Atlantis Awakening (25 page)

Ven saw the expression on Justice's face signal the approach of what smelled like wolf. He'd been standing a little to the right of the opening, out of the line of sight of anybody coming back into the cave. He leapt even farther out of the way, holding up a warning hand to Erin to stay back. The thunderous tolling sound started up again and she got that dazed look on her face, but at least she stumbled back against the wall.

He turned to face the approaching shifters, so he had less than a split second of warning before Jack—all fangs and claws and pure, enraged muscle—attacked Justice. He couldn't hear the snarling over the sound of the Nereid's Heart, or whatever was making that enormous noise, but he could tell from the tiger's wide-open jaws that there was definitely snarling going on.

He'd known they must have drugged or poisoned Jack to knock him out. What he hadn't known was what effect the drugs might have on a ferocious weretiger.

Figured it wouldn't be good.

He raised his sword and plunged it into the chest of the first shifter to hit the room. The Were had been moving fast enough that the impact drove Ven back a few paces. Before he could yank his sword out, Erin moved away from the relative safety of the shadows against the wall and headed for the fierce battle going on between Atlantean and tiger.

“Damnit, Erin, get back!” he shouted at her, not that she could hear anything but that damned ruby. This plan was fucked clear to the nine hells and back.

He had time to see Erin throw a shield around herself, and then the second shifter was on him. He abandoned his sword and went hand to hand, dropping to the ground and using one leg to sweep the Were's legs out from under him. The man dropped hard to the ground, then snarled at Ven out of a rapidly lengthening muzzle. He was about to have a fully transformed werewolf to deal with, and he just wasn't in the mood. Before the sparkling shimmers of transformation had fully dissipated, Ven balanced the silver and orichalcum dagger by its tip and then hurled it the short distance to his target.

Silver in a Were's heart stopped them like nothing else. Ven didn't have time to enjoy his victory, however. He whirled around and leapt into the ball of fur and blue hair snarling and growling on the ground. He managed to get an arm around the tiger's huge neck and pull it back a couple of inches so its fangs weren't quite so close to Justice's throat. Then Justice, his vision blocked by a tiger's head, slammed out blindly with a fist that smashed directly into the side of Ven's already throbbing head.

“Damnit, I'm trying to help you here,” he yelled, hoping to be heard over the feral snarls of the cat and the gonging of the ruby. “Quit punching me!”

“Perhaps we could help?” A lilting voice that sounded less and less like Erin smoothly asked the question that was clearly rhetorical. Somehow her soft voice pierced the resounding noise of the ruby that continued to gong out its call.

Before he could answer, she'd already twined her magic into separate bubblelike shields that individually captured the three of them. After gently floating Ven and Justice to the floor a short distance away from the tiger, she released them. Then she crossed to the final bubble that encircled the enraged jungle cat.

She placed her palms on the bubble and leaned her cheek against it, and then she started to sing. It was a quiet and gentle song, holding nothing of the immense power Ven had heard her sing before. It was a delicate song of healing and peace; a tapestry woven by a master weaver with silken thread. The pulsing noise of the ruby faded away as if in response to her song.

As she softly sang, a silver mist filled the bubble until Ven could only see flashes of orange, white, and black inside. Her song lasted less than a minute, and then she stood back from the bubble and the mist cleared. Sitting inside the bubble, entirely nude, Jack had returned to his human shape. As Ven watched, Jack raised his head and stared into Erin's eyes, then slowly nodded. She made a slight circular motion with one hand and the bubble vanished.

Jack stood up and bowed to her. “I'm in your debt, Erin Connors. The drugs had trapped me in the basest urges of my animal nature. I wouldn't have wanted to do something I might later regret.”

Justice rubbed his head. “Sure. Apologize to
her
.
I'm
the one you damn near killed.”

The edges of Jack's lips quirked up in a grin. “
You
probably had it coming.”

“Enough,” Ven commanded. “In case you two have forgotten, we're in the middle of enemy territory. Justice, check out that entrance and see if anybody else is coming. I can't believe they didn't hear the commotion in here, but that damn ruby probably drowned us out. So that's one good thing.”

He frowned as Jack stood up, way too casual about having his bare ass hanging out. “Put on some clothes, Jack,” he ordered, pointing at the fallen shifter. “Maybe this guy's pants will fit you.”

Jack grinned again. “Right. You're as bad as the humans with your prudishness over a little nudity.”

“No need,” Erin said. She chanted something under her breath and a silver shimmer spiraled around Jack. Seconds later, he stood there, fully dressed in dark pants and shirt, frowning at her.

“Thank you. But it occurs to me that your powers are magnifying exponentially, witch,” Jack said. “Is someone or something giving you more power than you can handle?”

“Do not concern yourself with my power, shape-shifter,” she snapped, and again Ven heard the Goddess.

Jack tilted his head looking wary. “Oh, I concern myself with all sorts of things.”

Ven stepped between him and Erin, tightening his hand on the hilt of his sword. “Not her. Not now, not ever,” he said flatly.

For a moment he almost thought the tiger would challenge him, but instead Jack leaned forward and spoke so quietly Ven nearly didn't catch the words. “She's not alone in there, Ven. I am dual-natured by heredity and by experience, and I can recognize this. Be cautious and aware.”

Seeing nothing but sincerity in Jack's eyes, Ven nodded once and stepped back, then crossed to Erin and put an arm around her waist. “Are you ready?”

She looked up at him, and for an instant it was only Erin staring at him through her eyes. “Kiss me, Ven. Please kiss me, in case—”

He cut off her words with his mouth and kissed her with all the desperation in his soul, breaking it off far sooner than he would have liked. Her kiss tasted of light and goodness and home, and he almost forgot where they were. Almost. Enemy territory, he reminded the primitive force inside him demanding that he take her lips again.

“We're going to have to talk about this bossy nature of yours,” he said instead. “When—not if, but
when
we get out of here.”

She smiled a little. “Add it to the list. I love you, Ven. I need for you to know that.”

His heart expanded at the words. “I love you, too, Erin Connors. Do not even think of leaving me.”

She smiled again, and then the life and warmth drained from her expression, and his gem singer went cold and still in his arms and pushed away from him. “Now, Warrior of Poseidon. We retrieve the Nereid's Heart now.”

With the icy sound of her dual-natured voice ringing in his ears, he stepped in front of her, and they headed toward the glow of the lights.

 

Quinn knew that the booming bell sound signified something important, but she wasn't sure what. Hopefully it involved the gem that Erin and Ven were searching for and the noise meant they'd found it.

No matter what it meant, she had the feeling that her luck had run out with the final, fading peals of the bell. Daniel and Caligula were both bearing down on her with fangs bared, and she wasn't entirely sure that this Daniel was still the Daniel that she'd known. This vampire had red, intensely glowing eyes, and all she could see was the threat of Drakos in the feral way he stared at her.

So much for hope.

“Are you going to fight over me, boys?” she crooned. “There's not really enough of me to go around. Kind of skinny, probably low on the O negative. Or, actually, A positive, I think. Seems like something a person should know these days, doesn't it?”

She smiled at Daniel, studying him for any hint that this was another guise in his covert mission. All she saw in his eyes was her own death. Or worse. Her own future as one of the mindless undead Caligula so enjoyed keeping in his blood pride.

“Over my dead body,” she snapped.

“That's rather the point,” Daniel said, smiling widely so she was sure to notice that his fangs had fully descended, which they only did when a vamp was preparing to strike.

She'd learned that one in a very personal way.

“If I only had a stake, you'd get my point, bloodsucker,” she said, hunching her neck down into her collar in an attempt to look weak and helpless.

Caligula finally spoke, glancing back and forth between the two of them. “If you truly would serve me, Drakos, I would be most pleased. I have had certain…concerns about your loyalty. It would go far to alleviate those concerns if you should take care of this little problem for me.”

Daniel bowed. “It would be my utmost pleasure, my lord. I will remove her worthless carcass from your presence.”

As he grabbed her arm, she screamed and fought to get away, not convinced that this was all a show for Caligula's benefit. She'd seen bloodlust before, and she was seeing it now in his eyes. Daniel really might be irrevocably Drakos. If so, she was truly screwed.

Caligula's voice sliced through the air. “Oh, no, my general. That would not please me at all. I prefer that this human serve as an example to her pathetic rebel forces and an entertainment to our loyal soldiers.”

The vamps and shifters lining the walls cheered and stamped their feet at the word “entertainment,” which reminded Quinn of the whole emperor thing. Throwing Christians to the lions or something. Murdering slaves in the coliseum. Russell Crowe dying in the dirt.

She was tough, but she was no Russell Crowe.

“I want her turned, and I want you to start the process now, my Drakos. Tie her to you with the blood bond and prove to me that you are truly mine to command.”

“No fucking way!” she screamed. “Never. I'll kill you myself, you bloodsucking bastard!”

She shifted into primal attack mode, screaming and clawing and punching and gouging at Daniel with a ferocity that must have startled him, because he grabbed her and threw her across the room toward the opening to the tunnel. She crashed into the wall and slid into a limp heap of aches and possible broken limbs onto the floor. In an instant, he flashed across the cavern and bent over her, baring his fangs. Just before he struck, he caught her gaze in his own. “It will hurt less if you let me enthrall you,” he whispered. “I promise I will find a way to fix this.”

Then, even as she began to sink into the glowing red whirlpool in his eyes, he struck. She screamed as she felt him draining her blood and energy from her body. As she sank into the darkness, she looked up and over Daniel's shoulder and right into Ven's furious face and nearly laughed at the sheer unexpectedness of seeing him there.

Please, God, please save Riley and the baby
, she thought, and then the world faded into shades of scarlet and bloodred, finally tunneling down to black.

Ven heard the screaming and fought to keep from rushing out into the cavern, sword drawn. The correct battle strategy was always to scout out the opposition. He peered around the corner and saw Daniel driving his fangs into Quinn, who fought like she had werecat in her DNA.

Screw battle strategy. He raised his sword and charged, roaring an ancient Atlantean battle cry that surfaced from the depths of his being. He caught a glimpse in his peripheral vision of an enormous space filled with more vamps and shifters, and then he was on Daniel. “You soul-sucking bastard. Prepare to die the true death, vampire,” he snarled, trying to find a place on Daniel's body he could skewer without injuring Quinn.

Daniel released Quinn and stared up at Ven. “All is not as it seems, Atlantean.” He flashed twenty feet across the room, carrying Quinn, so there were now about fifty vamps and shifters Ven had to slice his way through to get to them.

From behind him, the first notes of a dark song began. Then a glowing sphere of power shot through the room and struck one of the vamps in the front row. It exploded in splatters of decomposing slime, and the vamps surrounding it shrieked and backed up. The shifters milled around, not quite retreating, but not attacking anymore, either.

On either side of Ven, Justice, Jack, and Erin stepped up so that they formed a solid line of attack. Jack and Justice were armed with the fallen shifters' weapons and Erin held two more of the glowing spheres in her hands.

“Can't shift back to tiger form for a while, but I'm a fair hand with a knife,” Jack said.

“Less talk, more killing,” Justice said.

“Now they die,” Erin and what Ven had come to think of as Not Erin said.

Ven nodded. “Now they die.”

With that, they started forward toward the enemy, hopelessly outnumbered if you didn't count the fact that they seemed to have a seriously pissed-off Goddess on their side.

“
Stop!
” The voice roaring through the room was icily inhuman, and it came from directly above them. The vampire floating down toward them was one of the oldest Ven had ever seen, if the whiteness of his skin were any indication.

“Ex-Emperor Caligula, I presume?” he drawled.

“Once an emperor, always an emperor, Atlantean,” Caligula sneered, then he turned his laser-like focus on Erin. “Finally, Erin Connors. You are even more lovely than your sister.”

The master vampire laughed, and the sound skated chills across the room. “Of course, she has had a rather difficult decade, so she's rather the worse for wear, as you humans might say.”

Ven raised his sword and stepped in front of Erin. “I will happily show you a little difficulty of your own, Atlantean style, you monster.”

“Ven. No. He has Deirdre,” Erin said, choking on the words. There was no trace of the Goddess remaining in her voice, and he wondered where she'd gone.

“Yes, I have Deirdre,” Caligula said, baring fully descended fangs. “Would you like to see your sister? She might be a bit angry at you for abandoning her to me all those years ago, but I'm sure you can work it out.”

“I never knew,” Erin screamed. “I thought she was dead. All these years, I thought they were all dead. I thought…” She broke off, sobbing.

From high above them, a new voice—eerily similar to Erin's—called out. “You truly didn't know? All these years he told me…I believed—”

“Yes, you believed me,” Caligula said, doing an obscenely gleeful dance right there, still standing on air. “Not at first, not even for the first few years. But finally you believed that your own family had abandoned you to me in exchange for their own worthless lives. The joy of your surrender to my lies was truly sweet.”

A female vampire soared down from a place high above them. As she came closer, Ven saw that she had Erin's hair and a certain similarity in facial features. There was no doubt that she was Erin's sister, even with the red glow in her eyes. She wore a bulky black gown, loosely belted with a length of rope, and the naked emotion on her face must have been driving a stake through Erin's heart.

“Deirdre, he lied to you,” Erin said, tears streaming down her face. “He killed them all and left me for dead, too. I managed to make it back to the coven, but by the time I recovered from my injuries, everyone told me you were dead.”

Deirdre started to float down past Caligula, but he snaked out an arm and caught her by the hair, twisting it cruelly. “Very touching, but I'm not about to let them get their hands on my trump card, now am I?”

He drew a dagger and pressed the edge of the blade against Deirdre's throat until a thin red line appeared against her pale white skin and blood trickled down from beneath the blade. “I propose a bargain, Atlantean. You give me Erin Connors, and I kill the three of you in excruciatingly painful ways.”

“That's not exactly a bargain, bloodsucker,” Jack growled. “Or are you better in Latin than English, even after all these years?”

“Ah, yes, the kitty speaks,” Caligula said. “If you prefer Latin, then so be it. Let me set the stage for you: I hold the witch's sister, and if you attack my blood pride or my shape-shifters, I will kill Deirdre. Your witch won't care for that at all, will you, Erin?” He flashed a nasty smile at Erin.

“Furthermore, I hold the rebel leader, and my general is now going to take the second step toward forming the blood bond with her,” he said, waving a hand toward Daniel and Quinn, who still appeared to be unconscious. “Therefore, you can do nothing, and I will enjoy seeing you die. Slowly.
Res ipsa loquitur.
”

“What the hell does that mean?” Jack snarled.

“The thing speaks for itself,”
Ven replied.

Deirdre, still caught by her hair in Caligula's fist, laughed a high, piercing laugh. “Sometimes the thing
sings
for itself,” she said. Then she ripped the top of her gown in two, baring her breasts and a cloth-wrapped bundle, which she tossed down toward Erin. “Take this, baby sister, and join me in a duet.”

Ven snatched the bundle out of the air as it plummeted toward them, but was unprepared for its heavy weight and nearly dropped it. Together, he and Erin tore the cloth covering away, and the fierce red glow of the sunset on the waves shone up at them. The ruby was in the shape of an enormous solid heart, as big as Ven's head.

“What is that?” Caligula screamed. “What did you give her?” He backhanded Deirdre across the mouth so hard that blood spurted from her lip, but she only laughed at him.

“You vain fool!” She spat blood out of her mouth and laughed again. “Did you really think that you could wear me down?”

Erin clutched the gem close to her breasts and closed her eyes. When she opened them, the Goddess was back. She raised her head and locked gazes with her sister. “Now we sing.”

As one, the two sisters began to sing, and the ruby joined in, singing bass to their clear soprano. The symphony of pure power and light soared through the cavern, illuminating the darkest corners and shining a spotlight on the vamps and shifters cowering in the corners.

Caligula shrieked and released Deirdre to clap his hands over his ears, as the rubysong danced and played over and around him, casting him in a red glow that was somehow pure and innocent—a stark contrast to his putrid evil.

The rubysong trapped the ancient vampire in a glowing, crystalline prison made entirely of light and song, but Caligula's ineffective beating against the shimmering walls made it clear that he could not escape. The music dimmed the sound of his shrieks, but his open mouth and the cords straining in his throat told the tale of his capture. A surge of fierce joy swept through Ven at the sight.

Deirdre dropped to the ground directly in front of Erin, and the two embraced. Drawing back a little, Erin effortlessly raised a shield over the two of them and turned to Ven. “I am safe, my warrior. You may leave my side with confidence.”

“You stay safe!” he said fiercely. “Stay behind that shield, no matter what happens.”

She nodded and then hugged her sister again, and the two turned as one to focus on Caligula, who remained trapped. Reassured, Ven raised his sword and looked to his brother warriors. “Now!”

He, Jack, and Justice sprang forward into the throngs of moaning and howling vamps and shifters. They weren't too incapacitated to fight back, however, and the battle was on. Slashing and slicing anything that moved to fight him, Ven fought his way through to where Daniel leaned over Quinn.

But he was too late. Even as he plunged his silver-enhanced dagger into the heart of a wolf in full, snarling Were shape, he saw Daniel raise his wrist and slice into it with his fangs, then press it against Quinn's half-open mouth.

“No!” Ven sprang toward them, but again he was too late. Quinn had raised her head and was clutching Daniel's wrist with both hands as she drank from his vein.

The traitorous bastard had completed the blood bond and would forever after have a connection with Quinn and power over her. Ven raised his sword, remembering a crucial fact. The blood bond was severed at the death of the vamp who'd created it.

“I'm going to enjoy separating your head from your body,” he snarled.

Daniel raised his head, unspeakable weariness in his eyes. “She was dying, Ven. She had been weakened by the earlier battle and healing, and I must have taken too much blood. She was going to die if she didn't get a transfusion, and there's not exactly a hospital nearby.”

Ven saw the truth in Daniel's eyes, and slowly lowered his sword. Quinn finally released Daniel's wrist and stared up at Ven, tiny dots of blood on her lips. “Are we dead yet?”

“No,” he said. “But we may be in hell.”

Daniel fixed a bleak stare on Ven. “I am Spartan, warrior. We invented hell.”

Daniel stood and scooped Quinn up in his arms. “I am taking her to the surface, or at least as far as I can go before the sunlight stops me. Good luck with your quest, Atlantean.”

“If she dies, or if you hurt her in any way, I will track you down and stake you out for the sun,” Ven said, grim promise in his tone.

“She's going to despise me when she becomes fully aware,” Daniel said bleakly. “Do you think facing the sun could possibly be any worse? Behind you on the left!”

With that, Daniel shot up through the air and toward the ceiling, toward what Ven figured was a vamps-only exit. He turned to face the threat coming at him from the left, and plunged his sword into the vamp's mouth, nearly taking off the top of its skull. As it slammed into the ground, he jerked his sword out of its mouth and then sliced it down to finish the job.

Stepping back from the puddle of decomposing vamp, he immediately confirmed that Erin's shield was holding, then headed back into the fray. One down, a couple hundred to go.