Alexios started forward, rammed his shoulder against Christophe as he pa.s.sed him. "Another word, and you will discover an entirely new meaning of ugly, s.h.i.t for brains," he growled.

With hand gestures, Conlan motioned Justice to take point toward the left and Alexios to do the same toward the right. He went straight up the middle, muttering a quick prayer to Poseidon that Alaric would hold off another d.a.m.n minute.

That was when the windows of the building shattered.

Brennan's head jerked up. "Someone approaches." His hands went to the weapons that were never far from his hands.

Riley had noticed they were all like that. Even in bed with her, Conlan's daggers had been on a table within reach.

Her cheeks turned pink as she realized she was, for about the fiftieth time in the past hour, thinking about Conlan naked. Sheesh, she was turning into a guy, with s.e.x, s.e.x, s.e.x on her brain. Next she'd start scratching her crotch and develop a driving need to play fantasy football.

"It's probably the pizza guy," she said. "Yippee for on-time delivery. Let me grab my wallet."

Brennan and Denal both stood to accompany her. She planted her fists on her hips. "It's the pizza guy. Who is probably some skinny high school kid who will pee in his pants if you two come to the door looking like Conan the Atlantean. Okay?"

The doorbell rang, and Brennan shook his head. "You will not go alone."

She appealed to his logic. "Look, if you scare the guy, he'll have some big story to tell back at the pizza place, right? Do you really want the address and phone number of your so-called safe house to be stored in the computer system of people who think a drag-dealing biker gang lives here?"

Denal drew his sword, all "I'm the warrior, and you're the poor defenseless maiden" att.i.tude.

Riley rolled her eyes. "Brennan? You're the older and wiser, right? Don't I make sense?"

The doorbell rang again.

Finally Brennan nodded. "You may go. I will stand behind the door as you effect the transaction."

"Fine. Let's go before my pepperoni gets cold."

She paused the movie-you had to love Fay Wray-and pulled her wallet out of her jacket on the way. Brennan handed her some folded bills.

"You will not pay for our food, Lady Riley. Although we thank you for the offer."

She shrugged, let him put the money in her hand. "Okay. Maybe being a royal warrior pays better than being a social worker?"

Brennan positioned himself behind the door, moving an umbrella out of the way. "Do Atlanteans really need umbrellas? I thought you guys liked water," she teased, hoping Denal would start talking about the dome again.

But Denal merely grinned and shook his head, lurking behind the closet door. She glanced down at the wad of bills. "Sheesh, we don't actually need a couple of hundred dollars for pizza. The guy would get a heck of a tip!"

Laughing, she pulled open the door, still separating the bills. "Come on in, dude, how much is-"

And was knocked backward onto the floor by the first of a swarm of hissing vampires.

Alaric faced Reisen across the heads of the cowering humans, wanting to vomit at the sacrilege of seeing the Trident in this dismal place.

With this thieving b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

The concussion of his first blast of energy had bounced off a circle of power surrounding the Trident and its bearer. Yet even as the Trident protected Reisen, its siren call sang ever more urgent in his head.

Rescue me, priest. Take me back to the temple of my G.o.d.

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 G.o.dhood 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 shape shifters 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 d.a.m.n 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 t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es.

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, G.o.d, 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 h.e.l.l. 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 asocial 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 me's' 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.