Atlantis Rising

Chapter 38

Conlan watched as Barrabas did exactly what he'd expected, and he slashed a hand down in a signal to Alaric. Alaric threw his arms into the air and called water with such torrential force that the walls themselves seemed to reel under the power of it.

Barrabas rematerialized, bouncing off one of the walls.

And Conlan laughed. "Didn't your goddess mention that Poseidon's power over the element of water is the light to your dark? We cannot kill you with the mortus desicana, for your undead tissues have no living fluid to surrender."

He unsheathed his sword. "But we can block you from the use of your power. Prepare to die, bloodsucker."

Barrabas pulled a sword of his own. "I don't think so, little boy. Didn't you take a moment to see what I did to your friends?"

He pointed to the far wall, and Conlan glanced over to the shadowy corner. Reisen hung by one wrist from a manacle chained to the wall, bloody and broken. Another warrior lay near him, in similar condition.

"Ven! To Reisen!"

As Ven, daggers unsheathed, ran across the room, a grinding noise in the floor underneath warned Conlan in time to leap to the side. A panel in the floor opened up, and a black wave of vampires rushed up and into the room.

Justice and Denal ran up to flank him, swords at the ready, and he heard Jack's full-throated roar from behind him. Then he was too busy to notice anything else, as five vamps headed straight for him, fangs and claws bared.

Riley! Get out! Get to safety!

Her voice came back to him immediately.

I think Poseidon promoted one of his pawns.

He tried to see over the warriors and vampires battling all around him, but couldn't see her. Desperation tore at the last shreds of his sanity. "To me, Warriors! For Atlantis!"

And he sliced the head off the vamp in front of him, trying to work his way through to Barrabas. "For Atlantis!"

Riley watched while the floor opened up a doorway from hell and devils came pouring through to attack Conlan. She held the gun out in front of her, but couldn't shoot. Everywhere she looked, vamps and warriors and freedom fighters were locked so closely in battle that she had no chance of a clear shot.

A second wave of vamps broke through from the corridor. Quinn had been right about Daniel, at least. He was fighting against the vamps, using their own tricks against them. She shuddered at the sight of his bloodied fangs ripping into yet another of them.

Alaric flashed into the space in front of her, pushing her and Quinn behind him and against the wall, as more of the vamps headed for them. Alaric threw out wave after wave of the energy bolts, but the vamps kept coming as fast as he could mow them down. One of them threw a dagger and Alaric leaned over to snatch it out of the air.

But it must have been a ploy of misdirection, because the vamp whipped a second dagger through the air on Alaric's other side, and it pierced Quinn in the thigh. Quinn screamed, and Alaric's attention jerked around to her, the sound distracting him.

Useless, trembling, Riley saw the vamp aim his sword at Alaric. She fired the gun, but missed him completely. Almost in slow motion, she watched the point of the blade drive deeply through Alaric's chest. He fell forward, onto Quinn, and Riley screamed again as the point of the sword, driven clear through Alaric's body, impaled her sister.

Heard Quinn's voice, weak, in her mind.

It's burning like acid, Riley. Poisoned, probably. If you've been touched by a god, now would be a good time to page him.

In front of her, she saw Jack transform in a roaring frenzy from man to tiger and tear into the vampires with teeth and claws. Conlan and Ven fought side by side in the midst of a dozen or more of them.

She didn't know what to do. Didn't know how to call a god. Didn't know magic or have powers or anything. She was a social worker, damnit. She stood there, sobbing, anguish and fury searing through her, and heat and power climbed through her, raged through her, until she thought she might detonate from it.

That was when the hand wrapped around her throat.

The pure evil of the voice rang through the room. "I have your woman, Atlantean. What value do you place on her life?"

All sound and motion stopped as if the world had frozen around him, and Conlan zoomed in on the source of the voice he most despised.

It was Anubisa, and she had her fingers on Riley's throat. Conlan's vision sheared a brilliant blue-green, then grayed out to almost black. As the vampires groveled and cringed their way to the sides of the room, genuflecting to their goddess, he saw Alaric lying on the floor on top of Quinn. A sword run through their bodies.

Their blood pooling on the floor.

He fought the howl of utter despair rising from his soul at the sight of Riley held helpless in the hands of a creature who could kill her with a breath.

"Leave her," he commanded. "She is nothing to me. Are you so weak you make war on human females now?"

She laughed, and the sound rang with pure malice, so dark and twisted that Riley moaned and tried to put her hands over her ears.

As Conlan watched, trickles of blood began to drip from Riley's nostrils and the corners of her eyes. A killing rage swept through him. A memory, a vow, burned through him.

Anubisa will beg, before I'm done with her.

"Let her go, and you can take me back to your happy little love nest with you, Anubisa."

She turned her head to the side, as if entranced. "Oh, look at the precious kitty!"

Jack, in his tiger form, shot through the air, five hundred pounds of lethal killing machine headed for her head. She waved at him with two fingers, and his body slammed backward, tumbling end over end until he crashed into a line of groveling vampires, knocking them down like a row of dominoes.

None of them moved after that.

Conlan took another step closer to Anubisa, and her fingers tightened on Riley's fragile neck, a clear warning.

"Oh, I think not, princeling. I can smell your cock on her. So this is the slut you would have willingly, when I had to take you by force?"

She flicked a contemptuous glance up and down her captive, then almost negligently tossed Riley across the room so hard that he heard her head smash against the wall. "You know I don't share my toys."

He tried to run to Riley as she slid down the wall into a broken heap on the ground, but Anubisa caught him in a fire-bolt of power, chaining him in place with invisible bands of her dark magic.

Barrabas crawled toward Anubisa on his hands and knees, babbling. "My queen, my goddess, thank you, thank you. You came, you are here, and all will be saved."

She curled her index finger, beckoning Barrabas to her. Conlan fought to channel the elements, call any power at all, but he was as helpless under her control as he'd been during his captivity. All he could do was watch as she called her minion to her.

Anubisa smiled, delicately stepping over the body of a fallen shape-shifter. "You are my first, Barrabas. My oldest child, my precious one. Of course I would come when you called."

Her eyes glowed red, and she parted her lips to show Barrabas a mouth crowded with razor-sharp fangs. Punishing, ripping, and tearing fangs.

Conlan knew all about those fangs, would have shuddered if his body hadn't been held in a vise grip of power.

Barrabas swayed, trapped hypnotically in his master's deadly pull. "Yes, your first, my goddess."

She gracefully lifted a hand to touch him, ripped the shirt from his body. "Then why?" she screamed, rage suddenly lighting her face into incandescence.

"Why did you not tell me you had the Trident?" she roared, and the sound of it smashed all the glass in the room. Burst eardrums. Curdled the blood of anyone still conscious.

Gave Conlan hope. If rage overwhelmed her, there was a chance he could defeat her. If Riley still lived—and he refused to believe that she did not—Poseidon would find a way to heal her.

If Riley is dead, not one undead creature will leave this room, except as ash.

Barrabas shrieked, and the sound pierced Conlan's skull. He jerked his gaze back to the vamps in time to see Anubisa lift her head from Barrabas's shoulder.

What was left of Barrabas's shoulder.

A chunk of it was in her mouth.

She smiled at him again, blood and pieces of flesh trapped in her fangs. "You have failed me. Worse, you tried to deceive me, fool."

She flicked out a hand, ripped his pants from him. The vampire knelt naked and bleeding in front of her, sobbing and shrieking in a hideous cacophony of pleading and apology.

"We have to set an example, don't we, my dear?" she murmured, voice almost gentle. Then she curled her hand into a claw and it shot out toward Barrabas's groin.

A tortured shriek beyond any Conlan had ever heard since leaving her lair ricocheted through the room, and he watched in utter horror as she opened her fingers to show Barrabas the bloody spectacle of his own balls in her hand.

"Yes," she repeated, delicately sucking the meat out of her hand. "We have to set an example."

As Barrabas fell over, still screaming, her hand shot forward again.

This time, she came back with his heart. Barrabas never uttered another sound.

Riley felt consciousness coming back to her in ripples, as muted waves of sound and light washed into her mind. Conlan's horror, unshielded, nearly made her vomit, but some instinct told her to play dead.

She damn near was, if the pain crashing through her head was any clue.

She opened her heart and her mind, opened her soul, and begged for help.

I believe. I came to you in defiance before, now I come to you in abject humility, Poseidon. You are the sea god. You have power over these, your subjects.

Utter silence flooded her brain. She'd failed.

She traded humility for defiance.

Will you really let this bitch win the day?

Still silence. Hopelessness devastated her. If even the god who'd marked her deserted her, what hope did she have against the goddess of death?

THERE IS ALWAYS HOPE, DISRESPECTFUL ONE. ABJECT HUMILITY? MORE LIKE A PETULANT CHILD.

She nearly shuddered in relief, remembering at the last second to remain perfectly still.

Tell me what to do, your royal seaworthiness, and I'm your woman.

I THINK NOT. YOU ARE CONLAN'S WOMAN, AND A FINE QUEEN YOU'LL MAKE. YOU MAY MAKE USE OF MY TRIDENT ONE LAST TIME, GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER OF MY SEED. USE IT WELL.

With that, his thundering presence was gone from her mind. But something hard and sharp was poking her in the butt.

Guess you've got a sense of humor after all. And thanks.

She felt the unmistakable shape of the Trident warming beneath her bent and broken body, filling her with heat and light and healing. With a single, silent blast, every injury was repaired, and she was filled with a sense of enormous power.

The mark on her shoulder burned, reminding her of her duty.

Oh, it will be my pleasure.

With one smooth motion, she grasped the shaft of the Trident and jumped to her feet. "Hey, bitch! Wanna play?"

Anubisa, hand full of some disgustingly bloody-looking thing, swung her attention to Riley, hissing. Conlan stood in the center of the room, muscles quivering, clearly unable to move.

"You're not dead yet, little whore? And you think to play with the toys of the gods? Oh, please. This might be fun," Anubisa said, voice purring with smug superiority.

Riley took a deep breath and pointed the Trident at her. "Hell, I don't even know how to work this thing, but let's go with modified light-saber," she muttered.

Then she screamed out her own defiance. "Take this, you evil, ugly, bloodsucking fiend!"

And she called on the power with everything in her. Now! Now! Let's take her down, now!

The Trident sang with a sweet, clear sound of soaring power, and it vibrated in her hands. As Anubisa's expression changed from a sneer to shocked surprise, a silvery torrent of pure energy shot out of the point of the Trident and arrowed directly into the vampire goddess, blasting her off her feet.

The shock wave of power spread through the room, and Conlan broke free of whatever magic had held him and ran to Riley. "You're alive! Thank the gods, aknasha."

He grasped the shaft of the Trident with his hands over Riley's and they aimed it at Anubisa again, as she tried to stand up.

"Die, you foul hell spawn!" Conlan roared.

"Stay away from my boyfriend!" Riley yelled.

This time, the powerful surge of energy shot into Anubisa and lifted her up into the air, smashing her into the ceiling and holding her there. Her head fell back and her mouth opened, and the energy poured through her mouth and nose and eyes, and then—with a thunderclap of sound—she disintegrated.

The stream of energy shut off like a faucet, and Riley and Conlan fell against each other. He put his hands on her face, turning it back and forth. "You're not hurt? How are you not hurt? I saw—"

"Poseidon. He healed me with the Trident," she said, laughing and sobbing at the same time.

They both thought it at the same time. "The others!"

They ran to Alaric and Quinn first, and Riley dropped to her knees next to her sister, crying harder at the sight of Quinn lying in such a huge pool of blood. Conlan yanked the sword out of their bodies, then knelt beside Riley, putting his hands over hers on the Trident again.

They both focused, channeled the power again. Watched as the healing silvery-green light spread over Alaric and Quinn. Saw the color come back to their faces. Heard the gasps of air sucked into their lungs.

Quinn opened her eyes. "Riley?"

"You're going to be fine, Quinn. Everybody is going to be fine."