Oceanborne (23 page)
“Exactly. So, to keep you from being unduly frightened, I made you see me as a human male, not as I really am.”
“What? Have you got webbed feet? Gills? Are you some kind of super lizard with a dorsal fin down your spine?”
He was looking at her with such sad eyes that she eased up on the sarcasm. “Orion ⦠Is that even your name? Do you have names, or is it just, âHere, fishy, fishy.' ”
“Orion is the name my parents gave me.”
“So you just came up out of the waves and picked my boat to hop into?”
He grimaced. “Actually, I was in trouble. Something nasty was trying to eat me. A lot of something nasties. There were more than I could fight off. You came along in your Zodiac at the right time.”
“So you jumped into my boat, and what? Hypnotized me into thinking you were human?” A school of bait fish swirled by, pursued by several larger fish.
“Something like that.”
“So this isn't what you really look like?”
He shook his head. “I know this is hard for you, Elena, doubly hard because you're a woman of science. I respect that, and I respect your intelligence.”
“So much that you had to string me out with a pack of lies about being from Atlantis?”
“Be rational. How long can you hold your breath? A minute? Two? And how long have we been down? You're with me. That's why you aren't drowning. Humans came from the sea, in the dawn of time. Some say we were once the same, humans and Atlanteans, but we've evolved in different ways. We have different strengths and weaknesses.”
“Which doesn't explain how you managed to hide ⦠What? A city? Right under our feet?”
“Atlantis isn't in the Aegean or the Mediterranean. If your father claimed to have found it, what he actually came upon was one of our old palaces or outposts. The cityâthe kingdom is much larger. I can't tell you where it lies, for obvious reasons, but humans have explored less than two percent of the sea floor. Most of our planet is water, yet your kind knows less about the oceans than the surface of the moon.”
“So why hasn't anyone else stumbled on one of these palaces in the Mediterranean? In the last three thousand years?” She was intrigued by his argument, but she wasn't gullible. He hadn't convinced her yet.
“Illusion again, not just created by an individual, but by hundreds of trained Atlanteans. Explorers see what we want them to see. And remember, the floor of the ocean is constantly rising. Many of our large structures are beneath the floor surface. Keeping traces of our civilization hidden requires enormous energy, and it must go on constantly. If your father did find proof of our culture, it was simply an error on the part of our scientists.”
“But why would you go to all the trouble?”
“Because humans and Atlanteans have been enemies for at least five thousand years. Think of it. Every one of your societies has a story about the Great Flood. Even the Eskimos of North America.”
“We don't call them Eskimos anymore,” she corrected him. “They're âindigenous peoples' or known by their tribal names.”
“Don't be stubborn, Elena. Let your mind open to the possibility that we might exist. I proved that the fairies exist, didn't I?”
She narrowed her gaze. “How do I know that you aren't the result of a brain tumor?”
He shrugged and grinned. “I've been called a lot of things by beautiful women, but never a tumor. I assure you, I'm as real as you. If you cut me, I'll bleed. I could show you, if it would make you feel better.” He slipped the sword from his belt sheath and raised it over his left arm.
“No. No more blood. I've seen enough blood. What I want to know isâ”
“Shhh!” His eyes widened, and he seized her arm. “Something's happening. Can't you feel it?”
The sand beneath her feet seemed to shudder, and the earth groaned. The tide seemed to stop flowing, and the fish around them began to swim frantically out toward deeper water.
“Come, Elena,” he said. “We've got to get out of here!”
“What is it?”
“Earthquake.”
CHAPTER 21
T
he rumbling grew louder, and plaster fell from the ceiling. Greg rolled over and blinked, trying to decide if this was a bad dream or if the bed under him was really shaking. His head felt like a bucket of wet cement that had been mixed with pure Scotch, stood in the sun for three days, and started to ferment. Another chunk of the plaster overhead broke loose and fell onto his chest. Greg's stomach heaved and he supported himself with one hand to keep from falling out of bed.
he rumbling grew louder, and plaster fell from the ceiling. Greg rolled over and blinked, trying to decide if this was a bad dream or if the bed under him was really shaking. His head felt like a bucket of wet cement that had been mixed with pure Scotch, stood in the sun for three days, and started to ferment. Another chunk of the plaster overhead broke loose and fell onto his chest. Greg's stomach heaved and he supported himself with one hand to keep from falling out of bed.
Something soft gave way under his weight. A woman screamed. He stared as Michelle's mascara-smeared face appeared from under the sheets. “What's happening?” she cried.
Greg was up and moving. He was stark naked, but the chair where he'd tossed his pants last night was gone. A gaping hole in the floor testified to the violence of whatever was happening. “Come on!” he yelled. “We've got to get out of here!”
What was Michelle doing in his bed?
The state of her undress when she tumbled out answered his question. She was wearing his red-and-blue Hamilton-plaid boxers, his tie, and nothing else. Her short blond hair stood up like a rooster's comb, but the rest of her was prime as she struggled to hold up the oversized shorts with one hand and pull on her gold flip-flops with the other.
The state of her undress when she tumbled out answered his question. She was wearing his red-and-blue Hamilton-plaid boxers, his tie, and nothing else. Her short blond hair stood up like a rooster's comb, but the rest of her was prime as she struggled to hold up the oversized shorts with one hand and pull on her gold flip-flops with the other.
The plate glass along the outer wall billowed in and then out, before crumbling in jagged sections. Sounds of screaming, cars crashing, and glass breaking poured in the gaps left by the missing windows. Greg smelled smoke, and the building shook again, harder.
“To hell with your shoes!” he said. “Let's get out of here!”
Michelle thrust her left foot into the remaining flip-flop, grabbed his shirt off the foot of the bed, and leaped across a growing fissure in the floor to reach a small, red makeup case.
“Are you nuts?” Greg bellowed.
“I need it!”
He grabbed a handful of her hair. She struggled free and grabbed the case. Greg leaped over the now two-foot wide crack, threw her over his shoulder, jumped back, and carried Michelle, red case and all toward the door.
The hall was filled with panicked guests, all in various states of undress. Two couples were standing near the elevator pounding on the down button. Greg dropped Michelle roughly onto her feet. “You're on your own now, babe,” he said.
He ran past the group by the elevator and headed toward the fire door that opened onto the stairs. The smoke was worse here in the corridor, but Michelle was quick. Somehow, she got in front of him and beat him to the stair door and blocked his way. “Get those assholes by the elevator,” she shouted. “If they get on, they'll all die.”
“You're crazy! Who do you think I am, fuckin' Batman ?”
What floor were they on? Third? Fourth? Not too high, but too high off the ground to jump
.
What floor were they on? Third? Fourth? Not too high, but too high off the ground to jump
.
“You're G.R.'s son,” Michelle said. “If you leave those poor bastards to fry, you'll never be able to look yourself in the mirror again!”
Two more people ran up behind him, and Michelle stepped aside to allow them escape down the stairs.
Greg scowled. All he had to do was shove the stupid bitch out of the way. If those idiots didn't know better than to take an elevator when the hotel was coming down around their ears, they deserved to die. Natural selection and all.
Steel and concrete groaned. The noise was deafening. Chunks of wall and ceiling fell and crashed and rolled on the hall carpet. The shaking started again, not as strong, but lasting longer. Greg glanced back at Michelle. Her jaw was set and she stared him straight in the eye. The top of her spiked hair came only to his chin, but she looked formidable.
“I'm getting out of here alive,” she warned when the grinding subsided enough for him to hear her, “and I'll tell your father how brave you were when the earthquake hit.”
His dad with his damned medals and Vietnam War stories. Living with his old man would be impossible if he had any excuse to call his son a coward.
Cursing, Greg turned back toward the crowd at the elevator. Unbelievably, the elevator door slid open. As Greg dashed up, he could see the empty shaft gaping open like a black hole. There was no elevator waiting, but that didn't keep the idiots in the back from shoving the people nearest the door.
A gray-haired woman in a maid's uniform tripped and fell forward. The old man next to her grabbed the back of her blouse, catching her as she teetered over the abyss. Greg shouldered through, seized her by the right arm, and dragged her shrieking and sobbing back into the hallway. “Get away, all of you!” he ordered. “Take the stairs, unless you don't mind a hundred-foot drop!”
A tall man in a three-piece suit with blood running down his face started to protest in a language Greg couldn't understand. Greg spun him around and half pushed, half threw him in the direction of the fire door. “Get moving!” he shouted. “That way out! Everybody! That way!” More people crowded the passageway. “Take the stairs!” Greg bellowed.
At the fire-escape door, he heard Michelle giving her best flight attendant spiel in a firm but efficient voice. “Keep calm! This way! Keep moving! No need to panic! Walk, don't run! Follow the stairs to the emergency exit!”
Greg's eyes and nose were running. His throat felt like he'd been eating ground glass. Smoke poured up the elevator shaft in black clouds and spewed out into the corridor, but the crowd did exactly as they'd been told. “Anybody else?” he shouted, when he couldn't see any more guests or employees down the hall. “Anybody still in their rooms?”
“All out, sir,” a teenage boy in a bellhop's uniform tugged at his elbow. “We checked every room on this floor.”
So much plaster dust was in the air that Greg had to find his way back to the stairs by trailing his hand along one wall. The thought that he wouldn't find it made the hair stand up at his nape. He was scared enough to piss himself.
Some hero
, he thought.
Some hero
, he thought.
“Come on, Greg!” Michelle called. “Hurry! I think the steps are going.”
“I'm here. Wait for me!” His breath came in choking gulps.
They were the last ones out, and they took the stairs two at a time. At one point, they found their way partially blocked by fallen debris, but the people ahead of them scrambled over. Greg gave the elderly maid a boost, then helped Michelle to find her footing on the crumbling concrete.
The walls were growing hot, and Greg's eyes were so full of smoke and falling crap that he could hardly see. He was coughing his lungs out, but he kept going. He could feel cool air on his face from the open door below, and nothing was stopping him from reaching it.
They burst out of the emergency exit hand in hand, and threw themselves down on the grass. The evacuees from the hotel were all around them, some standing stupidly and staring, a few sobbing, while others ran away. Greg started to heave and threw up what remained of last night's porterhouse and a gut full of Scotch.
When he managed to get one eye open, he saw Michelle sitting cross-legged a few feet away. Her face and hair were black with smoke and caked with plaster. She'd lost her jacket, and his shirt hung in shreds, but she was laughing like hell.
“Thought you said you weren't Batman,” she croaked. “Looked like it to me.”
He leaned over and vomited again. When he could talk again, he'd curse her until a fly wouldn't land on her. He groaned and sank down, but she wouldn't leave him in peace. Like a damned greenhead horsefly, she kept pestering him.
“I think ⦔ She broke off and coughed, spit, and coughed again. “We need to get out of here.”
Through his one open eye, he saw she was still clutching the damned makeup case.
“This hotel is right on the beach,” she reminded him.
“So?” It seemed to him that the tremors had almost stopped. If the ground would stay still and the remains of the hotel didn't fall on him, his stomach might stop turning inside out.
“After an earthquake, there's always a chance of a tsunami.” Michelle pulled at his arm. “We need to move.”
“A what?” Greg threw up again, but this time there was nothing but bile, and it burned his throat like acid.
“Tidal wave,” she said. “Remember Japan? This ground isn't high enough. We could have a fifty-foot wall of water hit us.”
That got his attention. “A tidal wave?” He wished he'd had the sense to stay in Texas. They had tornados sometimes, but the ground had the sense to stay in one place and walls of water didn't threaten to drown him. Instantly, he was on his feet and moving away from the sea. He looked around for a vehicle, but the parking lot was on the far side of the hotel and he didn't want to waste time.
Michelle seemed to read his mind. “There!” She pointed to a snub-nosed sedan sitting catty-corner in the middle of a dead-end street.
He couldn't read the Greek lettering painted on the side, but there was a light attached to the roof. “A cop car? Twenty bucks says there's no keys in it.”
“Lucky for you my brother taught me the fine art of hotwiring.” Michelle ran toward the sedan, makeup case in hand.
There was nothing for him to do but go after her, or sit there looking like an ass. Around them was sheer pandemonium, people screaming, smoke pouring out the hotel windows, dogs running loose, sirens and alarms blaring.
Michelle seemed oblivious to it all. She headed for the police car like a retriever after a downed duck. Greg glanced back over his shoulder at the ocean. It seemed as calm as a millpond, but he remembered those TV news clips from the Christmas tidal wave in Indonesia, and he had no intentions of having his face plastered across the screen as one of the victims.
By the time he reached the car, Michelle was already attacking the ignition with what looked like an oversized nail file. She had the engine running in two minutes flat.
“Move over, and let me drive,” he ordered.
“Bullshit. Fasten your seatbelt and hold on.” She pointed back the way they'd come.
Greg looked. It was weird. It looked to him as though the surf was moving out, leaving a strip of dark, wet sand a lot wider than it had been the last time he'd looked.
Michelle tossed the red makeup case in the back seat, threw the car into first, and took off over the curb and across an open lot. She hit the accelerator hard. The little sedan bounced and skidded but kept moving forward. Greg had a brief glimpse of a fat man in uniform running after the car and blowing a whistle.
Greg's head hit the ceiling and slammed into the window frame before he got his seatbelt fastened. He had to give it to her: The bitch could drive. Maybe better than him. She took a sharp corner around a building, plowed through another hotel parking lot, and took a narrow road uphill away from the beach. Pedestrians leaped out of her way. Cars honked, and drivers cursed and waved their fists in a universal message of disapproval, but Michelle only pressed harder on the gas pedal.
“What if you're wrong about the tidal wave?” he shouted above the screeching tires.
She laughed. “Then you'll have to call your father and get him to bail us out of a Greek jail for stealing a police car.”
“All right. All right,” he agreed, getting into the mood. “Bonnie and Clyde. But I've got one question.”
She maneuvered the vehicle around a stalled tour bus, took out a sign for a museum, and made it back onto the street without blowing a tire. Part of the sign clung to the undercarriage of the car for a few blocks and then fell away. “Which is?” she asked.
“You seem to have your shit together. Why the damned makeup case? Got money, drugs, or jewelry in it?”
“Nope.” She took her eyes off the road long enough to wink at him and raise her left hand. On her third finger was a wide gold band. “Our marriage certificate.”
“Marriage certificate? What the hell are you talking about? I wasn't that drunk last night.”
“The hell you weren't.” She swerved right to miss a donkey, left to avoid an abandoned motor scooter. The little car fishtailed, but kept rolling. “We were married by a Greek Orthodox priest,” she said. “In a five-hundred-year-old church overlooking the sea. Saint Philippos.”
“A priest? He wouldn't. Foreigners can't get married that easy here. I know very wellâ”
“You know shit, Greg. You told him I was preggers and that you'd do the legal part later. You also wrote a company check for a large donation to the church. I've got the ring and the good father's signature on our marriage license.”
“You can't blackmail me.”
“Not trying to. And after last night, I could be carrying your son and heir. You insisted on riding bareback, cowboy. You told me that was the only way for a real man to goâand during my most fertile time of the month, too.”
He swore. “You won't get away with it.”
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