Warriors of Poseidon 05 - Atlantis Redeemed

the pack. “Well, Devon. We were wondering where you were. Who are your friends?”
    Devon narrowed his eyes, the only signal Brennan expected to get, and pushed Deirdre behind him. “How serendipitous that you should appear now. We were just on the way to inform you all that Jones and Smith killed each other in a struggle for power, and in the course of their fight, they blew up the lab. We’re leaving and suggest you do the same.”
    Another vamp hissed at them and jumped to the wall, clinging to it and hanging like a spider.
    “Why would we do that? Your word alone? Where is proof?”
    The vampire in the front whipped his head to the side. “Silence, fool. Of course Devon is telling us the truth.” He returned his red, glowing gaze to Devon, ignoring Brennan completely. “You must be hungry, though, after your . . . ordeal . . . with Mr. Jones.”
    He snapped his fingers, and another vamp dragged a human woman forward. “You know what to do,” the vamp told her.
    The woman was shaking like a sapling tree caught in a hurricane, but she took a tiny step Atlantis Redeemed – Warriors of Poseidon 05
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    forward and pasted a sick-looking smile on her face. After looking back once at the vampire, she walked closer to Devon. “I’m a gift to you, as proof that my master will follow you anywhere.”
    Brennan hesitated, caught between his need to protect the woman and his reluctance to get Tiernan killed over some nuance of vampire politics.
    Tiernan herself solved that problem for him.
    “She’s lying,” she said clearly. “Huge lie. That vampire has no intention to follow you or anybody else, Daniel.”
    “Good enough for me,” Brennan said and, one more time, he called the lightning.
    The vampire’s look of surprise remained on his face while his head rolled across the floor.
    If Brennan had thought killing their leader would stop them, he’d been very wrong. The death acted like a trigger, and they all exploded toward Brennan and his small group like a deadly swarm, clinging to walls, floor, and even the ceiling, all with fangs bared and promises of death in their eyes.
    Brennan welcomed the berserker rage and pulled every ounce of available energy into his body, feeling his hair lift away from his head and float in the air, driven by the electrical charge his body was generating. They came at him—they came at Tiernan—and he called the lightning.
    It came once more to his command, but there was a cost. His body was not made to channel the power of the gods, and Atlantean flesh could not carry pure, sizzling, electrical energy at this rate for this long.
    He felt something rip and tear inside him, and he stumbled, but he threw the power at the first wave of vampires and they burst into flames, incinerated in seconds, and the second wave fell back, hissing and shouting insults and epithets.
    “Can you keep doing that?” Daniel asked. “Also, don’t send any of it my way, if you don’t mind.”
    “Daniel!” Deirdre shrieked, and they all turned to see that another wave was coming from behind them. They’d be trapped.
    “Oh, this is not good,” Tiernan said, holding her scalpels up in the air. “I have no plans to die twice in one day, so let’s kick some vampire ass.” She threw an apologetic glance at Daniel and Deirdre. “No offense.”
    Deirdre smiled, and for a moment, some of the anguish on her face seemed to lighten. “None taken,” she said.
    And then the vampires charged, and the battle was on.
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Chapter 44
    Alaric soared down to the ground to meet Quinn, Alexios, and the shifters and rebels. It had taken far longer than he’d expected, and Brennan was still blocked by some extremely unusual interference, but they’d finally found it, though it was unmarked.
    The heavy guard at the access road had been their first indication.
    Quinn hopped out of the vehicle, and it took everything in Alaric not to spirit her away from there. Protect her from any fight.
    She pulled a deadly looking gun from her pocket and held it at the ready. “Are you sure? It looks like a warehouse.”
    “This is it. Litton’s institute. We found Wesley and made him talk,” one of Lucas’s Pack members said, grinning at the memory.
    It wasn’t a very pleasant grin.
    With no warning, a psychic blast smashed Alaric so hard his head rocked back on his neck. It was Brennan, and he was sending a mental communication more