Wild Hearts in Atlantis (2 page)

Ven shot Bastien a look. “It’s not Justice, big guy. Conlan wants you to do it.”

Bastien’s jaw dropped open, then he caught himself and grinned, catching on. “Right. Very funny. Make the all-brawn, no-brains of the organization take on a political role. Sure. Hey, you almost had me, Ven. You’re good.”

But Ven wasn’t smiling. “You’re the only one in Atlantis who thinks your value is merely in your physical strength, Bastien. Seems to me Poseidon isn’t gonna let you get away with that much longer, but that’s between you and the sea god.”

Before Bastien could think of a reply, a cold wind swept through the warm, sunny space, then shimmered into shape. Speak of the devil.

Devil—Poseidon’s high priest—nigh on the same difference.

Alaric invoked the fear of the sea god in anybody who dared cross his path. Not many did.

Alaric’s eerie green eyes glowed with power and then narrowed, as if he were thought-mining Bastien’s musings. But nobody these days had the ancient Atlantean power to sift the thoughts of another not soul-melded to him. Or so Bastien hoped.

Alaric finally spoke, fiery gaze boring into Ven. “What the sea god
wills
is beyond your limited knowledge of such affairs. Perhaps you should perform your duty as the King’s Vengeance and leave the responsibilities of Poseidon’s Temple to me.”

Ven inclined his head. “As you say. I’m here to give Bastien his marching orders, since the Council called Conlan back into closed session.”

He turned back to Bastien, who was still reeling, trying to process. “You remember that hot ranger you saved from that gang of bikers in Miami a couple of years ago? National Park Service chick? Smelled like a shape-shifter?”

Bastien felt his insides shrivel up a little even as he nodded. “Kat Fiero? Yeah. Vague recollection.”

Vague recollection of that day, twenty-one months and three weeks ago.

“Vague recollection, my ass,” Ven said, grinning. “It was the one time Mr. Even Keel got his smooth riled.”

Too late, Bastien realized he shouldn’t have come up with her name so fast, because now everybody else in the room was staring at him. Curious. Considering. Maybe, in Justice’s case, mocking.

At least he hadn’t said anything
really
stupid.

Like mentioning how the sunlight had kissed her tawny hair into spun gold.

Or how the strength in her tall, perfectly shaped, curvy body had shot him into waking fantasies so explicit he’d had to leave the beachfront bar and walk directly into the ocean, fully clothed, in an attempt to cool down. After he’d battled his way through a half-dozen or so vamps who’d thought to play with a beautiful shape-shifter caught on her own.

Mr. Even Keel.
If only they knew. The calm amiability he fought so hard to present to the world was a joke. Decades of battling the evil that stalked humankind had withered the rationality within him. If they only knew how close he’d come to going full-on berserker after discovering what the vampires had done to the babies in that orphanage in Romania, they’d be afraid of him.

Anyone sane
should
be afraid of what he’d turned into, after he’d been forced to clean up the mess.

Babies turned vampire were an abomination, but his soul would never recover from what he’d been forced to do. Three cycles of purification in the Temple had not been enough. Nothing would
ever
be enough to cleanse the stain on his soul. A woman like Kat deserved better than the monster he’d become that day.

“Yeah,” he repeated, voice raspy. “I remember her. Mostly how you were hitting on her and she blew you off,” he said, trying to turn the heat back on Ven.

Ven grinned. “Yeah, she blew me and my attempts at charm back on our collective asses. Point is, there’s a nest of shape-shifters in the Big Cypress National Preserve that’s gone rogue, in defiance of the big-shot Florida alpha’s edict that they ally with the vamps. We’re hoping we can get them on our side. The Big Cypress group is panthers, and the alpha is a truly badass dude named Ethan.”

“And Kat?”

“She’s our way in, we hope. From what we hear, she’s half human. Intel from Quinn.”

Bastien slowly nodded. Lady Riley’s sister was one of the leaders of the human rebellion against vamp and shape-shifter domination, and she tended to have extremely good information. “That would make sense. Kat seemed…different. I
could smell the big cat, feel its power under her skin, but it wasn’t the same as your run-of-the-mill furball.”

Justice whistled. “You felt her cat’s power
under her skin
? What else did you
feel
? Just how hot is this chick?”

Gut clenching, Bastien whirled to face Justice and whipped the hockey puck across the room at him. Justice jerked his head to the side, and Bastien watched in horror as the puck buried itself in the wall next to the warrior’s face.

“What in the nine hells was that?” Denal whooped, then strode over to pull the puck out of the wall.

It took him three tries.

Bastien felt his face flush hot with shame. A good warrior never lost control. His years of training had drummed
that
into his brain every bit as much as the arts of swordplay and battle strategy.

What had come over him?

An image of the curve of Kat’s neck flashed into his mind.

Oh, damn.

He bowed to Justice. “My deepest apologies, Lord Justice. I don’t know…I—”

Justice cut him off, voice gone a deadly calm. “If you were anyone else, I’d kill you for that. You’ve saved my ass enough times to earn a free shot. But watch yourself in the future, Bastien.”

Alaric glided noiselessly across the room to stand in front of Bastien and stare up into his eyes. The fierce green glow of the priest’s gaze seared heat across Bastien’s face, and he wondered if Poseidon would use Alaric to strike him down for endangering another of Prince Conlan’s elite guard.

Wondered if any punishment the sea god had in his capricious mind could be any more dangerous than facing Kat again. In the nearly four hundred years of his existence, no female had affected him like that one. His duty was to protect humanity, but not once in his long centuries as a warrior had he taken it so very personally.

She wasn’t even human.

She was
forbidden.

The priest finally spoke. “Interesting. This mission will prove very…interesting. I may have to visit south Florida soon.”

And then Alaric shimmered back into mist and swept right off the balcony, leaving Bastien to face the warriors who were his closest friends—and the mission he wasn’t anywhere near qualified to handle.

Oh, yeah. I’m golden.

Kat sat in her Jeep, shirt soaked through with sweat from the heat of south Florida in autumn, and wondered when a simple trip to the grocery store had turned into a test of courage. The thermometer at the bank had read eighty-five degrees, not all that unusual for this time of year, and the wild cat in her wanted to curl up in the sun on a rock somewhere.

Take a nap, maybe.

Take down a sheep or two.

“Yeah, right. Take a break from reality.”

The reality in which Kat Fiero, official National Park Service ranger and daughter to the former alpha of the Big Cypress panther coalition, had never once taken down a sheep. Or a goat. Or even a little bitty squirrel.

“Fake shape-shifter, useless excuse for a panther, worthless bitch,” she muttered. “Okay, that pretty much covers the range of happiness I’ll have to deal with if Fallon or her minions are in there, hanging out in the tuna fish aisle.”

She grabbed her wallet from her backpack and shoved it into her shorts pocket, then got out and slammed the door. Eyed the slut-red Jaguar with FALLON1 license plates, felt her lips curl back from her teeth.

The world is going to hell in a coffin, and I have time to worry about what these morons think of me why, exactly?

She thought back to the headlines she’d choked down with bitter coffee and overcooked eggs at Thelma’s grill. More bills passing Congress, more extra goodies tacked on to the 2006 Non-Human Species Protection Act, as if the poor humans were any danger to the vamps. Most of ’em cowered in their homes at night, still unable to believe—even after a decade—that the things that went bump in the night were real.

Vampires and shape-shifters both.

Her dad hadn’t wanted any of it. “Upsets the natural order of things, Kat,” he’d said, again and again. “We’re meant to stay in the wild, remain true to our natures. Not play at being reporters and law enforcement and other
civilized
members of society.”

But he’d married a human, hadn’t he? And then he’d died, still trying to hide how disappointed he was in his only child. The daughter who’d never been able to shift. Not even once.

Now half the rangers she worked with—and a good third of the local paranormal ops unit—were shape-shifters. “Except me,” she muttered as she pushed open the door to the store and felt the wonderfully cool currents of air-conditioned air sweep out toward her. “I’m only
half
shape-shifter. I’m just a—”

“Freak!” The voice rang out with unsuppressed glee. “We were just talking about you, ranger freak show.”

Kat dropped her hand away from the butt of her service revolver, regretting yet again that bitchiness wasn’t grounds for shooting under National Park Service regs. “Fallon. Always a pleasure. Or, wait—never a pleasure, actually.”

She watched, eyes narrowed, as the petite—
damn her
—bane of her existence stalked up to her on the kind of five-inch-heeled shoes Kat would never in her life wear. Then she allowed herself a little smugness because Fallon still had to look
up
at her. Being nearly six feet tall wasn’t always all bad.

Fallon ran a hand through her masses of black curls, arched her back, and acted like a feline in heat. Which she probably was.

Bitch.

The momentary pride Kat had taken in her height shriveled
like her self-esteem, and she went back to feeling like a pudgy Amazon next to the delicate beauty. Somehow, she was sure Fallon knew it, too. Too tall, too strong, just too
everything
for the human males. And too
wrong
for the shifters. Kat would never be the belle of the ball; she was long since resigned to it. But she’d like, just once, to get an invitation to the damn dance. Just once find a man who wasn’t intimidated or disgusted by her. She wasn’t sure which was worse.

“Are you coming to the gathering tonight? Oh—wait. That’s right. You’re not really one of us. You’re probably not invited,” Fallon said, voice dangerously near a purr.

Kat wanted desperately to walk away. Wouldn’t give Fallon the satisfaction of seeing her cowardice. “I was invited. Just not interested,” she replied, putting all the bored indifference she could manage into her voice.

Fallon arched one eyebrow. “Really? And yet I would have thought your ranger instincts would have gone crazy over the mere idea of us forming an alliance with the Lord High Vampire of the southeast district. I’ve heard he and his blood pride have
interesting
tastes in entertainment.”

Kat had heard the reports. Humans tortured for days, used as playthings for the bastard’s sick, perverted pleasure. She clenched her hands into fists, barely realizing that her nails were cutting into her palms. “You’re lying,” she said flatly. “There’s no way Ethan would join forces with the vamps. Especially not Terminus’s bunch. The two of them nearly killed each other last year after Terminus played his games with three of Ethan’s youngest members.”

“Haven’t you heard? Terminus is dead. Some new gang in the northeast who’ve allied with those idiot rebels or something. Anyway, things change.” Fallon started to walk off, turned. “Not everything, apparently. Still not a real cat, are you? Tell me, how does it feel to work with wild panthers and realize you’ll never, ever be able to become one?”

Kat tightened her lips, knowing anything she said would only prolong the encounter.

Fallon laughed, and the sound of it scraped like shards of glass over an open wound. “Poor little freak Kat, with her pathetic human mother. And really, what were they
thinking
to name you Kat when you’ll never be one?”

As Fallon clacked away toward the door on her ridiculous heels, Kat tried to think up a blistering comeback. Unfortunately, the grief burning in her throat blocked the words from coming out, just as the human DNA swirling in her bloodstream blocked the panther from coming out.

Pathetic.

Ethan leaned against the wall nearest to the sealed chamber’s door and looked around, fighting every instinct in both of his dual natures in order to appear relaxed and nonchalant. His cat had gone feral beast inside him—wanted to rip through his skin and attack the bloodsuckers in the room. Panthers didn’t care much for the smell of dead things that walked around.

But politics was a hunt better played by the human side of his existence. The vamp standing in the center of the room was a master gamesman and expected easy domination over Ethan.

Organos was in for a nasty surprise.