Warriors of Poseidon 05 - Atlantis Redeemed

Tiernan’s mind couldn’t process it. No. It couldn’t be the truth, but the guard was not lying; she would know with this guard. His lies had always sounded to her like sandpaper rubbing on steel, and there wasn’t a hint of that now.
    That couldn’t be her heart, tearing apart inside her chest. And yet it was. She gave up, and let out the cry. It came from so far deep inside her that even the vampire took a step back, flinching at the sound.
    “Please,” she whispered to the vampire. “I would prefer the kick now.”
    The vampire stared down at her, puzzled, but then Litton fastened the helmet on her head, and nothing else mattered but the pain and the light. Her brain shattered and re-formed, as it had so many times before, but this time there was a difference. This time she had entirely given up hope.
    She quit fighting it, but her Gift resisted in spite of her conscious mind, and when Litton kept returning, over and over, and telling her he was her friend, her Gift forced her to tell him that it was a lie.
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    Litton was not her friend. He never would be. He had killed the one man she’d ever wanted to spend her life with; the one man whose courage and kindness had given her hope for the future.
    He finally shrieked with frustration or rage and ordered them to ramp it up to the red zone, and she laughed. The red zone might mean freedom, now that she had seen there truly was nothing left to live for. Susannah was gone. Tiernan would never live as a slave to this monster, and although her heart and mind and soul flinched away from the thought, Brennan was dead—Brennan, dead in this horrible place after two thousand years protecting humanity.
    She faced death with little regret, except that she would never be able to break the story, bring this evil to the light of day. Brennan was gone, so there was no point to hoping for a future for herself.
    She heard Litton’s voice: “If she can’t be enthralled, she may as well be dead.”
    She laughed. She’d won. She was free. The red haze of agony lightened and turned to a pure and indescribably beautiful white light, and suddenly everything else and everyone else fell away and a single figure stood there, limned by the light, carrying a bundle in her arms.
    “Welcome,” Susannah said, smiling, holding her baby. “I’ve missed you so much.”
    Tiernan smiled and stepped forward into the light.

Chapter 37
    Devon’s eyes snapped open from the brief rest. He needed more, the long, healing day sleep, but there was no time and, underground, he could survive without it. He immediately warmed several bottles of blood; he and Deirdre needed the sustenance. He hated to wake her, but she would be terrified if she woke alone.
    “Deirdre,” he said. She shot straight up off the long bench where he’d put her when they made it to his rooms and flew at him, her eyes blind with fear.
    He caught her and soothed her, repeating her name over and over until she came out of it and calmed down. She drank four bottles of blood in huge gulps, not stopping until she’d drained them all. Then she wiped her mouth and stared at him, still silent.
    “I have to go after them,” he said. “I need to get to Brennan. You should stay here, where it’s safe. The others will see me as weak now, after Jones, and I’ll have to battle at least one, if not several of them.”
    “I’m going with you,” she said, showing her fangs.
    “It’s not safe.”
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    “I have never been safe,” she said flatly, and the argument was finished. She was going with him.

Chapter 38
    Alaric scanned the room. Lucas and twenty of his shifters, Jack, Alexios, Quinn, and about a dozen of her rebels all stood ready to assist. It would have to be enough.
    “We have an idea of how to get in, but we’re not entirely sure,” Quinn said. “We’re going to need to search.”
    “I know the direction Brennan’s last mental blast came from,” Alexios said. “We can use that to triangulate.”
    Alaric nodded. “I have been trying to reach him since I arrived, but the static you mentioned is too strong. It is almost certainly electrical interference, on an enormous scale. A laboratory full of equipment would not be enough, I don’t believe, so I’m somewhat confused.”
    Quinn shoved a hand through her choppy dark hair. “It could be Tasers. Or an electrified cell. Or you