Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
Proteus
Proteus made sure he was present for every human scientist, engineer, and research assistant that arrived at Sanctuary. He wanted them to see who was presiding over them, and to ensure that they would not do anything foolish. But the longer he was there, the more overwhelmed he became.
Hundreds of years in a coffin hadn't made it easy for him to be around so many people. It was hard for him to pick out voices, considering how many of them were talking all at the same time. The humans never stopped talking, either.
They were so awed when they got out of the water like silver fish, their wetsuits clinging to their bodies as they pulled themselves onto the floor and then walked around what should have been a museum. Everything here was ancient. Everything was part of their history.
Their wide eyes pleased him as they stared up at the massive ceiling all those stories above them.
Of course, the first few groups were rather unlucky, and they arrived during a terrible storm.
The sound of the ice and rain on the roof barely made them flinch, but the rumbling thunder that shook the walls made a few of them drop to the floor before they realized they were safe.
A few awkward chuckles followed, but he could see how nervous they all were.
They didn't know how to live here without feeling like they were under constant threat.
Good. They were.
Proteus needed them all to know that this wasn't a vacation.
They weren't here because it was safe or that it was even a good idea to be here.
There were so many things that could kill them on land, and they knew so very little about where they were.
Above, as they called it, had changed a lot since the last time humans were here.
Proteus had no idea what nightmares awaited them.
Ellie had asked him to gather food, and he was amenable to it. So many mouths to feed was going to be a problem. Sure, they had brought their own resources. A sight which had delighted Ellie, as she hadn't been able to eat many fresh vegetables, and the guests came with a whole host of them.
Proteus didn't want any of them to complain that they weren't being fed while they were here. The last thing he needed was for that coalition of undine and humans to decide the surface wasn’t viable after all. It was their choice to help, but it was his choice to keep them here.
At least tuna were hardy. Those fish seemed to survive through the greatest downfall of the planet, and he could find them easily enough.
Proteus came across a school of them that was so massive even he took one for himself.
Usually, he didn't eat prey unless it was large enough to sustain him for some time, and these were sizeable enough to curb his never-ending hunger.
Proteus unhinged his jaw and feasted before killing two more and bringing them to the humans.
As he surfaced, he was surprised to see that there was one of the undine here as well. The male made the waters reek with his interest in whomever he was talking to. Undine and their mates. Their stench would turn his insides out, and he had already eaten for the day.
With a massive tuna in each hand, there wasn't much room for him to maneuver around the other male. But he did so, taking up far more space than he needed to when he finally crested the water. Shaking the water from his head, he glared at the massive green male.
"What are you doing here?" he grumbled as he slapped the fish up onto the floor. "At least make yourself useful and gut these."
The male looked at him with surprise in his dark eyes before letting out a little laugh. "I suppose I could do that. When you surround yourself with intellectual women, it's hard not to get distracted, I fear."
Intellectual women? He had counted four females among the humans that arrived.
There had been five men with them, although most of those men were seemingly there as support.
One of them was clearly a cook, and another was there only to record what went on.
He'd told Proteus that four times as he inched by the massive god of the sea.
So, four females and three males who were useful, he had decided then. If one of those women were intellectual, then that was good enough to start their projects.
But his gaze slid over, and he did not see a stranger. Instead, what he saw was... Ellie.
She stood beside the water in new clothing.
It had been made out of crudely created fabric, clearly an attempt by the humans in this group to replicate something like cotton.
Still, it was pretty. Dyed a lovely shade of green, just like the color of the male in the water.
It hugged tight to her hips, showing off how long her legs were. The dress made his mouth water.
And apparently it made the other undine interested as well. Suddenly all he could think about was the scent of lust that had clogged his nose as he came up through the stones.
He saw red.
Proteus grabbed the undine by the gills along his ribs.
The hiss of pain was the only sound the other male could make as Proteus lifted him out of the water.
His hands slid into the gills easily, feeling the bones of the male's ribs resting in his palms and the wet heat of his breaths.
All of it wasn't enough. He wanted blood to smear down his arm, and to hear the rattling gasp of a dying undine that was flattened beneath his touch.
"Proteus!" Ellie shouted. "Put him down!"
He had no intention of doing that. He would not put the male down when he had been lurking, leering, looming above Ellie like he had any right whatsoever to do that. This male encroached upon what was Proteus’s.
Even if he was uncertain that he was worthy to keep Ellie with him for all eternity, he knew damn well this male wasn't.
The undine flopped in his grip, writhing and wriggling just like the tuna had done before he killed them too. "Release me," he wheezed, his breath reedy now that he was out of the water. "I beg you! I beg of you, god of the sea. Spare my life."
For a moment, Proteus remembered how it had once been. He saw so many other undine in his grasp, just like this one. He had killed them too, even after they'd begged. He had seen the oceans turn black as night while they still cried out for his mercy. But he had no mercy to give them. Never had.
They were tools to be used. Tools that would listen to him or not, and if they didn't, then he would replace them with tools that would. This newer generation would learn. Proteus had proven time and time again that the death of a few undine was the greatest way to get the others to listen to him.
But then he heard her. The quiet sound of a sob. And when he glanced in Ellie's direction, all he could see were her hands pressed against her mouth as she stared at him and the grip he had on the male in his hand.
"Please," she whispered. "We've worked so hard to get here."
Grunting, he looked once more at the pained expression on the male's face. Leaning close, he growled, "Now all I can smell is your fear."
Dropping the undine into the water, he climbed out and headed toward Ellie. She backed away from him, those eyes wide once more. But he didn't think it was terror in her eyes. She knew better than to fear him now. But there was something in her that recognized a predator when she saw one.
"Proteus?" she asked, breathless and stumbling. "What are you doing?"
He didn't have it in him to say a single word. There were no words that would fall from his tongue for what she had encouraged. She should have known to stay away from the other undine who came here.
Males looked at her, and they wanted her. That was all he knew. Because the moment he had seen her, frosted inside her pod, a gift from the sea itself, he knew damn well that he would think of nothing but her for a while yet.
He backed her farther away, ignoring the murmured questions from so many people who watched what he was doing.
"Should we intervene?" someone asked, a male voice that made Proteus snarl in response.
"Nope," a woman replied. "Sorry, clone. Not my problem."
That made him snarl too, but for an entirely different reason. Ellie was so much more than a clone. She was a thinking, living, breathing person with thoughts of her own. She was impressive and kind, and she had seen more in him than anyone else ever had. Not even his parents.
Creators.
Ancients.
Memories burst in his skull of all the times he had been here. Of how long it had taken him to convince the humans that he wasn't a monster, and even then, so few of them believed him. The scientists here had wanted to get rid of him at first. They saw him as the abomination he was.
But not Ellie. She had never once cowered away from him, and for that, he would always reward her.
Her spine hit a wall, but he now remembered that wasn't a wall at all. It had once been something else.
Proteus lifted a hand and hit the emergency button over her head. No one would know that's what it was. The flat panel didn't want to be depressed, likely from sand caught in it. But eventually it gave, and she tumbled into a new room.
He followed her.
The darkness surrounding them was nearly oppressive. It was warmer here, too. He had a feeling some part of the building had torn off, perhaps the roof above their heads. He didn't look. Instead, he crawled on top of her as the door behind them sealed.
He didn't need light to see her. Proteus could smell her, and that's all that mattered. She was within his grasp. So easy for him to pin down beneath him and devour whole.
But no, that wasn't what he was doing. His mind was all scrambled even as little, icy pricks attacked his spine.
Growling, he shook himself, freeing the little daggers that had been thrown at him. Had one of the humans followed them? Were they trying to protect her from him? Such was an honorable choice, but it would lead to their demise.
Snarling once again, he shook himself and turned to look at the door. But it was sealed. No one had trailed after them, and even as he scanned the remnants of the room, he found there wasn't another living soul here with them.
Only sand. Mounds and mounds of sand.
Small hands framed his face, forcing him to look down at the woman he had pinned.
All of his focus suddenly turned to her.
Like a predator who had found the prey he had been searching ages for, he filled his lungs with her scent.
Every detail of the room disappeared, his entire focus narrowing until there was only her.
The way her dark hair fanned out on the silver sand.
The way her pupils had blown out because she couldn't see in darkness like this, but he could.
He could see every detail of her body, how she moved with such grace as she blindly touched his features.
There wasn't even the slightest scent of fear in the air as she traced the outlines of his lips, up to the slits of his cheeks, down his throat where there were even more teeth waiting for her to find.
"It's okay," she whispered, and he thought maybe she had been saying that for a while now. "It's okay. It's just the rain."
The rain?
Oh, the little daggers. The sharp pricks were hail. Although this hail was formed more like shards of ice, raining down on his back and tried to burrow its way underneath his scales.
A flashing memory burned through his mind once more.
A human who had stepped out into one of these storms. Proteus had begged him not to, telling the man that it was foolish even to test it.
But he'd gone anyway, and the ice shards had stripped the flesh from his bones so quickly he hadn't even been able to scream.
Wincing, he pulled her more completely underneath him. "You are not safe," he murmured as he coiled his body around her more.
"And whose fault is that?"
"Mine," he muttered, looping his tail over her and making sure that not even a hint of her skin could be touched by the ice.
"We could go back inside."
"No." They couldn't. Because that male was there with his wandering eyes and his scent that screamed he wanted to touch her, taste her, learn her just like he had.
And a part of him feared that she would rather bind herself to a normal undine, one with pretty hair and eyes that reflected the light. Not someone like him.
An abomination.
Her hands feathered over his chest, gently tracing the outline of his ribs and following the hollows there. "We can stay for a few more minutes, if you'd like. But would you care to tell me what made you so angry?"
"He wanted you."
"And?"
He huffed out a breath. "And I won't stand for it."
"Why?"
He couldn't tell her why. Proteus refused to debase himself like that when she knew why he felt the way he did. Ellie knew how much he thought of her, and how strong his feelings were. She knew...
She didn't, he realized. How could she know any of those things if he had never told her?
He took a deep breath, expanding his ribs and preparing to tell her every bit of what had made him so angry.
But then he felt her press a kiss over one of his thundering hearts, and he froze.
She did it again, and again, peppering little kisses along his skin as she made her way from one heart to the other.
Like she could feel the beat pressing against her lips.
"Better?" she asked, the word so quiet he almost didn't hear them.
"Better," he agreed, coiling around her a little tighter. "But don't stop."
She didn't, not for a little while. Not until his heartbeats slowed and until reason returned to his mind.
He was in danger from this woman, Proteus realized. Far more danger than he could ever have anticipated.