Warriors of Poseidon 03 - Atlantis Unleashed

the life of Prince Conlan‟s unborn child.
    Lord Justice was a hero.
    But maybe he was a hero corrupted into a traitor. There was no way to be sure, until Alaric could test him.
    As if he were thought-mining Alexios, Alaric began speaking quietly and quickly, filling Ven and Conlan in on the current situation. Conlan‟s obsidian gaze swept over Tiernan, and he nodded to her with all courtesy. “If you speak the truth, lady, you will be rewarded. Be welcome to Atlantis.”
    A strange expression, almost a grimace, crossed Tiernan‟s face at his words, but she merely nodded.
    Ven snapped a hand signal to Christophe and Alexios, directing them to keep watch over Tiernan, but Ven himself barely glanced at her, his entire attention focused on the view through the dark magic of the window. “Truth, rewards, yeah, whatever. For now, what in the freaking nine hells are we going to do?”
    Alaric finished his recounting, and Ven‟s hands dropped to the hilts of his daggers. “Death magic? Are you kidding me?” He barked out a laugh. “Great. We finally find out Justice is alive, and we‟ve gotta kill somebody to get him out?”
    Prince Conlan glared at his brother. “No one is dying today,” he snapped. Then he returned his attention to Alaric. “Options?”
    “If I had any options, I would have presented them,” Alaric said, his voice so icy that Alexios was surprised Conlan didn‟t suffer frostbite. The priest was accustomed to solving every problem and having the last word in every crisis. Alexios figured it chapped Alaric‟s ass to be unable to solve this one.
    “Perhaps,” Christophe offered, “since Justice appears to have opened the first-ever window from the Void into Atlantis, he may have some ideas on the matter.”
    “What is that thing walking behind him?” Ven asked.
    “Gee, I wish I‟d asked that,” Tiernan said dryly.
    Alexios couldn‟t keep the grin from escaping. The woman had guts; he‟d give her that.
    As the two had drawn nearer, more and more of the figure following Justice had been revealed. It looked almost human, although grossly deformed. As it shambled along in Justice‟s wake, it rarely looked up, but merely stared down at the path in front of it.
    “Well, maybe we‟ll get lucky,” Christophe added. “Maybe Justice brought his own sacrifice along with him.”
    A flicker of light in their peripheral vision was their only warning before the Atlantean portal, situated exactly on the opposite side of the marble entry platform from the dark window, began to shiver and elongate into its usual ovoid sphere.
    Threatened on both sides with possible danger, Alexios ran to position himself in front of Tiernan, daggers unsheathed. Prince Conlan and his warriors drew weapons and Alaric called power, standing in a nimbus of silvery green energy, as Justice drew ever closer on one side of the group, and two people came through the Atlantean portal on the other.
    Alexios recognized Liam, one of the most dangerously effective of Poseidon‟s warriors, leading yet another human female. This one had blazing red hair and the most intensely green eyes he‟d ever seen on a human, and she was dressed casually, clutching a worn backpack to her chest with, oddly enough, gloved hands. Liam‟s head was turned to her as they crossed the portal. “Welcome to Atlantis, Dr. McDermott,” he said.
    The woman‟s stunning eyes widened and her jaw tightened but, to her credit, she gave no other sign of alarm at the sight of several armed warriors and one half-naked woman. She simply blinked once, held up a hand and waved, and then glanced up at Liam. “Well. I have to admit, McHottie, this is one of my more interesting welcome parties.”

Chapter 11
Atlantis
    Keely had learned, from long, painful years of experience, how to appear calm on the surface when everything was going clusterfark on the inside. Now seemed like the grand finale to all that practice; the PhD exam on maintaining order during chaos.
    She‟d never flunked an exam yet, and no way was she starting now. What would Gertrude Bell do? Not that one of the most famous female archaeologists of all time had ever had to contend with Atlantis. But Lawrence of Arabia had to have come pretty close.
    She took a deep but unobtrusive breath, while she studied the group in front of her. Armed men and a woman with a bruised face wearing a—toga? sheet?—were standing, incongruously, on the greenest grass she‟d ever seen. Jade melding into