Warriors of Poseidon 06 - Atlantis Betrayed

only by his calling card: a shiny silver card embossed with the scarlet silhouette of a ninja.
    Distraction. If he kept thinking about her, he might forget to realize how much he was hurting.
    Exhaustion took on the form of physical pain, even for an Atlantean warrior, when he’d been living on pints and very little else, not even sleep, for days, and then overused his magic in pursuit of a phantom.
    Alaric would be furious. The thought cheered him up enough to keep him going for a little farther, just a bit . . . there.
    He’d caught her. The long, dark car pulled smoothly away from London’s hideous traffic and up to the curb just long enough for the back door to be opened ever so briefly, seemingly by whoever sat inside behind those dark-tinted windows. And if Christophe hadn’t been watching very, very closely, he never would have seen the flash of scarlet silk materialize before the door slammed shut and the car pulled back out into traffic. Not a chance the traffic cameras had caught a bit of her, either. Just another anonymous dark car in a city filled with them. Even the license plates were mud-splashed and unreadable.
    As he soared down toward the car and its mysterious passenger, Christophe spared a flash of grim amusement at the thought of how very surprised his Scottish ninja was going to be when she reached her destination.

Chapter 6
Waterloo Barracks
    Telios returned to his perch near the gargoyle and puzzled over what he’d seen. A flash of a man who could turn into water? It wasn’t a Fae talent he’d ever heard of, but the Fae kept their secrets close and their enemies closer. He’d be a fool to believe that Prince Gideon na Feransel truly wanted him as an ally. More likely the Fae planned to use him and discard him. Or kill him. Until he knew the truth, he couldn’t trust any of the new members of his vampire coalition. They’d watch for which way the wind shifted and be as likely to try to kill Telios themselves as to assist him.
    Telios’s fangs extended and he danced a little capering jig. Far more powerful beings than a minor Unseelie prince had tried to kill him before. None of them still walked the earth in their precious Summer Lands. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
    The water man was no concern of Telios’s, anyway. If he’d been carrying the sword, Telios would have seen it when the man had lurched off the roof. Time to move on to part two of the plan and go inside, Atlantis Betrayed – Warriors of Poseidon 06
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    find out what the uproar his vampire hearing had detected was about, and get a little help from one of the dogs. He so loved making shifters obey.
    Telios flew down to the front of the building, timing it perfectly for the guards’ circuit. He focused every ounce of his power and stared them down, enthralling the human first and then the shifter before either could so much as draw a weapon.
    “We need to go see the Jewel House,” he said.
    “We need to go see the Jewel House,” the human responded, eyes glazed over and blank.
    “Make sure Vanquish is safe,” Telios prompted.
    “We must make sure Vanquish is safe,” the shifter said. His face was a blank mask like the human’s, but a tiny bit of twitching ran through his muscles. Shifters were always harder to completely enthrall, and he’d never yet managed to put more than one of them under at a time.
    He shrugged. He’d make do with what he had, as usual. He’d been doing just that since 1888. “You’ll kill anyone who tries to stop us.”
    “We’ll kill anyone who tries to stop us,” they both repeated.
    He stood aside and pointed. “Lead the way.”
    Telios had expected the guards to discover him every step of the way: through the employee entrance, down the twisting corridors, and even while they stood, exposed, as the shifter punched in the code that opened the security door to the Jewel House. Naturally, since he was prepared for every contingency of attack, none happened. Now they stood guard, his two minions, as he admired the lovely jewels on display.
    Not as many as he’d expected, to be sure. Perhaps the queen and her offspring were prancing around somewhere at some state dinner, all bejeweled and crowned. Did they even do that anymore? It was so hard to keep track of current traditions as the decades passed, faster and faster. The closest he’d come to a spark of interest in years had been when that American author came to London to try to discover his real identity.