Atlantis Unleashed (11 page)

Finally, she spoke, her voice husky and richly compelling. “Holy Pulitzer, Batman. This is the story of a lifetime.”

The priest's eyes narrowed. “It is a story you may not yet live to tell—” he began, before he was interrupted by a deep, almost animalistic growling sound.

“Harm her and die, Priest!” Brennan shouted, even as he sprang forward toward Alaric, unsheathed daggers in his hands. “She is mine.”

In the space measured by Brennan's leap, three things occurred simultaneously. First, Tiernan fell back onto the ground, dark eyes gone enormous in her white face. Second, Alaric held up a hand and again captured Brennan, freezing him in place. Third, and most unexpected, a portal that was not
the
portal, but more like a window, shimmered into existence, no larger than a single pane of glass.

As they all watched, however, the window or portal expanded until it was the height and breadth of a man. It was transparent in a darkling manner and opened to a view that must be located in one of the nine hells. Reddish-orange light pulsed sullenly over a rocky, barren landscape that twisted as though formed from volcanic eruption or a game of boulder hurling played by bored gods. Nothing living existed within it—neither tree nor plant nor creature.

They stared at it and each warrior drew his weapons, prepared for the worst. Alexios tightened his hands on the hilts of his daggers. Always prepared for the worst, even in a life lived through centuries. Unfortunately, the measure of
worst
only stretched and enlarged as the years passed.

“It's like a window looking out onto insanity itself,” Christophe muttered, shaking his head in apparent disbelief.

“Yet if it is insanity, at least two inhabit therein,” Alaric replied, pointing to the upper-left corner of the transparency.

Alexios caught sight of two figures, tiny and moving slowly in the far distance as viewed through the distorted window. Light gleamed from an object held by the first of the two, who shuffled forward almost painfully.

“It's a sword,” Alexios said. “And look. Look at the braid swinging behind him. It's Justice! It's got to be Justice!”

Alaric whipped around and pointed to the portal guards. “You two. Take Brennan to the palace. Carry him on your back if you have to. Install him in the healing rooms, and do not, under any circumstances, let him out.” He snapped out a word and Brennan collapsed into an unconscious heap on the ground.

The guards rushed forward to gather him up, but Alaric didn't wait to see that they complied with his orders. “If that is truly Justice, then we are looking directly into the Void. Again,
if
what this human female tells us is correct. There is far too much supposition in the situation to make me comfortable.”

“What if he's compromised?” Christophe asked, his hands on the hilts of his daggers. “What if he's leading some sort of army for Anubisa? How can he have opened a window directly into Atlantis? The wards protect the Seven Isles from any dark magic.”

The female interrupted their speculation, rising to her feet from where she'd fallen on the grass. “He's in the Void,” Tiernan said. “I saw someone die giving that information. A good man, who didn't deserve what they did to him.” Tears rolled down her face, but she ignored them. “Your warrior is in the Void, and if that's him, you'd better prepare for some serious bad.”

Christophe sneered at her. “Yeah, like we believe you, Apostate.”

Alaric cut him off with a single raised hand. “As he says, female, we have no reason to trust you. When this situation is resolved, we will learn more of each other. Until then, unless you have further information that can help us seal this breach, remain silent.”

“My name is Tiernan, not female,” she said, defiance in her tone. But then, murmuring something that sounded like “Pulitzer, Pulitzer, Pulitzer,” she inclined her head to Alaric. “Only one more thing, and you probably know this, since you seem to be the big boss around here. The only way in and out of the Void is with death magic, and I'm not talking animals,” she said, adding a crucial fact to what Alaric had told them earlier. “A
person
has to die for someone to escape—a life for a life. So unless either you or he plan to sacrifice someone, neither of you is getting through that entryway.”

Christophe raised one of his daggers and took a step toward Tiernan, a dangerous smile spreading across his face. “Well, how convenient that we have a sacrifice all dressed up and with no place to go.”

Alexios unsheathed his own sword and stepped in front of Tiernan. “I know you're kidding, but she doesn't. Shut up and step away from the human, unless you want to seriously piss me off. Because, Christophe, I'm having what some might call a tragically bad day.”

Laughing, Christophe whirled around to look through the entryway again. The figures had moved closer, and they could almost catch sight of the features on the man in the lead.

“It can't be Justice,” Alexios said. “I can tell Justice from much farther away than this, simply by the way he walks. Nobody else strides along with that inborn arrogance, as though he owns the world. This man may sport his hair in a braid, but that shuffling walk cannot belong to Lord Justice.”

Alaric, never looking away from the view, replied quietly. “And yet you yourself walked in just such a manner when you were healing from what Anubisa did to you. Near-fatal injuries can stamp out even the most determined arrogance.”

Unable to form a coherent response to Alaric's truth, Alexios clenched his jaw and considered their options. As they watched, the figures trudged closer and closer to the shimmering distortion of the window. “Well, don't you always tell us that the simplest solution is usually correct?” he finally managed.

“Occam may have a prior claim on that teaching, but yes,” Alaric answered. “Your point?”

“My point is that we haven't even tried to get through this yet. Maybe it's as simple as walking right through.”

“Sure. Because there's no chance this could be a trap, right?” Christophe said, rolling his eyes. “No chance that this could be a ‘fry the Atlanteans' game on Anubisa's part.”

“The female—
Tiernan
—is correct. If this is a view onto the Void, it cannot be entered without death magic. I have no desire for my own death to become the platform for that entry, by way of touching one of Anubisa's constructs,” Alaric said.

Alexios was tempted, in spite of the fact that he had never known the priest to be wrong. Justice was more than friend, more than brother.

They were the Warriors of Poseidon, and they
did not leave a man behind
.

Alexios had spent much of the past months, while ceaselessly searching for Justice, considering what the long centuries of silence must have cost the warrior. What breaking the
geas
must've done to erode his mind.

What Anubisa had done to further torment him. The shields Alexios had erected in his own mind to block those memories wavered, and he clenched his hands into fists as he built his shields back into impenetrable walls. “I will make the attempt, Alaric. I will test this barrier.”

Before Alaric could stop him, Alexios placed a hand flat against the wavering surface of the window. An enormously powerful energy spike slammed into him, knocking him back nearly a dozen feet. As he lay on the ground, blinking, he noticed the smoke before he saw its origin. Stunned and speechless, with the air smashed out of his lungs, Alexios held up that same hand that had touched the barrier. The nerve endings screamed in pain as though he held his hand inside the hottest fires of the deepest of the nine hells. Yet the only residual damage was blackened fingertips and smoking fingernails. Still, though, the smell of smoke grew stronger.

“Fool,” snarled Alaric. “Must I talk to you as though you were the rawest of untrained warriors?” The priest raised a hand, and then sliced it through the air toward Alexios, as though throwing an object. Instead, a stream of icy water arrowed through the air and slapped Alexios in the face, drenching his head.

He leapt up off the ground, spluttering and wiping water out of his face. “What was that for?”

Christophe started laughing. “Your hair was on fire, man. Alaric probably didn't want you to scar the other side of your pretty face, too.”

Alexios almost involuntarily ducked his head, so his sodden hair swung forward to cover the hideously scarred left side of his face. “Someday you'll go too far, Christophe,” he snarled. “Then I will be the one to teach
you
a lesson.”

Tiernan, whom he'd almost forgotten, cleared her throat. “Um, not to break up your frat-boy testosterone party, but your friend is getting closer. If he
is
still your friend, after spending time in the Void. And, what exactly is that thing walking behind him?”

Alexios ran back to the dark shimmer of a window and saw what had become painfully clear over the space of the past few moments. “That is Justice!” he shouted.

A prickling feeling on Alexios's neck was his only warning before High Prince Conlan and his brother, Lord Vengeance, shouldered their way to the window. Tension practically vibrated from the pair of them as they caught their first sight of Justice. The warrior who had claimed to be their brother immediately before he'd sacrificed himself to the vampire goddess. Justice had saved Ven's life, and the life of the gem singer Erin Connors, who was Ven's chosen and a healer. By doing so, he'd also saved the life of Prince Conlan's unborn child.

Lord Justice was a hero.

But maybe he was a hero corrupted into a traitor. There was no way to be sure, until Alaric could test him.

As if he were thought-mining Alexios, Alaric began speaking quietly and quickly, filling Ven and Conlan in on the current situation. Conlan's obsidian gaze swept over Tiernan, and he nodded to her with all courtesy. “If you speak the truth, lady, you will be rewarded. Be welcome to Atlantis.”

A strange expression, almost a grimace, crossed Tiernan's face at his words, but she merely nodded.

Ven snapped a hand signal to Christophe and Alexios, directing them to keep watch over Tiernan, but Ven himself barely glanced at her, his entire attention focused on the view through the dark magic of the window. “Truth, rewards, yeah, whatever. For now, what in the freaking nine hells are we going to do?”

Alaric finished his recounting, and Ven's hands dropped to the hilts of his daggers. “Death magic? Are you kidding me?” He barked out a laugh. “Great. We finally find out Justice is alive, and we've gotta kill somebody to get him out?”

Prince Conlan glared at his brother. “No one is dying today,” he snapped. Then he returned his attention to Alaric. “Options?”

“If I had any options, I would have presented them,” Alaric said, his voice so icy that Alexios was surprised Conlan didn't suffer frostbite. The priest was accustomed to solving every problem and having the last word in every crisis. Alexios figured it chapped Alaric's ass to be unable to solve this one.

“Perhaps,” Christophe offered, “since Justice appears to have opened the first-ever window from the Void into Atlantis,
he
may have some ideas on the matter.”

“What is that thing walking behind him?” Ven asked.

“Gee, I wish I'd asked that,” Tiernan said dryly.

Alexios couldn't keep the grin from escaping. The woman had guts; he'd give her that.

As the two had drawn nearer, more and more of the figure following Justice had been revealed. It looked almost human, although grossly deformed. As it shambled along in Justice's wake, it rarely looked up, but merely stared down at the path in front of it.

“Well, maybe we'll get lucky,” Christophe added. “Maybe Justice brought his own sacrifice along with him.”

A flicker of light in their peripheral vision was their only warning before the Atlantean portal, situated exactly on the opposite side of the marble entry platform from the dark window, began to shiver and elongate into its usual ovoid sphere.

Threatened on both sides with possible danger, Alexios ran to position himself in front of Tiernan, daggers unsheathed. Prince Conlan and his warriors drew weapons and Alaric called power, standing in a nimbus of silvery green energy, as Justice drew ever closer on one side of the group, and two people came through the Atlantean portal on the other.

Alexios recognized Liam, one of the most dangerously effective of Poseidon's warriors, leading yet another human female. This one had blazing red hair and the most intensely green eyes he'd ever seen on a human, and she was dressed casually, clutching a worn backpack to her chest with, oddly enough, gloved hands. Liam's head was turned to her as they crossed the portal. “Welcome to Atlantis, Dr. McDermott,” he said.

The woman's stunning eyes widened and her jaw tightened but, to her credit, she gave no other sign of alarm at the sight of several armed warriors and one half-naked woman. She simply blinked once, held up a hand and waved, and then glanced up at Liam. “Well. I have to admit, McHottie, this is one of my more interesting welcome parties.”