Warriors of Poseidon 02 - Atlantis Awakening

coffee and ate some of the food provisions they'd brought, Ven stood before the fire, staring into the flames. The wood he'd added crackled merrily, since he'd done some Atlantean thing to sweep it clear of every drop of water and snow that had clung to it. She glanced at her watch. "We slept most of the day away, but we still have about four hours of daylight. Dark comes early in Washington in the winter. And I may need the sunlight to try some of the spells in the scroll Marie gave me."
     
    He turned to face her, face impassive. "We have part of the day tomorrow, as well, to plan and prepare, if we need it. You also have the book from Gennae? The one from the Fae?"
     
    Atlantis Awakening – Warriors of Poseidon 02
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    "Yes, although it really ticks me off that she took so long to give it to me. She's had it since I turned twenty-one—five long years—but Berenice convinced her not to give it to me. Said I wasn't ready," she said bitterly.
     
    "No use crying over plucked peacock leathers," he said, shrugging.
     
    "Spilled milk."
     
    "What?"
     
    "We say 'no use crying over spilled milk,'" she explained, smiling a little.
     
    "Why would you cry over spilled milk? Does that injure the cow in some way?" His brow furrowed with confusion.
     
    "Never mind. If we survive this, we'll have a crash course on stupid human sayings."
     
    "When we survive this, mi amara" he said, voice coated with shards of ice that she knew weren't meant for her.
     
    "That's another thing. What does mi amara mean?"
     
    His expression softened for a moment. "That's another thing we'll talk about when we survive this."
     
    "How much time do we have, Ven? Marie and Conlan told that messenger that they could only hold Riley in stasis for forty-eight hours without risk of harm to the baby. And that she was fading, fast."
     
    "We must locate the Nereid's Heart within the next seventy-two hours if we're going to make a difference," he said. "There is something you must know, Erin. Her system is Atlantis Awakening – Warriors of Poseidon 02
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    apparently rejecting the baby as a foreign body, which puts the future of any Atlantean-human mating at risk."
     
    The room swirled around her as the implications of that crashed into her. "Mating? You mean… not that we know each other well enough to even… but we could never… I mean—"
     
    He crossed the room in two strides and knelt in front of her and took her icy hands in his own warmer ones. "Not now, Erin. Not now. Let us add this to the list of 'things to worry about later,' okay?"
     
    She looked around the cabin, with its bare wooden floor and walls, the pile of Ven's weapons centered on the table, the scroll and book that might teach her some way to harness her gem singer Gift in front of her, and blew out a breath. "Sure. Why not? It's an awfully long list. That's going to be one humdinger of a conversation."
     
    "Humdinger. Humdinger." He rolled the word around in his mouth, clearly enjoying the sound of it, then the amusement faded from his face in slow degrees, leaving the icy promise of death in its wake. "Yes, we'll have a humdinger when we have destroyed the monsters. For now, we train."
     
    10,000 feet beneath the cabin
     
    Caligula watched as the cringing, cowering fools from his blood pride shuffled into the main floor of the cavern, shivering as they assembled before him. The smell of dried blood covered them all, so some success must have been achieved, but there were far fewer than the nearly two hundred he'd sent out into the night to sow fear and dread into the humans.
     
    Far more important than the missing vampires, however, was the other who was missing. He snarled at the leaders, who he'd turned many years earlier than these Atlantis Awakening – Warriors of Poseidon 02
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    newest idiots. "Where is she? How is it possible that one weak human female managed to escape all of my best and brightest—all of my most powerful?"
     
    They bowed until their foreheads touched the damp and icy dirt of the cavern floor. "She was protected, my Lord. The Atlanteans and many shape-shifters were there in the building that you sent us to. And the witches had warded their home so strongly; there was no way for us to breach it."
     
    He bared his fangs and hissed at them, too furious to form words. The leaders began to moan, knowing that he enjoyed nothing more than killing the bearer of bad news.
     
    Well. Perhaps not nothing