“I do,” Brennan said. He gestured for them to move aside, and he raised his hands into the air. Power crackled through the room, sucking the moisture and oxygen out of the air, and it swirled and surged around Brennan and then funneled down and into his body.
She gasped and took a step forward, but Daniel/Devon, whoever he was, caught her around the waist and held her back. “He’d fry you,” Daniel said. “Just wait.”
An icy, silvery blue light like the aura of a lightning god surrounded Brennan, and he smiled. “For Tiernan, and for Susannah, and for Atlantis,” he said, and then he sliced his hands through the air and shoved the power across the room and into the machines. For an instant nothing happened except they lit up with an unearthly blue light.
“Now we duck,” Daniel said in her ear, and he yanked her down, and as they hit the floor, the room exploded.
Tiernan pulled her head away from Daniel’s restraining arm just in time to see Brennan standing, legs braced and arms out, bent forward into the shield of light he’d created that protected them from the results of the blast. After several seconds, when the debris from the explosion had all fallen back down to the floor and lay burning, Brennan turned around.
Tiernan ran to him and jumped into his arms, and he kissed her so hard and so deeply that she tasted the lightning. Her own world exploded around her, pulling her further and further into his soul. This time, it was a place she wanted to be.
Finally, Brennan lifted his head and took a deep breath. “Now we run.”
Chapter 43
Brennan lifted Tiernan into his arms and started running, following Daniel and Deirdre as they led the way through the maze of corridors to safety. Normally he never could have kept up with vampire speed, unless he’d been soaring as mist, but the lightning still infused his body. He raced along the corridors and took sharp turns without slowing, laughing as the power gave his feet wings of pure, shimmering electricity.
Minutes later, Daniel stopped so suddenly that Deirdre nearly ran into him and, behind them both, Brennan skidded to a stop.
“I hear something loud,” Daniel said, looking grim. “The shit, as the expression goes, is about to hit the fan.”
Brennan carefully lowered Tiernan to her feet. “Stay behind me,” he said, and she nodded. He took a step forward, then stopped and spun around.
“I love you,” he told her. “You need to know that, before we take one more step. Not because of the curse or the soul-meld or anything else except the goodness of your heart and the enormity of your courage. You are my soul and my life,
mi amara
, and I will love you until the end of this life and beyond. Can you ever love me?”
She simply stood there and blinked, and his heart teetered on the precipice of despair, but then she laughed, and warmth that had nothing at all to do with the lightning spread throughout his body. “Brennan. I left
heaven
for you. I may not be poetic, but you have to know how much I love you, too.”
He kissed her again, quickly, then turned to face whatever lay in wait.
Daniel flashed away, moving in a blur, but was back seconds later. “I was right. Jones had plenty of followers. They heard the explosion; they never wanted me for Primator, anyway, and they are very eager to get their hands on you and your billions.”
“Primator?” Tiernan said, and Brennan could hear the professional curiosity in her voice.
“Later,” Daniel promised, and Tiernan nodded.
They started forward, but then Deirdre stopped Brennan with a cold, pale hand on his wrist. “Atlantean, I want to know about my sister. Is she well?”
He nodded. “Erin is very well, and she is happy. She brings great joy to our prince, Vengeance, brother to the high prince.”
“And her magic?” Her eyes were huge, pleading with him for something—reassurance, perhaps? He was glad to give it.
“She has discovered power beyond any she knew before. As a gem singer, she is a great healer and beloved by our people,” he told her. “Erin’s magic helped save the lives of the princess and her unborn child. Prince Aidan lives because of your sacrifice and her magic.”
A single bloodred tear rolled down her face from each eye, and then she nodded. “I would like to see her again.”
“Can we discuss family reunions later?” Daniel demanded impatiently. “We’ve got bad guys dead ahead.”
Tiernan snorted. “Or dead guys bad ahead.”
Daniel groaned. “You come back from the dead, and that’s all you’ve got? Bad puns?”
“Laugh in the face of danger,” she said, holding up two long, shiny blades. “Scalpels,” she said, to Brennan’s unspoken question. “Thought they might come in handy, since I don’t have fangs or lightning bolts.”
Pride swept over Brennan. His little warrior. Even death itself could not stop her.
“Showtime,” she said, and the first wave of vampires rounded the corner.
One vampire, ancient judging by the look of his long, yellowed fangs, led the pack. “Well, Devon. We were wondering where you were. Who are your friends?”
Devon narrowed his eyes, the only signal Brennan expected to get, and pushed Deirdre behind him. “How serendipitous that you should appear now. We were just on the way to inform you all that Jones and Smith killed each other in a struggle for power, and in the course of their fight, they blew up the lab. We’re leaving and suggest you do the same.”
Another vamp hissed at them and jumped to the wall, clinging to it and hanging like a spider. “Why would we do that? Your word alone? Where is proof?”
The vampire in the front whipped his head to the side. “Silence, fool. Of course Devon is telling us the truth.” He returned his red, glowing gaze to Devon, ignoring Brennan completely. “You must be hungry, though, after your . . . ordeal . . . with Mr. Jones.”
He snapped his fingers, and another vamp dragged a human woman forward. “You know what to do,” the vamp told her.
The woman was shaking like a sapling tree caught in a hurricane, but she took a tiny step forward and pasted a sick-looking smile on her face. After looking back once at the vampire, she walked closer to Devon. “I’m a gift to you, as proof that my master will follow you anywhere.”
Brennan hesitated, caught between his need to protect the woman and his reluctance to get Tiernan killed over some nuance of vampire politics.
Tiernan herself solved that problem for him.
“She’s lying,” she said clearly. “Huge lie. That vampire has no intention to follow you or anybody else, Daniel.”
“Good enough for me,” Brennan said and, one more time, he called the lightning.
The vampire’s look of surprise remained on his face while his head rolled across the floor.
If Brennan had thought killing their leader would stop them, he’d been very wrong. The death acted like a trigger, and they all exploded toward Brennan and his small group like a deadly swarm, clinging to walls, floor, and even the ceiling, all with fangs bared and promises of death in their eyes.
Brennan welcomed the berserker rage and pulled every ounce of available energy into his body, feeling his hair lift away from his head and float in the air, driven by the electrical charge his body was generating. They came at him—they came at
Tiernan
—and he called the lightning.
It came once more to his command, but there was a cost. His body was not made to channel the power of the gods, and Atlantean flesh could not carry pure, sizzling, electrical energy at this rate for this long.
He felt something rip and tear inside him, and he stumbled, but he threw the power at the first wave of vampires and they burst into flames, incinerated in seconds, and the second wave fell back, hissing and shouting insults and epithets.
“Can you keep doing that?” Daniel asked. “Also, don’t send any of it my way, if you don’t mind.”
“Daniel!” Deirdre shrieked, and they all turned to see that another wave was coming from behind them. They’d be trapped.
“Oh, this is not good,” Tiernan said, holding her scalpels up in the air. “I have no plans to die twice in one day, so let’s kick some vampire ass.” She threw an apologetic glance at Daniel and Deirdre. “No offense.”
Deirdre smiled, and for a moment, some of the anguish on her face seemed to lighten. “None taken,” she said.
And then the vampires charged, and the battle was on.
Chapter 44
Alaric soared down to the ground to meet Quinn, Alexios, and the shifters and rebels. It had taken far longer than he’d expected, and Brennan was still blocked by some extremely unusual interference, but they’d finally found it, though it was unmarked.
The heavy guard at the access road had been their first indication.
Quinn hopped out of the vehicle, and it took everything in Alaric not to spirit her away from there. Protect her from any fight.
She pulled a deadly looking gun from her pocket and held it at the ready. “Are you sure? It looks like a warehouse.”
“This is it. Litton’s institute. We found Wesley and made him talk,” one of Lucas’s Pack members said, grinning at the memory.
It wasn’t a very pleasant grin.
With no warning, a psychic blast smashed Alaric so hard his head rocked back on his neck. It was Brennan, and he was sending a mental communication more powerful than any the warrior had ever been able to send before.
Protect Tiernan.
Brennan’s abilities struck Alaric as very different and very, very wrong. He headed for the building, without waiting to see if anyone followed him. “We go now.”
Before he even reached the door, it slammed open and human men with guns streamed out shooting. Alaric heard screaming behind him, but it wasn’t Quinn, he knew her voice, and he did not have time to stop for anyone else. He channeled Poseidon’s pure, blue-green power in the form of small spheres, and he fired them at the men in a steady stream, blowing the resistance apart. The men scattered, still shooting, but the rebels had guns, too, and the shifters had fangs and claws, so Alaric kept going.
He hit the door at a dead run. “Brennan,” he shouted. “I’m coming.”
Chapter 45
Brennan called the lightning again and seared flame through the second wave of vampires, but the power flickered and went out, leaving a hollowness in his stomach like the charred earth of a battleground. Something deep in his skull—something vital—twisted and snapped when he tried again to reach for the unfamiliar power. He fell forward, but Tiernan darted in front of him and caught him by throwing her body under his and taking his weight on her back. She stumbled and then steadied, and he gained his own balance and was able to stand.
“It’s gone. The power—I can’t call the lightning,” he said.
“Then call the water. Isn’t that your real power?” Tiernan said, slashing out with her scalpels at a vampire who dared to come too close.
Daniel and Deirdre fought like wild animals, feral and single-minded in their fury. They tore through the oncoming swarm two at a time, Daniel facing one vanguard and Deirdre the other. But without Brennan’s lightning bolts, it wasn’t going to be enough.
Not nearly enough.
“Call the water,” Tiernan insisted. “Do the ice spears.”
Brennan did just that, but for the first time in more than two thousand years, neither power nor water came easily to his hand. Perhaps the lightning had ruined him. Killed the magic.
“Now would be a good time for some help,” Daniel yelled, and then he went down, buried under a half dozen vampires.
“Brennan,” Tiernan cried out. “Help!”
She pointed up and he saw a vampire crawling on the ceiling toward them, hanging like a bloated spider but faster than any spider had ever moved. Before Brennan could react, the repulsive creature leapt down through the air and grabbed Tiernan, then threw her across the corridor so hard that she smashed into the opposite wall with an audible crack.
She screamed and held up her arm, which dangled in an unnatural way, clearly broken. Slumping back against the wall, cradling her wounded arm, she slid down until she was sitting on the floor staring up at Brennan, her face strained with the pain.
Tiernan’s pain blasted through the barrier in Brennan’s mind, and he called the water again. “For Atlantis!” he roared, and this time the water came. He created spears of ice and arrows of pure, shining water, and it came to his call and followed his command, shooting through the corridors in swirls and ribbons like a deadly ballet; dancers pirouetting on blades of death.
The vampire who had harmed Tiernan was the first to die.
When Brennan lowered his hands and finally released the water, there was no one left standing. The corridors in both directions were littered with piles of disintegrating vampires, and he saw the backs of several more who were fleeing the battle, having evidently decided they did not care to face the true death just yet.
He ran to Tiernan and carefully lifted her in his arms. Her face was white with pain, but she gritted her teeth and didn’t cry out.
“Daniel?” she said and he looked around, prepared to regret having destroyed his ally, but knowing he would have sacrificed far more for Tiernan.
“I’m here,” Daniel said from behind them, his voice cracking. “But Deirdre isn’t doing very well.”
Brennan turned around, carefully so as not to jostle Tiernan. “Did I—”
“No,” Deirdre, who was lying on the ground with a stake in her chest, said. “No. It was one of them. He was going to stake Daniel.”
Daniel, covered with wounds himself, pulled Deirdre into his arms, anguish in his eyes. “She did it for me. She stepped between the stake and my back.”
Daniel looked down at Deirdre, bloodred tears streaming down his face. “Not for me. You should not have done this for me. You were still too weak from the torture to survive this trauma.”