Warriors of Poseidon 06 - Atlantis Betrayed

partner,” Hopkins told him. “Answer it.”
    Christophe swiveled in the chair to face him. “Why do you always sound as though you’d rather shoot me than talk to me?”
    “Perhaps because you have some measure of perceptiveness?”
    Fiona held up her hands. “Enough, boys. Instead of shooting each other, let’s find out what happened, who has Vanquish, and how they framed the Scarlet Ninja for the crime.”
    “If you hadn’t left your calling card,” Hopkins began, before he stopped and shook his head. “Forgive me, Lady Fiona. This is not your fault.”
    Atlantis Betrayed – Warriors of Poseidon 06
    Page 66 of 188
    She raised her head, and Christophe had never seen despair written so painfully on a face in his centuries of existence. “Yes. It is my fault. I played this game, and now the penalty is mine. Those guards’ families rightfully must be cursing my name. I owe it to them to discover the truth.”
    The sight of her face, ravaged by emotion, unlocked a door he’d forgotten was even buried deep inside his heart. He heard the click as the first barrier he’d erected all those years ago opened a slow and painful inch. It was enough to help him come to a decision.
    “I need to tell you about me,” he said. “Why I’m here for that sword. Although I don’t really care about the sword, I just need the Siren.”
    “Need?” Hopkins said. “That’s an interesting choice of words.”
    “A deliberate choice of words. I’m from Atlantis, and unless I retrieve that gem, the Seven Isles cannot rise from beneath the sea.”
    He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it certainly wasn’t what he got. Declan burst out laughing.
    Hopkins snorted in apparent disgust. Fiona did neither. She just looked at him, shock and then anger written on her face.
    “If you don’t plan to tell us the truth, that’s one thing, but don’t insult me by making up fairy tales,” she said. “Did you think that since I write those stories in my books that I’d be charmed by another one?”
    “Atlantis. Of course,” Hopkins said. “Know many mermaids, do you?”
    “Mermaids don’t exist. I’d hoped that I could get a little trust on faith, but evidently I haven’t earned it yet,” Christophe said. “So here goes.”
    He called to power, reveling in the burning sensation as it flowed eagerly to his command. Towering sweeps of power, its intensity increasing every time he called to it these days. So much power that he almost feared that one day it would consume him.
    Maybe one day it would. But not this day.
    He formed twin spheres of blue-green energy in his palms and held them up in the air before sending them flying around the room, dipping and floating around and over Fiona, her brother, and Hopkins.
    “My tie with Poseidon, as a warrior sworn to his oath, is one source of my magic. Water is our element to call.”
    “Sure it is,” Declan said, grinning. “Cool magic trick. Do you—” His laughter muffled the next words, but he finally managed to get them out. “Do you ride whales down to Atlantis?”
    Christophe glared at the youngling and contemplated how angry Fiona would be if he hoisted her little brother out the window and left him dangling by a ribbon of water. He decided against it based on the way she was already clenching her fists at her side.
    A simpler demonstration, then.
    Atlantis Betrayed – Warriors of Poseidon 06
    Page 67 of 188
    A flick of his fingers sent the energy spheres whirling to two corners of the room. Then he called to water, the purest form of his magic, and it, too, responded willingly. He channeled the silvery streams of water to form a vortex around his body starting at the carpet and working its way up to the elaborately painted ceiling. He threw his head back and concentrated, though it was a simple enough working. He wanted this to be perfect—she was watching.
    Why it mattered so much, he wasn’t sure. He just knew that it did. He formed twin streams of water into perfectly symmetrical spears and hurled them directly at Declan. Hopkins jumped up, no doubt going for his gun, and Fiona cried out. Declan had no time to do anything but gasp before the streams spiraled into starfish shapes directly in front of him and, one after the other, splashed into the boy, thoroughly drenching him.
    “No,” Christophe said over Declan’s sputtering. “We do not ride whales, either.”
    Fiona fell back into her chair, torn between warring impulses to laugh or yell at