by Alyssa Day
Outrage flooded Keely, burning out the last remnants of residual shock. Dr. Lloyd was always one of the first to make patronizing comments about her “female intuition,” usually from the front row of the audience whenever she was presenting a paper at a society meeting.
Usually while he stared at her breasts.
No way was he getting his skanky hands on a single speck of Atlantean dirt. She put her hands on her hips and glared at Liam. “Lloyd? He couldn’t excavate his way out of a paper bag! His theories on . . .” Her voice trailed off as his lips quirked in a smile he was unable to entirely suppress.
He’d been playing her all along.
“Right. Nice. Not very high priestly, but effective. Very well, Mr. Liam. I’m all yours. I just need to gather my gear and handle some personal things.”
He shook his head. “As to your personal affairs, you will give me a list, and any tasks you need to accomplish will be handled by one of our stewards. All the gear you need is already prepared, and I’m assuming this bag on the floor contains your own tools?”
“How did you—”
He bent down and lifted her heavy bag as if it weighed nothing. Probably with muscles like that, it didn’t. “Your graduate assistant was very helpful,” he said.
Keely glared at him. “I just bet she was, once she got a load of you.”
A wicked smile flashed across his face, and his resemblance to the high priest from her vision grew even stronger. “I believe the term was ‘total hottie.’ Perhaps you could explain it to me on our journey?”
“Figure it out yourself,” she muttered, snatching up her gloves and pulling them on, then taking a last look around her office. “I’m on vacation, anyway, so nobody will miss me for a while. Lead on, McHottie.”
He lifted one eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”
“Yeah. You should beg my pardon,” she said, but there wasn’t much bite to it. As she followed Liam out the door, Keely wondered what exactly she’d gotten herself into, but she couldn’t suppress a shiver of excitement. Atlantis. She’d seen it herself, and her visions had never, ever been wrong.
The adventure of a lifetime, and it was all hers. She nearly laughed out loud, imagining the expressions on the faces of the countless shrinks her parents had dragged her to see.
Overdeveloped imagination bordering on psychosis, my butt, Dr. Koontz. I’m going to Atlantis.
Chapter 8
Boston
Alexios stared at Brennan, who continued his litany of murder in low, hoarse tones. “Kill them. Kill them all.”
Brennan lifted his hands, aiming his deadly throwing stars at a group of humans who huddled, naked and trembling, in the corner. The motion snapped Alexios out of his state of shock and into movement, and he flashed across the room to grab Brennan’s shoulders, noticing with his peripheral vision that Christophe was changing position to protect the humans.
Protect the humans.
From Brennan.
It boggled the freaking mind.
“Brennan! Stop it now,” Alexios shouted, shaking the warrior’s shoulders. The pale green of Brennan’s eyes had faded into silvery fire, and there was no sign of recognition on his face when he stared at Alexios.
For a moment, even as his mind recoiled from the idea, Alexios thought he’d have to fight the man who’d saved his life on countless occasions. Brennan’s arms tensed under Alexios’s hands as he strained to escape, but then the enraged warrior’s eyes slowly subsided back to green as a gradual sense of awareness returned to his features.
“Alexios? What—” Brennan’s voice trailed off as consciousness swam up from the secret depths behind his eyes. “The leader? Where is he? Did he get away?”
Alexios released his friend and stepped back, still wary, his hands dropping to the hilts of his daggers. “Not exactly.”
Christophe strode up to them, his sword out and held at the ready, a snarl on his face. “Yeah, you dusted him. Which normally I’d be all over, but we needed this one to tell us what he knew about Justice. What were you thinking?”
One of the humans rose unsteadily to his feet and took a deep breath, trying to regain some semblance of control. He was built like a manatee, and Alexios randomly wondered why it was always the ugly humans who went to the cult’s naked parties.
The pretty humans undoubtedly had better things to do. Damn shame, considering how many of these gatherings he’d busted in on over the past four months.
The manatee drew a layer of pomposity around himself like a cloak and dramatically cleared his throat. Probably some captain of industry when he had his clothes on. If only his board of directors could see him now.
“Look here, you three. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but this was a private party, and I’m going to call—”
“Oh, shut up, Tiny Dick,” Christophe snapped. “Just a tip, but maybe you’d be better off to keep your pants on in the future.” Almost negligently, he waved a hand in the air in the direction of the man, whose eyes bulged out before his eyelids fluttered closed and he silently slipped to the ground, unconscious. Alexios shot a look at Christophe and was unsurprised to see that the warrior’s eyes glowed a fierce dark green with the force of the power he channeled.
“Hells, while we’re at it,” Christophe muttered, “why not take care of all of this?” He took a deep breath and raised his hands in the air, then whispered an ancient incantation and opened his arms in a sweeping gesture that encompassed the room. Like a wave tumbling against the shore, the humans in the room fell to the floor in a graceful, rolling line of naked flesh.
Alexios narrowed his eyes. “They’re unconscious, right? You didn’t just kill a roomful of humans, did you?”
Christophe laughed. “Hey, not a bad idea. What, thirty fewer idiots we have to protect from themselves?”
Alexios nearly snarled. “Fool, if you—”
“Relax. I just put them to sleep for a while. But they’ll all wake up with one miserable hangover. It was the least I could do.”
Brennan shoved his throwing stars in some hidden pockets in his jacket and stared at the bleeding gashes on his hands. “What happened here? Why am I bleeding? Did I truly kill the one vampire who might have helped us to find Justice?”
Alexios blew out a deep breath. “Yeah. You did. You had some kind of meltdown and went crazy on us, saying the humans must die. And if I’m not mistaken, that was a giant helping of emotion crushing you down.”
Brennan raised one eyebrow, but no other evidence of even the slightest surprise marred the serene calm that had returned to blanket his expression. “Impossible. I have experienced no emotion in more than two thousand years.”
A shaky but determined feminine voice interrupted them, coming from the far corner of the room. “Well, that was a pretty good imitation of it, then.”
As one, the three warriors whirled to face the threat, pointing raised weapons at the figure who peered out at them from behind a large red-leather sofa. A human female, wrapped in nothing but a torn length of fabric, stood up and stared at them defiantly. Her dark hair was tangled around her shoulders and one eye was swollen and bruised as though she’d been struck—hard—in the face. In spite of her disarray, she had a compelling beauty that drew Alexios, made him want to assist her in some way.
She lifted her chin and gazed at each of them in turn. “Unless I’m either hearing things, or I’m crazy, you’re from Atlantis, and you hate these monsters as much as I do. So how about we make a deal? You help me get the story of a lifetime, and I’ll help you find your friend.”
Christophe laughed and lowered his sword. “Right. Naked and beaten, in this room, and you expect us to believe you’re some kind of reporter? You’re as sick and twisted as the rest of them.”
“That may be,” Alexios said slowly. “But why is she the only human still conscious?”
Brennan made a strange growling sound and stepped forward, but Alexios shot out a hand to grasp his arm. Brennan stopped dead, but n
ever took his gaze from the woman.
She shook her head, her slender fingers twisting in the fabric she held closed over her breasts. “No, you don’t understand. I’m—”
“It’s okay,” Christophe said, leering. “Did I mention I like sick and twisted? We should definitely get to know each other sometime.”
Brennan’s growling throttled up into a full-fledged roar, and he broke away from Alexios’s restraining hand and shoved Christophe halfway across the room.
“You don’t understand,” the woman repeated, with only a slight hint of nerves threading through the determination in her voice as her gaze darted back and forth between them. “I write for the Boston Herald. I know where your friend is. I heard them talking about him being in someplace they call the Void.”
Alexios swore. “If Justice truly is in the Void, we cannot hope to find him. The way is—”
“Through magic,” she said to Alexios, though she never took her eyes from Brennan, who had retreated into some sort of fugue state as he stood, hands clenched into fists, staring at her as if he would devour her.
“Dark magic. I know some people. Look, let me find my clothes, and we can at least talk. My name is Tiernan Butler, and I’m—” She suddenly stopped midsentence, her eyes rolling back in her head, and began to collapse to the floor. Either Christophe’s magic had hit her with a delayed reaction, she was more injured than she’d let on, or the shock had finally caught up to her.
Before Alexios could move, Brennan flashed through the room, a miniature meteor shower of sparkling mist blasting through the air in his wake. He swept the woman up into his arms and turned to face Alexios and Christophe, baring his teeth. All that naked rage and fury was once again on his face, battling with an emotion shining and deadly, like an unsheathed sword.
An emotion Alexios had never once seen from Brennan.
But he’d definitely seen that look from someone else recently. When Prince Conlan looked at Riley, his bride-to-be.
Possession.
“Damn,” he muttered.
“Brennan, put down the nice human,” Christophe said, grinning as if at some wondrous joke. “She’s—”
“Mine,” Brennan said flatly. “She’s mine. Come near her and die.”
Alexios lowered his sword arm and sheathed his weapon, then sighed and lifted his head to stare at the ceiling. “Great. Outstanding. So now I’ve got unconscious and bloody humans, Justice possibly in the Void, and Brennan losing his tiny little mind. Welcome to my nightmare.”
An icy wind sheared through the room and materialized into the form of Poseidon’s high priest. Alaric, clad in black that was only alleviated by the shimmering silvery green light of the power glowing in his eyes, took in the situation in a single glance. “You are in luck, warrior. I specialize in nightmares.”
In the space between thoughts, Alaric lifted his hands and shot a pulsing blue-green energy sphere directly at Brennan, who flew into the air, still clutching the unconscious woman, to try to escape it. But Brennan, especially under the sway of whatever dark magic that had compelled his rage to the surface, was no match for Alaric. Sparkling light surrounded the warrior and his captive and inexorably lowered them until they hung, frozen, inches above the floor.
Alaric inclined his head, and Alexios rushed forward to lift the human from Brennan’s arms. As soon as he pulled her away, the frozen state of her muscles relaxed into limpness. He carefully placed her on the couch and pulled the fabric over the rounded curves that had been revealed when he moved her. She was lovely, and she was trouble.
Why did the two always go together when it came to women?
“What happened here?” Alaric demanded.
Alexios brought him up-to-date. “So, this Tiernan claims to know a way to find Justice, but it requires black magic,” Alexios concluded. “What do you think?”
Alaric closed his eyes for several seconds then slowly shook his head. “Poseidon offers me no guidance on this issue, although I do know that only death magic will open the Void. We must decide on a course of action, but Conlan and Vengeance will not rest until they have rescued their . . . brother.”
“I still can’t believe Justice is their brother,” Christophe said. “Some seriously incredible secret he kept for all those years.”
“It is the nature of the geas that was cast upon him,” Alaric said. “He was cursed never to reveal the truth unless he then killed every living being who heard it from his lips.”
Alexios shook his head. “But he didn’t kill any of the ones who heard him during that final battle with Caligula. I never thought to ask you, in all this time we’ve been searching for him. What happens when you break a geas?”
Alaric’s eyes darkened, all the green bleeding out of them until they were purest black. “You die, Alexios. You die, or you become utterly, irreparably insane.”
“Then what are we searching for?” Christophe asked, all traces of mockery and humor gone. “What will we find if we ever do locate him?”
“That is the answer that even I am afraid to give,” Alaric replied. “And Poseidon will not answer my queries on this matter.”
A brittle silence filled the room for several moments, while time and terrifying answers hung suspended between them. Then Alaric shook his head and gestured to a space in front of the shattered window, and an iridescent oval shape began to form. “Now we return to Atlantis, where I can attempt to discover what dark force has overtaken Brennan.”
“And the woman?” Alexios asked, staring down at her.
“She comes, too, and we will determine exactly what she knows.”
With that, Alaric stepped through the portal, and Brennan, still frozen, floated through it after him as if pulled on a tether.
Christophe took a last look around the room and laughed. “Wonder how they’ll explain all this to themselves when they wake up?”
Still laughing, he leapt through the portal, leaving Alexios to lift Tiernan into his arms and carry her through it with him. As he entered the magical doorway to Atlantis, he looked down at her pale and bruised face. “Lady, I hope you’re telling the truth. Because if we don’t find Justice soon, only Poseidon himself will be able to help him.”
As the portal swirled shut behind him, Alexios’s words—words he knew to be sacrilegious—echoed in the dark. “And gods? Just between us, they’re not always all that reliable.”
Chapter 9
The Void
Use all of your senses, the forgotten voice from an ancient past repeated in Justice’s mind. He struggled to comply, marshaling formidable will to defeat surrender.
Took inventory:
Sight—useless in the blackness of the Void.
Scent—providing nothing valuable, no new information. The rankness of rotted carcass. The rusted coppery aroma of primordial blood.
Sound—the grunting and moaning grew louder, closer, more and more eager. Dark’s denizen gaining on its goal.
The memory of a voice. Mocking. No, not mocking. Affection underlying camaraderie. “So, Justice, you gonna sit there and think about this monster, or are you gonna kick its ass?”
Facial muscles long atrophied moved in a parody of a smile. Bastien. Friend. Brother.
Home.
A harsh croaking noise rasped from his throat. Speech after unrelenting silence. Defiance after near surrender.
He was Justice, and he was going home.
“Kick. Your. Ass,” he growled. As battle cries went, it was lacking. As a directional beacon to the monster, it worked very well. “Come to me, then. Come to me and die.”
The monster roared out in answering challenge, a harsh, gravelly noise paired with wet, sucking sounds. Heralds of grasping greed and insatiable hunger. Worse, somewhere in the nearly inarticulate noise, words existed. Garbled, twisted. Words spoken by one who had nearly forgotten the meaning of speech.
“For so long, my enemy. So long have I waited to feast on flesh and blood and fear. Defy me, I beg of you. Defy me,
and your death will taste that much sweeter,” the creature grated out in rusted syllables.
It took a moment to realize that the creature spoke in ancient Greek and to formulate a response in kind. Then for an instant—trapped between thought and action—Justice knew pity. “How long?” he demanded. “How long have you been trapped here, creature?”
It was a long, shuddering pause before the creature responded. “Longer than sentience, human. Longer than reality. There is nothing but the blood.”
Before pity had opportunity to crystallize into empathy, the creature sprang, snarling in bestial rage. Justice reacted, body and mind moving into the dance honed by centuries of training and practice. His arm swept up, hand reaching behind his head to grasp the hilt of the sword that he hadn’t even known until that moment was still sheathed on his back.
She’d left him a weapon, then. Even with his sword, he was too puny in her eyes to pose any threat. He’d prove her wrong.
“Then we dance, monster,” Justice roared, finding full voice. “For Atlantis!”
In the next second, the monster hit him, hard, smashing him down onto rocky ground that he didn’t remember having been under his feet. The weight of its body was unexpectedly light. What he could feel of his attacker felt disconcertingly like it was simply a man. But the sounds of it, by the gods. What man made sounds like that?
Justice rolled backward, shifting his body to accommodate the sword, and gained his feet in the space of a few heartbeats. Holding his sword in a two-handed grip, up and before him with tip pointing down, Justice charged forward. Brute force would have to suffice; the dark made elegance irrelevant. Judging his distance by the harsh, snuffling bellows of the creature’s breath, Justice ran forward two short steps and drove the point of his sword at his target, rage accelerating the force of his thrust.