by Alyssa Day
“I can do it,” he said. “I can call the lightning. Put the machine on me.”
“What?” Deirdre said. “No, you don’t understand, this only works when the heart has already stopped.”
“I understand,” Brennan said, ripping off his own shirt. “Put the pads on me. Surge the power through me.”
Deirdre was shaking her head, but Daniel stopped her. “He has power, Deirdre. Look at that.” He pointed to the corner, to what was left of Litton, and around the room at the destroyed equipment. “Do it.”
She stared around the room and then shrugged, rapidly removed the pads from Tiernan’s chest, and attached them to Brennan’s back. Brennan put his hands carefully, so carefully, on Tiernan’s chest.
“Do it now,” he told Deirdre, and then he smiled down at the woman he loved with every ounce of his being. “One way or another, we will be together.”
“Clear!” Deirdre cried out, and then Brennan called the lightning.
The power surged into him and through him stronger than ever before, and he poured it through his hands into Tiernan, into her heart and blood and soul. He shouted her name as the power surged, but it wasn’t enough, wasn’t enough.
Wasn’t enough.
The power fizzled and stopped, and Brennan took a deep, shuddering breath and then turned his own dead gaze to Deirdre. “Again.”
“But it will kill you—”
“Now.” The command hung in the air, resonating with the measure of power of a Warrior of Poseidon.
Deirdre cried out the word again, like a talisman. “Clear!”
Brennan called the lightning.
Pain scorched through him with the power, leaving a trail of sizzling agony in its wake. The energy burned through him from his back, through his bloodstream, and to his own heart, and then down his arms to his hands and into Tiernan’s heart.
He called the lightning, and screamed her name through the pain that threatened to incinerate him. Screamed her name and pledged his vow: “Poseidon, channel this power through me to save my woman and I freely give my life for hers.”
He staggered and nearly fell, his wounded leg screaming out as the jagged holes from the gunshot were seared shut, the flesh burned and melted to instant scarring from the heat and fury of the lightning. The power surged through him, biting with its jagged teeth, eating everything he was and consuming it as fuel for the lightning that then poured into Tiernan’s body, filling her organs and blood and bone with the power.
This time, the lightning conquered death itself.
Tiernan arched up off the table, crying out, but then she opened her eyes and smiled.
He fell then, against the chair, but she held up her arms to him and he fell forward into his life, into the future, into hope. He kissed her and she tasted of the power and, together, they swallowed the lightning.
They dove, as one, into the soul-meld, and this time they were together, in Atlantis, dancing in the moonlit night, and the future belonged to them, forever and ever. He kissed her, and he tasted eternity.
A sound brought him back. Behind him, Daniel cleared his throat, and Brennan’s conscious mind clicked back into place. “We’re not out of danger yet,” he told Tiernan. “We have to run.”
“As long as I’m with you,” she said, and then her gaze shifted, and she stared at something behind Brennan and to his right. Confusion played over her expressive features and her brows drew together.
Daniel stepped up, next to Brennan, and smiled at Tiernan. Brennan opened his mouth to explain, but Tiernan spoke first.
“Devon? What are you doing here?”
Chapter 42
Tiernan stared at the vampire, wondering what possibly could have happened when she was . . . when she was . . .
Dead.
She had been dead. Her mind rejected the fact, but her soul knew the truth, and some things were far more important than Devon and his intrigues.
“I was dead,” she whispered to Brennan. “I saw Susannah, and the baby. They were so happy, and loved, and they shared that joy with me, but I felt something was missing.”
She sat up and put her hands on his solemn face. “Someone was missing. You were missing.”
“I was ready to follow you,” he said fiercely, resting his forehead on hers. “I planned to fulfill your mission, and avenge your friend, and then follow you into death and past its dark shores.”
“Corelia was there, too. She sent me back,” Tiernan said, the memory glowing in her eyes. “She said to tell you that she is in a place beyond the need of vengeance, and that you should forgive yourself. That your entire life has been a quest for redemption, and you should be at peace with yourself now.”
“If I am truly redeemed, you are my reward,” he said, gathering her into his arms again.
“While this is touching, we need to get out of here. Now.” Tiernan didn’t recognize the voice and looked up to find a woman standing near Devon and almost dancing with impatience. No, not quite a woman. A female vampire.
“Deirdre is right,” Devon said. “Back-from-death reunion later, running now. Jones had followers, and they’re going to be very unhappy with me. Not to mention all the vamps who want your billions, Brennan.”
Devon pointed to the black pile of ash on the floor where the vampire had been. “I’m guessing that’s Smith, which means I now have two blood prides and two sets of followers out for my head. We need to go, and we need to go now.”
“Daniel,” Brennan said. “We must destroy this equipment first, so that it can never be used to harm another living being.”
Devon hesitated, then nodded. Tiernan held up a hand. “Wait. Why is he calling you Daniel?”
Devon laughed. “That’s my name. I’ve also been Drakos, D’Artagnan, Demetrios, and, among many, many other names, Devon. Call me Daniel, please. It’s less confusing.”
“We’ll call you a dead man, if we don’t hurry,” Deirdre said, grabbing Devon-turned-Daniel’s arm. “We have to get out of here now. I won’t be captured. Ever, ever again.”
The searing pain and overwhelming terror in Deirdre’s voice and eyes jolted Tiernan into action. She was surprised to find herself filled with energy, as if she’d just eaten a full meal and slept for eight hours, instead of having been dead, held captive, and tortured for who knew how long. Whatever Brennan had done had given her a massive jolt and power boost.
She jumped into action, going to examine the computer consoles and other machinery, but it took only a few seconds for her to realize she had no idea how to destroy any of it. Unlike in the films, there was no giant red button labeled “SELF DESTRUCT.” “I don’t know how to do it,” she had to admit.
A tray of medical instruments caught her eye and she grabbed a couple of them. Just in case. “I don’t know how,” she repeated. “I’m sorry.”
“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 warni
ng, 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.
