Atlantis Rising

lawn in front of her house.

The same lawn where Conlan stood with his men.

She snapped out of her shock; shouted a warning. 'Watch out, Conlan! Vampires!'

But he and his men were already looking up, unsheathing daggers of some sort. The blades flashed like copper fused with diamonds, beautiful and deadly.

Sort of like the man himself.

Riley, get back! Conlan thundered in her mind. Close that damn door and hide.

But she stood there, frozen, the phone forgotten in her hand. The silence was surreal—battle scenes in the movies were always full of clashing armor and shouting.

The battle scene before her was all the more terrifying because of the near cessation of sound.

The largest of the vamps landed in front of Conlan, sword drawn. Conlan crossed his daggers to block the blow, then sliced down viciously, striking the vamp's left arm. With an upswing, he drove his dagger into the attacker's heart, and the vamp slumped to the ground.

More men came running from around the corner of her house. They were dressed in black leather and long coats, like some terrifying biker gang. One of them, hair in a long, blue braid to his waist, broke the silence. He roared—a name, a challenge—something that sounded like 'Poseidon!' then flew into the air in a wild leap, a sword and dagger held up and out in front of him. He landed on top of a vamp who'd tried, but failed, to twist out of the way.

Blue-hair thrust both his weapons into the vampire's neck, twisted his clearly powerful arms, still yelling fiercely, and then yanked the blades back out.

Riley stood, unblinking, hand-to-hand combat and sword-play crashing through the night around her.

Focused only on the vampire's head.

The head that fell off his body and rolled to a stop a few feet away, right next to her dormant azalea bushes.

She clutched at the door frame with one hand, slowly shaking her head back and forth, swirling fog threatening to obscure her line of sight…

Well, that didn't happen, did it? Because nobody decapitates vampires on my lawn, right? Can't be good for the grass. Or the azaleas.

She recognized the symptoms, objectively. She was going into shock. Numbness, graying vision, a spreading cold—

Then she looked up and met Conlan's gaze. He'd felt her terror. It must have distracted him, because she could tell he didn't notice the vampire who leapt at him from behind, aiming his sword at his back.

Her numbness shattered.

'Nooo!' she screamed, hurling herself off the porch and toward the two of them. Unthinking. Urgency driving her. She had to help him. Had to protect him.

Must protect him.

'Leave him alone!' she shouted. She jumped on the vampire's back, reaching around his neck to grab at his throat. Throttle him.

But it was too late. The vampire hissed at her as he pulled his sword back, dripping with Conlan's blood.

'You leave him alone now!' she repeated, mindless with rage. Her self-defense classes kicked in, fingers reaching, digging, in a barely remembered tactic.

Go for the eyes, Riley. No matter how big they are, you can always go for the eyes.

She dug her fingers in, gagging against the feel as her nails dug into squishiness. The vampire screamed with agony and twisted, heaving her arms away from him.

Smashing her to the ground.

He turned, clawing at his streaming eyes, and Riley tried to crawl backward to escape. Then the vamp roared out his anguish again, spittle flying from his cracked and twisted fangs, and focused on Conlan, lying so still next to her. The vampire reared back one booted foot, clearly planning to kick Conlan in the head.

Riley sucked in a torrent of air and screamed with everything she had in her. She launched herself in front of the vampire to somehow block his foot from crushing Conlan's skull.

And a hailstorm of coppery blades sliced through the air above her to land in the vampire's chest and throat. His foot wavered, and he staggered.

An arc of blue fire—or electrical current—or something not human, no, never human, not even vampires had blue fireballs, what the helll—shot from the hands of one of Conlan's men and incinerated the vampire's head.

Incinerated.

Demolished.

As Riley collapsed back onto Conlan's still form, she started to laugh.

Then she couldn't stop.

She laughed and laughed, not registering when the laughter turned to sobs, finally looking up and seeing the ring of men looking down at her, blades drawn. Her head throbbed, ached, seemed as if it would split open from the reverberations of… what, exactly?

The one standing a little apart from the others tilted his head and pinned her with his icy green gaze. He was beautiful, like the rest of them, and yet his eyes were flat. Dead. In her job, she'd seen hardened recidivist criminals with more emotion in their eyes than his had.

'Conlan is not seriously harmed. The blade was coated in poison—the dose would have been fatal to a human,' he stated, imperiously looking down his nose at her. 'It will be little trouble to clear it from his blood.'

She hiccupped a little, caught her breath, and then glared her defiance up at him. 'You look like a serial killer, buddy. But whoever you are, unless you really can help Conlan, you'll have to come through me to get to him.'

A collective gasp went up from the others, all six, no, all seven of them—she'd almost missed the one lying on the ground, blood dripping from his head as he raised it to look at her.

'She seeks to protect him where we have failed,' he gritted out, wiping blood out of his eyes with one hand. 'And we, sworn to his service.'

Another one of them who looked an awful lot like Conlan nodded his head, face grim, then barked out a laugh. 'She sure pegged you, Temple Rat.'

Laughing Guy dropped to a crouch on one knee before her, smile fading to somberness, and bowed his head. 'Your courage is unknown to us in humans, lady. You offered yourself to protect my brother. But you must let our healer help him.'

She clutched at her head, trying to keep it from cracking open, shocked into silence as she recognized the source of the driving pain. It was him. The one kneeling in front of her.

No, not exactly. She looked at them all, wonder drowning out fear. It was all of them. Their emotions. Their rage and pain.

Riley reached out one hand to the huge man who claimed to be Conlan's brother, gently touched his arm, and then flinched back. 'Pain,' she whispered. 'Fear for your brother. Fury and vengeance… who is Terminus! ...'

As the man's eyes widened, mirroring her own shock, she scanned the rest of the group. Colors, too many colors, pain, the percussion, the drums of their fury pounding in her brain.

Pounding in her heart.

Pounding in her soul.

Too much. Too much. Toomuchtoomuchtoomuch—

She smiled her best, most professional 'Hello, I'm your new social worker' smile and primly clasped her hands together. 'I've had enough now, thank you,' she whispered.

Then she closed her eyes and, for the second time that night—the second time in her entire life—she slipped into unconsciousness.

But she heard him—Conlan's brother—as she fell down the dark well of silence into the black. She heard the