Warriors of Poseidon 05 - Atlantis Redeemed

help this one, as you and your Atlanteans helped my sister.”
    She put one hand under Tiernan’s head and helped Brennan guide her back onto the hated chair, and then Deirdre ripped Tiernan’s shirt open and put pads on her chest that were attached to wires and a machine—a different machine, not the same, not the helmet—and she yelled, “Clear,” but Brennan didn’t know what that meant and he didn’t move.
    Daniel yanked Brennan back and away from Tiernan, but he didn’t have time to protest before Deirdre made the machine bring another kind of lightning, and Tiernan’s body jumped in the chair and then fell back, still silent and unmoving.
    Brennan roared out his anguish from hope extinguished, and he stumbled back, would have fallen, but Daniel caught his arm in a strong grip.
    “It didn’t work,” Brennan said, unnecessarily, as they could all see that it had not brought his Tiernan back, but Deirdre ignored him and adjusted dials on the machine and again yelled out the word.
    “Clear!”
    This time Tiernan’s body jumped higher, but the result was the same: no life, no heartbeat, no Tiernan. But Brennan looked at the machine and then at Tiernan and he knew what to do.
    “I can do it,” he said. “I can call the lightning. Put the machine on me.”
    “What?” Deirdre said. “No, you don’t understand, this only works when the heart has already stopped.”
    “I understand,” Brennan said, ripping off his own shirt. “Put the pads on me. Surge the power through me.”
    Deirdre was shaking her head, but Daniel stopped her. “He has power, Deirdre. Look at that.”
    He pointed to the corner, to what was left of Litton, and around the room at the destroyed equipment. “Do it.”
    She stared around the room and then shrugged, rapidly removed the pads from Tiernan’s chest, and attached them to Brennan’s back. Brennan put his hands carefully, so carefully, on Tiernan’s chest.
    “Do it now,” he told Deirdre, and then he smiled down at the woman he loved with every ounce of his being. “One way or another, we will be together.”
    “Clear!” Deirdre cried out, and then Brennan called the lightning.
    Atlantis Redeemed – Warriors of Poseidon 05
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    The power surged into him and through him stronger than ever before, and he poured it through his hands into Tiernan, into her heart and blood and soul. He shouted her name as the power surged, but it wasn’t enough, wasn’t enough.
    Wasn’t enough.
    The power fizzled and stopped, and Brennan took a deep, shuddering breath and then turned his own dead gaze to Deirdre. “Again.”
    “But it will kill you—”
    “Now.”
    The command hung in the air, resonating with the measure of power of a Warrior of Poseidon.
    Deirdre cried out the word again, like a talisman. “Clear!”
    Brennan called the lightning.
    Pain scorched through him with the power, leaving a trail of sizzling agony in its wake. The energy burned through him from his back, through his bloodstream, and to his own heart, and then down his arms to his hands and into Tiernan’s heart.
    He called the lightning, and screamed her name through the pain that threatened to incinerate him. Screamed her name and pledged his vow: “Poseidon, channel this power through me to save my woman and I freely give my life for hers.”
    He staggered and nearly fell, his wounded leg screaming out as the jagged holes from the gunshot were seared shut, the flesh burned and melted to instant scarring from the heat and fury of the lightning. The power surged through him, biting with its jagged teeth, eating everything he was and consuming it as fuel for the lightning that then poured into Tiernan’s body, filling her organs and blood and bone with the power.
    This time, the lightning conquered death itself.
    Tiernan arched up off the table, crying out, but then she opened her eyes and smiled.
    He fell then, against the chair, but she held up her arms to him and he fell forward into his life, into the future, into hope. He kissed her and she tasted of the power and, together, they swallowed the lightning.
    They dove, as one, into the soul-meld, and this time they were together, in Atlantis, dancing in the moonlit night, and the future belonged to them, forever and ever. He kissed her, and he tasted eternity.
    A sound brought him back. Behind him, Daniel cleared his throat, and Brennan’s conscious Atlantis Redeemed – Warriors of Poseidon 05
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    mind clicked back