Slippery When Wet
Prudence Sinclaire
Kindle Edition
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All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental. The material in this book is intended for ages 18+ it may contain adult subject matter including explicit sexual content, profanity, drug use and violence. All characters portrayed in this fictional work are over the age of 18.
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Cara slipped away from the Patrons' Ball and down the ancient corridor attached. Harsh halogen portable work lights strung along the wall replaced the soft glow of the paper lanterns from where she'd come. As the sounds of music and laughter faded away, she became more conscious of the clattering of her heels striking against the ancient stone floor with each step. She stepped out of her pumps and continued to pad down the hall barefoot.
She hadn't wanted to set the gala here. That many people at such a delicate site? Now that the ruins had been uncovered after thousands of years of burial, exposure to air, pollution, and touch were all enough to compromise the ruins on their own. Cara didn't think they needed to invite dozens of inexperienced laity along as well. Plus catered food, candlelight fire...Cara shuddered to think of what damage could happen to the ancient fortress tonight. Unfortunately, she hadn't been able to get Dr. Kitt, the Archeological Director of the dig, to agree.
"Listen, Cara," he had said. "We've uncovered more than we could have ever hoped for here, and our funding is going to run out. If we want more, we have to show our investors some results, and what better way to do that than to bring them here? "
Cara glowered at the memory and pressed her lips together in a firm line. Filled with old men, socialites, and stodgy old government representatives, the party may be important for the dig, but it seemed like a waste of her time. She had to put on a short dress and heels for this?
She examined her nails. Usually chipped and caked with dirt for the better part of the day, they looked too clean. She had aimed for as best a pass at a manicure as she could muster out on a remote island in the middle of the Mediterranean, but none of the people there seemed interested in her or the state of her nails. They had crowded around Dr. Kitt as he excitedly explained her latest find, and Cara had been left to stand scowling in the corner.
Cara sighed and rounded another corner. No one would miss her for the evening, and she'd prefer to be by herself anyway. She had always been much better dealing with people who had died millennia ago than those in her fellow era. After another turn, the corridor opened into a large room filled with pictograms and an ancient logographic writing system none of the crew had recognized.
Cara stepped into the room she had nicknamed Atlantis . She crossed over to the stone wall and stared at the unfamiliar etchings in the stone as if one more time could shake the ghost of a memory loose. Her hand rose to one particular pictogram at eye level, and her fingers hovered above it, close but not touching.
For some reason, this one kept drawing her attention--a depiction of a figure with the head and torso of a man but the bottom half of a fish. Dr. Kitt had theorized the culture that had produced these etchings held religious beliefs with therianthropic and shamanistic roots, but Cara wasn't too sure. Something about this image stood out to her in her mind. Cara pulled her eyes from the pictogram and walked to the middle of the chamber. She stopped when
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