Atlantis Unleashed (10 page)

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.

The monster shrieked and swung out with a stick the size of a tree trunk, deflecting the blade, smashing into Justice's side and possibly cracking ribs. But ribs would heal if death were defeated, so Justice pressed forward, putting his full weight behind the pressure he brought to bear on his sword, trying to pierce his opponent.

Bellowing sharp cries that burned like acid in Justice's ears, the creature switched tactics. Fetid breath his only warning, Justice leapt back and away a moment before the monster's teeth clashed shut.

A shiver of humor snaked through him, in spite of death and dark and Void. A shadow of the man he'd been before all three. “Brings a whole new meaning to ‘don't bite my head off,' doesn't it?” he said, and then he laughed.

In spite of madness and impending death, he laughed.

As if in response to the forbidden sound of joy, silver-blue sigils on his sword—symbols he'd never seen on it before—appeared and began to glow. First faintly, and then with increasing power, until a circle some dozen feet in diameter shone with the crystalline light of a moonlit night.

The creature screamed and dropped the stick. Shielding its face, it cringed from the light, and the sight of it twisted something deep inside Justice. The creature was humanoid, had perhaps even been human, once. Eons ago, before darkness and madness had taken it. Its ropy, muscled form twisted and bulged with pockets of barnacle-like encrustation, and the edge of the single eye that Justice could see was staring white and blind. The light from the sword seemed to be burning it, and it shrieked and shrieked for long minutes until its wild cries subsided into sobs.

Justice could not bring himself to execute it. He lowered his sword, which still glowed with the force of a new moon, though in a place where no moon had ever shone. “How long, then? How long since you have seen light?”

The hoarse sobs paused, then haltingly came to a complete stop. “I do not know. Anubisa found me on a battlefield, near to death, when my lord Alexander defeated Thebes.”

Justice rocked back a step, the force of the admission more powerful than the pain in his ribs. “More than two thousand years? All here, trapped in the Void?”

A long, shuddering sigh greeted his words. But he waited, and finally the creature spoke. “I was near death from my wounds, and she promised eternal life. I did not know I would be damned for all eternity if I accepted. When I . . . refused her embrace, in fear for my soul, she cast me here, to become a worse monster than even she was.”

Harsh, cawing sobs shook the creature again. “I have not seen light once in that time. Yet she will not let me die. Only a weapon wielded by a champion will release me, by the words of her curse. But no champion will ever find himself in the Void. So here I remain, for more than two millennia, as you tell me. Undying and never to find my eternal rest.”

Pity and revulsion, both, combined in Justice, and he made a rash oath, not knowing how—or if—he could fulfill it. “I am a Warrior of Poseidon, creature, and by some measure all such stand as champions to earth's humans. We will escape this hell together.” He lifted his sword again, to use as a beacon instead of as a weapon, and scanned the edges of the dark surrounding them, then turned his attention to his adversary. “If we are to fight together, I cannot call you
creature
. What is your name?”

The creature—no, the
man
—lowered his arm and squinted up at Justice, his face twisted painfully with what might have been hope. “My name? I have had no name for so long . . .” He wrapped his arms around bony knees and, keening softly, rocked back and forth on the ground until Justice feared the man had once again succumbed to madness.

“If you have no name—”

“Pharnatus,” the man said, mouth falling open as one having a revelation. “My name was Pharnatus. I was foot soldier to Alexander of Macedon.”

Justice inclined his head. “These thousands of years later, Alexander is still recognized as one of the greatest military leaders of all time. So you are no creature but a true warrior. I am Justice, of Atlantis, Pharnatus. Let us conquer the Void together, in the name of Alexander and Atlantis.”

He held out his hand, and Pharnatus stared at it for a long moment. Then the Greek reached up with his own torturously gnarled hand and Justice gently grasped it and pulled him up to his feet.

Pharnatus inhaled a long, shuddering breath, then shook his head and stepped back, his white eyes flaring in the gleaming sword light. “The scent of your blood. It still pulls at me. I have only a phantom memory of being a man, but centuries of existing as a monster. What if—”

“You are a champion in your own right, Pharnatus. Remember Alexander and gain strength from his example,” Justice commanded.

Command. Yes. It was coming back to him. He was Justice of Atlantis, and he had friends. Brother warriors. Home. Pain sliced through his soul as he remembered the
geas
he had broken. The truth he'd finally revealed.

Family. He had family. Brothers. Ven and Conlan were his brothers, and he must return to Atlantis. To his family. Yet another misted memory returned to him, breaking through the shrouds in his mind as the light from his sword broke through the darkness of the Void. He shouted out a laugh, and as Pharnatus flinched back from him, the sword's brightness gleamed even stronger.

“The baby! Pharnatus, I will be an uncle! We must find a way out of here. Now.” He suddenly stopped, a face—
her
face—flashing into his mind. Keely. A tidal wave of renewed strength coursed through his body.

“I must find the woman I am destined to meet.”

Atlantis

The last shimmers of light from the portal flickered out as it closed behind what Alexios thought must be the oddest group ever to have entered Atlantis. He felt his lungs expand, as if the air itself were telling him he could relax now.

He was home.

The ornate marble platform they'd stepped onto was bordered by the thickest profusion of trees, plants, and flowers he'd seen outside of the Amazon jungle. Delicate orchids in colors never seen anywhere else grew to heights of four feet or more, impossible masses of blooms in so many shades of purple that only the palace gardeners could name them all. Trees topped with a symphony of blossoms, cascading through warm brown and shining silvery branches.

The gardens had been a touchstone for him during the worst of the torture. He'd leave his body and imagine walking through the paths of the palace gardens, and nothing they did to his body could reach him.

“You with us, Alexios?” Christophe's sarcastic voice snapped him out of memories he had no desire to revisit, and he realized that he still held the sheet-clad, bruised human woman in his arms.

Alaric stood, face grim, one hand held out toward Brennan, who floated unmoving beside him. Christophe smirked at the six portal guards, who crouched slightly, swords held at battle ready, awaiting command.

“You may stand down,” Alaric said, voice quiet but resonating with authority. “Lord Brennan has been temporarily . . . incapacitated.”

The more senior of the guards bowed to the priest. “As you say, then. Shall we notify the prince?”

Alaric gazed into the distance for a moment and then made a slight motion with his shoulders that may have been a shrug. “Prince Conlan is on his way with the Lord Vengeance.” He turned his glowing green gaze to the captive warrior beside him. “Perhaps now, on the soil of Atlantis, Brennan will regain his faculties.”

Alexios stepped back two quick paces, still holding Tiernan, as Alaric moved his hand in a small semicircle and spoke a word under his breath. Brennan's eyes snapped open, and he also dropped into a stance of battle readiness, scanning the area as if for danger.

“Atlantis? How am I here? Xinon—the humans—the woman—”

Alaric smoothly stepped between Brennan and Alexios. “Yes, Atlantis. Perhaps you would care to explain your actions in regard to the human female?”

Brennan slowly shook his head. “I know not to what you refer. There were many human females among the Apostates. Was there one in particular that required my assistance?”

Alexios stepped out from behind Alaric, but remained at a safe distance from Brennan. Tiernan was beginning to rouse from unconsciousness, shifting restlessly in his arms. “Yeah, you could say that, Brennan. This one in particular. The one you claimed for yourself and threatened to kill us over? Ringing any bells?”

Christophe casually rolled a green sphere of pure energy from palm to palm and shot a glare at Brennan. “Bells, hells. It should be ringing a big freaking gong in that tiny emotionless brain of yours, Brennan. Let's not forget the humans you tried to kill for no reason. Not that I'm not down with that; the only good human is a dead human and all that. Bunch of damn sheep. But, oh, yeah, sacred mission, duty as warriors, blah, blah, blah. Right?”

Before Alexios could snarl a reprimand at Christophe's insolence, Tiernan opened her eyes and stared up at him. “What—Oh. Right.” She took a deep breath, which did interesting things to the curves concealed by the sheet, and then she spoke again, rather calmly, considering the situation. “Will you please put me down? I think I'm going to be sick.”

Alexios hastily lowered her to her feet, and she took a shaky step and then crouched down, resting one hand on the grass and clutching the sheet to her breasts with the other. She drew in several deep, shuddering breaths, but apparently managed to calm her unsettled stomach. Finally, she looked up and stared around at the ring of warriors who watched her. Slowly, she rose, shaking her head at the hand Alexios held out to assist her. Her chin lifted as she stared up and up and up, and her mouth dropped open in an expression of utter awe.

Alexios followed her gaze and realized she was staring at the nearly transparent, faintly glowing dome that surrounded Atlantis. Or beyond it, at the deep, dark currents of the ocean under which the Seven Isles rested.