Atlantis Unleashed (2 page)

The Warrior's Creed

We will wait. And watch. And protect.

And serve as first warning on the eve of humanity's destruction.

Then, and only then, Atlantis will rise.

For we are the Warriors of Poseidon, and the mark of the Trident we bear serves as witness to our sacred duty to safeguard mankind.

Four months ago,
a cave deep underneath Mt. Rainier,
Cascade Range, Washington, United States

Justice took inventory of his condition, his weapons, and his chances, as he'd done so many times before in his centuries as a warrior, and came up with:

1. bad

2. worse

3. odds-on favorite to be a dead man in the next five minutes

Condition, physical:
Currently lying flat on his belly on the cold, damp dirt of the cavern floor. Face smashed down on the side of a wet and soon-to-be seriously enraged tiger. Peacock-egg-sized lump on the back of his head from rough handling by the vamp and the wolf shifters who'd carried him down the long dank tunnel from the surface. Possible cracked rib or two. The ketamine they'd darted him with was mostly worn off, due to the nature of his Atlantean immune system, but he wouldn't bet any gemstones on his ability to transform into mist.

Condition, mental:
Fury bordering on homicidal rage. In other words, standard operating procedure.
Ha
. SOP. Poseidon picked his warriors carefully, or so he'd always heard.

The sea god must have been multitasking the day he'd decided to add Justice's name to the list.

Weapons:
None. The sword he'd worn for hundreds of years—indeed, since the king of Atlantis had given it to him with not a single word of explanation but only a look steeped in contempt—gone. One of the two shape-shifters standing guard over Justice and his furry tiger friend Jack stood off toward the mouth of the cave, fondling Justice's sword like he couldn't believe his luck. A faint glow from the cavern beyond silhouetted the guards' shapes against the utter dark of the small cave in which they'd dumped Justice, and he watched in impotent fury as the shifter raised his sword in the air as if admiring his new toy.

Sure, it was all fun and games until an Atlantean warrior sliced your guts out.

Justice would have smiled if he wouldn't have ended up with a mouthful of wet tiger fur. They'd taken his daggers, too.

The better to kill them with.

He tried to reach out toward his brother down the shared Atlantean mental path, but nothing but a harsh static buzzed through his mind. The drugs were probably still interfering with his access to his powers over water and energy, too. He'd assume he was helpless. Better that way.

Never rely on the unreliable when you're otherwise weap onless against two wolves and a potentially drug-crazed tiger.

Chances
: He'd bet on himself against most shape-shifters, even in close quarters like this, but five hundred pounds of tiger? Even Jack, who was sort of a friend when he walked on two legs.

He'd have to call it even odds. And that was before he ever got to the two wolves. So maybe he'd have to take out the wolves first.

Because Justice knew one critical fact: he'd rather spend eternity roasting in the lowest of the nine hells than spend one more minute with his face pressed into the rank animal stench of a wet tiger.

The shifters finished their muttering about sneaking out to see the action and moved off, as stealthy as a couple of drunken water buffalo. Before today, Justice would have bet a Roman-emperor-turned-vampire as powerful as Caligula would have hired a better class of help.

He'd have been wrong. No wonder the Roman Empire had fallen.

All the better, though.

Justice waited long enough to be sure they weren't faking the move, then leapt up and away from the still-unconscious but ominously twitchy tiger. Maybe the action knocked something loose in his drugged brain, because he suddenly knew his brother was finally arriving. Lord Vengeance to the rescue, just freaking great.

Of course, Vengeance didn't know that he was Justice's brother.

“I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you,” Justice growled; then, more loudly so he could be heard, “Damn, Vengeance better appreciate this.”

He whipped around to see Vengeance standing at the tunnel entrance, sword at the ready. Ven said something about cat hair and tiger pillows, but Justice barely heard it, because the booming sound of an unseen bell smashed through the air. He covered his ears, but the percussive waves of noise threatened to crush his skull beneath their power.

A flash of foreknowledge swept through him and he somehow knew—just
knew
—that the next hour would change everything.

Then the goddess walked into the room clothed in the body of Ven's woman, and everything inside of Justice that was not the primitive, savage descendant of his Nereid ancestors shattered. Insanity and battle lust washed in a blue-green haze across his vision and, as he stared at the brother he wanted so desperately to acknowledge, his last rational thought was one of regret.

Had it been minutes or hours? Justice crouched on the stone ledge, hidden from sight and surveying the carnage. Dead and dying shifters and vampires littered the stone floor of the cavern. The stench of the acidic decay of the vamps combined with the coppery metallic tang of blood to rot the very air they were breathing. The flickering lights of the torches on the walls illuminated garish displays of broken and torn-open bodies.

He'd done his part, but had been careful to stay out of sight, drawing his opponents behind the cavern's many rocky outcroppings. Even the preternatural senses of the vampires had been overwhelmed by the wash of blood, and nobody had seemed to notice him.

Nobody still living, at least.

Justice was planning to be the trump card, and any good gambler knew the value of never revealing his hand. He glanced down at the blade of his sword, gleaming wetly in the flickering dark.

No trump card had ever dealt such a deadly hand. He was the joker, and the queen of death was next on the list.

He heard her voice then, and knew he'd failed. The vampire goddess Anubisa had captured Vengeance and his woman in spite of Ven's strength and Erin's powerful witchcraft.

Justice had failed them.

He'd failed his
family.

As he listened, options, strategy, and desperate measures swirling through his still only semilucid brain, he heard her say it. The words he'd dreaded. Anubisa was going to take Ven with her. She was giving the rest of them to Caligula as a little gift.

A
snack
.

Justice shot up and began to show himself, then stopped, frozen, when he saw Anubisa holding Erin while Ven dug the point of his sword into his own heart.

“If you truly wish for my voluntary service, release her now and swear the oath for her safety. Or I will run this sword through my heart, and you will be cheated of your goal,” Ven said, grim determination hardening his features.

Justice nearly staggered as the truth of what he must do slammed into him. To save his brother—to rescue Erin, who might possibly be able to heal his second brother's unborn royal heir—he must make the ultimate sacrifice.

Worse, he had to make them believe that he
wanted
to do it.

Acid washed through his veins as he prepared himself to face an eternity of torture. He almost laughed at the thought. It was no less than he deserved.

No more than he'd expected.

Below him, on the cavern floor, they were still talking. He couldn't hear it, though. Couldn't make out the words. Nothing but a vast ringing noise smashed through his skull, until he heard the bloodsucker goddess issue her demand, in a voice sheathed with blood and ice that sliced through the haze of his mind.

“Do you voluntarily accept my service, Lord Vengeance, blood kin to Conlan?” Anubisa demanded.

Justice forced down the grief and bile threatening to make him puke and stepped farther out from behind the shielding rock and onto the ledge directly above and across from her. This needed to be a performance to outshine all performances.

Good thing he had the best poker face in Atlantis.

He sucked in a lungful of air and called out to her. “Of course he doesn't, you evil bitch. You're holding his girlfriend as collateral. He has no choice.”

The shock on her face pleased him. He'd surprised a goddess. Maybe he had a one-in-a-thousand chance to stay alive.

Maybe.

Anubisa shot across the cavern floor, and he leapt down to meet her, standing braced and silent until she jerked to a halt, only inches separating them. The burning red of her eyes deepened until they glowed, and then she freaking sniffed him, inhaling his scent like a beast, and his skin tried to crawl off his body.

“Blue hair,” she said. “And yet you smell like—”

“I smell like the blood kin of Conlan and Vengeance,” he said, flashing a smile that tasted like death. “I'm their brother, and I offer myself in Vengeance's stead.”

Ven exploded in denial, but Justice barely heard him. The
geas
was kicking in, biting into his nerve endings. He'd been cursed to kill anyone he told the truth of his birth. Either kill them or his mind would shatter.

He picked option C. Shacking up with a vampire goddess. At least maybe he'd have a little fun before she killed him.

Everybody was staring at him. Right. Time to start acting.

He laughed. “You think I'm lying, don't you? Precious pampered royal princes, never imagining that dear Daddy may have done the nasty with someone who wasn't their mother. Someone who wasn't even their
species
.”

Anubisa shook her long black hair away from her face, staring intently into his eyes as if to discover if he were telling the truth. Ancient vampire goddesses didn't show emotion. But there was something—just a flicker—in her eyes that allowed him to believe she was buying it.

“The mating I forced on Conlan's father bore fruit? Oh, that is entirely too delicious!” She threw her head back and laughed, and the shifters who were still alive began to howl.

“Yeah, well, this delicious fruit is going to start killing everyone in this room, thanks to the
geas
laid on my ass, if you don't get me out of here,” Justice said, trying to think of a way to convince her. “You wanted voluntary? Well, trust me, after centuries of having to take orders from my brothers, with their overblown sense of entitlement that came with being the royal heirs, I'm more than ready to try out the other side.”

Ven protested again but Justice cut him off, then sheathed his sword and smiled down at Anubisa. “Me for him. Willing service.”