Warriors of Poseidon 05 - Atlantis Redeemed

floor.
    “The wiring, Brennan. Look at the wiring,” Tiernan said, ignoring the guard who threatened her again. “It’s the equivalent of an electric fence. Didn’t you say—”
    She cried out—one of the guards must have struck her—and Brennan, driven beyond endurance, lunged up from the floor, only to meet the butt of another guard’s gun on its way down to slam into his face. The world went hazy and he fought for consciousness. If he passed out now, he’d wake up not knowing Tiernan, with both of them trapped here. His one and only goal was to stay awake, stay alive, rescue his mate.
    No matter how many had to die for him to do it.

Chapter 25
    Yellowstone National Park, Pack Headquarters
    Alexios paced back and forth in the spacious living area of Lucas’s HQ, stopping every few minutes to shut his eyes and try to establish a mental pathway to Brennan.
    “Nothing. Gods damn it, nothing. It’s wrong, somehow. Not silence or an emptiness, which would happen if he were out of range, but more an odd static and a—” He broke off. He trusted Lucas completely, but there were several other Pack members in the large wood-and-brick room, and he didn’t want to give away what he’d felt from Brennan. There were too many variables, too many chances that one of them might be compromised.
    It had happened before. The very night before, in fact.
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    Lucas gave him a narrow-eyed stare and then nodded almost imperceptibly. “Let’s set up a perimeter watch,” he ordered his second. “I want everybody out there, keeping us safe.”
    The shifter jumped up, not quite meeting Lucas’s eyes. Alexios did not fully understand Pack politics and hierarchy and believed none but shifters really could, but he knew enough about dominance and shifters to realize that Lucas was one of the most powerful alphas he’d ever encountered, on the level, power-wise, of Ethan of the Florida panther shifters.
    Thinking of Ethan led his tumbling thoughts to Marie, sister of Bastien, one of his closest friends and a very powerful warrior. He still couldn’t believe Bastien’s sister, Marie, leader of the Temple of the Nereids, had fallen in love with Ethan during such a brief trip to Florida. They were trying to work it out, but as Grace had said once, Ethan and Marie gave a whole new meaning to the long-distance in the term “long-distance relationship.” Atlantis-to-Miami trips took quite a bit of planning. For Ethan to travel to Atlantis was, as yet, forbidden.
    “Deep thoughts?” Lucas said, and Alexios looked up from his mental ramblings to realize the room had emptied out and they were alone.
    “It’s something bad, Lucas,” Alexios said, suddenly whirling around to smash his fists down on the pile of wood near the fireplace. He watched, almost unseeing, as the pile collapsed with a crash and logs rolled across the floor.
    “Honey will love that,” Lucas said dryly. He crossed to a side table and poured them both glasses of a clear brown liquid, then handed one to Alexios. “What is it?”
    Alexios took a deep sniff of fine Scotch whiskey, then drained his glass in two gulps. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and Lucas snatched the glass out of his hand, pointedly looking down at the logs. “I like these glasses,” he said, holding up the bottle and raising an eyebrow.
    Alexios shook his head. “No more. I need a clear head. Brennan isn’t gone, exactly, but he isn’t there, either. When I open a pathway, I get a flooding sensation of rage and violence, almost animalistic in nature.”
    Lucas’s face went hard. “Don’t give me that bigoted bullshit. It’s not the animals who kill each other for no reason.”
    “I didn’t mean that, and you know it. It was more fury and unreasoning pain, like an animal caught in a trap. Does that make more sense?”
    Lucas drained his own glass and put it down on the table, considering. “Would pain alone block the pathway?”
    “No. That’s the problem. Something else, some kind of magical or psychic interference or—” His gaze went to the lamps, and another connection formed. “Electricity. If he’s somehow bound with electricity or held in one of their science labs, which we have to assume is filled with Atlantis Redeemed – Warriors of Poseidon 05
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    electrical equipment—” The obvious conclusion hit him with the force of a tsunami. “Oh, by all the gods, Lucas. What