* * * *
Cassie didn’t know if she was more unnerved by the grim faces of the council seated on the platform before them or the fact that the room was filled almost to capacity by Atlanteans who’d come to witness whatever it was that the hearing was about. Carl and David, looking little the worse for the time they’d spent confined beyond a pallor neither had had before, were seated at the far end of the bench from her and hadn’t glanced in her direction more than once. Between them sat Mark, Ben, Jimmy, Shelly and their keepers. A stirring and the sound of approaching footsteps announced the arrival of Linda and Adan, which Cassie supposed had been the holdup to beginning the proceedings.
Her stomach tightening with anxiety, Cassie looked around forlornly for Raen.
He’d told her he would be there. Just as Linda and Adan reached the aisle where the rest of them sat, Raen came through the doors in the back and strode purposely toward her.
Her relief left her feeling weak all over.
The bench was full by the time he reached her. He glanced at the tightly packed bench and finally merely stood beside her. Cassie looked up at him and smiled. His harsh features eased.
“Be
seated!”
The command came from one of the female council members. Raen’s jaw tightened as he met her gaze. Instead of moving away, however, he knelt beside her at the end of the bench.
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The woman glared at him but apparently decided not to push the issue.
High Councilor det Ophelia looked more grim than all the rest, Cassie noted, feeling even more uneasy. She slipped her hand into Raen’s.
“We have reached a point in our dealings with the united earth forces,” he began without preamble, “where it has become necessary to invite representatives into Atlantis to proceed with peaceful negotiations. Since we do not feel that it would further the proceedings to discover we have held natives here, for whatever reason, and since we also promised our guests that they would be released to return to their homes as soon as it was possible, we have summoned you sentinels who have had them in your care to escort them beyond our borders. There are to be no exceptions.”
Raen’s hand tightened on hers, and she glanced at him, trying to hold back the absolute misery that swept over her. She’d known it wouldn’t work out, she told herself.
She’d known, no matter what she wanted, it was destined not to be.
A stir on the bench beside her dragged her gaze from his and she saw Linda bound from her seat. “But—I want to stay!” she objected. “I asked to stay. I chose Adan and he said yes.”
The same woman who’d given Raen such a nasty look, fixed Linda with a frozen stare, her lips curling with obvious distaste. “The native element is distasteful and disruptive,” she responded coldly. “You are not an Atlantean and your ‘wants’ are of no more interest to us than your ‘choosing’ is acceptable. Adan has shown poor judgment in accepting, but that is beside the point. Since the inception of this colony, we have closely guarded our genetic strains, optimized them. Introducing your questionable, if no doubt colorful, lineage into our society is not something that will improve our gene pool, although I make no doubt Adan’s would improve yours.”
Turning red with both anger and embarrassment, Linda sat back down.
“The distasteful incident last evening,” another councilwoman spoke up, “settled the matter as far as I am concerned. We can not have outsiders stirring our males to such barbaric displays!”
Cassie felt her face heat as everyone beside her, and no doubt behind her, turned to stare at her disapprovingly. Linda glared at her accusingly, as if it was entirely
her
fault that she wouldn’t be allowed to stay. Despite her sense of injustice, guilt stung her.
“
She
is not responsible for my behavior!” Raen ground out.
“And I suppose the other sentinels were not responsible for
their
behavior?”
another councilor spoke up. “They are a disruptive influence on our society. Even if not for the fact that having any one of them here is liable to upset the delicate balance we have achieved thus far in negotiating peaceful relations with our neighbors, even if we segregated their inferior off-spring to keep them from tainting our bloodlines, where would we draw the line? If one were to stay, another might claim a similar tie, and then another until there was no end to it.”
“As paltry a thanks as it may seem for the selfless act of kindness bestowed upon us by one of your number,” the high councilor spoke, his voice heavy with sarcasm, “the majority has ruled that you must all be expelled, and it is my duty to order this carried out. Sentinels, you will escort the natives, safely, to their own people.”
Raen’s hand was shaking faintly as he drew Cassie to her feet. To her surprise, instead of guiding her down the aisle, he pulled her to face him. She looked down at his hands when he did and saw that he was holding a pair of what appeared to be intricately 193
wrought silver wrist cuffs chased with gold, a smaller one nestled inside of the larger of the two.
Around them, she heard a rustling stir, as of people shifting in their seats, and the rise of murmuring voices as Raen lifted her right hand and fitted the smaller cuff around her wrist. He took the larger of the two and clamped it around his left. “I am your man, Lady Cassia Pendall, regardless of what words have or have not passed between us. I do not give a gods bedamned what any one else thinks or how they feel about it.” He dragged his gaze from hers after a moment and glared at the council members. “I will do my duty to my people because I can not in good conscience do aught else in this time of strife, but when this is settled, you will gladly take a daughter of man to live here, or you will lose a son of Andromeda. For now, I will take her name as mine and pray that I have given her my child. It could not have a better mother.”
“Or a better father,” the high councilor agreed.
Even as the stupefied audience abruptly erupted into disorder, Adan dragged Linda from the bench and stumbled his way through a similar speech. Cassie was scarcely aware of the other sentinels who followed suit. She was staring down at the bracelet Raen had placed around her wrist, trying to see it through a blur of tears.
He tipped her chin up so that she was looking up at him, gazing at her face searchingly. “I could not wait any longer for you to choose me, lady. I was afraid you would not. Tell me if it is not what you want.”
She found her chin was wobbling too hard from imminent tears to answer him.
Instead, she pushed up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the lips. “It’s what I want,” she managed finally.
He grinned at her shakily, his gaze flickering over her face. “I was afraid you would say no.” He pulled her into a brief embrace.
“Sentinels!” he said authoritatively when he had released her. “On the councils’
orders, escort our guests!”
The sentinels came to attention. Cassie flicked a smile up at Raen and led the way as the rest of her party filed out and walked up the aisle, a sentinel marching beside each of them. Cassie didn’t look at the other Atlanteans, the ones who watched. She didn’t care what they thought, either. Raen had cared enough to break tradition and defy the council. Whatever happened next, she had that.
Instead of escorting them straight away to the surface as she’d expected, they were taken to a room where she saw their diving equipment had been stored. Carl and David went immediately to the tanks. “Empty!” Carl said in disgust, checking another.
“This one, too!” David said.
“This one has a couple of minutes—tops,” Mark said in disgust.
“We have devised these for you,” Raen said, holding out what looked to be little more than a slightly modified face mask.
Carl glared at them. “Thanks, but that isn’t likely to do us much good. We need air if we’re going to have a chance of getting out of here in one piece. We’ll have to go
under
the net they’ve thrown over this place.”
“This will draw the air from the water around you,” Raen said.
Carl took it and examined it with frowning intensity. “It doesn’t look like it’d work to me.”
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“Nevertheless, it has been tested,” Raen said. “You will need the suits to protect your skin. We have the location of a ship owned by a media called CBN that is awaiting your arrival perhaps twenty miles beyond the military cordon. They are not allowed to come closer, and it would not be to your benefit if they did. They are far enough away that they will be able to pick you up without detection.”
Everyone exchanged uneasy glances but hurried to put on the wetsuits.
Cassie’s stomach was in knots as the Atlanteans led them from the room and then down into the belly of the ship. There was an access pool roughly the size of an Olympic swimming pool in the room they were led to. Five more sentinels were waiting for them when they arrived, all of them armed with tridents. The men in Cassie’s group eyed the tridents uneasily.
“Expecting to get up close and personal?” Carl drawled when Raen and the sentinels who’d accompanied them took up tridents, as well.
Raen pointed his trident toward the far wall. When he did, three blue beams shot from the forks at the end and burned black spots on the far wall. “This one is set to stun only.”
Any questions, Cassie thought in bemusement?
“You will not be able to communicate with us once we are submerged,” Raen told them, “but we will be able to communicate with you when necessary. We will send scouts ahead to search for military divers, but you are to stay close together, within the parameters we set, so that we can protect you if necessary.”
By the time he finished speaking everyone was white faced with anxiety and merely nodded.
“We will wait until the scouts arrive to move out. On my mark, dive!”
For several moments, Cassie’s entire party merely gaped at him. As the Atlanteans leapt into the water, however, they pulled their masks on jerkily and followed suit.
Cassie held her breath as long as she could before she found the nerve to test the
‘water breather’ attached to her mask. The air she dragged into her lungs, to her amazement, was fresh and sweet—real air, not the bottled air she’d gotten from the tanks.
She turned in the water to look at the diver next to her—Linda—and grinned, giving her a thumbs up. Linda’s return smile was almost apologetic.
Sorry
, she mouthed.
Cassie smiled back at her and turned to look for Raen.
He moved toward her, encircling her waist with his hands.
She wished she hadn’t had to wear the mask so that she could kiss him.
His lips curled upward. He looked away from her after a moment.
They are
coming.
Curious, Cassie turned to look in the same direction. In the distance, she could see dark shapes moving quickly toward them, dozens of dark shapes. Her heart thudded uncomfortably as it occurred to her to wonder if ‘they are coming’ meant trouble, and not the scouts she’d expected. In a moment, though, the dark shapes obtained form and definition.
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It was a school of dolphins, Cassie thought in amazement, heading straight for them. They didn’t veer away. They continued to swim straight at the party at high speed and then finally ‘braked’ when they were almost upon them, hovering in the water in a ragged line in front of them. The Atlanteans moved toward them, stroking their heads like someone would stroke a pet. The dolphins bobbed their heads excitedly, rolling over and offering their bellies, and then flipping over again and nuzzling the Atlanteans. Two of Atlanteans, Cassie saw, were carrying something that looked like harnesses, and apparently were. They began to slip them over the heads of some of the dolphins and fasten them—eight in all. The remaining dolphins—about a dozen—hovered nearby for several moments more and then commenced to bobbing their heads and making the clicking and squealing noises peculiar to their kind, and then abruptly shot off.
Come.
Raen’s hand tightened on her waist as the word entered her mind
. The
others will scout ahead for us and tell us if there are any humans in the water. You must
hold tight to the strap. He will carry you. It is too far for you to swim and you can not
swim fast enough, in any case. We must move quickly to reach the ship at the appointed
time.
Cassie nodded her understanding, but she was more than a little wary of grabbing the strap Raen had indicated. Sucking in a fortifying breath, she moved over the dolphin’s back and gripped the strap tightly in both hands. She’d hardly done so when the dolphin shot forward. She let out a yelp then ducked her head as she felt the pull of the water against the mask from the speed they were moving. For a while she couldn’t think of anything beyond hanging on, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.
I see you are enjoying this very much.
Raen’s voice in her mind was amused. Cassie opened her eyes a fraction to peer around for him. She discovered he was swimming alongside her and the dolphin carrying her.
Ass, she mouthed at him.
He lifted his brows, but his lips curled upward at one corner.
I could not hear
that.
Cassie frowned.
Ass
, she thought, making it a shout in her mind.
He sent her a startled look, but then smiled.
You are getting better. I will make
an Atlantean out of you yet.
It was amazing how hard it was just to hold on. Cassie had reached the point where she felt as if her arms were going to drop off at the shoulder when the dolphin carrying her began to slow and finally almost to hover.
We will rest here for a few minutes while we are still within the protective shield
of the Atlantis. We have almost caught up to the scouts.
Cassie nodded that she’d understood, though her heart sank at the announcement that they hadn’t even cleared Atlantis yet. Uncurling her hands from the strap one at the 196
time, she flexed her fingers, trying to recover the circulation and then rubbed first one arm and then the other to soothe the ache.
Raen was studying her with concern when she glanced around for him again. She smiled at him reassuringly and made the thumbs up signal. He frowned faintly.
What
does this mean?
I’m
good.
He moved closer.
I’m alright.
He frowned worriedly.
We must go perhaps twice more the distance we have
come already.
Cassie smiled at him reassuringly and nodded, giving him the thumbs up again since she couldn’t do anything else. As loath as she was to make him worry more, though, she leaned her head tiredly against the dolphin’s, glad to have a few minutes to rest.
The dolphins couldn’t be pets, she mused, even if the Atlanteans had had dolphins as pets before the calamity, but the Atlanteans had obviously had some connection with them in the past and knew, just as they’d learned, that dolphins were amazingly intelligent animals.
Just as obviously, the Atlanteans could communicate with the dolphins and convey fairly complicated ideas.
They’d summoned the dolphins telepathically, she realized abruptly.
A hand settled on her back.
Ready, Cassie?
Cassie lifted her head and tightened her grip on the strap and then nodded.
This time when the dolphin shot forward, Cassie tried shifting forward and back until she found a position that caused the least strain on her hands and arms, a position where the dolphin’s body protected her the most from the drag of the water. More accustomed, she looked around instead of cowering on the dolphin’s back with her eyes closed. To her right, and slightly in front of her, she saw the rest of her group, plastered to the backs of the dolphins. The sentinels swam on either side, scanning the water around them.
A sense of wonder filled her as she watched them. They were so beautiful and graceful! The sense almost of finding herself in the middle of a fairytale filled her, and she wondered abruptly about the fairytales and myths of mermaids. Had they been based on the Atlanteans? They must have, she realized, wondering why she’d never made the connection before.
She hadn’t really thought of them as merfolk, though. She’d hardly seen them in that form since she’d arrived in Atlantis—not since they’d first been held for trespassing.
Not until Raen had challenged Claudius.
She turned her head to look for him on that thought. A smile curled her lips as she watched him. He was the most beautiful merman of all, she thought whimsically.
He turned just then to look at her and caught her mooning over him. He quirked an eyebrow questioningly. Embarrassed, she smiled sheepishly and was about to turn away when she saw a dark patch of movement in the distance.
Instantly alert, Raen’s head snapped in that direction. The two sentinels in front of him, possibly alerted or summoned by Raen, abruptly dropped out of formation.
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Cassie noticed it only peripherally, however. Her attention was still on the dark form moving toward them. Her heart stilled in her chest as her eyes finally focused on it.
It was a diver.
She’d no more than made that assessment than she had to correct it. The gear didn’t look anything like the gear their diving group had used. It was a military diver on an underwater scooter.
And he wasn’t alone.
She’d no sooner identified him as military than she discovered other dark shapes in the water around him, all moving toward them. The dolphin she was riding slowed and then hovered in place.
Her heart racing now, Cassie glanced quickly around and discovered that all of the dolphins had stopped and gathered in a tight cluster. The sentinels had ranged themselves around them, and beyond the sentinels, coming at them from two directions at once, were divers.
She’d barely registered that, her brain had scarcely had time to react by shooting adrenaline into her blood stream, when she saw what looked like a stream of water shooting toward her, and then another, and then what seemed like dozens. She stared at the strange things blankly, her mind trying to grasp what it was.
Oh god, she thought as her brain abruptly identified the missiles coming toward them! The divers were
shooting
at them!
The thought had barely formed in her mind when the sentinels—
did
something.
She couldn’t tell what they’d done, or how they’d done it, but it was as if huge ripples had abruptly formed in front of them washing outward, away from them—like a hand slapping the water and sending out rippling waves. The spears shot from the spear guns were caught up in the ripples and tumbled harmlessly away.
Directly behind the ripples, the sentinels pointed their tridents and blue-white bolts shot through the water. Two of the divers tumbled backwards off of the scooters.
The submersibles traveled a few feet further and then began to drift toward the bottom of the sea. One blew up, exploding into a thousand pieces, the blast sending a shockwave through the water toward them. Cassie braced herself, expecting to feel the shockwave slamming into her or a piece of the submersible.
Again an invisible wall formed in front of them, moving outward to meet the wave of water and debris coming toward them. The two forces connected, then diminished, traveled onward.
Blood clouded the water. Several of the divers, apparently unconscious, were drifting toward the seabed far below them. At least two that Cassie could see had been hit by the flying debris from the exploding scooter. They writhed in the water—from pain—struggling to stem the flow of blood and maintain their positions in the water.
Another volley of arrows were launched on them from the spear guns of the remaining men, who were far closer now.
The Atlanteans returned fire, countered the oncoming spears with the sound waves they’d been sending out. The advancing divers were knocked from their crafts and tumbled backwards in the water, spinning slowly, as if performing a backwards flip.
Scanning the water surrounding them anxiously, Cassie turned to look on the other side when she saw no more. Two of the sentinels were engaged in hand-to-hand combat with two of the military divers, but it took them no more than a few moments to 198
disarm the soldiers. A few moments later, the soldiers stilled their frenzied attempts to free themselves, glancing sharply at the Atlanteans that held them. Even from where she sat on the back of her dolphin, she could see their eyes widen with shocked surprise and knew the sentinels must have spoken to them telepathically.
For several minutes after the battle had ended, the sentinels held their positions, scanning the water around them for any sign that their might be more divers. The school of dolphins that had been designated as scouts appeared suddenly out of the gloom and swarmed the area, whipping around the cluster the sentinels had formed around them and then darting off to examine the unconscious divers.
Relaxing their stance, the sentinels moved away.
A sense of uneasiness settled in Cassie’s belly. She didn’t know where it came from or why she felt it. She thought it was probably no more than her fear that Raen might still, somehow, be hurt, maybe not even that. It might have been no more than the residual fear driven adrenaline rush dissipating.
Nevertheless, she watched him fearfully as he approached the soldiers, her stomach tightening a little more each time he reached one and grabbed him, hauling him upward to check him for injury and then summoning a dolphin to nudge him upward toward the surface.
Several of the men had drifted all the way to the sea floor and landed together.
When Raen had scanned the area, he spied them and swam downward to examine them.
As he settled, lifting one of the men, Cassie studied the other men, the possibility of a sneak attack blossoming in her mind. As she did so, her gaze was snagged by a slight movement from the man behind him. She stared at him harder, trying to decide if it was only the current shifting the unconscious form or she really had seen movement. Almost before she saw the glint of a blade in the man’s hand terror squeezed her heart painfully.
“Raen!” she screamed, shoving away from the dolphin abruptly and knifing through the water as fast as she could manage.
He whirled toward her when she screamed, encountering the soldier, who’d undoubtedly been feigning unconsciousness and shot upward to attack even as Raen turned. The blade in the soldier’s hand sliced into Raen’s arm and then slid along his ribs, drawing blood, but he was no match for Raen—certainly not underwater. Before Cassie had managed to cover even half the distance that separated them, Raen had torn the knife from the diver’s hand and subdued him.
Cassie was sobbing so hard by the time Raen reached her she could hardly see or breathe. Blinded by the tears, she’d still been struggling to reach him when he swam to meet her instead. She clutched at him frantically when he caught her by her shoulders, babbling hysterically into her face mask, trying to blink the tears away so she could see how badly hurt he was.
Cassie! Stop! I can not understand you!
Sniffing back her tears with an effort, Cassie focused on trying to
think
what she needed to know.
Hurt?
Like gods bedamned hell, but he did not cut deeply.
Cassie stared at him a moment and finally uttered a watery chuckle, surging toward him and wrapping her arms around him. He held her for a moment before he 199
pushed her away to study her face frowningly.
You called to me. I heard you call to me.
If you had not, he would have stabbed me in the back.
Cassie nodded, fighting another round with her tears.
The sneaking low down
bastard!
she thought.
Abruptly Raen’s frown vanished, and his lips curled upward in a faint smile.
I do
not think you will ever cease to amaze and confound me Cassie Pendall.
He carried her back to the dolphin then, waiting until she had gripped the strap again. Almost as soon as she’d settled, the dolphin surged forward again, gaining speed rapidly. Startled, Cassie twisted around to look back. The sentinels were quickly diminishing behind them and a fresh wave of panic washed over Cassie.
He’d sent them away? He wasn’t coming with her?
She looked around her at the other riders, wondering if any of them understood what had happened. Linda, she saw, was looking around unhappily just as she was, but Cassie couldn’t decide if she was unhappy because she didn’t know, or because she did.