Warriors of Poseidon 04 - Atlantis Unmasked

Chapter 1
    St. Louis, leaving regional rebel headquarters
     
    “It‟s almost impossible to shoot a bow while driving.”
     
    Grace Havilland clenched her fingers around the steering wheel of the Jeep and waited for the Atlantean warrior riding shotgun to respond to what she thought had been her very reasonable point.
     
    Waited. Waited a little longer. She‟d met Alexios months ago and seen him sporadically since, but she‟d never been in such a small space with him. It felt like being trapped in a cage with a lion who‟d just eaten a full meal. Deadly, dangerous, and exhilarating, but maybe—just maybe—you‟d live through it.
     
    Unless he suddenly felt like a snack.
     
    She wrenched the wheel to the left when she saw the deceptive DEAD END sign appear in the headlights and then took the deserted side street. Alexios finally turned to face her, his golden hair brushing the tops of his shoulders and sweeping forward to hide the scarred left side of his face. Reinforcing the lion imagery so strongly she flinched a little.
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    He raised a single eyebrow.
     
    “The sign keeps people out,” she explained. “HQ escape route and a shortcut to the hospital. Since we‟re a little behind everyone else, I wanted to catch up.”
     
    A weak but warm voice floated up from the backseat. “Shortcut would be good.”
     
    “How are you doing, Michelle?” Grace asked, not daring to look over her shoulder at this rate of speed.
     
    “Well enough, considering that nasty vampire nearly ripped my head from my neck.
    Lucky for me that your dishy Alaric popped in with his magic healing powers. My first mission with you Americans, and the rebel headquarters gets attacked. Bit of a bad penny, me.”
     
    Alexios made a strangled snorting sound. “Dishy Alaric. Now there‟s something I bet he‟s never heard in his nearly five hundred years. Alaric, the dishy high priest of Poseidon‟s Temple.” In spite of the rich, dark amusement in his voice, he never once quit scanning every inch of the deserted street as they raced through it. Always on guard. Always alert.
     
    A warrior in every facet of his being.
     
    Grace slanted a glance at him. Six feet and a few inches of pure primitive male, all hard lines and curved muscle. He‟d fought like an avenging angel back at HQ when their strategy meeting had been viciously destroyed by the wave of vampires and shifters crashing through doors and windows in a multipronged attack. She‟d loosed arrow after arrow, each one finding its target, but Alexios and his sword and daggers were everywhere at once, stabbing, slicing, and slashing. All the while, his expression had remained utterly calm and controlled. Even as he‟d circled around her, ripping heads from vamps and . . .
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    A realization seared through the memory. Always around her . He‟d fought in a perimeter around her, leaving her room to shoot her bow, but never straying far from her side. Anger started a slow burn.
     
    “Were you protecting me in that fight?” she asked, slowly and carefully, trying to keep the lid on her temper. Not good to accuse and attack the fierce warrior ally unless it was true. “Because you know that I don‟t need protecting. I‟ve been doing this for a long—”
     
    Michelle made a loud shushing noise. “Oh, let‟s not get our knickers in a twist. So, Alexios. You don‟t look a day over thirty. But if Alaric is nearly five hundred years old, how about you?”
     
    Alexios‟s dark gaze touched Grace‟s face for an instant, hot, predatory, tangible as a caress, before returning to vigilance. She wondered if his eyes were blue or black or one of the many shades of jewel like green, but couldn‟t tell in the dark vehicle.
    Atlantean eyes were like mood rings. Unfortunately, they didn‟t give out the handy decoder chart.
     
    “How about me, what?” he finally answered Michelle.
     
    “How many centuries?”
     
    “A little more than four. Grace, watch that hole in the road.”
     
    She swerved to miss the pothole and began to slow for the end of the road and the busy intersection it dumped into. “You‟re more than four hundred years old? Really?” Okay, maybe a man that old had a few preconceived notions about fragile females that could be forgiven.
     
    “Well, you look lovely for your age,” Michelle called out. “He‟s maybe a little old for you,