Great. She picked now to go all multiple personality.

The sane side of her went right back to its personal agenda of scared, terrified, and pretty darn frightened, if the goose bumps traveling up her arms were any indication.

"Keely, please be calm," he said quietly, as if soothing a wounded animal.

"I'll be calm when you get me out of here," she pointed out, proud of how reasonable her voice sounded, when her heart was thumping in her chest. "Not the way we got here, either. None of that 'beam me up, Scotty,' crap. A nice, normal tunnel. Or stairs. Stairs would be good."

"But-"

"And get dressed!" she shouted, out of patience. "I don't care if you look like some kind of Greek statue come to life. I want you to put your clothes back on!"

That slow, dangerous smile of his-it ought to be registered as a lethal weapon, really-spread across his face. "You think I look like a statue?"

Keely scowled at him. "Clothes. Now."

Still smiling, he sauntered over to a pile of clothing and, not nearly quickly enough for her peace of mind, pulled on a shirt and pants. Her view of his tightly muscled behind, as he stepped into the pants, nearly made her groan out loud.

She was going to get years' worth of fantasies out of this experience, if she happened to live through it.

"Okay, fine. Now you're dressed. So you can lead me to the up arrow."

He shook his head as he crossed the mosaic tile toward her in a few long strides. "I would like to believe that I would release you if I were able, in spite of the dark desires of the Other inside me, Keely. But I'm not entirely sure how we got here, since the power of transport has never been one at my command until now."

"But-"

"I don't know how to use it again." He stopped, mere inches away from her, and stared down into her eyes, his own spiraling with vivid blue-green flames. "Unfortunately, the staircase that leads from the Temple to this cavern was blocked by rock and dirt in a cave-in some years ago. There is no way out."

Chapter 17.

Keely had never suffered from claustrophobia, thankfully, even after some of the more outrageous treatments various shrinks had subjected her to in childhood, such as the sensory-deprivation tank that only lasted one session.

They hadn't known an eight-year-old could scream that loudly.

But the news that she was trapped with Justice in an underground cavern-underground in Atlantis, and no way did she want to even think about the possibility that the whole shebang could spring a leak or something-took her to a whole new level of psychosis.

Her breathing sped up to hyperventilation, and she started trembling, fluctuating with each shuddering breath between fury and panic. "You . . . you . . . Are you insane? You brought me to a cave-underground-with no idea of how to get back out again?"

He raised one dark eyebrow. "Most caves are underground."

"I know that! I'm an archaeologist, you-"

Ignoring her sputtered words, Justice lifted a hand as if to touch her. Oh, no. Not going to happen, whether he was sex on a stick or not. She jumped back out of his reach, clutching her head in her hands and inhaling deeply. Tried to calm down, so she could think rationally about a plan. A plan, that's what she needed.

Not random, useless terror about what the archaeologists of the future would think when they found her crumbling bones lying beside a pair of gloves, another skeleton, and a damn sword.

She belatedly realized that her fingers were twined in her hair. Her bare fingers. "My gloves! What did you do with my gloves?" Her breathing sped up again until her lungs burned inside her chest.

He silently pointed to the floor near the pallet where she'd slept. She backed away from him and bent down to snatch them up, but he moved with that eerie, inhuman speed and caught her wrist before she could pull the first glove over her hand.

"Why, Keely? Why the gloves? Do you feel they offer you some protection?" A grimace twisted his face. "Am I so terrifying to you?"

He released her wrist and crouched down, then stood up with his sheathed sword in his hands. Before she could protest, deflect, or take any evasive action at all, he shoved it into her arms.

"Take this, then. Take the sword I've worn for so long it is a part of myself, and use it against me if you fear me so much," he said, his dark eyes and roughened voice coated with ice. "To kill a man, press the pointed end here." He placed his palm flat on his chest, over his heart, but it was too late, too late.

Too late.

The hilt of the sword fitted itself into her hand as though it were seeking her. Seeking her knowledge of it. She had a fanciful notion that it was laying claim to her mind, even as Justice had laid claim to the rest of her when he'd brought her here.

Soon there was no room for thought as the weight of ages crushed the whimsy, crushed her defenses. Ages of time and eons of violence. Violent, bloody death splashing through the unprotected corridors of her mind.

"No," she tried to protest, even as the resonance of the sword's history beat her into submission. "No, no, no. Too much, too much. I can't . . . my gloves . . . I can't-"

"Keely!" He called out to her, but the sound was muted. Muffled. Yet again, he caught her.

Held her.

But it was too late. She fell, screaming soundlessly, into the blackness of her own personal void. As she fell, she looked into his eyes and managed one final sentence.

"I can't survive it."

Keely smashed into the reality of the vision with actual physical pain. A great wrenching and tearing of the fabric of her existence manifested itself in the searing pain of broken and bleeding flesh, oddly focused on her face and throat.

She gasped and fell back, her attention captured by the floor-a very different floor than the one in the cavern. This floor was brilliantly white marble, inlaid with designs of gold and copper and another metal, similar to copper, but sparkling and almost gem-like. The wrenching pain began again, and she realized she might not survive the vision. Pain like nothing she'd ever felt wrapped around her throat as though it had been crushed. She gasped, wheezing in a breath, but a moaning cry came from farther into the room and she looked up to try to find the source.

It was a dark-haired woman, kneeling on the floor, clutching at her belly. Her enormous, rippling, pregnant belly. The woman was clearly in labor, and the agony of it made Keely rethink any random yearnings she'd ever had for children. She cried out again. It must be contractions. If they came this quickly, one on top of the other, didn't that mean something?

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. The woman was about to have a baby-right there on the floor. Keely started to call out, but the sharp, searing pain that sliced through her throat told her that the woman she'd become in her vision wasn't going to be talking anytime soon. What had happened to her? She gingerly felt her neck and flinched from the sting of torn flesh. Her fingertips traced the wound and discovered a long slice in her skin; it seemed to be shallow but was bleeding quite a bit.

From the way the side of her face hurt, someone had struck her quite recently, but her questing fingertips couldn't find any cuts on her cheek or near her eye, where the pain centered.

She wore a simple cotton dress and sandals. No jewelry or adornment. She was probably seeing the room through the eyes of a servant girl, then. But why a servant girl? Usually the visions took her to someone who had a close personal connection or deeply emotional connection to the object she touched. Would a servant girl ever . . . ?

Slowly, a horrifying thought crossed her mind. She lowered the hand clutching her throat and stared almost blindly at the bright red blood that stained her fingers and palm.

She tried to seek answers in the terrified mind of her host, but all she could see was an image of the sword, coming toward her-no, headed for the pregnant woman. The servant girl had only been unlucky to have gotten in the way of the backstroke, when the crazed man wrenched his sword up over his shoulder in preparation to strike. Whoever he was, he'd literally cut her throat, and now there was a pregnant woman going into labor right in front of her.

And there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. She was no more than an observer in her visions, unable to change actions that had happened long ago in the far-distant past. All she could do was suffer their pain, and pray that the vision released her soon.

The woman on the floor screamed again. She fell to her side and drew her knees up, curling into a ball, as if trying to escape. "Help me! Somebody help me," she cried out, pushing her tangled hair away from her face.

Her tangled midnight blue hair, Keely realized. What if this woman were related to Justice? She tried, in spite of everything she knew about the visions, to force her host body to go to the woman. To help her, in spite of the servant girl's obvious terror.

But it was like trying to move a pyramid with only her mind. She couldn't affect what was long over and done. No matter how much she wanted to do so.

When the contraction eased, the blue-haired woman managed to raise her head and scan the room. Keely did the same and gasped again. Marble columns lined the walls, and a golden throne graced one end. She must be in the palace throne room, then.

But she wasn't alone.

How could she have missed him? The man standing in front of the throne. His dark hair, aristocratic features, and regal presence had so much of Conlan and Ven in him, and she recognized the sword he held as the one that had hurled her into the abyss.

Except now it was wet with her blood. Drawn by some hideous fascination, Keely stared at the evidence that this man had sliced her throat. Her host's throat.

Their throat. Blackness began to whirl behind her eyes, and she didn't know whether to try to stay conscious or hope that fainting would yank her out of the vision. Would her host faint?

Would the man with the sword punish her if she did?

And since Keely couldn't affect the past, was she only experiencing the dizziness of her host, surely due to fear and loss of blood?

The pregnant woman cried out-a long cry filled with suffering and hopelessness. She stared up at the man, beseeching, from where she was curled up on the cold, hard floor, all alone. "Help me, please. I beg of you. This baby is coming, and now."

Distantly Keely recognized that she was somehow hearing and understanding ancient Atlantean. The cadence of the language was almost musical; it seemed wrong to use such a lovely language to describe such suffering. The harshness of English would be better.

Can't you see I'm in pain here? Or, Help me, you bastard.

Three contractions in a row swept over the woman, pressing her back to the floor with the weight of the pain. Her abdomen tightened, visibly hard as a rock, with each one. But whatever was supposed to happen didn't seem to be happening.

At least as far as Keely knew. She hesitantly glanced at the woman's legs, bare under some kind of silken skirt, praying that the baby's head hadn't breached yet.

Not yet. But Keely noticed something new. Something her shock had kept her from noticing before. The skin of the woman's legs and hands were the color of ivory tinged with the palest blue. She wasn't human. She wasn't even Atlantean. She was something . . . other.

The contraction seemed to ease again, and the woman was reduced to sobbing, lying on the floor. Keely tried again in vain to force her host to go toward the woman and help her. But the servant girl's fear was far too great to allow compassion to translate into motion.

Anger swept through Keely's consciousness in a blazing swath, and a single very determined thought popped into her mind: if she ever survived this vision, she was going to stab Justice with his own sword.

King SOB finally spoke. "I cannot believe you dare to come to me with your bastard child, eibhleann. After what you and Anubisa did to me, you're lucky I don't strike you dead where you lay on the floor."

The pregnant woman bared her teeth and actually hissed at him, an alien sound that ricocheted off the walls. "It was not me. It was never me. I was as much a captive as you, Your Highness. If you, who are the all-powerful king of Atlantis, could not resist Anubisa's mind control, how could a simple Nereid maiden hope to do so?"

She threw her head back, clamping her teeth shut, but then giving in to the howl as another contraction hit. When she could breathe again, she continued. "You know that Nereids see the destined face of our true love as part of our vision quest. Believe me when I tell you that I never once saw yours. I, too, was sacrificed to Anubisa's jealous obsession, although I will not love our child less because of it."

The king's confusion almost overruled the fury that hardened his features. Just for a moment, but it was enough to give Keely a little hope that he would help the woman.

"If what you say is true . . ." he began, but then shook his head. "But, no. It matters not. I will not raise the bastard child borne of the vampire goddess's mind rape as my own."

As another wave of pain from the contractions smashed into eibhleann, something happened that had never before occurred in one of Keely's visions. She spoke out in her own voice, from her own knowledge, in a way that ran counter to her host body's every instinct.

"You are a pathetic excuse for a king," she shouted up at him, her voice hoarse. "Conlan and Ven would be ashamed of you if they knew about this. You need to help this woman before she has her baby right here on your floor."

The king snarled and lifted his bloody sword, taking a step toward Keely, but a new player entered the room. A shaky but determined feminine voice spoke up from behind Keely. "Yes, my husband. We must help her. Call for the First Maiden of the Temple of the Nereids immediately to assist with the childbirth."

Keely was almost afraid to try to discover who was speaking, although she had a pretty good idea that it was Conlan and Ven's mother.

"Thank you," she whispered, through her raw and injured throat.

The queen slowly moved into view, her face starkly white with either shock or pain. She barely glanced at Keely at first, but then jerked her head around, staring at Keely's host's wounded throat.

"You are welcome," the queen said, barely above a whisper. "Now we will find the healer for you and the First Maiden of the Nereids for this woman and her child."

Either relief, exhaustion, or both combined rippled through Keely, still locked inside her host's mind, and her tenuous grip on consciousness faded. As the edges of the room grew dark, she fell, twirling and spinning in the vortex of the vision that clearly was not yet done with her.

The door opened behind Keely, who stood in the darkened room staring down at a swaddled infant in a wooden cradle. A familiar voice murmured a hello. The queen.

A strand of silvery hair fell forward into Keely's face, and that and the absence of pain in her throat made her realize that she was not inhabiting the same woman as before. With the relief from the servant girl's injuries and terror, Keely was able to think more clearly.

Justice's mother. eibhleann must have been Justice's mother, then. But where was she? And who was hosting Keely now? Tears welled in her eyes and clogged her throat as the knowledge filtered through her host's mind.

eibhleann was dying. The birth had been too much for her. There was nothing further to be done but pray.

A wave of sorrow and pity washed through Keely as she stared down at the delicate curve of the infant's tiny hand, his fingers curled like a fragile sea anemone. This must be Justice, then. No wonder he was so damaged, with a start like that.

"First Maiden," the queen said, entering the room. She carried a candle, and the light from the flame illuminated the wildly spiking blue-tinged hair of the sleeping baby. "How fares the child?"

Keely realized the First Maiden was her/them, when her host responded to the query. "He does very well, Highness. But the mother . . . I fear that she is beyond my power to heal."

The queen turned to face Keely. Head held high, quiet determination in every line of her face, she spoke softly, but with definite purpose. "Although this Nereid female has known my husband, due to Anubisa's vile manipulations, I would not have any harm come to her. Do everything you can to heal her, please. For me and for this child, who is blameless."

"And if she does not live? She is very ill, and we have had no gem singer in the Temple for thousands of years. The legends say that a gem singer can draw upon the power of the goddess herself, more powerfully than even a First Maiden, in order to heal."

"Then I will raise him myself, as my own child," the queen said, her eyes carrying the weight of ravaging pain, but still dry. "He carries the blood of my husband and is kin to my son Conlan and to any future children I might bear. Could I do any less?"

"Could you love this child?" Keely asked, registering in the back of her/their mind the First Maiden's courage to dare to question a queen so. "He deserves to be loved and not made to feel unwanted."

"I will love him," the queen replied firmly, as though trying to convince herself. "I must love him."

The baby sleepily opened his eyes and looked up at Keely. She reached out to touch his cheek, and she fell, plunging back into the dark.

The visions came fast and faster; one after another. Brief snippets of memory the sword had gathered throughout its long existence. Blessedly, Keely was observing only as a bystander throughout, as she was thrown from moment to moment.

The throne room

"He cannot know," the king said to a man and woman who stared down, overjoyed, at the baby she held in her arms. "He can never know."

As they agreed, words tumbling over each other in their haste, the queen stood behind her husband with tears rolling down her face.