“In case your magic goes on the fritz,” Princess Riley said, from her seat on a blanket in the grass bordering the hard-packed dirt training ring. She held her son with Conlan, Prince Aidan, the heir to the throne of Atlantis. His Royal Drooliness, she called him. Alaric felt it lacked a certain dignity, but he refrained from pointing it out.
Humans could be so sensitive.
“My magic does not fritz,” he replied, vanishing from under the force of Conlan’s advance and reappearing behind the prince. He swatted Conlan in the ass with the flat of his sword to emphasize the point.
Conlan whirled around, bending down with that innate grace that had fooled so many opponents into underestimating his ferocity, and swept Alaric’s legs out from under him. Alaric’s own ass hit the dirt, hard, before he could teleport. His control over the skill was only slowly improving in spite of practice, and trying to use it while under attack was tricky, at best.
Riley burst out laughing. “That looked like a fritz to me. Did that look like a fritz to you, wittle snookums?”
The chubby baby chortled out a gurgling laugh. Probably at Alaric, if Aidan was anything like his parents.
Alaric jumped to his feet and brushed the dirt off his pants. “One hopes you are addressing your son and not me,” he said dryly, lowering his sword and bowing to his prince.
Conlan shouted out a laugh and then returned Alaric’s bow. A wide-eyed boy, probably shocked to hear his high prince and Poseidon’s high priest jesting so casually, ran up and retrieved the practice swords.
“I can’t actually see anybody ever calling you wittle snookums,” Conlan said, still laughing. “Nobody would dare.”
“I’m sure his mother did when he was Aidan’s size,” Riley said, grinning with mischief. “You weren’t always the scary high priest we all know and love, Alaric. Once you were a cute little baby, drooling on yourself and peeing your diaper.”
Alaric’s lip curled away from his teeth. “Your Highness, did you mean to beat me into submission with the wooden swords or with your bride’s conversation?”
Riley laughed again, not in the least offended. As an emotional empath, or aknasha, she could probably read his affection for her as easily as he could read Conlan’s worry in the lines of the prince’s face. They’d been friends for centuries, he and Conlan, and now that Atlantis was finally preparing to take its rightful place on the surface of the world once more, the problems kept coming, as hard and fast as Conlan’s attacks in the practice ring.
“Speaking of diapers, as much fun as it is to watch the two of you all sweaty and shirtless, I’m off to change your son’s. See you both at breakfast?” Riley leaned up to kiss her husband, and Alaric had to look away from the depth of emotion the two shared. But even he, who had been alone for so long and had little prospect for ever being anything but, could not begrudge his prince and friend the love and happiness he’d found with Riley.
Conlan watched his wife and child as they headed off toward the palace, but then he sighed and turned toward Alaric. “What news?”
“None good, unfortunately. The scientists Brennan and Tiernan stopped in the United States were not the only ones working toward shifter enthrallment. Europe has a great number of underemployed scientists who are working toward the same goal, evidently. Our sources tell us that not only has the continuing vampire enthrallment of shifters spread to Europe, but someone very highly placed in either Interpol or Scotland Yard’s new Paranormal Ops division is the ringleader.”
Conlan smashed his fist into his palm and swore. “The bad news keeps on coming. What is the European plan?”
Alaric raised his hand, palm up, and a glowing blue-green sphere of energy spread out to form the shape of Europe. He clenched his fist and it disappeared. “The vampire alliances are growing. The rumor is that an international consortium of vampires has formed, and it is planning a concerted strike on all human rebels, using enthralled shifters.”
“Quinn and her counterparts have finally hit them hard enough to hurt, have they?”
Alaric was proud that he barely flinched at her name. “Your wife’s sister is the rebel leader of all of North America, Conlan.” And the woman Alaric loved. Not that he would ever be able to say the words aloud.
Conlan looked at him with some sympathy, and Alaric deliberately removed any expression from his face. “Quinn is constantly in touch with other rebels throughout the world. Though the new laws are making rebel offensives more difficult.”
In spite of the dangers vampires represented, or perhaps because of them, more and more human nations were passing laws guaranteeing the vampires equal protection under the law. Shifters, as well. Alaric had no problem with that—most shifters were simply trying to live their lives in peace. The few who had gone rogue were the equivalent of the human populace’s criminal element.
But if the vampires succeeded in enthralling shifters, when they had never before been able to do so, they would have a ready-made army of warriors far more powerful than any human soldiers. And shifters could create more shifters easily and quickly. At the very least, it would be a bloodbath of apocalyptic proportions.
“Christophe is in London, isn’t he?”
“As you well know, having sent him there,” Alaric replied, raising one eyebrow. “Your point?”
“Let’s let him investigate. He’s already there, anyway. We’ll send Denal over to help.”
“You’re worried about Christophe, aren’t you?”
Conlan turned toward the palace and started walking, and Alaric fell into step beside him. “Aren’t you?” the prince said. “He’s close to going over a deadly edge lately—too much power and too little focus. I fear if we don’t give him something to concentrate on that he feels is worthwhile, we’ll lose him.”
“He should have entered the priesthood,” Alaric said darkly. “He has far too much magical power to be running around playing at swords.”
“Like the rest of us brainless warriors?” Conlan aimed a not-very-amused look at his friend.
“That’s not what I meant, and you well know it. If too much magic is left unchanneled and untrained, the wielder may become unstable. Mages have died—or killed—from simply going mad; and many of those had less power than Christophe.” Alaric’s mood darkened, thinking of one high priest in particular. The elders had banded together to kill Nereus before he could destroy all of Atlantis with his rage and magic, more than eight thousand years ago.
“That’s why I sent him to London to retrieve the Siren. It should be an easy job, and he has always been drawn to that part of the world, in spite of what happened to him there.”
“Or perhaps because of it,” Alaric said. “Akin to worrying a wound until it won’t heal.”
“Can that kind of childhood trauma ever heal?” Conlan shook his head. “I don’t know. You’ve been inside his head, what do you think?”
Alaric thought about it until they’d reached the palace gardens. Then he stopped, and Conlan halted to face him and listen. “I don’t know. Something is wrong—twisted—inside him. What humans did to him when he was such a small boy caused him to hate them all, as a race, with an almost zealous passion. Can that ever change? I simply don’t know.”
“And yet he protects them,” Conlan said. “There must be hope in that.”
“He protects them as duty, and as obligation. He fights vampires because he likes killing, not out of any altruism. He hones his magic in forbidden ways, but I cannot catch him at it, so I cannot censure him for it. Something—or someone—will drive him to the edge of reason, and then we will know whether Christophe will either heal and come to find some peace, or be forever destroyed by the bitterness festering inside him.”
“When will that happen, do you think? It would be good if we could schedule around it, since we have so many other crises to deal with,” Conlan said wryly.