Atlantium Trilogy I: Bride of Atlantis (2 page)

How had he managed to finagle her into
a cruise, of all things?

Try as she might, she couldn’t seem to
recall how it was that he’d waltzed her onto a cruise ship with no
more than a token protest, when she would ordinarily only have gone
kicking and screaming.

She’d always had a fear of the water,
especially the ocean … any body of water, in fact, that wasn’t
manmade and lined with concrete. The ocean was dark, deep and there
were things in it, live things that bit, stung, and/or devoured the
unwary.

It didn’t help her feelings one iota
that she had company to die with.

“
The ship’s gone. We’re
going to die here,” she muttered, mostly to herself.

The man turned to look at the
departing ship. “I can take you back, if you like.”

Alexis gaped at him, too stunned to
speak for several moments. Hope surged through her again. “You
can?”

He turned back to look at her, almost
pityingly. “There is danger for you there.”

She stared at him. He’d jumped in to
save her. He must have. There was no other explanation for his
appearance.

It would’ve been far more helpful if
he’d run to report it. At least then the ship wouldn’t have sailed
off without them.

“
You can’t help me. Not
unless you can sprout wings,” she snapped sarcastically, knowing
she sounded ungrateful for his attempt to save her, but uncaring.
For chrissake! He hadn’t done a thing but jumped in to drown with
her! How helpful was that?

He looked at her quizzically. “I
can.”

“
Can, what?” she asked,
distracted.

“
Sprout wings, if you like.
Would you prefer that to swimming?”

“
Yeah, right.” It wasn’t bad
enough that she was in the middle of the ocean, treading water,
just waiting to run out of energy and sink to the bottom. She had
to be here with a lunatic.

“
I will show you if you
like,” he offered.

“
Sure. Why not? It’s not
like we have anything else to do,” Alexis snapped sarcastically,
trying to control the shivers that had begun to rack her from head
to toe as the chill from the ocean began to lower her body
temperature.

WHY was she so cold, she wondered
absently, trying to control the spasm in her jaw that signaled
imminent teeth chattering. These were southern waters, and it was
well into spring.

It was night of course.

And she was next to naked—sequins
didn’t really offer a hell of a lot of warmth.

But surely she wasn’t suffering
hypothermia?

Maybe it was just terror that was
making her shake like she had palsy?

Would she slip into a hypothermic coma
first? And, barely conscious, or better, not conscious at all, sink
into oblivion?

Maybe she should try floating on her
back. She’d always been rather good at that.

She was distracted from her morose
thoughts by the strange man who’d dropped in to keep her company,
and watched, puzzled, as he seemed almost to levitate upwards until
she could see that he was bare from the waist up … and as muscular
as a weight lifter.

She was still wondering how he’d
managed the trick of rising so far out of the water when he
extended his arms stiffly to each side.

Oh god! She thought. This lunatic
thinks he can take off like an airplane. Did he plan on flapping
his arms? Or did he think he was just going to take off?

He did neither. He merely extended his
arms and bent his head forward.

As she watched, stunned into silence,
the ridge of flesh on his sides beneath his arms and along the
underside of his arms flattened, seemed almost to spread, began to
form wings like, well, like dragon wings.

“
NO!” she covered her face
with her hands. She should have known it was she who’d lost her
mind! Terror had turned her brain into mush. She simply couldn’t
accept that she was alone in this vast nothingness, and her mind
had conjured a companion. It didn’t matter whether she lived or
died. She was a blubbering lunatic.

She felt him grasp her wrists, tugging
her hands from her face.

His expression was one of concern. “I
did not mean to frighten you.”

She burst into tears.

He released her hands abruptly, almost
seeming to jump back from her.

“
No! Don’t leave me! I don’t
care if you are a figment of my mind! I can’t bear to be alone
here, waiting to die! Stay with me, please!”

He moved toward her, pulling her
close. He felt wonderfully warm and alive for a figment. She could
almost believe he really was there.

“
If I take you back, he will
kill you. If I leave you, you will die.”

And she needed him to tell her
this?

He frowned. He didn’t look angry. He
looked as if he was concentrating very hard.

In the next moment, he plunged beneath
the sea, taking her with him so fast she didn’t have time to
scream.

Alex gasped … air?

She opened her eyes. Then blinked,
rubbed her eyes and opened them again.

There was a … well it looked like a
bubble surrounding her.

She was almost afraid to touch it,
afraid that it would vanish and she’d find herself struggling for
air. She was just as afraid not to touch it, needing the
reassurance of knowing it was real.

Tentatively, she put her hand out,
pressed against the almost transparent film that surrounded her. It
yielded, stretched. She pulled her hand back, afraid to put too
much pressure against it.

She couldn’t decide what to make of
it. It seemed real. She didn’t think she was dreaming, or
hallucinating.

But what had happened to her
‘hero’?

Carefully, she twisted around to look
behind her.

She recognized the face of the man
pushing the bubble of air encapsulating her. It was definitely the
same man who’d spoken to her, offered to grow wings for her. The
problem was, he wasn’t a man at all.

From his waist down, iridescent green
and blue scales covered his long tail and fin.

Alexis felt quite suddenly as if she’d
just run out of air. She passed out cold.

* * * *

It was so black when Alexis finally
came to, she thought she might have gone blind. She lifted her
hand, felt around her. Something soft and yielding surrounded her.
A deep cold penetrated it and she shivered, realizing suddenly that
she was wet.

It took several moments to recall her
last conscious moments, but when she did, she was inclined to think
she’d had the world’s worst nightmare.

But, she was wet.

Maybe she’d fainted in the shower,
bumped her head?

She was moving, though. She couldn’t
see much of anything, but she could feel that she was
moving.

She could also feel the thin membrane
that she recalled exploring.

If she’d dreamed it, would she still
feel that? Could it possibly be anything else that her mind had
interpreted as a bubble?

She became aware of a soft glow of
light and turned toward it.

Beneath her, she could see what
appeared to be a coral reef. She was guessing, naturally. She’d
never had the least inclination to go diving and had never actually
seen one, except in pictures, but it did look like one, except for
the cave-like entrance and the soft glow of light spilling forth
from it.

Maybe she was dreaming? Eating seafood
usually resulted her in dreaming some really bizarre things. Had
she eaten seafood, though? She decided she must have, even though
she couldn’t remember having done so.

Or was she floating mindlessly on the
surface of the ocean, hallucinating while her life slowly slipped
away?

The man—merman—that was pushing her
along in the strange bubble, headed directly for the
light.

Once they’d passed the opening, she
realized it couldn’t possibly be a cave. It was a tube-like
corridor that seemed to go on forever, and it was man made because
it was as straight as an arrow … or made by something, in any
event. It most certainly was not a natural cave.

It must have been at least two or
three miles long, maybe more, because it seemed they traveled
through it for a very long time. They passed, eventually, through
the tube and into what appeared to be a great cove, or, more
likely, a cavern and underground lake, although she could see no
signs of stalactites, which she knew would’ve been in a natural
cave.

Then, as they moved toward the surface
of the water, she realized the ceiling emitted a faint glow—like a
bright night sky. Faintly, she could just distinguish the twinkle
of stars.

So they weren’t
underground?

It didn’t make sense. They should be
underground, but if they had been she wouldn’t be looking at a
night sky.

She thought it over, trying to add two
and two and coming up with six every time, because it just didn’t
make any sense at all. Before they’d entered the tunnel, they had
been surrounded by the darkness of deep water. She was as certain
of that as she was certain of anything that had happened that
night. Moreover, the tunnel they’d followed had been straight as an
arrow, and just as level as a if it had been laid out with a
contractor’s laser. And, if they hadn’t gone up, then it was a
physical impossibility that this could be anything but a
cave.

Unless … Maybe it was like the bottom
of an extinct volcano? Maybe this place WAS beneath the sea, but
opened to the sky because the cavern had no roof?

She abandoned her useless speculation
when they surfaced at last. The bubble disappeared as abruptly as
it had appeared and she found herself being cradled against the
man’s chest. More curious now than frightened, she looked
around.

They were still perhaps a mile, maybe
two from shore. In the distance, she saw the twinkling lights of a
city, sprawling along the shoreline as far as she could see in
either direction.

The question was, what
city?

It could not be the US. Coastal cities
might abound, but they certainly wouldn’t be able to approach the
city as she and her merman had.

South America? Could they possibly
have gone that far?

She was no genius when it came to
geography, but it seemed beyond the realms of
possibility.

But then, up until a few hours ago she
would have said that pretty much everything she’d experienced so
far was beyond the realms of possibility.

“
What is this place?” she
asked, more to herself than to him. “It doesn’t look like any of
the islands I’ve seen before.”

“
It is not an island, not in
the strictest sense of the word, at any rate,” he responded,
sounding tired.

She turned to look at him. He looked
tired, too.

How odd that her figment had human
failings. If this really was a dream, would he get
tired?

She had a bad feeling that he
wouldn’t, but decided that she just couldn’t handle any more mental
calisthenics at the moment. She was tired beyond belief and her
head was throbbing as if it might explode.

She dismissed it, tried not to put a
great deal of effort into thinking at all, instead merely watching
as they drew closer and closer to the strange city.

As they neared the shore and she could
see more clearly, an odd sense of disorientation swept over her.
The place … every building, was in a style strongly reminiscent of
ancient Greece … except these weren’t ruins. Some of the buildings
looked old, perhaps a bit time worn, but none were crumbling. Most
seemed to be single story buildings, with perhaps a handful rising
two or three stories. In the distance, in what looked to be the
center of the city, stood a cluster of buildings on a hill, or
rise. These came the closest to resembling the multistoried
buildings one would expect to see in a city of this size. In the
midst of them, a tower rose well above everything surrounding it,
almost like a lighthouse, or maybe an observation tower.

“
It’s beautiful,” she
murmured.

The sense, almost of weightlessness
the buoyancy of the water, had given gave way to a feeling of
heaviness, cool air brushing her wet skin, bringing her to the
realization that they were emerging from the water. She frowned,
aware that she’d lost a sense of logic again. The guy carrying her
was half fish, a merman. How could he just stand up and walk out of
the water? She craned her head to see the merman’s tail and fin,
but, even as she watched, they disappeared.

He set her on her feet and she leaned
forward to peer at him in the dim light, watching in amazement as
his iridescent scales gave way to skin, his lower body dividing to
become two legs.

Well, two and a half.

He was stark naked.

Alexis straightened abruptly, blushing
as she met his grinning face.