronting Poseidon’s temple glowed with the reflected hues of artificial sunset. Conlan’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of it.

A sight he’d been sure he’d never experience again.

Especially when she’d laughingly proposed taking his eyes.

“A High Prince with no vision. What a delicious metaphor for the loss of your philosopher-king father, young princeling. Why don’t you beg?”

She’d strolled around him, flicking the silver-barb-tipped whip almost leisurely at him, as he stood, helpless, in chains made for creatures borne of deeper hells. Extending one delicate finger, she’d touched the droplets of blood that sprang up so eagerly in the wake of her whip.

Then she’d brought her finger to her mouth, smiling.

“But you
will
beg. Just like your father begged when I sliced the flesh off of your mother as she yet lived,” she’d purred, evil mixed with a hideous lust in her eyes.

He’d roared his hatred and defiance for hours.

He’d even wept, driven to madness from the pain, on seven separate occasions.

Once during each year of his imprisonment.

But he’d
never
begged.

“But
she
will,” he said, voice hoarse with the effort of remaining upright. “She will beg, before I’m done with her.”

“Highness?” The guards rushed forward to assist him, yelling out for aid. He whipped his head up, teeth bared, growling like the animal he’d become. They both stopped, mid-step. Frozen in place.

Unsure how to react to royalty gone feral.

Conlan staggered forward, determined to take the first steps onto his native soil without aid.

“We must inform Alaric immediately,” said the older, more experienced warrior of the two.
Marcus. Marius, maybe?
Conlan focused, certain he must know the man.

It was important that he remember things.

Yes,
Marcus
.

“You’re bleeding, Highness.”

“Mostly,” he repeated, stumbling forward another step. Then the world spiraled down to black.

***

Ven stood in the observation chamber, looking down on the hall of healing below, where Poseidon’s high priest, clearly exhausted, labored over Ven’s brother. It took one hell of a lot to drain the energy out of Alaric. He was rumored to be the most powerful high priest who had ever served the sea god.

Not that warriors knew much about the difference between one priest and another. Or, usually, gave much of a shit. Except, right now, he cared about that distinction.

A lot.

Ven clenched the railing, fingers digging into the soft wood, as he thought about what exactly Anubisa must have done to Conlan. He knew what she’d done to Alexios. One of Conlan’s most trusted guards, the Seven, Alexios had spent two years under Anubisa’s tender ministrations. Hers and those of her evil apostates of Algolagnia, who drew their only sexual pleasure from pain and torture.

Then she’d left him -- naked and near death -- to die. In a pile of pig shit on Crete. The vamp goddess of death was big on symbolism. Maybe something she’d inherited from her father-husband, Chaos. And that was seriously twisted right there.

It had taken Alaric nearly six months to retrieve the warrior’s memories. That half-year had included two cycles of purification in the Temple to cleanse his soul.

Ven didn’t want to think it – fucking
hated
to think it – but sometimes he wondered if Alexios had
ever
come all the way back from whatever black pit of hell she’d dragged him into.

Still, Alaric had okayed him. Alexios was back as one of the Seven. It was a matter of honor that Ven trust him.

The Seven served as the most trusted guard to the high prince of all Atlantis. Even when he was gone; presumed dead.

They also led and coordinated the teams of warriors who patrolled the surface lands of the earth. Watching over the damn humans, who’d let themselves be herded like – what did the bloodsuckers call them? Sheep?

While Ven and all of the Warriors of Poseidon had to keep to the shadows. Out of sight. Incog-fucking-nito. Defending the landwalkers from the bad asses among the bloodsuckers, the furry monsters, and all the shit that went bump in the night. And, frankly, the bad asses seemed to be in the majority in those particular species most of the time.

And they’d done a damn fine job the past eleven thousand years, give or take. Until the day about ten years ago when the freaks that inhabited the night decided to come out of the coffin. First the vamps, then the shapeshifters. The job of Poseidon’s warriors got about fifty kajillion times harder when that happened.

For whatever reason, Anubisa hadn’t bothered to let her people -- her vamp society -- in on the secret of Atlantis. But Ven knew that could change any minute. If anybody knew about the capriciousness of gods and goddesses, it was an Atlantean.

Doomed to the bottom of the sea at Poseidon’s whim.

Not that he’d ever complain about it. Out
loud
, at least.

Still, it was tough to defend humans when the big, bad, and ugly roamed freely, and the Atlanteans had to stick to the shadows. But Ven had argued the point in the Council until his fact turned blue, and then he’d finally given up. The Elders didn’t want anybody to know about Atlantis, and until Conlan ascended to the throne, nobody could go against their edict.

Ven looked down at his brother again, barely registering the soothing tones of the harps and flutes being played by temple maidens in the alcoves surrounding his brother. The music was supposed to aid in healing.

Ven laughed. Yeah, except Conlan hated that light fluffy Debussy shit. When he ascended to the throne, he’d probably ask for Bruce Springsteen or U2 to play at his coronation.

If. If
Conlan ascended to the throne.

He didn’t even want to think about what would happen if Conlan had gone bad. Because guess who was second in line? Yeah. Ven would go from being King’s Vengeance to high prince in a royal godsdamned minute, and there was no fucking way he was cut out to lead anything.

He looked down at his brother again, lying so still. Conlan had grown up like royalty, honor and duty and all that happy shit ingrained in his soul. But Ven grew up pure street fighter. There was a big, ugly part of his soul. The part that had withered and died when he’d been with his mother at the end, before she died. When she’d begged him to save himself. Keep his brother safe.

He’d promised her, sobbing, as she died.

Great fucking job he’d done of keeping his word.

The wood snapped under his clenched fists.

“Tough wood to break with your bare hands,” observed a dry voice.

Ven didn’t look up at the priest, instead pulling splinters out of his torn and bleeding palms. “Yeah, they don’t make these railings like they used to,” he muttered.

Alaric walked -- more like glided, the man was spooky – up to stand next to him. “I can heal that if you like,” he offered, tone dispassionate.

“I think you’ve done enough healing for one day, don’t you?”

Alaric said nothing, merely looked down over the railing at his sleeping prince.

Ven studied Alaric as the priest watched Conlan. Alaric and Conlan had grown up running around the kingdom like the hellions they were, tearing up the streets and fields with their games and pranks. Rarely reined in by their indulgent parents or a community respectful of the royal heir and his cousin.

Later making their way through the taverns and the barmaids with the same verve and boyish charm.

There was nothing of boyishness about the priest now. He wore the power of his office like a shield of armor. Invisible, but unmistakable. The sharp planes of his face and the hawk-like asceticism of his nose reminded all who confronted him that here was a man of faith; stripped to muscle and bone by the demands of his service.