Warriors of Poseidon 02 - Atlantis Awakening

glanced down at her rings but, for once, they were utterly silent.
     
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Chapter 16
    A warehouse, Seattle
     
    If Ven's warehouse home (or what was left of it after that bomb blasted a hole in the middle of his floor) was old enough to be retro, then the place Quinn had directed them to was on the borderline between piece-of-shit-rattrap and condemned.
     
    Ven was betting on condemned.
     
    As he looked up at the stark front of the building, dark in the dim glow cast by the single working streetlight on the block, he noticed the holes, missing brick, and multiple broken windows, all of which could house enemies sighting down very expensive scopes at them as they stood there. He pulled Erin closer to his body so she made a smaller target, even though he trusted Quinn as much as he trusted any human, and Alexios, Justice, and Brennan had all melted into the shadows to circle the building and scout for trouble on the perimeter.
     
    Christophe and Denal had gone hunting for lowlifes; scouting the bars and flophouses for anybody who might have information about Caligula and his activities. When a drag or drink habit rode a man hard, he could usually be persuaded to sell what he knew for a price.
     
    Erin stiffened and started to back away from him, but then a rat bigger than most cats scurried around the corner in front of them and she let loose with a shrill yelp and tried to climb into his shirt with him. He couldn't help the grin that crossed his face. "My little warrior. Willing to take on bombs with nothing but her magic, but afraid of a little mouse."
     
    She shoved him. "Little mouse, my foot! That was the biggest rat I've ever seen!"
     
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    He shrugged. "At least you can be relatively sure it's not carrying plague, which wasn't always the case."
     
    "Plague? Oh, right. You're almost five hundred years old. I keep forgetting. You realize you're way too old for me," she said, trying to move around him to go into the building first. She'd been arguing with him about how she was better prepared to be first inside, considering her magic shielding, ever since they'd stepped through the portal that Alaric had created for them.
     
    Ven's gaze flicked to the priest, whose face had gone so white he resembled one of the undead. Every step they took closer to Quinn was one that Alaric must feel spiking through his chest.
     
    Before they reached the steel door, which hung drunkenly off its hinges, it swung open to reveal a small, slender woman standing in the doorway. To look at her, you'd never believe that Quinn Dawson was one of the co-leaders of the human rebel forces. She was a few inches shorter than her sister and had short, dark hair that looked like she cut it with a lawn mower. In the oversized Bon Jovi T-shirt that she wore with faded jeans, she could easily have passed for a teenage boy. A teenage boy with enormous eyes and very delicate features.
     
    From a short distance behind him, Ven heard a noise that sounded like the whooshing of air driven out of someone's lungs. Since the someone was Alaric, who could fry Ven's ass with those glowing eyeballs of his, Ven gave no indication that he'd heard a thing.
    As Erin tried to push past him again, he even felt a glimmer of sympathy with the priest's reaction to seeing Quinn again.
     
    Without a breath of warning, Alaric suddenly shimmered into mist and soared up and over the top of the building. Ven watched him go, grimly amused. The most powerful high priest Poseidon had ever anointed was afraid of a girl. The thought cheered him up immensely, in spite of a certain lack of accuracy.
    Atlantis Awakening – Warriors of Poseidon 02
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    He solved the Erin problem by putting an arm around her shoulders and pulling her closer, not bothering to deny, even to himself, the sense of utter lightness he felt when she was in his arms. He knew he'd pay for his presumption later, but figured he'd worry about that when he got to it.
     
    "Nice digs, Quinn," he said, offering his hand.
     
    She smiled up at him, her quick gaze having already weighed and measured each one of them, and shook his hand with a firm grip. "It's good to see you," she said, sounding like she meant it. "We've got trouble."
     
    "You and trouble in the same playground? Say it isn't so," he said, clutching his chest with his free hand.
     
    "Maybe we'd better get