The Atalantium Trilogy I:
Bride of Atlantis
By
Madelaine Montague
Copyright by Madelaine Montague, April 2012
(C) Cover Art by Eliza Black, April 2012
(C) Original Copyright, March 2003
Smashwords Edition
Published by New Concepts Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.store.newconceptspublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.
Chapter One
“Just so you know, I killed your father,” Eric whispered in her ear.
Expecting love words when she’d felt him lean against her, felt the warmth of his breath along her neck, Alexis Stanhope was too stunned by her new husband’s confession to move. The scene she’d only moments before been staring at in wonder—the full moon dancing off the waters of the Caribbean in the wake of the cruise ship—vanished and she saw only the vision of her father, laying prostrate on his kitchen floor, blood pooling around him.
She could not seem to grasp what he’d said. “You were in Seattle. How…? How could you have…?” Her lips felt stiff. The words tangled on her tongue, as if she was speaking for the first time.
“Cleverly,” Eric said, taking a step back and striking her so hard between the shoulder blades that she tipped over the ship railing.
For several seconds she teetered on the balustrade, too shocked and too petrified with terror to do more than gasp, unable even to scream as she scrabbled for a hold on the slippery railing. The beautiful sequined sheathe she had worn for its elegance trapped her, allowing her no room to maneuver, despite the slit down the back of the skirt, so that she was scarcely able to do more than wiggle like a worm caught on a hook.
Then she felt him grasp her legs, flipping her completely over the railing. Several nails broke as she lost her grip and then she was plummeting toward the yawning sea, falling in slow motion, staring in shocked disbelief at Eric’s grinning face as it grew smaller and smaller with distance, as the waves seemed to rise up to catch her.
She struck the water almost fully erect, feet first.
The chill of the water seemed to loosen the grip shock had held over her vocal cords.
Subconsciously, she knew a cry for help was useless. Late as it was, music still spilled from the ballroom and casino where inebriated guests laughed and talked at the top of their lungs to be heard above the music. The thrum of the engines, the crash of churning water added to the clamor. It was doubtful if she would have been heard had she screamed before she went over.
Now, it was worse that useless.
And yet she couldn’t go to her death without telling the man who’d betrayed her how she despised him for his cowardly attack.
“I’ll divorce you!” she screamed furiously.
Dimly, she heard, or thought she heard, a laugh, and the words, “Too late.”
Despite the fact that she struck the sea feet first, she didn’t cleave the water cleanly. Her feet took most of the shock, but her bent knees and upper torso took the impact in sufficient force that a shock wave traveled through her entire body, as if she’d struck pavement.
The horror, however, overshadowing even the stunning pain, was that she continued to fall, on and on, almost forever it seemed.
Blackness engulfed her before her instinct for survival took over and she began to struggle against the water pulling at her, slowing her descent, and finally climbing. Her arms burned with the effort. Her lungs were on fire. Her head felt as if it would explode from the pressure of holding her breath.
Something brushed her leg.
She screamed a silent scream, loosing much of her captured air, swallowing a gulp of briny water. The fright galvanized her flagging strength, however, and she struggled harder to reach the surface, her need for air rapidly overshadowing all other fears.
The water around her lightened … or her eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness. She wasn’t certain which, but this time, when ‘it’ brushed against her, she saw, or thought she saw, the shape of a man.
Eric?
Had she been mistaken? Had he come after her?
The shape moved away, but she was too desperate for air now to spare a thought for searching.
She could see the surface of the water above her. The moon’s glow rippled over the restless waves, causing the water to sparkle like silver and gold gems.
For some moments, hope buoyed her flagging strength, but no matter how she struggled, she seemed to come no closer. Her arms moved slower and slower. A different sort of blackness swarmed around her. She couldn’t hold her breath any longer.
She inhaled water as something grasped her and propelled her toward the surface as if she’d suddenly found a jet pack strapped to her. She thought the speed might be her imagination, but she was moving so fast that she cleared the surface of the water by several feet before she crashed down once more.
She went under, bobbed up, treading water like a half drowned puppy, flopping her arms and slapping at the water awkwardly, dipping under the water again and again before bobbing to the top once more.
Minutes passed before she could control her coughing and gagging. Finally, she managed to draw one pure breath of air and then another. Slowly, her drowning panic subsided until other considerations began to filter through her mind.
Frantically, she looked around for the ship.
When she finally saw it, she was certain her eyes were playing tricks on her. It couldn’t have gone so far … could it?
It was hopeless.
They’d sailed on without her.
No one had seen Eric’s cowardly assault.
No one had heard her scream as she’d fallen overboard.
No one except the man who’d pushed her … her husband of five days.
Some freaking honeymoon!
* * * *
She had no hope of catching the ship. She knew that with a terrible certainty. It was miles away now. Slowly, she turned in a circle. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but water, and more water.
She was going to die here.
Something broke the surface of the water only a few yards from her, leapt toward the sky, then crashed down so hard that water rolled over her.
She screamed, then laughed a little hysterically.
It was a dolphin.
It must have been the dolphin that had pushed her to the surface.
Well, if he wanted the ‘trash’ out of his pond, he was going to have to push her a hell of a lot further. They’d left their last port of call hours earlier. They weren’t due to dock at home port for hours more. She was miles and miles from land in any direction.
She heard a splash again, this time behind her, and whirled toward the sound.
The head of a man emerged from the water less than two yards from her.
She was so stunned, she could only stare at him.
Irrationally, hope surged through her.
It died almost instantly as she realized she had already looked for a ship, a boat--anything. She’d seen nothing but the vanishing cruise ship. If he was actually with her, and not some figment of her imagination, then he was only company to drown with. He’d probably fallen off, or been pushed off, the same vessel.
She looked at him pityingly as he moved toward her and finally realized that he was probably nothing more than a figment of her hysteria, or hopefulness incarnate. In the bright moonlight, she saw that he was exceptionally handsome, with the perfection of f
eatures one expected only to find in models or movie stars.
The light from the full moon sparkled in his long, flowing hair. It looked, she decided almost whimsically, like spun moonbeams.
She felt oddly unmoved by her good fortune.
Wasn’t it every woman’s dream, after all, to be rescued by a handsome young hero?
But then, he was far too gorgeous to be real, wasn’t he? And, in any case it seemed unlikely that he was going to rescue her.
Obviously, her mind was playing tricks on her, filling her with hope when there was none.
Or maybe it was just her eyesight? A trick of the moonlight? If he was real, then he could not be as perfect as he appeared.
Then, too, unless he possessed uncommon swimming skills, it wasn’t likely that he would end up being her hero.
“Speken ze duetch?” He asked as he stopped a few feet from her, tilting his head quizzically.
Great! He didn’t even speak English! What kind of providence, or fantasy, was this?
“Par le vous François?”
Alexis’ jaw dropped in surprise. Bilingual? Here? In the middle of godforsaken nowhere?
“Habla Espanol?”
“Hell! Now I know I’m hallucinating.”
“Ah! English … wait. American?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
He frowned. “This means joke?”
“No it doesn’t mean joke, damn it. I mean, yes, but … never mind.” Alex realized with some surprise that she was as angry as she was frightened. She had every right to be furious, of course. Her new husband had not only just admitted that he’d murdered her father, he’d just thrown her overboard. She didn’t want to think about the implications of his actions, or his last comments, however, and shied away from them almost as quickly as the thoughts scurried furtively through her mind. Her fear, she realized, had translated into defensive anger. She was furious because she was too terrified to think of anything except that, she, who absolutely hated the sea, was going to die in this place.
She must have been out of her mind to have allowed Eric to talk her into a honeymoon cruise.
Where had her sense of self preservation been when she’d fallen for a con man? Where had it been when she’d yielded to his persuasion? Shouldn’t alarm bells have gone off? Did all women turn into mindless morons the moment an attractive man popped the question, or was it just her?
Her father had owned a small construction outfit. He hadn’t been rich, merely well-to-do, but he’d had sufficient money to draw the sharks. She’s spent most of her adult life suspecting every man who’d ever courted her.
Then she’d met Eric. He’d seemed to have far more than her family had. It hadn’t occurred to her for one moment that he’d been another shark, far worse than any that had gone before him.
She’d brought him home to daddy, and he’d killed her father without her any the wiser … fooled even the police, who’d been convinced his alibi was air tight, then rushed her to the alter not six months later, and off on their ‘honeymoon’ cruise so he could neatly dispose of her, as well.
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. Th
en 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.
Atlantium Trilogy I: Bride of Atlantis Page 1
