Warriors of Poseidon 06 - Atlantis Betrayed

all enter carrying weapons.” He forced the words out. “None of this does us any good. Once we’re in there, we’re on our own.”

Chapter 37
    Fairsby Manor, midnight
    Atlantis Betrayed – Warriors of Poseidon 06
    Page 167 of 188
    Christophe tightened his grip on Fiona’s hand and knocked on the enormous wooden door. Oak, he thought. Beautiful carving in all of the many panels. Funny how the Unseelie Fae always surrounded themselves with beauty, when they were so ugly on the inside, where it counted.
    A tiny shiver passed through Fiona, but she hid any nerves behind her “lady of the manor” serenity. “Just coming to call,” she said. “I’ve been here before.”
    “That’s it. You can do this.”
    “Before I knew my best friend was a Fae princess and kidnapper,” she continued relentlessly. “Before some crazy elf stole my brother and wanted to hire out my uterus.”
    Christophe grimaced. “I don’t think he has hiring in mind. What were you talking to Justice about, by the way?”
    She shrugged her shoulders under her long, heavy coat. “Nothing much. And now? I’m going to kick some elf ass,” she said, smiling at the door.
    “We’re going to kick some elf butt, Partner.”
    She reached up to kiss him and he just barely had time to hope it wasn’t the last time he ever kissed her, and then the door opened. His jaw dropped open in shock.
    “Lucinda?” Fiona leapt inside and helped support the bloody and battered shifter. “Who did this to you?”
    Christophe thought, Trap, but it was too late, far too late, and so he followed Fiona inside and watched the door slam shut behind them.
    Lucinda fell to the ground heavily. She was bleeding from so many different places that it was a wonder she was still alive.
    “Why don’t you shift and start healing yourself?” He crouched down next to her. “We’ll stand guard.”
    She shook her head; a tiny movement, but even that caused her pain. “No, you don’t understand. He has the Siren. He can keep us from shifting. Right now he’s only playing with it and there are hundreds of us near death. If you teach him how to access its full power, we’re all finished.”
    “No worries there,” he told her. “There’s not a chance in the nine hells I’ll help him with anything.”
    The sound of boot heels ringing on marble sounded in the foyer, though there was no one there, until suddenly Gideon na Feransel stood there watching them. “Such a disappointment. Here I’d hoped it would be easy.”
    The Fae slowly and carefully rolled up the sleeves on his tailored shirt. “I think I need a little snack for this demonstration.”
    As if on command, three shifters dragged a fourth out of a doorway behind the Fae and dropped their struggling captive in front of him. The shifters, all but the captive, were enthralled. The one on the floor Atlantis Betrayed – Warriors of Poseidon 06
    Page 168 of 188
    looked up at them, and it took Christophe a minute to recognize Evan, Lucinda’s mate, in the mass of torn and tattered flesh that was all that was left of his face.
    “What did you do to them?” Fiona demanded. “Gideon, how could you?”
    “It’s not the Gideon you think you know,” Christophe reminded her. “He was an illusion.”
    “Yes, he was an illusion,” the Fae repeated, mocking them. “But this isn’t.”
    He yanked Evan up off the floor with one hand and brutally jerked the shifter’s head up at a painful angle. Then he leaned forward until their faces were almost touching and he . . . inhaled.
    That was all. He inhaled. Nothing more, and yet Evan began to scream and fight even harder than he had before, to get away. Christophe pulled his daggers, but the Fae pointed a single finger at Fiona, and the shifters attacked. The three were pure, single-minded, deadly determination in their enthralled state, and it took everything Christophe had to fight them off. By the time he’d killed the third, Gideon na Feransel was dropping the husk of Evan’s drained body on the floor.
    That single action caught at something in Christophe’s mind and sliced away all of his years of denial in a single vicious swipe, and the memory played in full, living color.
    His mother, her drained body falling to the floor. His father, only a dried-out husk remaining, thudding to the floor.
    The same man the cause of all of it.
    The same Unseelie Fae.
    He turned blind eyes to Fiona, and she caught his arm. “What is it? What’s wrong? What did he