Atlantis Rising

Chapter 20

Twenty minutes later, Conlan stood with Ven, grimly contemplating the pile of bodies they and the rest of the Seven had pulled behind the deadfall of trees. Centuries of serving as a warrior had yet to inure him to the foul stink of death, and his stomach growled an urge to reject its contents. He scrubbed at his hands with leaves, then realized the futility of the effort and called water from the surrounding leaves and a tiny stream some hundred yards away to cleanse his hands.

The mist became fluid in the cupped bowl of his hands and he washed the blood from hands and forearms, wondering how Reisen and his remaining warriors had escaped undetected after surviving this carnage. They must have been spattered with gore.

Except, of course, when they traveled as mist. Which may have explained why Riley no longer detected them. He'd have to test his theory with her sometime. Sometime when a dozen dead men weren't lying at his feet.

Almost involuntarily, his mind reached out to hers, but she'd slammed those damned shields of hers down so tightly he wouldn't know she was there if he hadn't just left her. It was better that way, though. There was only so much that she could be expected to endure.

Justice and Bastien were roaming through the woods on either side of them, searching for any sign of Reisen and his remaining warriors, while Christophe and the others stood guard.

Emotionless Brennan stood with Riley and her sister.

Riley had told him they were wasting their time. "They're gone. Or they've magically learned how to mask their emotions in the past half an hour. Because I can't feel a thing."

Conlan was unsure of how far he could rely on her ability to sense the Mycenaean warriors, given the extent of the terror she'd just experienced. But her senses, however compromised, were all he had.

Alaric was gone.

"We've got to get rid of the bodies. We can't leave this mess for the human authorities," Ven growled, wiping sweat off his forehead with his arm. "It's a nightmare."

Conlan nodded. They'd tallied seven dead shape-shifters and five Atlanteans. The evidence of the battle needed to be destroyed. "We're not exactly going to dig a big hole," he replied. "There is one way, but it will take both of us to do it to so many."

Ven shot a look at him. "You're not thinking—"

"What else could I be thinking? We must employ the final solution."

Ven whistled. "Mortus desicana. I didn't even know you knew how to channel that kind of power. Have you ever—"

Conlan cut him off. "No. Not that I wouldn't have tried it on Anubisa, if I'd had a fraction of a chance. But this is different. These men are already dead. The penance would not be tasked against us."

"Are you sure about that? What does the temple rat say?"

Conlan hesitated, unsure of how much to divulge. Alaric would hate to be exposed in any weakness.

In any event, there was no time. "He's gone. The healing—he returned to the safe house."

"What? He went all girly after healing a simple bullet wound? I'm going to give him so much grief—"

Conlan heard rustling in the trees approximately fifty yards away and concentrated. It was Justice. But the sound underscored their need for haste. "Ven. Focus. Will you help me channel the mortus desicana to destroy these bodies, or do I do it myself?"

. "I'll help you. Poseidon help us both if you're wrong about the penance. Twelve bodies… we might not survive it."

Looking around quickly to make sure that Brennan still kept Riley away from the bloody pile of the slain, Conlan took a deep breath and held his hands up, sending his call into the wind.

If she saw this, she'd think he was the same kind of monster who'd created this bloody nightmare.

Beside him, Ven did the same, and they both began to chant.

"Poseidon, Father of Water,

"Lord of elements, avatar of justice for all Atlanteans,

"Hear our plea, feel our need,

"Lend us your power for the mortus desicana,

"Hear our plea, feel our need."

For a moment, nothing. Despair surged through Conlan. Had Poseidon truly abandoned him as unworthy after what Anubisa had done to him?

Damaged goods. Damaged goods. Damaged—

Then a surge of electric power stormed into his body. From the air, from the water in the ground, from the wind itself. Up through his feet, through his skin, down into his skull from the cloudless sky. The power of the elements ripped through his flesh, screamed through nerve endings, tore at his control.

He fought with it, contained it, channelled it. Not even realizing he was doing it, he roared out his dominance over the power. "I am Conlan of Atlantis, and I command you to the mortus desicana!"

With that, he flung the power out of his body through his hands at the pile of bodies and watched, gloated, gloried in the power. The roaring rush of the elements covered and surrounded the bodies of the dead, rushing into every pore in their skin, into every orifice, and did their terrifying work.

Sucking, draining every ounce of water—every drop of fluid—out of the bodies. Sucking it out and returning the fluid to nature, from whence it came. Drying, desiccating the bodies of the dead.

Whispering to Conlan with fury, with frenzy, with the sly Siren call of unadulterated power. The mortus desicana.

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.

Anubisa. Goddess of the night.

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."