Warriors of Poseidon 05 - Atlantis Redeemed

justice and suffer long years in prison. Needing only to get to Tiernan, to hold her one last time, he turned away and crossed to the chair. He gently touched her face, which was still warm, but so very pale. “I will always love you, mi amara, through this life and beyond,” he whispered.
    The first gunshot hit the chair. The second smashed into the back of his leg.
    As he fell, he spun on his good leg and threw the power—all the power, every ounce of the power—at Litton, who stood against the far wall, the gun from the fallen guard clutched in his shaking hands.
    It was Brennan’s turn to call the lightning.
    When the smoke cleared, nothing but a blackened pile of smoldering bone remained.
    Brennan returned to Tiernan, limping now, blood running freely down his leg. The bullet had missed bone and artery and had gone clear through flesh, but if he left it untreated and unbound, surely it would be enough to kill him.
    He prayed it would be enough to kill him.
    He ripped the restraints off of Tiernan’s wrists and pulled her gently, so carefully, into his arms.
    Everything he’d ever wished for lay like ash in his arms and heart and mind. He resolved to carry her out of that miserable place of pain and death, find a way back to the park, and sit with her in the cool peace of the forest until his blood left his body in sufficient quantities to allow him to join her.
    He stood, turning toward the door, and took the first step toward freedom, prepared to blast his way out, through guards, through scientists, even through the vampires.
    The last thing he expected was the vampire who walked through the door.

Chapter 41
    “Daniel?” Brennan stared at the vampire who’d suddenly appeared like a hallucination to his overwrought mind. The vampire who had allied with the Atlanteans over and over again, who had saved Quinn’s life although at the price of a blood bond, here he was and Brennan’s mind Atlantis Redeemed – Warriors of Poseidon 05
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    could not make sense of it.
    “Brennan, we don’t have much time,” Daniel began, but then he looked—really looked—at Tiernan, and he froze. “No. No, not again.”
    “She is dead, and the one who brought us here and murdered her lies dead as well,” Brennan said, barely managing to speak through the pain that swamped his mind and drained the breath from his lungs. “I will be next.”
    A female entered the room, another vampire, and she scanned the equipment, then trained her gaze on Tiernan. “How long?” she asked, her voice urgent. “How long since she died?”
    “A few minutes, perhaps. Long enough for my heart to die with her. Now, get out of my way or by all the gods, I will destroy you, too, Daniel, no matter what help you have been to me and mine in the past.”
    The woman pushed past Daniel and blurred with preternatural vampire speed across the floor to Brennan, so fast Brennan didn’t have time to move before she was there, staring down at Tiernan and touching her skin.
    “We might be able to resuscitate her,” she said, and at first the words had no meaning, they were just sounds, but then a great, dark hope lit Brennan’s world and he staggered back as though she’d struck him.
    “What? How? Vampires have no healing magic,” he said, sanity and rationality returning to crush hope.
    “No, we have something better,” she said, pointing to the as yet undamaged machines that had been behind Brennan, near the chair. “Modern life-saving equipment. Put her back in that chair.”
    He didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Could only stand there, holding the body of his woman, not daring to hope.
    “The machines, Brennan. They have machines to make her heart start again. I know how to use them.”
    Daniel leapt across the room to Brennan. “Let Deirdre help, Brennan. Please, let her try.” He gently but quickly steered Brennan around and back to the chair.
    Brennan hesitated still; no matter that he had some measure of trust for Daniel, he did not know the other vampire and, most of all, to put Tiernan back in the chair that had tortured and killed her felt like the worst kind of blasphemy.
    “Please,” Deirdre said, looking up at him with eyes that were so familiar, and something clicked in Brennan’s mind.
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    “Deirdre? Erin’s sister?”
    She nodded, fathomless pain in the dark depths of her deep blue eyes, and she even smiled a little. “Yes. Please let me