Warriors of Poseidon 04 - Atlantis Unmasked

and that had not changed after his death. She knew this, and yet occasionally took his choice as challenge. She seemed to lack the ability to understand why any man or, indeed, any woman would not be drawn to her. It alternately infuriated and amused her, and he supposed sometimes that the puzzle of it was one reason he still survived.
     
    “I have news for you,” she said. “I learned enough of the Atlantean‟s plans, before that fool‟s mind broke completely and I had to throw him into the Void, to know that we need more of an army to defeat them. You are, of course, among the best at training my blood pride to enthrall the humans. The members of my Apostates have declined since that unfortunate raid by the panther shifters.”
     
    Atlantis Unmasked - Warriors of Poseidon 04
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    A palpable fury swept through the room at her words. Furniture trembled, papers sailed off tables, and light fixtures exploded in a shower of glittering glass. “This is unacceptable,” she raged. “I have decided that the bratling princes three will serve me well as bedchamber slaves, when Atlantis rises from the waters currently holding it captive, and I claim it for my own.”
     
    Vonos clenched his teeth together to keep from making any comment about the futility and wasted resources involved in Anubisa‟s obsession with the Atlanteans. Political power was of no use to a pile of dust upon the ground, and dust would be an optimal result in store for one who defied Anubisa.
     
    “Prevacek, too, has some great skill with enthralling humans. He is my second-in-command and is currently in Florida. If you will it, my lady, I shall contact him so that we may plan our strategy together to more effectively serve your needs.”
     
    She inclined her head; royalty granting a boon to a peasant. One day, perhaps, she would bow to him, instead . . . but, no. Even to think such thoughts was heresy. Vonos was well trained in suppressing all but the most loyal of thoughts. If she were to learn that he had not yet told her of the diamond, for example . . .
     
    Suddenly Anubisa‟s eyes flashed deepest scarlet, and Vonos trembled where he stood.
    Surely she had not caught such a brief thought? But she was a goddess—
    She screamed, a sound of such frustrated rage that the walls themselves shook from the force of it. “No! No, no, ten thousand times, no!”
     
    Blood-colored flames seared forth from her eyes, her mouth, and her nostrils. Flames shot forth out of her fingers and the tips of her toes in their pointed slippers. In seconds, she was surrounded by a conflagration of fire, an inferno that blasted such intense heat he did not know how she could not be consumed by it.
     
    Atlantis Unmasked - Warriors of Poseidon 04
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    He could do nothing but throw himself to the ground, cowering before her. The scorching heat from the flames scalded the air around him until he realized he would be immolated. His last thought was philosophical, rather than outraged. He‟d played the game and taken his chances.
     
    Now he‟d take a loser‟s punishment.
     
    But then, somehow, the fire disappeared. The flames were gone, as if they‟d never existed. Only the black and charred scorch marks on the floor of the chamber and the smell of sulfur in the air served as silent witness to Anubisa‟s tantrum.
     
    A small, delicate hand in his hair yanked him up off the ground and threw him against the wall some twenty feet away. He slid down the wall and crumpled to the floor, afraid to rise. “Have I displeased you, my lady? If you only let me know, I will—”
     
    “Silence, you babbling slug!” she roared. “The heir is born! Conlan‟s whore of a human female has borne him a healthy son.”
     
    He dared to glance at her and saw that she was trembling with a fury that was apparently too great to be contained within the space of her small form. “They do not escape me. I release them, or I destroy them. They do not escape me and breed bastards to carry on their hated line,” she raged.
     
    He began to speak, but then trapped the words before they escaped his mouth. In the more than six centuries that she had deigned to recognize his existence, he had never seen Anubisa react like this. Her confidence was always unshakable, her arrogance sublime.
     
    A goddess who showed signs of being vulnerable was a goddess who would destroy any who had seen her weakness. He lowered his face to the ground and shut his eyes