Atlantis Riptide: Lost Daughters of Atlantis Book 1 Read online

The plant seemed to have a mind of its own. The long tendrils wouldn’t release me like I was dinner.

  Struggling against the seaweed, I squashed down my panic. I had to be realistic. The seaweed wasn’t trying to trap me.

  Grabbing a strand, I untangled it from around my face and shoulders. The slimy seaweed immediately wrapped itself around my arm. Like it was alive, the seaweed moved faster.

  Slimy tendrils curled around my waist, my legs, and both arms. I struggled, but even with my super strength I couldn’t unwrap the plant from around me.

  My breath came in shallow spurts. Chase was right, which I hated. Water emergencies did find me. How was I going to save the underwater world when I couldn’t even save myself?

  “What have I caught here?” The deep words penetrated my panic. Captain Fisher swam from behind a rock. “You’re Finn’s special friend.”

  My shoulders sagged and the plant loosened. Weird. “Captain Fisher, I’m so glad I found you. I need your help—”

  He bowed. “At your service.”

  “The air-breathers know about me, know about us. We have to warn the Free Atlanteans, and the Royalists.”

  His eyebrows twisted into a question mark. “Royalists? Did they send you?”

  “No.” I shook my head and calmed myself. I must breathe, or water, or whatever it’s called. “We have to warn them, too.”

  His eyes narrowed into adversarial slits. “Why have you come skulking near our base?”

  “You have to listen.” My tone rose. “The air-breathers know about us.”

  “Because of you.”

  I blew out a breath. I wouldn’t place the blame on Chase. Even though he deserved it, I didn’t want trouble for him. I hated him, but I still cared for him. “Yes, because of me. We have to do something. Warn everyone.”

  He scratched his chin. “Is this a plot cooked up by the Royalists?”

  “No, of course not.” I struggled against the seaweed and it tightened again. “What is this stuff?”

  “An air-breather scientist developed it for me.” The captain’s smirk reminded me of a shark about to attack. “A new scientific development for use on our enemies.”

  I wasn’t an enemy. I was a friend trying to sound a warning. “Let me out.”

  “Not a chance.” The captain’s pure-evil smile darkened his face. “You’re existence needs to be kept secret. Now, you’re my prisoner.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Princess Problem

  Blood pounded behind my eyeballs. My body trembled. Confusion rocked my mind. What was going on?

  The seaweed tightened around my middle section. Fronds held my arms tight against my body and twisted around my legs. My body tensed like I was caught in shackles.

  Regular shackles I could handle, I did have super strength after all. But this seaweed was tougher than anything I’d encountered on land. I twisted, trying to fight it off. The seaweed tightened.

  I tried to stomp my foot but it became more tangled. This was absurd. “Why are you doing this?”

  The captain swam around like I was a specimen. “Plankson told me about your special gift.”

  I stopped struggling, finally comprehending Fisher’s comment. “The campground manager isn’t an air-breather? He’s one of us?”

  Guess I was never alone at all. I just didn’t know about the others. The confusion twisted and turned and tangled like the seaweed choking me. I must not be observant.

  “I know you can turn air-breathers. Your talent is quite unique.” The captain didn’t make it sound like a compliment.

  “Who cares what I can or can’t do? I’m trying to help you, to save our people.” I was trying to save all Atlanteans and he had me trapped like a dolphin in a net.

  I struggled more. Frustration scratched against my nerve endings, rubbing me wrong.

  His harsh laugh boomed in my head and scratched down my spine. “If the Free Atlanteans found out about you, they’d never follow me.”

  “I don’t want to be a leader.” I was only a girl who recently discovered this entire new world.

  “I’ve finally convinced them that the tale of the three lost princesses from Poseidon’s line is a fraud. A fairy tale made up to keep them enslaved to the Royal faction.”

  I stopped struggling. The nautilus hung heavy in the bag on my back, weighed my body and my thoughts. “I’ve heard the story.”

  “If there aren’t three real princesses, then they shouldn’t follow Princess Cordelia, and her henchmen.”

  “What does that have to do with me?” A stopwatch ticked in the back of my head, an ominous countdown. The circuits in my mind fired, but they weren’t connecting.

  “Your talent is so rare it might be recognized. Only Poseidon possessed it, and only one of his heirs would inherit it.”

  The watch exploded in my head like a sonic alarm clock. The circuits connected, but I still I couldn’t think straight. Two and two together suddenly wasn’t four. “What are you saying?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” His scoffing tone announced he thought I was an idiot. “You’re a lost princess, an heir of Poseidon, one of the legendary three who will join the other two to lead.”

  Stunned, I didn’t know how to respond. The thought had crossed my mind, but my life wasn’t anything like a fairy tale and wasn’t going to get a happily ever after. Not if I couldn’t get out of this seaweed. I must look like a ginormous tuna not a princess.

  Hysterical laughter gurgled out of my chest and escaped my mouth. Bubbles formed a rising chain in the water. “Me, a princess? Impossible.”

  The captain’s lips firmed. “As much as I wish it wasn’t so, the facts are conclusive.”

  “You’re insane.”

  Images bombarded me. The large nautilus Bill and Carlita owned. The fact they weren’t my real parents and had used me like a trained seal. The pink pearl I’d worn around my neck since birth. My underwater skills and how they were more powerful in the ocean. The woman bowing to me at the Free Atlantean base and the gift she gave. My one special skill of turning an air-breather.

  A skill only Poseidon possessed.

  And my last name—Poseidon I mentally thwacked my forehead.

  I’d always thought my last name was phony like my birth certificate. That Bill and Carlita had made it up for a public relations stunt for the circus.

  I tried to reach up to clutch the pearl around my neck, but the seaweed refused to let go of my arm. Puffing out my chest, I shot Fisher an I’m-better-than-you look. “If I’m a princess, I order you to let me go.”

  He smiled unevenly making his mouth appear sinister. “I don’t think so.”

  I needed information, something that could help me escape, or something to convince him to let me go. “Which princess am I then?”

  “Princess Cordelia lives with the Royalists. Then there’s Pelagia and Marisabel.” He ticked off on his fingers. “With your known name being Pearl and the skill you have, I believe you’re Pelagia.”

  Uck. I couldn’t even have a pretty princess name. Not that that was important right now. Escaping and getting more information had priority. “What does Pelagia mean?”

  “Dweller by the sea. Which makes sense for you to have the talent you have.”

  I still found it hard to believe the whole princess thing. I mean, come on, me a princess? But maybe if I played along he’d let me go.

  “Where’s the third princess, Marisabel?” I couldn’t believe I was Princess Pelagia. I’d led too crappy a life. But Fisher acted like I was a political prisoner.

  “No one knows.” He swam around again, studying me. “I’ll deal with one princess at a time.”

  A cold spray of goosebumps scattered across my skin. I struggled against the seaweed some more. “What do you mean?”

  “My air-breather scientist friend, the one who invented the seaweed, would love to study you, possibly dissect you.” The captain examined me like I was already under a microscope. “He’d love to take care of my prince
ss problem.”

  * * *

  The captain held onto the seaweed net and dragged me behind him like a sack of sardines. I fought by creating drag in the water. I couldn’t believe I’d come to save his Free Atlanteans and he treated me like a bag of garbage, but I should be used to it.

  We traveled past the spot where I was blindfolded, and then past what I believed to be the entrance of the Free Atlantean base camp.

  Using my teeth, I tried to bite through the seaweed strands, but the gnawing had no effect. And the seaweed tasted like cleaning solution.

  The captain kept glancing around, dodging between rocks and crags, and stopping suddenly to hide for a few minutes within a seaweed forest. He looked like a fugitive Santa trying to steal children’s toys. Or more like the Grinch.

  Nope. Just kidnapping me.

  He finally stopped in what appeared to be a dead area of the ocean floor. No plant life. No sea life. Barren ground with black sand as if a fire had burnt through, which was impossible. He rolled a large, scarred rock off of a hole and peered inside.

  “Get in.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “What?”

  “Get in the hole.”

  The hole was about twenty-four inches around. Inside I saw nothing but blackness.

  Kind of how my life was ending up. My heart blackened from Chase’s betrayal. My mind darkened from my lost princess life. My body shadowed from my useless struggles.

  I tried raising my hands in a helpless gesture, which of course, I couldn’t. “I can’t get in. I can’t even swim tied up.”

  “Do as I say.” The captain sounded royal. Royally pissed.

  My heartbeat picked up its pace. Now might be my only chance. I bunched my muscles ready to take flight. If he untied my hands I could overpower him and swim away. “Untie me and I will.”

  “Not a chance.” He grabbed the seaweed and positioned me over the hole.

  The complete darkness below reached up and swallowed me. Shivers racked my bunched body. “What is this place?”

  “Dead thermal vent. We’ll wait for my contact inside.”

  Using the edges of the hole for leverage, he pushed me down and then followed. I couldn’t even struggle against him.

  The water immediately dropped in temperature. Inside was darker than dark. I couldn’t tell what skulked at the bottom. Even with my enhanced vision, I could barely see. It was like being blind.

  The large, cave-like hole was surrounded on all sides by rock. Besides the tiny entrance at the top, there didn’t seem to be another exit.

  I’d shrivel and die in this shadowy hidey-hole. No one would know what happened to me. No one would care.

  All-encompassing sorrow filled my frame, stretching my nerves to breaking point. My skin wanted to crawl off my body. There were so many things I still wanted to do.

  Would Chase care? His betrayal had driven me to this drastic ending. A fissure formed in the middle of my bruised heart. The ache throbbed, pressing inside my chest. Did he even realize I was gone?

  The captain continued to tug me down. He held the seaweed with one hand and seemed to be searching for something with the other. A click sounded in the darkness and a bright light burned.

  He held a large, yellow flashlight in his other hand. “Air-breathers are good for something.”

  For flashlights.

  And princess extermination.

  Funny, how it would be an Atlantean to cause my downfall, not an air-breather. One of my own people causing me harm.

  He wrapped the seaweed around a rock that jutted out and tethered me down to the spot. “Get comfortable.”

  His silence gave me time to think. All of this princess stuff was difficult to believe. I wasn’t raised in luxury and had been treated more like a slave than royalty. I certainly didn’t feel royal. Right now I didn’t want to be. Being a princess meant certain death.

  I squirmed in my bindings. “How long?” How long did I have to contemplate death?

  “Not long. I received a message you were headed this way.” He swam back and forth in front of me like a man pacing. “I’m surprised Plankson didn’t beat us here.”

  I gasped finding it hard to believe Plankson was in on it, but I remembered how he’d watched me, how he’d insisted I clean litter from the rocks and how the seagulls had pushed me into the ocean. “Plankson tested me, didn’t he? The whirlpool, the seagull attack, the ferry.”

  “The whirlpool was a small skirmish between forces, but the rest, yes. I couldn’t rely on Finn’s reports.”

  “Finn?” My chest tightened making it difficult to breathe. Another betrayal. I could trust no one. I was completely alone. No family. No friends. No boyfriend. The fissure in my heart widened like the Grand Canyon I’d passed on my trip west.

  And I’d let Finn go after Princess Cordelia. I shuddered at her plight.

  “I’m not sure of Finn’s commitment to the cause even though his father assured me he was loyal. I understand father and sons being on separate sides.”

  Confusion multiplied. “Who is Finn’s father?”

  “Plankson.”

  My head jerked. That’s how Finn found me. Picturing Finn and Plankson in my mind, I now saw a resemblance. Their eyes and hair were similar, although Plankson’s hair was grey and a few wrinkles lined his face.

  The relationship twists I’d encountered today confuzzled my brain. Mrs. Fowler was Chase’s aunt and they both had betrayed me. Plankson was Finn’s dad and they both had tricked me.

  “Any other familial relationships I should know about?’ I tossed the question out with deep sarcasm, not expecting a response.

  “Finn is your half-brother.”

  * * *

  I swallowed the news like swallowing bad pills. The information went down like a lump of oyster, slimy but hard. I’d been searching for my real family, even mentioned it to Finn, yet he’d said nothing.

  “Does he know?” My heart braced for the answer.

  Fisher shrugged in an off-hand way like he didn’t care one way or another. “I don’t keep track of the latest gossip.”

  A drilling pain stabbed my heart. Another, more horrendous thought occurred. “Is Plankson my f-father?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Fisher snapped.

  “Are Finn and Princess Cordelia related?” Finn couldn’t hurt his half-sister, could he?

  “No. You and Finn had the same mother. You and Princess Cordelia had the same father.”

  “Who is my father?” I might be dead soon, but at least I’d finally know who my father was.

  “With your talent,” Fisher snarled. “You’re from Poseidon’s line. King Atlas was your father.”

  My heart stopped beating for a moment. I had a father. A father who was a king. A father who was dead.

  I was a princess. My heart re-started, picked up its pace like a strengthening hurricane. Hearing of all these family relationships connected all the dots.

  Dots I’d been piecing together like a five-year-old doing and adult puzzle. I ran through the facts in my mind. My last name. My strange upbringing. My abilities. And the most solid fact of all—the one special talent of turning air-breathers—a talent only Poseidon possessed.

  “So who is King Atlas?”

  Fisher blew out a breath and bubbles rose from his mouth. “History, girl.”

  “But I don’t know Atlantean history. I didn’t even know it existed until a few days ago. If I’m going to die, I’d at least like to know why.”

  “King Atlas is Poseidon’s son. He ruled Atlantis at the time of the great calamity. The selfish barbarian dispatched regents across the world to save his three daughters instead of his people.”

  Fisher believed King Atlas, my father, had been selfish saving his own flesh and blood before his subjects. If I was one of the people he saved, I was glad. But I felt awful for all those who died. “But some Atlanteans survived.”

  “Thousands perished.” Bitterness laced his voice. The lines on his face seemed to
deepen.

  “That happened hundreds, no thousands, of years ago.” I did the mental math and things didn’t add up. “I’m only sixteen, how could I possibly be King Atlas’ daughter?”

  “You were cocooned in a special protective pod. When the right time arrived, you were to be released into the world.”

  Like a chicken or a turtle.

  Another freaky fact about me.

  “How old are you? How old is Finn?” I examined my hands for wrinkles and age spots. My fingers trembled. “How old am I?”

  “We age slowly underwater. Cocooned you didn’t age at all. Any other questions?” Although he asked, I didn’t think he meant to answer.

  Sixteen years ago I was released from my protective shell. A chill cascaded down my spine and ended in the dark pit of my stomach. “Why now?”

  “That is the big question.” Fisher’s expression grew thoughtful. “Princess Cordelia was released sixteen years ago as well. The timing couldn’t be worse for the Free Atlanteans. We’ve been building our resources for the last couple of years and our all-out revolt will commence soon. Cordelia is taken care of.”

  A shiver ran down my spine and spiraled out of control knowing I was next.

  “How is she taken care of?” My guilt multiplied. By letting Finn follow her I could be responsible for Cordelia’s death. Responsible for my half-sisters death.

  My aching heart lifted in my chest. I had two half-sisters.

  Two half-sisters I’d never meet. The lightness vanished. Replaced by shadows of death.

  “You don’t need to know the details.”

  Maybe the details weren’t so important. Two princesses gone, or almost gone in my case. I tugged at the seaweed netting. One princess to go.

  * * *

  A rolling sound, like a ball going down a bowling alley, awakened me from my tense-exhausted-half-sleep. I had so many thoughts swirling inside my head and stabbing my heart, I couldn’t focus on a thing.

  Chase’s betrayal.

  Finn’s relationship.

  My half-sisters.

  The captain’s evil plot.

  My father’s improbable plan.

  The dead thermal vent pitched into blackness once again. The captain had turned off the flashlight. He stood, ready for action.