Ghosts of Atlantis (Immortal Montero Book 3) Read online

  Her dark eyes watched everything I did.

  Standing again, I hoisted her in my arms and carried her to the bed. After I set her down, I began unhooking the front of my doublet.

  “This is something you can help with,” I said.

  She scooted over and assisted with trembling hands.

  Once we had finished undressing me, I lifted her chemise over her head. Her curly black hair tumbled over her shoulders. She had small, uplifted breasts and long legs. Her mouth was moist.

  I ran a caressing hand along the silky skin inside her thigh. “This is something I learned in France.” Her eyes widened as I leaned toward her. I kissed the tip of her nose. “What do you think of that?”

  She laughed and her tension evaporated.

  We embraced, our mouths coming together. I pressed my naked body against hers, and felt her shiver. I slid my hand along the line of her shoulder and down her back. When I reached the curve of her ass, I pulled her against me.

  Her breath pulsed hot on my throat. I guided her hands. She touched me with uncertain fingers. I ran my tongue over the line of her jaw.

  “Oh, Sebastian…”

  I pushed her onto her back, kissing her breasts, murmuring to her in French. When she pressed me in place, I slid roughly inside her. She cried out.

  “Forgive me, my darling,” I said. I began a slow rhythm, my hand clasped to her bottom, lifting her to me. We looked into each other’s eyes. Tears left streaks along her cheeks.

  She ran her hands over my face. “Vous êtes mon rêve d’amour fait réel,” she whispered, quoting from her book of poems.

  You are my dream of love made real.

  Chapter 12

  Saturday, February 14, 2:11 a.m.

  With only four hours left until sunrise, anxiety held sway in the Montero manse. Facing situations over which one has no control is common in this world, but this sudden turn of events made me feel vulnerable, and that always brought with it a whiff of fear.

  What would I do if Aliena never woke up? I couldn’t even imagine it.

  A groan came from her room.

  My heart leapt and I sprinted down the hall. When I lunged through her door, she looked exactly the same as before, unmoving and lifeless. Had I manufactured the sound in my head?

  Sitting on the bed, I picked up her hand. To my overwhelming relief, she opened her eyes.

  She glanced around, a near-terrified expression on her face. When frightened, Aliena tells all without saying a word: eyes wide, lower lip trembling.

  Hoping to calm her, I put my hand on her forehead and peered into her pupils.

  “How do you feel?”

  Grabbing my wrist, she crushed the bones to splinters. My cry was more of surprise than pain. She shook me.

  “Are you one of the men who tried to burn me?” She looked around. “Where am I?” When I didn’t answer immediately, she pulled me closer to her face. “Who are you?”

  “Sebastian Montero.” Amnesia. Not good. “Do you know who you are?”

  She sat up, the blankets falling to her waist, my wrist still painfully in her grip. Her eyes darted as she looked around. Sliding out of bed and standing, she pulled me near.

  “What am I doing here? What is this place?”

  “This is your room. We are in my home.”

  “Where are my clothes?”

  “That hurts.” I reached out with my left hand and made to remove her vice-like grip. In a flash, her other hand was on my throat, crushing it. My feet left the ground.

  “I don’t know you,” she said. Those beautiful eyes studied me. “But you’re not one of the priests. Tell me where my clothes are and I will leave you alive.”

  “No.”

  Mild surprise crossed her features. She set me down and released me.

  “You’re not afraid of me.”

  Choking, I said, “My dear, I love you, more than anything in the world.” Cradling my broken limb to my side, I stepped over to her armoire and pulled the doors aside, hoping her clothes or leather jacket would jog her memory.

  She looked at them for a moment without a glimmer of recognition. Giving me a suspicious glance, she sidled past and reached into the cabinet, donning a blouse and pants in a combination I had never seen her wear before.

  “So you are Sebastian Montero,” she said, pulling on her boots. She took her cell phone off the nightstand and put it in her jacket pocket. “What do you mean this is my room?”

  “For the past few weeks, you have been staying here during the day.”

  “With you? I would never do that. Never.”

  “I know it sounds incredible, but it’s true. I had this room renovated specifically for you,” I said, gesturing. My wrist had healed. Aliena noticed.

  “You are an immortal.”

  “Yes.”

  “But who are you to me?”

  For a moment, I considered several responses to that question, and decided on, “Your fiancé.”

  “My…” She shook her head. “You’re lying. I would never marry. You are one of them.” Her neck muscles bunched. She was seconds away from attacking me again.

  “Wait. Please tell me if you know who you are.”

  Her brow furrowed and she relaxed. “Aliena.” She looked around again. “Where?”

  “Malibu, California,” I said, not knowing how broad to make my response. “You have lived in the L.A. area for over twenty years.”

  “I don’t recognize this place.”

  “And you don’t remember me?”

  “No.”

  We had known each other for a hundred and fifty years. I needed to figure out a way to get her thinking. Scared and confused, Aliena appeared ready to bolt from the house. I had to keep her here. This illness could not be a mistake. She was not safe on her own in her current condition.

  “You woke up in bed naked,” I told her. “You are a powerful creature and I am not. Why else would you be here unless it was of your own free will?”

  “You have done something to me.”

  “Why would I have so many of your clothes? Why would I sit on your bed without trying to protect myself when you woke up? I know you’re a vampire.”

  “I don’t know.”

  She moved past me. I knew better than to stand in her way.

  Peering at everything, she led the way to the living room, turned toward the large sliding glass doors. After inspecting the controls on the wall, she pressed a button, and the doors began to slide apart.

  “Wait,” I said. “Aliena, please don’t leave. You have been sick.”

  She strode onto the patio with me as her shadow. When she turned, I wanted badly to embrace her, but she apparently already considered me to be too close. She put her hand flat on my chest. “You don’t mean me any harm, I can see that.” Glancing down, she saw the engagement ring.

  “I gave you that,” I told her. “Tonight.”

  “You’re saying you proposed this very day?”

  “Earlier this evening, yes. It’s Valentine’s Day.”

  “And I accepted.”

  “We are very much in love. Darling, you mustn’t go. Something has happened to you. Can’t you see that? I can’t let—”

  She gave me a soft push and rose into the air, out of my reach.

  “Aliena, no!”

  Her back arched. Her expression turned blank. A soft mewling cry of pain came from her.

  “Aliena!”

  Eyes rolled up to whites, she shot out of sight.

  ***

  Standing on the patio, staring up at a sky filled only with stars, I reviewed what had happened. She was awake. I had been scared to death she wouldn’t ever come back to me. But rather than assuage my fear, her condition on regaining consciousness was almost as bad as her coma had been.

  Now what was I to do?

  Marcus. I needed to contact Marcus. He had known Aliena most of her life. She must remember him, if anyone. My watch read two hours before sunrise. Still time. I dialed, got his
voicemail.

  “It’s Sebastian,” I said as soon as the beep sounded. “Something has happened to Aliena. She drank blood at Bar Sinister that made her sick and knocked her unconscious. When she came to, she didn’t remember me. Now she has flown off. You’ve known her longer than I have. She may remember you. Call me.”

  Chapter 13

  Saturday, February 14, 3:04 a.m.

  My message to Marcus had been thirty minutes ago and still he had not called. Pacing my living room, I ran my hand through my hair. Where would Aliena go?

  She had demonstrated the symptoms of retrograde amnesia: recent memories—such as living with me—were gone, but older memories were still there. Most people recovered from amnesia, regaining recent memories a little at a time. There was no way to know if that applied to Aliena since I didn’t even know what had caused the problem.

  I wondered if Darius Spellman would know. The drive he had given me could contain the information I needed, but I was obliged not to view the contents while he was alive. I intended to get him alone at 49 and ask him.

  My phone rang. I snatched it out of my pocket. The caller ID read Hamilton.

  “Hello, Steve,” I said.

  “I knew you’d be up. Do you ever sleep, Sebastian?”

  “When I’m tired.”

  “Hm. Doing anything special right now?”

  “No. What’s up?”

  “Call came in ten minutes ago. Weird. We got a burning death.”

  “Weird how?”

  “The circumstances are unusual. The vic has been reduced to ashes.”

  My breathing became very still. “How did the person burn?”

  “We have no idea. The Fire Inspector has no idea. And there’s more. The vic’s clothes aren’t even scorched.”

  My heart stuttered. “Man or woman?”

  “Impossible to tell from the remains, but the clothes are male.”

  Heart re-start, though with a lurch. “I assume you mean he was wearing his clothes when this happened.”

  “It appears so.”

  “I’d like to see this.”

  “Yeah, I thought you might.”

  I stopped for donuts and coffee before I turned off Kester Avenue onto Bassett. A small group of onlookers had clustered around to watch the local late night reality show. I eased the 458 between two fire trucks and parked in front of a small house with a bird bath on the front lawn. I clipped my ID badge to my lapel, grabbed the box and drink carrier, and pushed my way out of the car.

  Hamilton and Elliott stood next to a black-and-white, talking with the Fire Inspector. I ducked under the yellow crime scene tape and walked up to them.

  Detective Sergeant Vincent Elliott, Hamilton’s new partner, was a waist-challenged Italian with thinning black hair receding from his forehead. Bulbous eyes behind heavy, black-framed spectacles. The dopey look served him well as a financial undercover detective. He had been commandeered by the FBI several times to get the inside dope on corporations suspected of playing games with the stock market.

  “Mr. Montero.” When he saw my hands were full, he took the big pink box, freeing my right hand, and set it on the cruiser’s hood so we could shake. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, sir.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said. Since most detectives hated to work with me, I sometimes could not tell when I might be hearing sarcasm.

  “Too bad about Gonzales, wasn’t it?” he asked. His expression was bland, but his frog eyes were hard.

  “Yes, it was. He was a good man.”

  “I understand you were with him when he got popped.”

  I stared at him for a few moments. “Yes, I was.”

  He nodded. “Lucky it wasn’t you,” he said.

  “Yeah, well,” Hamilton said. “Talk to me about the donuts.”

  “An assortment of cops’ favorites.”

  “Buttermilk?”

  “Two,” I confirmed. “One glazed, one maple.”

  He looked at the coffee tray I held. “Which one is mine?”

  “Next to my thumb. Cream, two sugars.”

  He took it. I set the tray on the hood. One of the uniforms opened the donut box and selected an apple crumb, grabbed the two cups with no initials on them, and headed toward her partner.

  “Thank God for coffee,” Hamilton said.

  Detective Lieutenant Steven Hamilton was the son of a black father and a Puerto Rican mother, with a boyish face made rugged by a thin scar along his left jawline. I had worked with a dozen detectives and he was, in my opinion, the best plainclothes man LAPD put in the field.

  Preston had run a background on Elliott. All reports said he was a sharp homicide investigator who was also an experienced finance professional. He had been Hamilton’s partner for two weeks. Hamilton’s former partner Alfred Gonzales had been killed in the line of duty.

  I turned to the third man, Fire Inspector Michael Jones, and held out my hand. “Mike, how have you been?”

  “Can’t complain. Haven’t seen you in a while, at least not in person. Saw you and Steve on TV last Christmas. Congratulations. That Voodoo Killer was bad news.”

  “I was merely an advisor on that,” I said. “Steve and Alfred did the work.”

  “Yeah,” Jones said, faintly ironic, “that’s what I heard.”

  Though rumors ran rampant through police and fire stations, only Hamilton knew all the details of my involvement in the sensational Voodoo Killer investigation. And even Hamilton’s official report left out the true circumstances leading to the death of Karnall Kanga, the serial killer who had been a full-fledged sorcerer.

  I looked at the lighted scene in the alley. The lab techs were photographing an area near a brick wall. At the base of the wall lay a pile of dark garments and a pair of boots.

  “What have we got?” I asked.

  Elliott reached over and took the last cup of coffee. “A mystery, that’s what we’ve got.”

  “Come on,” Hamilton said.

  The four of us crossed the sidewalk and gathered inside the lights.

  Fresh black streaks like tire skid marks covered the ground. Some were twisted, others were straight. They all centered on the pile of clothes leaning against the white wall. Bricks on either side of the black leather jacket showed similar signs of scorching.

  Jones went down on one knee, examining the smudges on the concrete.

  “What do you think?” Hamilton asked. “What are those?”

  “Burn marks. And from the look of them, I’d say electrical.”

  “What would cause that?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe an exposed power line, but it wouldn’t create this pattern.”

  The garments looked as if the owner had simply disappeared inside them, leaving them to crumple to the pavement. The boots remained standing up. “These clothes look unmarked,” I observed. I could also tell I had seen them earlier in the evening, around sunset.

  “Yeah, we noticed,” Elliott said.

  The members of the Scientific Investigation Division had finished mapping and photographing the area. The team leader handed Elliott a tablet computer and he signed it.

  Two techs from the Medical Examiner’s office began bagging the remains, sweeping up dusty piles and carefully shaking ashes out of the jeans and charcoal gray t-shirt.

  An eager German Shepard tugged a fireman in yellow pants, the big dog’s nose to the ground, sniffing for accelerants. So far, the dog had not given any indication of detecting a scent.

  “Well?” I said. “Is this really a burning victim?”

  “No doubt about it,” Jones replied.

  “How?” Elliott asked.

  “Damned if I know.” The Fire Inspector stood, pointed at the streaks. “Concrete and brick, no accelerant, nothing else caught on fire, the vic’s clothes intact, and his remains apparently inside them. It’s impossible.”

  Hamilton and I watched one of the ME’s techs pick up a boot, look inside, then carefully turn it over, upending its contents
into a clear bag held by her partner. Fine dust filled the container.

  “Are you saying you’ve never seen anything like this, Mike?” Elliott asked.

  “That’s about it,” the inspector said. “And I’ve seen every type of burned corpse imaginable. Unless you have an oven as hot as a crematorium, there’s always something left, no matter how badly charred the body.”

  A metallic clinking sound drew our attention. A chain and medallion had fallen to the pavement as one of the techs lifted the leather jacket. Hamilton snapped on a pair of examination gloves and retrieved the necklace. The rest of us gathered around him as he held it up.

  “Heavy,” he said.

  The thick chain stretched about eighteen inches long, composed of gold links. The round medallion also shone yellow gold, shaped like a flaming sun with a trident carved into its center. Three circles surrounded the pronged fork.

  “No sign of scorching,” Jones noted.

  Elliott held an evidence bag open, and Hamilton dropped the necklace inside. An officer took the bag to be logged and photographed.

  Hamilton squatted down and searched through the pockets of the jeans. He pulled a black leather wallet out, flipped it open.

  “California driver license, issued to Darius Spellman. VISA, MasterCard. Cash. Looks like about three hundred bucks. That’s it.” He handed the license to an officer. “Run that, will you?” She took it to the patrol car and climbed inside.

  Hamilton bagged the wallet, looked through the pockets of the jacket, found a ring of keys. He held it up.

  “Three keys.” Elliott peered closely. “No car fob. Looks like they’re all door keys.”

  “No cell phone,” I said.

  Hamilton put the ring into an evidence bag, and gestured to the crime scene techs. They gathered up the clothes.

  The firemen packed their gear and climbed aboard their trucks.

  “We’re done here,” Jones said. “I’ll send you my report in the afternoon.”

  “Thanks, Mike,” Elliott said. The Fire Inspector nodded to us and left. The truck crews drove off.