Warriors of Poseidon 03 - Atlantis Unleashed

in the darkness of his face. “We are Justice,” he said. “And you are ours.”

Chapter 13
    Justice stared at the woman, wondering when and how she‟d become the focal point of his universe. Wondering how she could be so beautiful that she glowed like a jewel in the setting of Atlantis. He was drawn to the courage he saw in her eyes and—for the barest instant—nobility and honor coun seled him to turn away. To remain in the Void and never, ever attempt to find her again. She was light to his darkness, and he was twisted.
    Everything about him was wrong.
    For that single, frozen moment, the Atlantean side of him struggled against the compelling need, harsh demand, and bitter hunger that poured forth from his Nereid half. But his Nereid side had been too long denied.
    It wanted. It needed . It needed Keely, and it would have her.
    A wordless roar exploded up from his lungs and burst from his throat. He would take her.
    Now. He stepped forward to cross the entryway, but at the first touch of his hand to the glassy surface, a fierce electrical charge knocked him back half a dozen paces.
    Behind him, Pharnatus, the poor creature he‟d nearly forgotten, stumbled to a stop. “I understand not what is happening here, my lord. But any entryway from the Void is gated and shielded by death magic. As the vampire goddess created them, so must they be passed.
    Without a blood sacrifice, you cannot join yon fellows, nor they you.”
    Justice swung around, snarling, the sword still raised in his hand. Pharnatus cringed, shielding his face with one arm, his wild eyes rolling in their sockets. “What little sight I have left to me proclaims that you are near to taking my life,” he said, with no little dignity. “At least let me say my final words to the gods of my fathers before you do so.”
    Before Justice could deny it, almost before he could check the impulse to strike out, the deformed creature who had once been a man bowed his head and knelt on one knee. He began murmuring a simple litany of prayer and Justice was shocked to hear that it was a prayer of gratitude.
    Thankfulness .
    He grasped Pharnatus by the shoulder and yanked him up. “What can you possibly have left in the way of gratitude? What can you be saying to those worthless gods of yours, who would leave you in this hell for thousands of years? They deserve neither your prayers nor your thanks, but only your hatred and vengeance.”
    Justice‟s Greek was almost unintelligible as he snarled it through clenched teeth, but the man before him seemed to understand.
    “Perhaps you would have been right, once,” Pharnatus murmured through cracked and twisted lips. “Perhaps I would have died with vengeance on my tongue and loathing in my heart, then. But you came, and you brought light through your holy sword. Light shone upon my face again, for one last time, after two millennia of darkness. How can I not be thankful?
    How can I not believe in my gods? For you are their messenger, and now, with your shining sword, you will deliver me to them.”
    Justice took a step back, all but screaming with frustration. “I am no god‟s messenger, you poor, deluded fool. I am naught but the cast-off bastard of a hypocritical king, and the unwanted bane of the sea god. Even my own mother abandoned me. So speak to me not of gods and messengers. I will not kill you. Though my name is Justice, I am no deliverer of it.”
    He turned back to the window. He would have no entry into Atlantis, then. He would never again set foot in his home-land. He had not known that the thought of it would wrench through him with such biting agony and rank despair, but he would give his own life before he would take that of this poor, miserable creature.
    He could not bear to look at Keely again, so he was careful to gaze only at Conlan and Ven.
    “Brothers,” he said, the word somehow shaping itself in Atlantean instead of the ancient Greek. “After all these years, I can finally call you my brothers, and then it is only so that I can tell you farewell.”
    The Nereid inside him howled silently with rage, but it was silenced by the Atlantean half of his soul when he saw the tears that fell from his brothers‟ eyes. Conlan and Ven, the brothers he‟d never been able to claim, stood anguished before him, with the evidence of their regard for him tracking down their faces.
    “Never farewell, my brother,” said Conlan, his dark eyes flashing to silver. “Not when we have only just