Warriors of Poseidon 03 - Atlantis Unleashed

coming toward her—no, headed for the pregnant woman. The servant girl had only been unlucky to have gotten in the way of the backstroke, when the crazed man wrenched his sword up over his shoulder in preparation to strike. Whoever he was, he‟d literally cut her throat, and now there was a pregnant woman going into labor right in front of her.
    And there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. She was no more than an observer in her visions, unable to change actions that had happened long ago in the far-distant past. All she could do was suffer their pain, and pray that the vision released her soon.
    The woman on the floor screamed again. She fell to her side and drew her knees up, curling into a ball, as if trying to escape. “Help me! Somebody help me,” she cried out, pushing her tangled hair away from her face.
    Her tangled midnight blue hair, Keely realized. What if this woman were related to Justice?
    She tried, in spite of everything she knew about the visions, to force her host body to go to the woman. To help her, in spite of the servant girl‟s obvious terror.
    But it was like trying to move a pyramid with only her mind. She couldn‟t affect what was long over and done. No matter how much she wanted to do so.
    When the contraction eased, the blue-haired woman managed to raise her head and scan the room. Keely did the same and gasped again. Marble columns lined the walls, and a golden throne graced one end. She must be in the palace throne room, then.
    But she wasn‟t alone.
    How could she have missed him? The man standing in front of the throne. His dark hair, aristocratic features, and regal presence had so much of Conlan and Ven in him, and she recognized the sword he held as the one that had hurled her into the abyss.
    Except now it was wet with her blood. Drawn by some hideous fascination, Keely stared at the evidence that this man had sliced her throat. Her host‟s throat.
    Their throat. Blackness began to whirl behind her eyes, and she didn‟t know whether to try to stay conscious or hope that fainting would yank her out of the vision. Would her host faint?
    Would the man with the sword punish her if she did?
    And since Keely couldn‟t affect the past, was she only experiencing the dizziness of her host, surely due to fear and loss of blood?
    The pregnant woman cried out—a long cry filled with suffering and hopelessness. She stared up at the man, beseeching, from where she was curled up on the cold, hard floor, all alone.
    “Help me, please. I beg of you. This baby is coming, and now.”
    Distantly Keely recognized that she was somehow hearing and understanding ancient Atlantean. The cadence of the language was almost musical; it seemed wrong to use such a lovely language to describe such suffering. The harshness of English would be better.
    Can’t you see I’m in pain here? Or, Help me, you bastard.
    Three contractions in a row swept over the woman, pressing her back to the floor with the weight of the pain. Her abdomen tightened, visibly hard as a rock, with each one. But whatever was supposed to happen didn‟t seem to be happening.
    At least as far as Keely knew. She hesitantly glanced at the woman‟s legs, bare under some kind of silken skirt, praying that the baby‟s head hadn‟t breached yet.
    Not yet. But Keely noticed something new. Something her shock had kept her from noticing before. The skin of the woman‟s legs and hands were the color of ivory tinged with the palest blue. She wasn‟t human. She wasn‟t even Atlantean. She was something . . . other.
    The contraction seemed to ease again, and the woman was reduced to sobbing, lying on the floor. Keely tried again in vain to force her host to go toward the woman and help her. But the servant girl‟s fear was far too great to allow compassion to translate into motion.
    Anger swept through Keely‟s consciousness in a blazing swath, and a single very determined thought popped into her mind: if she ever survived this vision, she was going to stab Justice with his own sword.
    King SOB finally spoke. “I cannot believe you dare to come to me with your bastard child, Éibhleann. After what you and Anubisa did to me, you‟re lucky I don‟t strike you dead where you lay on the floor.”
    The pregnant woman bared her teeth and actually hissed at him, an alien sound that ricocheted off the walls. “It was not me. It was never me. I was as much a captive as you, Your Highness. If you, who are the all-powerful king of