Warriors of Poseidon 04 - Atlantis Unmasked

filled with crumbling bones and rotted death.
     
    “I am Prevacek, and I worked too hard for that tyrant for too long to give up the jewel,”
    he blubbered out of the remaining side of his mouth.
     
    Anubisa almost casually knocked him to the floor and he lay there, snorting and howling, but he didn‟t stand up again. He still had his gun aimed at Alexios‟s head, though.
     
    Another flash of heat shot through Grace, and she cautiously, ever so slowly, straightened her legs and arms, rolling slowly and carefully toward the planter that was only about a foot away from where Anubisa had so considerately tossed her.
     
    Toward her bow and the arrow that she would aim so exactly. The arrow that never, ever missed. Carefully, oh so carefully, she lifted an arm high enough to retrieve her bow and an arrow—luck was with her, or Diana was, and she drew a silver-tipped arrow on the first try—and she carefully fitted it into her bow, not even daring to breathe.
     
    But evidently even the stealthiest movements of humans were no match for the hearing of goddesses. Anubisa swung around to face Grace, smiling that hideous smile, with her fangs fully extended and her eyes brightly, vividly scarlet.
    Atlantis Unmasked - Warriors of Poseidon 04
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    “Oh, lovely,” she said, clapping her hands. “A choice. I am delighted to have a game to play with your human whore, Alexios. Did you tell her how you begged me to hurt you?”
     
    Grace heard a growl coming from her own throat, and she aimed the arrow directly at Anubisa‟s lying, nasty, torturing face. “I will kill you, you filthy bitch,” she said clearly. “I will make sure you never, ever hurt an Atlantean again.”
     
    Anubisa, clearly insane, clapped her hands again and pealed out a joyful laugh.
    Everyone in the room tried to clap their hands over their ears, because the sound of her laugh caused eardrums to pierce and brain aneurysms to burst randomly throughout the crowd. The screams and cries seemed to make Anubisa even happier.
     
    “A choice,” Anubisa repeated. “You can save Alexios, your true love, with that arrow, or you can shoot me with it. But let‟s make it interesting. I know how noble you humans like to pretend to be.”
     
    She cast her glittering gaze out over the crowd and then squealed with such unholy glee that several people fell to the floor, unconscious or dead, from the sound. “I know! If you choose to shoot this miserable burned husk of vampire to save Alexios, I will murder every human in this room. But if you choose to shoot at me, I will simply order Alexios‟s death and let the humans live. There! Isn‟t that fun?”
     
    Grace said nothing, just calculated the time it would take her to reach for a second arrow. Before she could decide, the bag behind her, carrying her arrows and Alexios‟s gear, burst into flames.
     
    “No cheating,” Anubisa said, giggling wildly, like a demented child.
     
    Grace turned toward Alexios in despair and locked gazes with him, hoping he could read everything she felt for him in that one last glance. It was a choice, but it wasn‟t a Atlantis Unmasked - Warriors of Poseidon 04
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    choice. There was no option. The lives of dozens of innocent humans or Alexios‟s life, freely given as the warrior he was.
     
    He nodded, and she knew that he understood. That he was encouraging her to make the worst choice in the world. The one choice she would never be able to live with, instead of the choice that neither of them would be able to live with.
     
    Anubisa started to say something else, but in one smooth motion, Grace drew back her bowstring and shot the vamp goddess directly in the heart. Expecting nothing. A puff of smoke, maybe, as Anubisa destroyed her arrow mid-flight.
     
    Instead, the unthinkable happened. The arrow hit home.
     
    The arrow hit home .
     
    Anubisa started shrieking as smoke poured out of her chest and she yanked at the arrow, trying to get it out. Grace yanked herself out of her shock to leap up with some idea of running to Alexios, but a single gunshot stopped her in mid-step. Tears poured down her cheeks; she was afraid to look.
     
    “It‟s okay, mi amara . The old man has a few moves left in him.”
     
    She whipped her head up to see Alexios, gun in hand, standing over the body of Prevacek. Anubisa still writhed and screamed on the floor, smoke roiling out of her.
     
    Grace decided it was time to make a dash for it. She jerked