Warriors of Poseidon 02 - Atlantis Awakening

considering they'd stripped her of her weapons, may have killed her partner and she was acting with diminished capacity.
     
    Guess Jack was right. Sometimes the rebel leader was a girl.
     
    The light lowered so it wasn't shining directly in her eyes, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Dry heaving had been imminent, and that was definitely not on her top ten list of fun ways to spend her free time.
     
    But now she could see the vamp's face, and that wasn't much better. He looked a tad bit angry.
     
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    "If Caligula didn't want you for his little demonstration, I'd take care of you myself," he hissed. "But don't worry, bitch. I may still get my hands on you when he's done. And I'll make sure you scream for a very long time."
     
    At the mention of Caligula's name, Quinn ran strategies through her mind, considering and just as rapidly discarding most of them. There wasn't much she could do until she found an opening. For now she'd have to wait and watch. But if they gave her the slightest chance, she was going to dance on the salted grave of one very old ex-Roman emperor.
     
    "Bring it on, fang face," she said, forcing herself to her feet. "Let's go meet the big bad."
     
    "Bold words, considering they may serve as your epitaph," he snarled.
     
    She shrugged, then winced. Right. No shrugging until large bottle of extra-strength acetaminophen found and consumed. "It's better than 'Here lies Fred. He's dead.'" She laughed again, faking a humor she didn't feel in the slightest. "Or how about 'Here's old John. He's gone.'"
     
    He snarled a truly obscene curse and smacked her between the shoulder blades to shove her along. Her headache picked up drumsticks and started pounding out something with a heavy beat right between her eyes. Aerosmith, maybe.
     
    "Sheesh. None of you dead guys ever has a sense of humor," she managed, and then she stumbled in the direction he indicated, chin up and shoulders squared, praying that Erin somehow found a way to save Riley and the baby. If Quinn could help her by playing cat and mouse with a two-thousand-year-old vampire, that's exactly what she was going to do, even if the thought of it sent ice searing through her veins.
     
    She glanced over at Mr. Undead and Unfriendly. "Hey, ugly. Do you think Caligula has any Tylenol?"
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    Point Success
     
    After Ven had transported them up the mountain at a dizzying rate of speed, he'd shimmered back to his form and now stood silently, watching her. Erin found the warded area easily enough, but deciphering the magic was far more challenging. She paced back and forth before the area of ground that would be indistinguishable from the rest to any non-Magickal. Aside from the magic, only a slight decrease in the ambient air temperature marked it as different. Her amber sang out a warning whenever she stepped too closely to the warded area, and heat seared her skin when she reached out with her magic.
     
    Ven tried brute force, in spite of her warning, and bounced off the edge of the transparent magical shield. "Isn't that a little odd? I mean, doesn't your average hiker kinda notice when he gets knocked on his ass by an invisible wall?"
     
    She sighed and held out a hand to help him up. He shook his head and pushed himself up off the ground, grumbling something about warrior, swords, and freaking witches.
    She figured she was better off not asking him to repeat it.
     
    "It doesn't work that way, Ven. A non-Magickal would simply be directed subconsciously slightly away from this area. It's probably no more than three square feet, so it wouldn't be noticeable. Especially since the spell is reinforced with a look-away spell, so they literally would not see this spot or even know that they'd been guided away from it."
     
    "Right. No offense, but I don't care how the spell works," he said, stabbing the shield with his sword and cursing when it zapped a bolt of electricity up the sword to his arm.
    "All I want to know is, can you break it?"
     
    She focused all her concentration on the ward's intricate patterns and sent her own magic out to meet it and unravel tangled skeins of power. For every step forward she Atlantis Awakening – Warriors of Poseidon 02
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    made in the process, it seemed that the ward's magic knocked her a half-step back.
    Finally she pulled hack and looked at Ven.
     
    "I'm going to have to