Warriors of Poseidon 02 - Atlantis Awakening

Ven.
    He tensed, but one of them, with long red hair, started chanting and he felt the push of her magic, hard, against his skin before she'd uttered more than three words. Erin smiled at the newcomers, though, so he relaxed somewhat.
     
    "Hey, friend here. Don't turn me into a toad. I'm Ven from Atlantis, and we need to talk."
     
    Erin raised her head from his shoulder and drew in a shaky breath. "It's true, Gennae."
    She looked up at him with those enormous blue eyes. "He may have just saved my life."
     
    The three women all began talking at once.
     
    "What?"
     
    "Who—"
     
    "Did you—"
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    And the redhead cut them off. "Inside. We'll discuss this inside."
     
    The witches started toward the door and Ven followed them. "Are you okay?" he asked Erin, his arms tightening around her. "Really okay? How about your head? What did that ugly light do to you?"
     
    Her head fell back against his shoulder, as if it were too heavy for her neck to support. "I think I'm okay. Ven, it was black magic. My amber sang to me. And they cut me off from my own power, so that witch had to be more powerful than any I've met before outside of those three." She indicated the witches walking into the building in front of them.
     
    "Yeah, well, we've got even bigger problems," he said, dropping his voice to a whisper so that only she could hear him. "Do you know the name Caligula?"
     
    She gasped and her fingers convulsively clutched at his shoulders. Slowly, she turned her eyes up to study his face, and he'd never seen skin so pale on a living being. But all she spoke were two short words. "Not again."
     
    The sky over Puget Sound
     
    Ven transformed back into his physical form seconds before his body arrowed, head first, into the icy water. A power far older than Atlantis had engineered the magic of the portal that would take him home to find Alaric. To find some answers.
     
    Poseidon himself knew answers were short in supply, Ven thought. Erin had begged him to keep the name Caligula to himself until she could fill him in on something. From the look in her eyes at the time, he had a feeling that it was a seriously bad story. The head witches or whatever they were had sworn to him that the building was warded with more than a century's worth of magic and that Erin would be safe to rest there overnight. He'd very nearly demanded a demonstration before he agreed, but he'd gotten the distinct impression that Erin was about to drop where she stood. Either that, Atlantis Awakening – Warriors of Poseidon 02
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    or that scary one, Berenice or something, was going to shoot some nasty-ass magic at him from the wand she was white-knuckling in the corner.
     
    In the end, he'd been convinced that she was safe enough there, asked for and received a promise that she wouldn't step foot out of the door until they could talk, and left. Now he needed to get home and report in. Maybe find out what kind of complicated plot the vamps were up to this time. Gather the boys and kick some bloodsucker ass.
     
    He dove farther, deeper, scowling at the inconvenience of having to enter the doorway to his homeland through a body of natural water, but nobody except Alaric could call the doorway from dry land. He plummeted down into the darkness of the icy waters, wishing the waves crashing around him would help him escape the residual terror he'd felt when Erin had hit the ground. Couldn't be emotion. He didn't do emotion. The lovely little witch must have trapped him with some weird musical spell.
     
    Yeah, that had to be it.
     
    He dove down still farther, calling to the power with his mind and senses. Offering himself as a prince of Atlantis. Falling into the ritual of the ages, calling out to be accepted into the portal's will. Farther, deeper, he dove. Down past the memory of light, but still the melodies of her magic rang in his head. Resonated in the fibers of his being.
     
    Deeper, yet. Still the portal failed to appear. Ven didn't worry. Princes never worry, or so Conlan had told him often enough. The image of Erin falling flashed into his head. Okay, almost never worry.
     
    But the first tendril of concern snaked through his mind when oxygen deprivation banded its iron grip around his lungs.
     
    Princes may not worry, but princes can drown.
     
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    The depth gauge hardwired into every Atlantean brain