Atlantis Rising (20 page)

The power with the potential to suck the fluids from the tissue and bones of those who were
still alive
.

The sheer seduction in the thought choked him, stopped him. His horror at what he could become, at what wielding such power might do to his mind—to his
soul
—cut him off from the source of the elements instantly.

As he lost control, he fell back, gasping harshly, against the nearest tree. When his vision cleared of the power and the haze and dust from the dried-out bodies, he saw Ven, collapsed on the ground, trying to raise up on one arm.

As Conlan attempted to stand, to recover enough of his strength to proceed, a sharp voice cut through his exhaustion.

Justice. “Interesting, my prince. I did not know you had mastered the calling of forbidden death.” Justice bowed slightly and walked around the pile of dust and bone fragments that lay where the bodies of twelve men had been only minutes earlier. He kicked at a skull that had rolled away from the rest, and it exploded into a shower of fine, dry dust.

Justice cocked his head and stared at Conlan and Ven, eyes narrowed. “Very interesting, indeed.”

 
Barrabas leaned back in his carved wooden seat in the center of the Primus main gallery, hours after everyone else had gone home to their meaningless lives. He was well contented by the day’s work. Yet another codicil to the 2006 Nonhuman Species Protection Act he’d authored—one of his proudest accomplishments—was now only a single signature from becoming law.

He’d shoved the codicil through with persuasion, charm, and brute force. The disappearance of two key members of the human houses of Congress hadn’t hurt, either.

He smiled, a baring of teeth that would have terrified the weak man who probably sat, quivering, in the Oval Office at that very minute. His advisors were begging the president to veto the bill.

Barrabas knew the weakling didn’t have the spine for it. “Lame duck” took on a whole new meaning when a politician was dealing with a master vampire.

“You must be very pleased with yourself, Lord Bar—. . . Lord
Barnes
.” Drakos had entered, unnoticed, and now strode down the aisle toward him.

Barrabas didn’t particularly care for a general who could sneak up on him, which reminded him yet again that he’d have to decide soon about finding Drakos’s replacement.

Perhaps Caligula. The thought gave him a perverse pleasure, and he smiled again. “Yes, Drakos, I am very, very pleased. The consolidation of power is simply a matter of acquiring and honing knowledge.”

Barrabas stood, then levitated from his position down to the floor of the chamber. “If you know both your enemy and yourself, you will come out of one hundred battles with one hundred victories. Know neither your enemy nor yourself, and you will lose all.”

Drakos raised one eyebrow. “Sun Tzu?”

Barrabas inclined his head. “A true master strategist.”

“Was he, too, one of us?”

“No, although it is astonishing that he was not. If only I’d had the opportunity . . . Well. No matter. What have you to report?”

“Our spies report a complete failure in determining what may have happened to Terminus and his vanguard, my lord. We—”

But before Drakos could finish his thought, a chill swept through the chamber. Though colorless, it destroyed the light. Though odorless, it reeked of bile and death.

Though soundless, it deafened them, driving both to their knees.

Choking, suffocating, Barrabas barely had time to form the name in his mind before she spoke.

Her voice rang with the chimes heralding the hangman’s noose, the headsman’s axe. The sound of ground glass shredding the vocal cords of screaming humans shrieked in her tone.

Yet, somehow, her words were quiet and still. Death stealing the breath of an infant in its cradle.

As he’d seen
her
do. Not merely breath, but blood.

As he’d
helped
her do.

He wondered at the broken shards of his long-murdered conscience as they poked at his liver.

Twisted in his brain.

He was screaming with the agony of it before she’d completed her first sentence. And then he was unable to make any sound at all.

He collapsed on his face next to the unconscious form of his general.

“You grow stronger, Barrabas,” she crooned in her poisonous lilt. “When last I saw you, you were sodden with your own piss long before I formed words.”

He wrenched his head to the side, tried to gaze into her face, and the ice in the air intensified. Turned his bowels to water.

He’d pray not to soil himself, but to whom did dark lords pray?

To the bitch goddess in front of him, of course. And she had nothing of mercy or compassion in her.

He clenched his buttocks together and listened.

She laughed. At the sound of her laughter, living things died. He’d seen
that
, too.

A tiny blood clot in his brain burst, shooting blood out of his nose. He lay still while it trickled down the side of his face to pool on the floor underneath his cheek.

“Is that your offering to me, Lord
Barnes
? And, yes, of course I know about your pitiful attempt to disguise your true self from these sheep.”

The tips of her fingers and the bottom of her silken gown were all he could see. She wore white. A travesty, virginal white on the goddess of all lusts.

Which is why it amused her so.

She’d told him that once. Then she’d broken him.

Again and again.

He cringed to remember. Cringed to remember how, at the very end, he’d begged her for the pain. For the humiliation.

Groveled for the twisted perversions.

She gestured with one hand and released him. Suddenly able to move, he was afraid to do so.

He was no stranger to her games.

“Rise, my Barrabas. I hear from your cesspool of a mind that you remember our fun with . . .
yearning
. Shall I pleasure you again with my toys?”

He stood, struggling to contain the shudder that threatened to devour his body. Her toys. Iron-clawed whips. Steel manacles that fit many more things than only arms and legs.

Braving a glance at her, he saw that she was unchanged. If anything, more beautiful than she’d been three hundred years ago when he’d last seen her.

Last
felt
her.

Almost died the true death from it.

Silken waves of midnight black hair caressed curves of such perfection that they would drive a human male to drooling madness. Piercing eyes the black of damned souls gazed at him, a spark of red in their exact centers.

She must be in a good mood.

Maybe he wouldn’t die.

Maybe not this time.

“Afraid to answer me,
Lord
Barrabas?” She infused the word with sarcasm sharp enough to flay flesh from bones.

He’d done
that
with her, too. More of her “toys.”

“I . . . forgive me, my lady goddess. I have no words, before your beauty.” He stammered out the words, knowing that flattery might have a chance to distract her. She was Death personified, but she was an ancient
female
death. Pretty words drew her attention like shiny things to the eyes of a crow.

“Yes. Yes, I am beautiful, Barrabas,” she preened. “And I have been constrained from playing my favorite games for far too long, due to Poseidon’s curse. But this day and yester eve bring me great joy, my young one. Do you wish to know why?”

Though nearly three thousand years old, the “young one” was afraid to do more than nod.

She caressed his cheek with a fingertip, and his skin burned and sizzled in the wake of her touch. He fought to keep from flinching.

“The princeling himself broke Poseidon’s curse. He has revealed the existence of Atlantis to one of the sheep, thus breaking the ancient stricture laid upon me by that prick of a sea god,” she said, skirts whirling around her with the force of her anger.

Barrabas gasped. “Atlantis? The lost continent of legend truly exists?”

She smiled again, and her mouth was crowded with far too many teeth. Shiny, dagger-sharp teeth. He leaned toward her, hypnotized at the sight, but she laughed and turned away.

“No, Barrabas. I am in no mood to sample your wares again. First, I will tell you of Atlantis, and how you will serve me in my plans. Then.” She smiled again and prodded the motionless form of Drakos with one slippered foot. “Then I will teach your general how to play.”

Riley planted one hand on her hip, the other still supporting Quinn, and stared up at the walking mountain of muscle who was barring her path. “Look, Bastien, I appreciate your loyalty to Conlan. Really I do. But Brennan already let us go, and I need to get my sister to a doctor.”

A trace of warm sympathy crossed Bastien’s handsome face, but he shook his head and folded his arms across his enormous chest. “I am sorry, Lady Riley, but I am unable to allow you to pass.”

Riley heard a sharp
snick
sound, and suddenly a lethal-looking knife blade was pressed up against Bastien’s neck. And Quinn was the one holding the nonpointy end of it.

Riley gasped, but Bastien merely sighed, as if he were totally unconcerned with the six inches or so of steel pointing at his throat.

Quinn moved away from Riley and pushed her a little way back with the arm not holding the knife. “Here’s the deal, buddy. You let me and my sister go, or I’ll slice your carotid artery into little pieces before you can say ‘not-so-jolly giant.’ ”

Bastien actually smiled. “I am unsurprised that you would have the courage of a warrior five times your size, small one.

Your sister’s blood is strong in you. Were you suckled with tiger’s milk?”

Riley snapped out of her shock and grabbed her sister’s arm. “Quinn, stop! These men are . . . well, they . . . they’re the good guys.”

Quinn turned to look Riley in the eye, hand holding the knife never wavering. “Riley, there are things here you don’t understand. Those men who were dead—they were—”

“They were shape-shifters and Atlantean warriors,” Conlan said, stepping onto the path next to Riley. “What will be interesting to learn is how you came to be lying, injured, in the midst of them.”

Brennan silently appeared beside Quinn. “I sensed that you had finished the
mortus desicana
, and that it would be safe to let Lady Riley and her sister walk toward you,” he said, bowing slightly toward Conlan.

Quinn’s eyes narrowed, but she finally put the knife down and stepped back from Bastien, who winked at her. “Outnumbered by Atlantean warriors. That would actually explain a lot about the way they . . . Well. Do you have any proof of this ridiculous story? And what are you doing here?”

She swept out a hand at the path. “Were those your men who attacked my wolves?”

Riley’s heart, which had finally begun to slow down, started racing again. “What?
Your
wolves? What are you doing hanging out with a pack of shape-shifters?”

Quinn gently patted her arm, with the air of a parent comforting a toddler. “Shh, sis. It’s okay. I’ll tell you about it later.”

Oh, that was
so
not happening. Riley yanked her arm away from Quinn’s hand. “You can stow the condescending attitude, Quinn, and tell me what the hell you’re doing here and why you had a . . . a
gunshot
wound that you nearly died from?”

Quinn had the audacity to roll her eyes. “A little dramatic, don’t you think? It was only my shoulder. I’ve had worse.” Her face softened, and she pulled Riley close in a fierce hug. “I’m sorry, baby sister. I love you so much—I never wanted for you to see any of this world.” Quinn pulled away suddenly, and she scanned the area.

“Speaking of which, where is that other man? I had the strangest feeling that he crawled into my skin to heal me from the inside out . . .” Her voice trailed off, and her hand reached up to touch her shredded shirt and the unbroken skin underneath it. “I know I didn’t imagine that gunshot.”

“We can share our stories back at the house,” Conlan said.

“I think it’s past time we got away from here.”

“The scene of the crime,” Quinn added, lines of sorrow and exhaustion on her face. “Where are they? What did you do with . . . their bodies?”

Ven stumbled up to them, looking like he’d been on a three-week bender. His skin was gray, and the dark circles under his eyes went on for miles. Riley looked from him to Conlan, whose face was also drawn and pale, though less so than Ven’s.

“What exactly happened to you two?” she asked, opening her mind and emotions for the first time since she’d seen the bodies.

But Conlan’s mental shields were down in a big and serious way. She couldn’t feel anything from him.

Ven, though, either wasn’t as strong or else he was too tired to care. She felt it from him—the sorrow, the weariness, the horror at what they’d done.

But she didn’t understand the emotions. “What did you do to the bodies?” she asked, echoing Quinn.

“We had to dispose of them. We can’t leave that kind of mess for the human authorities,” Conlan said, jaw clenching.

“But—no! You can’t do that! We have to call 911 and—”

“He’s right, Riley,” Quinn said wearily, head drooping. “This is something beyond even the P Ops. Especially if they really are from Atlantis.”

Conlan held a hand out to Riley, and she blinked at him in utter disbelief. “But, that can’t be right. Paranormal Ops guys deal with this kind of stuff all the time, right? I mean—”

“Riley,” Conlan said, voice gentle. “There is nothing left for them to find. Please. We need to get your sister out of danger.”

Riley hesitated another minute, then nodded, squaring her shoulders. “Sure. Fine. You’re right. Atlantis exists, vampires attack me, I nearly get killed by my client’s boyfriend, and my sister is in league with werewolves. What’s abnormal about that?”