Warriors of Poseidon 03 - Atlantis Unleashed

sheep.
    “Please tell me,” Vonos said, calmly polite, with a slight emphasis on the word please . Then he aimed a gentle, encouraging smile at the man. “Or I‟ll rip your tongue out by its root, and you won‟t have to worry about telling anyone anything ever again.”
    The sheep fell to his knees, babbling something incoherent, and Vonos sighed.
    “Truly, he is starting to annoy me,” he said to the man in charge. “Perhaps you would care to translate, before I lose my patience and kill every one of you?”
    “He‟s afraid of what the local vampires will do to us if we stop cooperating with them,” the leader said hastily. “We‟re—”
    “I am uninterested in your rationales,” Vonos said, cutting him off. “Be advised that the local vampires will never again be a threat to you or anyone else. We were unhappy with their carelessness.”
    Vonos‟s cell phone rang, and he held up one finger for silence. The sheep were at least good with their technology. He did so love his iPhone. Maybe he should convert that Steve Jobs fellow? Hmmm. Idle thoughts for another time.
    Vonos glanced at the caller ID and noted that it was his personal assistant, one of the very few vampires that he trusted. He flipped open the phone. “Yes?”
    “You have an urgent call from the human leader of the Apostates in Ohio,” his assistant said.
    “He claims he has knowledge that you need.”
    “I‟m growing astonishingly weary of these humans,” Vonos said into the phone, while scanning the row of men cringing away from him. “Knowledge of what type?”
    “I know it sounds insane, but he claims it‟s about Atlantis. He says an Atlantean warrior kidnapped one of his colleagues right out of her office. You told me to watch out for anything we could use against the Atlanteans, as insurance for when they want to negotiate with the U.S. government. This could be it.”
    Vonos narrowed his eyes and thought for a moment. “The story sounds unlikely. The Atlanteans have been far too careful to allow anyone to witness something so lacking in finesse as a kidnapping.”
    “He swears it‟s true,” his assistant said, excitement in his voice. “The Atlantean did something to him, some form of mind control that knocked him out, but he didn‟t stay out for long. He just lay there on the floor pretending to be unconscious and heard the whole thing.
    He says he knew that news like this would be crucial to our mission.”
    “He actually said that, did he? Crucial to our mission? These humans and their sense of melodrama.”
    “Well, this guy has been flagged for a while. He‟s a climber; wants to move up the hierarchy and be in line to be turned eventually.”
    “Ah. Immortality. The elusive prize at the end of all the sheep‟s rainbows. It does, however, cast a certain shade of doubt upon his claim. Perhaps he exaggerates in hopes of gaining accolades,” Vonos said skeptically, but he allowed himself a tiny bit of cautious optimism.
    Anubisa would reward him well for building a strong case against the Atlantean advent into international politics. State-sponsored kidnapping of American scientists was certainly a good start.
    “I believe I will visit this man myself,” Vonos decided. “Who is he and where is he?”
    The sound of shuffling papers came over the phone for a moment, and then Vonos‟s assistant came back on the line. “Here it is. Dr. George Grenning at Ohio State University.”

Chapter 19
    Rebel regional headquarters, St. Louis
    Alaric stepped through the portal into a scene of controlled chaos and immediately looked around for the Atlanteans. Alexios, blood matting his golden hair into heavy clumps, stood near the stark concrete front wall of the warehouse headquarters, shouting orders to the heavily armed humans as they rushed back and forth, many of them limping or carrying wounded comrades.
    Alaric grimaced at the acrid tang of gun smoke in the air. Christophe leaned against a graffiti-covered wall, bent over, with his hands on his thighs as if propping himself up. Alaric detected the faint residual glow of blue-green energy that surrounded Christophe; the warrior must have expended enormous amounts of energy quite recently.
    Denal was nowhere to be seen. Nor Reisen, Jack, or Quinn. Something in Alaric‟s chest tightened painfully at the thought of Quinn, but he refused to allow it to overcome him. She would be fine. She had to be fine.
    If Quinn were to die, he would have no reason to continue