Warriors of Poseidon 03 - Atlantis Unleashed

out toward his brother down the shared Atlantean mental path, but nothing but a harsh static buzzed through his mind. The drugs were probably still interfering with his access to his powers over water and energy, too. He‟d assume he was helpless. Better that way.
    Never rely on the unreliable when you‟re otherwise weap onless against two wolves and a potentially drug-crazed tiger.
    Chances : He‟d bet on himself against most shape-shifters, even in close quarters like this, but five hundred pounds of tiger? Even Jack, who was sort of a friend when he walked on two legs.
    He‟d have to call it even odds. And that was before he ever got to the two wolves. So maybe he‟d have to take out the wolves first.
    Because Justice knew one critical fact: he‟d rather spend eternity roasting in the lowest of the nine hells than spend one more minute with his face pressed into the rank animal stench of a wet tiger.
    The shifters finished their muttering about sneaking out to see the action and moved off, as stealthy as a couple of drunken water buffalo. Before today, Justice would have bet a Roman-emperor-turned-vampire as powerful as Caligula would have hired a better class of help.
    He‟d have been wrong. No wonder the Roman Empire had fallen.
    All the better, though.
    Justice waited long enough to be sure they weren‟t faking the move, then leapt up and away from the still-unconscious but ominously twitchy tiger. Maybe the action knocked something loose in his drugged brain, because he suddenly knew his brother was finally arriving. Lord Vengeance to the rescue, just freaking great.
    Of course, Vengeance didn‟t know that he was Justice‟s brother.
    “I could tell you, but I‟d have to kill you,” Justice growled; then, more loudly so he could be heard, “Damn, Vengeance better appreciate this.”
    He whipped around to see Vengeance standing at the tunnel entrance, sword at the ready.
    Ven said something about cat hair and tiger pillows, but Justice barely heard it, because the booming sound of an unseen bell smashed through the air. He covered his ears, but the percussive waves of noise threatened to crush his skull beneath their power.
    A flash of foreknowledge swept through him and he somehow knew—just knew —that the next hour would change everything.
    Everything.
    Then the goddess walked into the room clothed in the body of Ven‟s woman, and everything inside of Justice that was not the primitive, savage descendant of his Nereid ancestors shattered. Insanity and battle lust washed in a blue-green haze across his vision and, as he stared at the brother he wanted so desperately to acknowledge, his last rational thought was one of regret.
     
    Had it been minutes or hours? Justice crouched on the stone ledge, hidden from sight and surveying the carnage. Dead and dying shifters and vampires littered the stone floor of the cavern. The stench of the acidic decay of the vamps combined with the coppery metallic tang of blood to rot the very air they were breathing. The flickering lights of the torches on the walls illuminated garish displays of broken and torn-open bodies.
    He‟d done his part, but had been careful to stay out of sight, drawing his opponents behind the cavern‟s many rocky outcroppings. Even the preternatural senses of the vampires had been overwhelmed by the wash of blood, and nobody had seemed to notice him.
    Nobody still living, at least.
    Justice was planning to be the trump card, and any good gambler knew the value of never revealing his hand. He glanced down at the blade of his sword, gleaming wetly in the flickering dark.
    No trump card had ever dealt such a deadly hand. He was the joker, and the queen of death was next on the list.
    He heard her voice then, and knew he‟d failed. The vampire goddess Anubisa had captured Vengeance and his woman in spite of Ven‟s strength and Erin‟s powerful witchcraft.
    Justice had failed them.
    He‟d failed his family.
    As he listened, options, strategy, and desperate measures swirling through his still only semilucid brain, he heard her say it. The words he‟d dreaded. Anubisa was going to take Ven with her. She was giving the rest of them to Caligula as a little gift.
    A snack .
    Justice shot up and began to show himself, then stopped, frozen, when he saw Anubisa holding Erin while Ven dug the point of his sword into his own heart.
    “If you truly wish for my voluntary service, release her now and swear the oath for her safety.
    Or I will