Warriors of Poseidon 02 - Atlantis Awakening

general.
     
    Her laughter drove needles into his brain, and the pressure behind his eyes continued to build. "Giving up so soon, Caligula? I am disappointed. I expected so much more from the most depraved ruler of the Roman Empire. What was it you are claimed to have said? 'I wish the Roman people had but a single neck'?"
     
    She took a step closer to where Caligula huddled next to Drakos on the dirt. "Singularly appropriate, or perhaps prophetic, don't you think?"
     
    The pressure in his head increased, and he clenched his teeth together and drove his fingers, lengthening into claws, into the ground in a futile attempt to keep from crying out. But the pressure built and built and built—surely his eyes would pop out from the pain screaming, blazing inside his skull. Caligula had a sudden, sickening visual of his eyeballs rolling across the dirt, finally surrendered, and he screamed.
     
    He sacrificed two millennia of pride and screamed long and loud.
     
    He screamed, and she laughed.
     
    And her laughter raised a swarm, black as an ancient plague, of squirming discolored maggots that boiled up from the earth beneath him to crawl up his body. The pressure behind his eyes subsided, but he was beyond caring about mere bits of orbital flesh. He rolled on the ground, pressing his palms against his face, protecting it from the bugs that feasted on the rotting dead.
     
    He knew better than to try to flee.
     
    Atlantis Awakening – Warriors of Poseidon 02
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    Still she laughed.
     
    "You disappoint me, but you amuse me. Since very little has amused me in these weeks since those cursed Atlanteans tricked me into killing my Barrabas, I will let you live," she said. The rush of relief that roared through his ears was so loud that he almost missed her next words.
     
    "I want Conlan's baby brother," she whispered, trailing one long fingernail down her cheek. "I will take the King's Vengeance for my own."
     
    Caligula sat up, forcing himself not to flail as a wave of maggots squirmed up his body.
    It is illusion, it is illusion, it is illusion, he told himself.
     
    Then they crawled into his mouth.
     
    She laughed again at the sound of his soul-rending shrieks, clapped her hands together, and the maggots vanished.
     
    It took him a few moments longer to be able to stop shrieking.
     
    "I had heard that maggots were your particular… weakness," she murmured.
     
    He raised his eyes and dared to look at her face for the first time since she'd arrived, knowing he should not. Unable to resist. Immediately he sank, enthralled as any pitiful human, into the seductive flames in her red eyes, which glowed like unholy jewels set in her pale, pale face. Such spectacular beauty was obscene when imposed on the face of painful death.
     
    Anubisa pushed him with one delicately shod foot and knocked him over. He fell on top of Drakos, who continued to moan quietly on the ground, finally catching the vampire goddess's attention.
    Atlantis Awakening – Warriors of Poseidon 02
    Page 68 of 296
    "My Drakos, is that you? Where were you when Barrabas needed you?" she asked, her voice betraying the first hint of uncertainty Caligula had ever heard from her. But it vanished so quickly he was sure he must have been mistaken. He didn't dare to dwell on it for fear she would somehow know and make the maggots return.
     
    "You are either unreliable, or you are a traitor. General Drakos," she hissed, lashing out at the cowering vampire with her foot. He soared a dozen feet through the air and crashed into the craggy rock of the cavern wall, then lay there, still and silent.
     
    Caligula watched as Anubisa hurled herself across the cavern toward Drakos. "Either way, today is your day to die. Be advised that it shall not go quickly for you," she called out, and her wild, insane laughter spiked shards of pain and madness into Caligula's eardrums.
     
    As Anubisa landed in front of him, Drakos finally raised his head from the ground and almost—but not quite—looked up at the goddess. "I am no traitor and I can prove it," he said, his voice rough and broken as his body soon would be. "I can give you the rebel leader, Qukin."

Chapter 8
    Atlantis, the palace gardens
     
    Erin stood, entranced, staring at the vibrantly colored masses of flowers, many of which were species she'd never seen before. She'd rounded a corner on the stone path from the castle and spotted lush, dark purple flowers that looked a lot like roses—except