Free Atlantis Unleashed by Alyssa Day Page B

rusted coppery aroma of primordial blood.
    Sound—the grunting and moaning grew louder, closer, more and more eager. Dark’s denizen gaining on its goal.
    The memory of a voice. Mocking. No, not mocking. Affection underlying camaraderie. “So, Justice, you gonna sit there and think about this monster, or are you gonna kick its ass?”
    Facial muscles long atrophied moved in a parody of a smile. Bastien . Friend. Brother.
    Home.
    A harsh croaking noise rasped from his throat. Speech after unrelenting silence. Defiance after near surrender.
    He was Justice, and he was going home.
    â€œKick. Your. Ass,” he growled. As battle cries went, it was lacking. As a directional beacon to the monster, it worked very well. “Come to me, then. Come to me and die.”
    The monster roared out in answering challenge, a harsh, gravelly noise paired with wet, sucking sounds. Heralds of grasping greed and insatiable hunger. Worse, somewhere in the nearly inarticulate noise, words existed. Garbled, twisted. Words spoken by one who had nearly forgotten the meaning of speech.
    â€œFor so long, my enemy. So long have I waited to feast on flesh and blood and fear. Defy me, I beg of you. Defy me, and your death will taste that much sweeter,” the creature grated out in rusted syllables.
    It took a moment to realize that the creature spoke in ancient Greek and to formulate a response in kind. Then for an instant—trapped between thought and action—Justice knew pity. “How long?” he demanded. “How long have you been trapped here, creature?”
    It was a long, shuddering pause before the creature responded. “Longer than sentience, human. Longer than reality. There is nothing but the blood.”
    Before pity had opportunity to crystallize into empathy, the creature sprang, snarling in bestial rage. Justice reacted, body and mind moving into the dance honed by centuries of training and practice. His arm swept up, hand reaching behind his head to grasp the hilt of the sword that he hadn’t even known until that moment was still sheathed on his back.
    She’d left him a weapon, then. Even with his sword, he was too puny in her eyes to pose any threat. He’d prove her wrong.
    â€œThen we dance, monster,” Justice roared, finding full voice. “For Atlantis!”
    In the next second, the monster hit him, hard, smashing him down onto rocky ground that he didn’t remember having been under his feet. The weight of its body was unexpectedly light. What he could feel of his attacker felt disconcertingly like it was simply a man. But the sounds of it, by the gods. What man made sounds like that?
    Justice rolled backward, shifting his body to accommodate the sword, and gained his feet in the space of a few heartbeats. Holding his sword in a two-handed grip, up and before him with tip pointing down, Justice charged forward. Brute force would have to suffice; the dark made elegance irrelevant. Judging his distance by the harsh, snuffling bellows of the creature’s breath, Justice ran forward two short steps and drove the point of his sword at his target, rage accelerating the force of his thrust.
    The monster shrieked and swung out with a stick the size of a tree trunk, deflecting the blade, smashing into Justice’s side and possibly cracking ribs. But ribs would heal if death were defeated, so Justice pressed forward, putting his full weight behind the pressure he brought to bear on his sword, trying to pierce his opponent.
    Bellowing sharp cries that burned like acid in Justice’s ears, the creature switched tactics. Fetid breath his only warning, Justice leapt back and away a moment before the monster’s teeth clashed shut.
    A shiver of humor snaked through him, in spite of death and dark and Void. A shadow of the man he’d been before all three. “Brings a whole new meaning to ‘don’t bite my head off,’ doesn’t it?” he said, and