“We’ve moved a cot in there, and a bathroom,” Litton said smoothly, and Brennan turned to look. Sure enough, a cot, complete with blankets and a pillow stood on one side of the cell. A guard held the cell door open, while another opened a door in the back of the cell that he hadn’t noticed the night before, probably because it was simply part of the wall. It must have had a hidden mechanism with which to open it. He could see past them to the small bathroom contained within the room.
A small noise, like that a wounded animal might make, caught his attention and he turned his head to look. A woman stood, trembling violently, in the cell next to his, her door still locked. She stared at him, and he felt the tiniest hint of recognition in his mind. Did he know her?
Whoever she was, she was pretty. She might even have been beautiful if her face hadn’t been so pale and tearstained and her eyes so red. She must be afraid . . .
She must be . . .
But the wisp of memory floated back out of his mind, and he had nothing to offer her of reassurance or hope. Not even he, a trained Atlantean warrior, was able to escape this nightmare. What hope had she?
“Brennan?” she said, her voice shaking with some violent emotion. “Are you okay? Do you . . . do you know me?”
A flash of something crossed his mind. A name? A feeling? But then it vanished and all he was left with was utter weariness. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m very tired.”
Litton grabbed his arm and stared up at him, then shot a look at the woman. “That’s Tracy Baum. You came with her. There’s no reason your long-term memory should be affected,” he said, staring into Brennan’s eyes. Suddenly he recoiled.
“His eyes. Look at his eyes,” Litton said.
Smitty came around to the front of Brennan and stared into his eyes, then slowly backed up and trained his gun, in a double-handed stance, on him. “They’re glowing,” he said flatly. “Maybe now we’ll find out just what kind of wee beastie we’ve got.”
“He’s not human?” Litton backed up in a rush. “But—but he’s not a shifter.”
Smitty shot a look of thinly veiled disgust Litton’s way. “There’s a lot more out in the big, bad world than just shifters and vampires, you know.”
Brennan wanted to ask the man how he knew, or what he knew, but suddenly black was spiraling in from the edges of his vision and he stumbled again, nearly falling. “Am tired, friend,” he told Litton.
“Get him in the cell,” Smitty ordered, and two of the guards rushed up to help Brennan in. They shoved him onto the cot, and he tried to remain upright but he fell over onto his side.
The woman rushed to the bars dividing their cells, and she was crying harder. Her pain caused a terrible, answering ache in his chest, and he did not know why.
“I’m Tiernan, Brennan. You have to remember me. You have to remember.”
Tiernan? Something sparked, a tiny flame deep in the blackness trying to claim his consciousness, but it was quickly extinguished by the exhaustion and residual pain. Every muscle in his body ached as if he’d been smashed by a tidal wave.
“What did she say?” Litton said. “Tiernan? What is that? We know who you are, Ms. Baum.
Tracy
Baum. What is that word, Tiernan? Is it a code?”
The woman started laughing, the tears still pouring down her face. Brennan struggled to stay awake, sure that whatever she had to say was somehow important to him, but she collapsed down to her knees on the hard, hard floor.
“Yeah, it’s code,” she finally said. “It’s code for we’re totally screwed.”
Brennan wanted to help her. She looked so very sad and terrified as they opened the cell and went for her. He knew his mission. He must protect humanity. He was a warrior of Poseidon, and Conlan had sent him to . . . sent him to . . .
But there was nothing. His mission was gone and his mind was blank, and even as he struggled, the dark took him yet again. As he fell down into the darkness, he heard the woman scream.
Chapter 32
Atlantis, three days later
Alexios paced the war room, ignoring Grace’s hand signals that he should calm down or sit down or, knowing Grace, go bang his head against the wall to let off some steam. If he didn’t move, he was going to explode.
“We’ve searched everywhere. After Brennan nearly blew out my brain cells with that mental blast, there was nothing. Just that weird buzzing again. I need Alaric, Conlan. I’m not powerful enough to do this without him, and Brennan is in serious trouble or he’d be answering me.”
“Are you sure?” Conlan drummed his fingers on the table. “The curse broke and his emotions . . . Maybe he wants some time alone with Tiernan?”
“In the middle of a mission? Are you nuts?” Alexios stopped, remembering he was talking to his high prince. “I’m sorry, Conlan, but I’m really worried here. I need you or I need Alaric or, preferably, both of you.”
Conlan stood up in an explosive movement and suddenly hurled his cup across the room, where it shattered on the wall. He whipped around to face Alexios, and his eyes were wild. “Do you think I don’t know that? That I’m not worried, too? Brennan is one of mine, Alexios, just like you and Bastien and Denal, Justice and Ven, and hells, even Christophe. The responsibility for each and every one of you lies squarely on my shoulders.”
Alexios shoved his hair out of his face, heedless of his scars. Conlan had seen them before. “He was mine to protect, but I got there too late. We’ve searched everywhere for him and for Tiernan, but nothing. Nobody saw anything, nobody knows anything. Nothing.”
“Where is Litton?” Grace asked. “Or that turd Wesley?”
“Nobody has seen either of them,” Alexios said. “Lucas’s computer guy is tracking down Wesley’s home address. Litton dropped off the grid when he founded this company. He seems to live there, too.”
Conlan nodded, closing his eyes. A full minute later, he looked at Alexios, who had to squint against the power shining from the prince’s eyes.
“He’s on his way,” Conlan said. “Alaric. He’s bringing some of the local rebels with him. They seem to think it’s going to be a fight, that there is some kind of underground fortress. Quinn will meet you at Lucas’s headquarters.”
“Quinn knows Lucas?”
“Quinn knows everybody,” Grace informed them. “How do you think she got to be the leader of all rebel groups in North America?”
“And you?” Alexios asked Conlan.
“I,” Conlan said grimly, “apparently am called to a command appearance before the High Court of the Fae.”
“Seelie Court?” Alexios asked.
“I wouldn’t even consider going if it were Unseelie Court,” Conlan snapped. “Not with Riley and Aidan—no. Just no.”
“This, however, is an offer you can’t refuse,” Grace muttered. “Trust me, I know way more than I want about the Fae.”
Alexios shared a look with her as they both remembered the last time they’d encountered Rhys na Garanwyn, high prince, High Court, Seelie Fae. He’d pulled a Rip Van Winkle on them, as she called it, and they’d briefly been afraid that he’d stolen years of their lives. Instead, he’d stolen something they still hadn’t been able to identify, from a very unpleasant vampire, and then left Grace and Alexios to face the consequences.
Honor had a very different definition to the Fae than it did to the Warriors of Poseidon. They couldn’t lie, but they never told the truth. They laughed at the very idea of loyalty. No, Alexios had no desire to see any Fae, ever again. If Rhys had put out a royal request to meet, though, it was tantamount to a declaration of war between Atlantis and the Fae if Conlan refused.
“When do we meet Quinn and Alaric?” Alexios said, heading for the door, Grace right behind him. There was another fight he was going to face: telling her that she could not risk herself and the baby in a fight, even to rescue Brennan.
“The sooner, the better,” Conlan said. “And Alexios?”
He stopped, one hand on the door. “Yes?”
“Bring them home.”
Alexios could only nod, humbled by the pain on Conlan’s face. “I swear it,” he said.
Chapter 33
Brennan walked into a wall. Again. He kept smashing his face into hard surfaces. After the first few times he’d run into the cell bars, they’d shut down the electrical current, because they were afraid he’d inadvertently kill himself.
He didn’t want to kill himself. He didn’t want to keep running into walls. Something in his brain was directing his body in ways over which he had no control. He was a puppet to whatever they’d done to his caudate nucleus—yes, he remembered the scientific name for that small pea-shaped structure in his brain that was causing all of his trouble.
He didn’t want to kill himself, but he didn’t particularly want to live, either. He was indifferent to anything, except for the lightning. Over and over, for hours or days or weeks, he didn’t know which, they’d put him in that chair and called the lightning.
He, Brennan, had once been able to call the lightning. It was a fleeting memory, or more probably only a fantasy. There was nothing left but such fleeting memories.
Those and the lightning.
He heard a sound, but took a moment to place it, then dully turned his head to see if she was still there. He’d forgotten her, again. His world had narrowed to the lightning and the woman, and it struck him as somehow desperately wrong that he kept forgetting even the woman.
She was in the other cell, and he did not know her name, but when she looked at him and called his, a tendril of knowledge tried to unfurl, deep, deep in his soul. About her. About who she was.
Who she was to him.
But then the haze would settle over his mind again, because the lightning left no room for memories. Only for obedience, and he could not give it that. Everything else, but not that. Not yet. Maybe not ever. He had sworn an oath to a god, and no machine could override that, no matter how much it scrambled his brains.
They didn’t take the woman to the lightning as often. She was human, not . . . what he was. Not Atlantean. Not a warrior. He looked at the bars again and reached out to touch one, feeling only cold metal and not the surge of electricity. Thinking there was something he should know about the bars, and something he should be doing.
He couldn’t remember, though. His mind was empty of so much, and even his emotions, which for some reason he knew should be important to him, had been dulled.
The woman, too, had lost hope. For the first hours, or days, she had called out to him. Called his name. Talked to him constantly; told him stories of himself and of her. Of the two of them, together. Her name was Tracy, or maybe Tiernan. She knew him, and he knew her, she claimed.
She was wrong. He only knew the lightning. He feared it less now. Almost welcomed it. Everything else was dull and gray, and he kept hoping now that the lightning would take him to the waters of the ancestors. He was ready to end the cycle of cell and chair and cell and chair.
Except, he was not. Not quite yet. He couldn’t give up. He didn’t know exactly why, only that he should be helping the woman. He was a Warrior of Poseidon. It was his duty and his calling.
The men opened the cell, but not his, so it was not the lightning. It was late; he knew that somehow even though the cells had no windows. The guards on duty at night were worse than the others. Rougher. Louder.
They entered the woman’s cell, and Brennan sensed danger. Danger to her. A primal instinct to protect seared through his mind and the fog slowly cleared. Memories flooded his mind, and his heart, and his soul, dragging pain and shame and horror in their wake. Dredging up the memories. The first clarity he’d known in such a long time burned the rest of the haze from his mind, and he remembered. For the first time in days, he
remembered
.
“Hey, pretty lady, we just want a little bit of fun,” one of them said, shoving the woman—
Tiernan
—into the arms of the other. “We’re bored here every night, all alone. Why don’t you be nicer to us?”
She didn’t even scream. She’d given up all hope of rescue or help, even from him, Brennan realized.
One of the thugs reached out and ripped the sleeve of her shirt away, and Brennan threw his head back and roared out a challenge. The guards jumped away from Tiernan and whirled around to stare wide-eyed at Brennan.
“What the hell? He’s been damn near comatose for three days,” one of them said, reaching for his gun.
“Maybe he’s going crazy like those shifters,” the other one said, yanking Tiernan in front of him to use as a shield.
“It’s my turn,” Brennan said, clarity returning in a searing rush, and he called the power. Everything that he was and ever had been answered his call, jumping to his use to protect his destined mate. She had been right here all of this time, enduring unimaginable suffering. Giving up hope.
They would pay. They would die.
“Settle down,” the coward who had Tiernan said, his voice rising. “Stop doing that glowing thing with your eyes. Stop it or I hurt her.”
Brennan formed the water into spears of ice in his mind before he ever forced them to materialize. When they did, they were already in motion, slicing through the air at the speed of sound. The guards were dead, both impaled through the middle of their foreheads, before they ever hit the ground.
Tiernan stared at him, stunned, unable to believe what she saw. “Brennan? Are you—are you back?”
“I’m back, and I owe you a thousand apologies, but we must leave. Now. The keys?”
She bit her lip, but didn’t waste time arguing, just bent to search the guards’ pockets, coming up with the keys. She quickly opened his cell, but backed away from him, her eyes wary, when he would have gathered her in his arms.
“Fair enough,” he said, knowing he deserved nothing more from her, after he had failed her so badly. “Now we escape.”