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  Rescue me, priest. Take me back to the temple of my god.

  The power in it, amped up beyond any he'd known before, scorched him even while it seduced. Power beyond imagining.

  And Reisen had only added the first jewel.

  Yes, only the first. Restore me to my glory, Alaric, and glory and power will be yours beyond measure.

  For the span of a mere whisper of thought, Alaric's thoughts turned to Quinn. But she could never be his. If power would be his only mistress, he would ride its heat.

  He raised his arms, levitated into the air, and floated over the bodies of the warriors who'd fallen at his first blast.

  "I'm coming for what is rightfully mine, Mycenaean," he called, his voice deep and resonating with the power he channeled.

  "Yours? You claim much for yourself, priest. The Trident belongs to Poseidon. You are merely his servant," Reisen sneered. "Or do you aspire to godhood now that Conlan is dead?"

  "Conlan lives, fool. He is even now on his way to defeat your pathetic force—what is left of you after the shapeshifters defeated you yesterday."

  "You lie!" Reisen roared. "You would lie about your dead prince in pursuit of your own power?"

  Conlan's voice cut through the hum of gathering power. "It seems the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

  Reisen jerked his head toward his very alive prince. Shock must have loosened his grasp, for his hands trembled on the Trident, and he nearly lost his grip on it.

  Even as Reisen's warriors stirred and started to rise from where they'd fallen during the first blast, Ven, Justice, and the rest flowed in through the building's windows and a back door. Surrounded the room.

  Reisen stood, gaping. "Conlan! How are you alive after seven years?"

  Conlan took a step toward him, menace shadowing his features, royal command in every line of his body. "Oh, we'll talk, Mycenaean. Or rather, I'll talk, and you'll listen. But for now, you'll return the Trident to Poseidon's priest."

  Reisen held the shining staff in the air. "I think not. We have decided that Atlantis shall take a new path. Even if you are not compromised by so many years with Anubisa, you are stuck in the past. I am the way of the future. With this, I am unstoppable."

  Alaric drew on the elements, formed a ball of shining power and hurled it at Reisen. The Trident only deflected a part of its force, and the energy sphere smashed Reisen back a few steps. Around him, warriors of the House of Mycenae drew steel and began their approach.

  Conlan turned his gaze to Alaric, nodded. "Let's play."

  Riley stared up into the red and glaring eyes of the vampire whose hands crushed her throat. She heard voices; the sound of battle. Denal and Brennan roaring out the name of Atlantis and Poseidon. Yet somehow it all sounded far, far away.

  And seemed to be happening in slow motion.

  All she could focus on was the drop of saliva gathering at the corner of the vamp's mouth as it killed her. As it drew back its lips over yellowed and cracked fangs and reared its head back to strike.

  She was going to die at the fangs of a vamp with bad teeth.

  I never told Conlan that I love him.

  Despair gave her power. She thrust her arms up, then out, in the tactic she'd learned to break the grip of an attacker.

  Of course, that had been with attackers who couldn't lift her house with one hand, like a damn vampire would be able to do.

  But still, it weakened his grip for a split second. Enough for her to slam her knee up into its crotch, wondering as she did it if vamps even had testicles.

  Its hideous shriek told her they did.

  She rolled out from under the screaming creature, and she was screaming herself. Shattering the night with an ear-splitting, wordless scream.

  Sending her thoughts and terror out to Conlan, more powerfully than she'd ever broadcast.

  Vampires! Too many! Denal—oh, God, no.

  She froze for a moment, overwhelmed with horror. Too many, too many, too many.

  And I'm not going to die like this.

  She grabbed the umbrella that still, improbably, leaned against the closet door and ran for the four vamps that were attacking Denal.

  "Get your lousy hands off my friend!" she screamed, even as Denal stabbed the point of his sword through the chest of the vamp in front of him. It must have hit the heart, because the vamp exploded into a nasty mess of blood and bone onto the carpet.

  Even as Riley forced herself to run through it, the pointy end of the umbrella aimed at another vamp, the mess began to dissolve.

  Brennan shouted at her from the corner, where he battled three more. He must have already killed some of them, because there had been far more than seven pouring through the door.

  "Riley! The one who attacked you! You must take its head!"

  She stopped, stared at Denal, then Brennan, then back at the vamp, now trying to stand.

  "With a freaking umbrella?" she yelled.

  "Behind you! The closet!"

  She yanked open the closet door and saw a roomful of weapons. "What—"

  She grabbed the closest thing, something that looked like a battle-axe from an old movie. "What the hell. I always wanted to be a Viking."

  Stop babbling, Riley, she told herself, scared nearly out of her last wit.

  "Riley! Now!"

  She jerked and whirled around, axe held out in front of her.

  And sliced off the top of the head of the vamp crawling up behind her. Blood and brains cascaded out of its skull, splashing gore on her legs and boots.

  Which drove the last ounce of sanity out of her mind. "There are brains on my legs!" she screamed, hacking and slashing at the dying vamp, one stroke taking the head off at the neck.

  "I can't stand this! I. Can. Not. Stand. This."

  She ran from the room, slid in the blood and brains on the floor, nearly fell. Sobbed in terror and sheer, spiking adrenaline.

  Ran for the vamps surrounding Denal, still hacking and slicing with the axe. "No, no, no! Leave him alone!" she sobbed, screamed, roared. Not making any sense. Not caring.

  It was way past time for sense. "There are brains on my legs! I am a social worker! I will cut off your head in triplicate!"

  Blind rage overcame her, and she swung from right to left, putting all the fury and uncertainty of the day into her stroke. The axe sliced into the shoulder of the vamp in front of her and sliced all the way down into the center of its chest.

  As it fell to the ground, shrieking, the axe went with it. She couldn't pull it out. It was wedged in the vamp's bones, in its rib cage.

  "Riley!" Brennan's voice thundered at her. "Get out of here now! Get out—run to safety. Now!"

  Denal, still battling fiercely, sword in one hand and dagger in the other, stared at Riley over the shoulder of the vamp attacking him. "Lady Riley! Please! Away to safety! Let me fulfill my role as your protector."

  She stood there sobbing, frozen between the two battling groups. Brennan brought down another vamp, and only one stood against him. Denal still fought two.

  "Must get another weapon. Must help," she cried out. "Conlan! Where are you?"

  But when she tried to reach him, all she felt was that curious blankness that Reisen had surrounded himself and his men with earlier.

  She turned around, forced legs covered in gore and dripping with blood to carry her back to the weapons room. Had almost made it when she heard the loud thud and Denal's anguished bellow.

  Turned around to see. Screamed again and fell to her knees.

  Brennan stood, gasping, over the now-headless body of the final vampire.

  Denal lay on the floor, impaled by a sword that the vamp had driven through his stomach before it died.

  As she watched, tears nearly blinding her, the life and the light in Denal's eyes dimmed and went dark. His head fell to the side, and he died.

  Chapter 29

  Conlan stood with the points of his daggers pressing against two different throats. The warriors he'd disarmed
held their breath, backed against the wall, no doubt reading their deaths in his eyes.

  The whooshing noise of steel through air warned him to the danger seconds before yet another of Reisen's men fell dead next to Conlan's feet. He turned to see Justice wiping his sword on the fallen man's clothes. "Just watching your back, Conlan."

  Conlan nodded. "Literally, I see. I owe you one."

  Justice raised an eyebrow. "Oh, I think we shouldn't start keeping track, my lord. Because the 'you owe mes' are up to the double digits, now."

  Ven and the others held the rest of the Mycenaean warriors at bay behind the barrels of semiautomatic shotguns. The problem with Ven's toys was that the reliability of machinery was chancy at best around anyone channeling the elements.

  Dangerous at worst.

  Ven always said he liked to live on the edge.

  Alexios moved among the humans, checking on their well-being. They all wore odd robes and expressions of terror mixed with awe. Conlan caught the murmurs of "Atlantis, Atlantis."

  Another problem to add to his ever-growing list.

  On the makeshift stage, Alaric faced Reisen, who still held the Trident. A shimmering wall of energy flared up and between them, wavering toward first one, then the other.

  Reisen had no training in using objects of power, but Alaric had once told Conlan that the Trident seemed to have a mind of its own. "More fickle than a beautiful woman" had been his expression.

  But Alaric seemed to be winning this battle.

  The men on the other ends of his blades twitched, and Conlan pressed the daggers a fraction of an inch deeper into the tender skin of their throats. "Do you think I'm distracted? Do you plan to make your move now?"

  They stood silent, eyes widening in denial. Afraid to speak, probably.

  Terrified of a prince come back from the grave and turned savage killer.

  Good.

  "Who knows what Anubisa did to me while I was gone?" he asked, mocking them. "Maybe I'm secretly a vampire, too."

  He leaned closer to them, pulled his lips back over his teeth, and hissed.

  The man on his right made a squeaking noise, then his eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped like a stone. Conlan barely had time to jerk the blade away before the damn fool impaled himself on it.

  The warrior on Conlan's left wasn't the slightest bit intimidated. "Maybe you are worse than a vampire, if you play childish games like that with men who deserve better, my lord."

  The words stirred a distant shame. Then anger followed it. "You dare to chastise me? Remember anything about treason? Blaspheming against the Temple of Poseidon by stealing one of its icons? Daring to attack your high prince?"

  The man's defiance never lessened. "I am Micah, first of Reisen's Seven. We believed you were dead, and that Atlantis had no leader. You—"

  "Ven was heir to the throne, and everybody knew it. Nice try at rationalizing, though."

  Micah sneered. "Ven? How many times has he made it clear that he wants no part of rule? He's more at home in a tavern than in the palace. Reisen also has the blood of kings in him, and he would serve our people well."

  Conlan stepped back, sheathed his daggers. Flicked a contemptuous glance down and back up the warrior. "So you think to lecture me on the demands of the throne? Go back to your mother's skirts, boy, and leave the thinking to the men."

  Micah roared out his defiance and charged, exactly as Conlan had expected. He snapped out his fist and smashed Micah in the face.

  Micah blinked, then fell forward and landed on the floor on the nose that was probably already broken.

  "You picked a bad day to land on my shit list, warrior," Conlan said, almost to himself. Then he swung around to head for the magical battle of wills still raging in the front of the room.

  Alaric had fought his way to the Trident, and he was inches away from laying a hand on it. The shock wave of power that blasted out in concussive circles had driven everyone else in the room to their knees.

  Conlan started toward them, and another blast of power poured out of the Trident, waves of blue-green and silvery light sparkling with heat and thunderously loud. He ducked, and most of the energy passed over his head.

  The second it was past, he dashed toward Alaric and Reisen, determined to bring an end to the standoff.

  "For Atlantis! For Poseidon!" The words ripped out of his throat, no less powerful for being involuntary.

  He was back. By the gods, he was back.

  Anubisa hadn't won, after all.

  He'd nearly reached them when Riley's voice, her emotions, pounded into his head with driving rage and pain.

  Conlan!! Death anger sorrow death death death nooooooooooo!!

  The shock wave of her emotion knocked him off his feet, and he fell to his knees, choking on her pain, a few paces away from Alaric and Reisen.

  Come to me now!! I need you need need need powerrrrr!!

  Riley had no voice left for screaming. Had no strength left for sobbing. She fell, dragged herself, crawling, through the unspeakable residue of vampire guts and blood and death coating the floor with its filth.

  Somehow made it to Denal just as Brennan reached them both. She tried to focus through eyes drenched with tears, realized Brennan was wounded. Badly.

  He limped. So many cuts and bites and blood covered him, she didn't know how he was still standing.

  Bites. Oh, no.

  "Brennan? Can Atlanteans turn into vampires?"

  He shook his head, fell to his knees beside Denal's body. "No," he ground out, shuddering. "Virus. Not—not vampire. Kills us or we shake it off."

  He gasped and clutched at his neck as his body arched back in the throes of a terrible convulsive spasm.

  She reached out to hold his hand, not knowing what else to do to help.

  "Might be bad this time," he gasped. "Must get you to safety."

  "I tried to reach out to Conlan. Nothing—only blank, dead space where his emotions should be," she said, fighting back more tears.

  Then letting them fall. What did it matter now?

  Denal deserved at least her tears.

  "Take it out! Brennan, we have to take it out," she begged, knowing she didn't have the strength left to pull the sword from Denal's body.

  Brennan nodded, silent and grim, his skin already shriveling back into the bones of his face. His skull clearly visible under the flesh of his face.

  He took a deep breath, and rose to grasp the hilt of the sword. Used it to pull himself up, then gathered his last energy. With one powerful jerk, he pulled it out of Denal's body and flung it away from them down the hall.

  Then he collapsed next to Riley, strength spent. "I can no longer protect you, my lady. I have failed you. I am sorry."

  She shook her head, tears still falling. Then she bent over Denal and lifted his head and shoulders into her lap. When she'd managed that, stroking Denal's lifeless face with one hand, she reached out to twine her other in Brennan's hair, trying to give some comfort.

  "No. You never failed me, neither of you did. It was your stupid worthless excuse of a sea god. Where was your precious Poseidon when we needed him?"

  She realized she was shouting at their god, didn't care. "Where were you when your prince needed you, you selfish bastard? Swimming around and frolicking with a fucking Nereid?"

  Brennan tried to raise his hand, but it fell back against his side, shriveled and ancient. He was wasting away in front of her eyes.

  "Where are you now, huh? You prick! I challenge you!! Heal these men, your warriors, if you're so all-powerful!" She screamed her rage until her throat burned and her skin caught fire from the inside.

  An inferno of pain seared, burned, roared through her and into the room, scorching her breath as it came out of her lungs. She laughed, wild and savage.

  "Yeah? Is that all you got? Come on and smack me down in person, you rotten coward! What kind of god are you, anyway? Come on! I dare you! Come heal these men!"

  A cascading torrent of flam
es twined with water burst out of the ceiling and flooded the room. Surrounded Riley and the two fallen warriors. Branded her flesh with its searing intensity. In the midst of the pain, Riley found an oasis of calm inside herself. A moment of reflection cast upon her by desperate need.

  So this is how I'll die. Mocking a god.

  A voice resonating with power beyond anything she'd ever imagined thundered through the room, through her head, through the fabric of her reality:

  MAGIC COMES ONLY AT A PRICE, AND LOVE COSTS ALL. DO YOU OFFER YOURSELF FOR THESE MEN?

  The pain stopped. All that she knew was light and color and the cool mists of an ocean breeze. She was wrapped in the sea and filled by the voice of the sea god.

  She'd dared to love a prince, and now his god would kill her for her temerity.

  The voice blasted through her again, resonating in her bones, her teeth, her blood.

  DO YOU OFFER YOURSELF FOR THESE MEN?

  She hesitated, knew the answer must be utter truth. Looked down at their faces and into her memories. Joyous Denal, shy behind a bouquet of flowers. Emotionless Brennan, hungering for the feelings that were stolen from him.

  And now their lives. This was her cost.

  Will you let Conlan know that I loved him?

  YOU DO NOT BARGAIN WITH A GOD.

  She bowed her head, ignored the tears streaming down her face. The pain that shredded her heart.

  She nodded.

  Said the words out loud, needed to hear them. A promise. An offering. A solemn oath. "Yes. I offer myself for these men."

  SO BE IT.

  The water spiraled up from the floor, out from the walls, and down from the ceiling. Cushioned Riley and the two warriors in its curling caress.

  Somehow, she knew to hold out her hands.

  Somehow, she knew what appeared in them.

  Shining with the glare of a dozen suns, the image of the Trident coalesced across her palms an instant before she felt the weight of it.

  SO BE IT! THIS I COMMAND!

  A fierce luminosity spread from the Trident across Riley's body to encompass first Denal, then Brennan. Quickly it grew so bright that she was unable to see them, had to shut her eyes against the glare. But she felt their still forms next to her.