Atlantis Unmasked Page 29

  “I think I will have your pointy ears on a platter if you mention Grace’s undergarments again, elf,” Alexios said, lifting a gold-handled, gem-encrusted dagger and pointing it at Rhys.

  Grace rolled her eyes. “Seriously? We’re in the middle of a treasure trove like nobody has ever seen outside of El Dorado, and you’re going to fight about my bra? We need to get moving before Vonos gets back, because there’s no way he’d leave all of this unprotected for long. He’s no idiot.”

  “Thank you,” a cold, dry voice said from behind them. “So didn’t it occur to you that I’d have security? I’ve been watching your fumbling expedition from the beginning, curious as to what you were after.”

  “Oh, we’re just lost on the way to the men’s room,” Rhys said, looking supremely unconcerned.

  “That’s good,” Vonos replied. “I don’t think a full bladder will bother you when you’re dead.”

  Chapter 29

  Grace was suddenly wishing she’d taken the time to make one final phone call to Michelle. And to Aunt Bonnie, though she hadn’t seen her in years. To anybody, really. Just to say hi, how are you doing, sorry, I’m not going to be in touch much after I die an incredibly painful and permanent death this morning.

  Yeah. Somehow that would have made her feel just a skinch better.

  “Why?” The Primator stared at each of them in turn, obviously trying to use his vamp mojo on them, but he wasn’t having any luck.

  “We wanted to get a chance to ooh and aahhhh, that’s all,” she offered, since her two companions in crime were remaining woefully silent.

  Alexios kicked a pedestal and it smashed to the ground, the sound shockingly loud in the walled-in room. “So, Primator Vonos, I hear you’ve been holding out.” He stalked toward a tall pedestal at the center of the room that had been hidden by the fallen one. Then he pointed at the fist-sized square yellow diamond resting on a cushion. “If you’d told Anubisa about this one, there’s no way she’d have let you keep your grubby hands on it, is there?”

  For a split second, Vonos looked almost terrified. Then he composed his expression and laughed. “What does one such as you know of the most exalted goddess of Chaos and Night?”

  Alexios turned toward Rhys. “Hit it, Your Highness.”

  Rhys nodded, and instantly Alexios’s face returned to normal, the glamour gone.

  Vonos stumbled back a step. “No. No, it’s a trick. You cannot be Alexios from Atlantis.”

  “And yet, here I am,” Alexios said, stalking closer to the diamond. “This baby belongs to me, too. Or at least it belongs to Atlantis, and I’m going to take it home now. So you have two choices. You can get out of my way, or I can use it on you.”

  “Did you think we’d let you get away with that?” The cheesiest Russian accent Grace had ever heard was still menacing when it came equipped with a very lethal-looking rifle.

  And the rifle was pointed right at Alexios’s head.

  Prevacek stepped into the room. “You called, Master?”

  Grace rolled her eyes. “I can’t escape the Renfields this week, can I? Was it something I did? Some karmic pay-back biting me in the ass?”

  Alexios started laughing, and the sound of his voice carried something warm from him directly into her heart. She figured it was time she told him something important.

  “If I don’t get the chance to say this again, I love you,” she called out.

  “I know,” he said smugly, chuckling to himself.

  “How touching,” Vonos sneered.

  “Oh, please. That’s so Han Solo,” she muttered, ignoring the vampire.

  “I love you, too,” Alexios said. “But can we hold the rest of that thought until I get us out of here?”

  “How about until we get us out of here?” Grace fired back.

  Rhys threw his hands into the air. “Excuse me? Is anyone forgetting the high prince, High House, Seelie Court, standing right here?”

  “The what?” Vonos all but shrieked.

  “Let me kill them now, my lord,” Prevacek begged.

  “Nooo, no. I will present all three of them as a gift for the goddess,” Vonos said, all but rubbing his hands together with glee.

  Suddenly, all the bravado currently inflating Grace’s lungs vanished like a puff of imaginary smoke. Anubisa was coming. They were all screwed.

  Alexios didn’t dare make a move when the Russian had that gun trained very carefully right on the middle of Grace’s forehead. But he knew that seeing Anubisa again might be the end of his sanity. Now was the time for the risky move.

  “Why didn’t you tell her?” he called out.

  Vonos slowly opened his eyes; he’d been “communing” with the goddess, probably. Alexios could only hope he’d gotten a busy signal.

  “Trying to move up the ladder, bloodsucker? Enthrall some shifters here, wipe out a theater troupe there, and take over the god spot yourself?”

  Vonos’s eyes flared red, but he didn’t answer. Alexios hadn’t found the right button to push, yet. So he’d try again. “I’m just curious. Is the Vampire’s Bane going to be part of the gift? Or will we be the ‘please don’t kill me for withholding’ gift, and the Bane is the real gift? What about re-gifting? Is she really a fan?”

  “I’d advise you to shut up,” Vonos snarled. “The goddess is on her way to us now.”

  “There’s no time for this, Alexios,” Grace said.

  Rhys simply nodded, but somehow Alexios knew that both of them were telling him to spearhead a charge to escape. Two vamps, one gun, three of them. He didn’t like the odds, because all he could think about was the terrifying picture of Grace lying dead from a gunshot wound.

  “I don’t think . . .” he began.

  “Don’t think so much,” she yelled. Then her hand whipped out and she grabbed a golden dish off the pedestal nearest her and whipped it at Prevacek’s head. The Russian ducked, but the gun went off, shattering another pedestal inches from Grace.

  Vonos realized what was going on just a fraction of a second too late to beat Alexios to the Bane, and his clawed hand closed around air as Alexios ducked and rolled, coming up on the other side of the pedestal with the Bane clutched in his fist.

  “Use it now!” Rhys shouted from across the room. The Fae was tucking something silver and oddly shaped into his jacket, but Alexios couldn’t get a good look at it.

  “Now is a good idea,” Grace said, crouching next to him, and Alexios lifted the diamond and called out “For Atlantis!” and aimed it in the general direction of Vonos and Prevacek.

  For an instant, nothing happened. Then a powerful beam of yellow light burst forth from the diamond, rimming Vonos with light so that he looked like a skeleton caught in a flood lamp. Then he simply exploded right where he stood, screaming the most unearthly sound Alexios had ever heard.

  “Where was Prevacek? Did we get him?” Grace asked, but he didn’t know.

  “I didn’t see him. Rhys?” But the Fae was gone as if he’d never been there, and Alexios and Grace stood alone in a cell with a deadly diamond, while Anubisa was on her way.

  “Out! Now!” He grabbed Grace’s arm and they dashed out of the room, leaping over the scorch marks that were all that was left of Vonos.

  They ran, dashing through the crowded great room of the mansion, shoving politicians and vamps alike out of their way, the diamond burning a hole in Alexios’s pocket, calling out to him to use it, to destroy every vamp in the house. But it wasn’t time, it wasn’t even necessarily right; there were actually some vamps who were living in harmony with humans.

  At least a few.

  And he wasn’t going to be judge and jury on those who hadn’t murdered, plotted, and schemed.

  It was enough for now that they had had retrieved the Bane for Atlantis. Another jewel in the Trident. Another step toward Atlantis rising.

  But then Alexios heard the voice he’d prayed to Poseidon to never again hear in his lifetime. It was Anubisa, and she was screaming.

&nb
sp; May the gods save them all.

  Chapter 30

  Grace’s steps slowed as though she were trapped in molasses or cement or simply caught in the gaze of a vampire goddess who could squish her like a bug, thus bringing her full circle in a distinctly unpleasant way from her original meeting with Rhys na Garanwyn, the lousy rat who’d deserted them.

  Everyone in the room started screaming and shouting and cowering at the sight of the goddess. Anubisa shone with a terrible, hideous beauty, but evidently she didn’t much like Grace’s dress, because with one negligent flick of her wrist, she sent Grace smashing into the front door. Hard.

  Possibly all-my-ribs-are-broken hard. So Grace started praying, also hard. To Diana, who’d had reason in ages past to want to kick a little vamp goddess ass, or so Grace had heard. But her prayers were silent and her body was crumpled, so Anubisa dismissed her as nothing to worry about.

  Grace only hoped to live to prove her wrong.

  Satisfied, the goddess turned toward Alexios and beckoned him forward with one finger. “Oh, how lovely,” she purred. “One of my own coming back to me. We will have such fun together this time, and I’ll know better than to ever let you go.”

  “I don’t think so!” The Russian was nearly guttural in his rage, and as he limped into view, pointing a pistol directly at Alexios’s heart, Grace could tell why. Evidently he hadn’t escaped the Bane altogether whole. The entire left side of his body and head was simply gone, leaving a charred mess of twisted flesh on what was left of him. The sight was hideous; a burned manikin limping along on one remaining leg. Grace felt like she was going to be sick from the smell of burnt flesh, and the sight of his half-incinerated head was pushing her farther over the edge.

  Anubisa turned toward the horrible meat puppet and shuddered delicately. She was so beautiful that she probably even ripped the wings off flies delicately. Bitch. But a flash of heat and power trailed across Grace’s crumpled legs just then, so she instantly released her rage and redoubled her prayers to Diana.

  “What are you?” Anubisa asked, her voice filled with crumbling bones and rotted death.

  “I am Prevacek, and I worked too hard for that tyrant for too long to give up the jewel,” he blubbered out of the remaining side of his mouth.

  Anubisa almost casually knocked him to the floor and he lay there, snorting and howling, but he didn’t stand up again. He still had his gun aimed at Alexios’s head, though.

  Another flash of heat shot through Grace, and she cautiously, ever so slowly, straightened her legs and arms, rolling slowly and carefully toward the planter that was only about a foot away from where Anubisa had so considerately tossed her.

  Toward her bow and the arrow that she would aim so exactly. The arrow that never, ever missed. Carefully, oh so carefully, she lifted an arm high enough to retrieve her bow and an arrow—luck was with her, or Diana was, and she drew a silver-tipped arrow on the first try—and she carefully fitted it into her bow, not even daring to breathe.

  But evidently even the stealthiest movements of humans were no match for the hearing of goddesses. Anubisa swung around to face Grace, smiling that hideous smile, with her fangs fully extended and her eyes brightly, vividly scarlet.

  “Oh, lovely,” she said, clapping her hands. “A choice. I am delighted to have a game to play with your human whore, Alexios. Did you tell her how you begged me to hurt you?”

  Grace heard a growl coming from her own throat, and she aimed the arrow directly at Anubisa’s lying, nasty, torturing face. “I will kill you, you filthy bitch,” she said clearly. “I will make sure you never, ever hurt an Atlantean again.”

  Anubisa, clearly insane, clapped her hands again and pealed out a joyful laugh. Everyone in the room tried to clap their hands over their ears, because the sound of her laugh caused eardrums to pierce and brain aneurysms to burst randomly throughout the crowd. The screams and cries seemed to make Anubisa even happier.

  “A choice,” Anubisa repeated. “You can save Alexios, your true love, with that arrow, or you can shoot me with it. But let’s make it interesting. I know how noble you humans like to pretend to be.”

  She cast her glittering gaze out over the crowd and then squealed with such unholy glee that several people fell to the floor, unconscious or dead, from the sound. “I know! If you choose to shoot this miserable burned husk of vampire to save Alexios, I will murder every human in this room. But if you choose to shoot at me, I will simply order Alexios’s death and let the humans live. There! Isn’t that fun?”

  Grace said nothing, just calculated the time it would take her to reach for a second arrow. Before she could decide, the bag behind her, carrying her arrows and Alexios’s gear, burst into flames.

  “No cheating,” Anubisa said, giggling wildly, like a demented child.

  Grace turned toward Alexios in despair and locked gazes with him, hoping he could read everything she felt for him in that one last glance. It was a choice, but it wasn’t a choice. There was no option. The lives of dozens of innocent humans or Alexios’s life, freely given as the warrior he was.

  He nodded, and she knew that he understood. That he was encouraging her to make the worst choice in the world. The one choice she would never be able to live with, instead of the choice that neither of them would be able to live with.

  Anubisa started to say something else, but in one smooth motion, Grace drew back her bowstring and shot the vamp goddess directly in the heart. Expecting nothing. A puff of smoke, maybe, as Anubisa destroyed her arrow mid-flight.

  Instead, the unthinkable happened. The arrow hit home.

  The arrow hit home.

  Anubisa started shrieking as smoke poured out of her chest and she yanked at the arrow, trying to get it out. Grace yanked herself out of her shock to leap up with some idea of running to Alexios, but a single gunshot stopped her in mid-step. Tears poured down her cheeks; she was afraid to look.

  “It’s okay, mi amara. The old man has a few moves left in him.”

  She whipped her head up to see Alexios, gun in hand, standing over the body of Prevacek. Anubisa still writhed and screamed on the floor, smoke roiling out of her.

  Grace decided it was time to make a dash for it. She jerked her head toward the door and Alexios shot down the hall toward her, both of them nearly to the door when a thunderclap of force boomed through the hall and forced them, almost against their wills, to stop and see what had happened.

  Behind her, almost too faintly to be seen, a silvery female form fired arrow after arrow from her own phantom bow into the vampire goddess, who was screaming and shouting vile curses.

  “It’s Diana,” Grace whispered, and for an instant, the silvery goddess seemed to meet her eyes. But then Anubisa screamed and the moment was broken. Grace and Alexios ran out of the building and into the moonlight, followed by a river of people escaping the titanic struggle between goddesses going on inside. Another thunderclap boomed through the air, and then the mansion shook and imploded, collapsing into itself, hopefully burying Anubisa for all time.

  “It’s too much to hope for,” Alexios said in response to her unspoken wish.

  “I know, but so were you,” she said, throwing her arms around him and knowing she would never, ever let him go. “So were you.”

  They stood together for a long time, well after the sun had set and the moon rode high in the night sky, watching the pile of rubble for signs of disturbance. The firefighters, police, and EMTs had come and mostly gone, although there would be flashing lights and investigators around long into the night and in the days to come. She and Alexios had even answered a few questions, professing a complete lack of knowledge about the cause of the explosion.

  After all, it’s not like they could tell the police that a clash between the vampire goddess and the moon goddess had blown up Primator Vonos’s mansion. Even P Ops would have had a tough time with that one.

  “Should we go?” Alexios finally asked.

  “Go where?” she replied, dull with
exhaustion. “Home? I don’t even have a home.”

  He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. “Your home is with me. I think it’s time you see Atlantis.”

  “I think not,” whispered a voice that shimmered with light and rang with the music of a thousand symphonies. “Rather it is time that my descendant met her ancestress.”

  Grace froze, then slowly pulled away from Alexios and turned. A woman stood between them and the sea, her feet in the water and her hair whipping in the cool sea breeze.

  But, on taking a second look, Grace quickly realized that this was no woman, but the goddess. Power sparkled around her, crackling and sparkling in the long, waving strands of her hair, and the silver gleam of the moon itself shone from her eyes.