Warriors of Poseidon 03 - Atlantis Unleashed

made, which was draped in—no kidding—black and red satin. No overkill there. The bedpost carvings of satyrs and mutant-looking nymphets, performing perverse sexual acts that must have broken at least a few laws of physics, didn’t even surprise him after the satin.
    “Who are you kidding with this? Did you hire some B-movie porn set designer? If the bowm-chicka-bowm-bowm music starts up, I’m out of here,” he said.
    The words were no sooner out of his mouth before he remembered. The cave. His sacrifice.
    He was supposed to have been willing.
    Anubisa hadn’t forgotten, though, and regardless of her taste in boudoir décor, she was no idiot. Evil, murderous, twisted, and obsessive, but not stupid.
    Goddesses rarely were.
    Even those who reigned over their own fiefdom in the nine hells.
    She sat on the edge of the bed, which sank perceptibly, as though the sheer force of the fury and death that rode her soul added weight to her slender frame. Almost against his will, he touched a lock of her mass of hair that hung down to her hips. Or maybe it was against his will. Maybe she was manipulating him so expertly that he didn’t even realize it.
    But if he really believed that, he’d give in to his fate. Try to kill her and go out in a blaze of suicidal stupidity.
    He wasn’t a god, but he wasn’t stupid, either. He’d bide his time.
    “If you do not care for the furnishings, I will change them,” she said carelessly, with the air of a benevolent parent bestowing a gift on a child. Then her voice turned almost coy. “Is there anything here that you like?”
    Justice hadn’t lived for centuries without learning a few things about women. It amused and somehow calmed him to find that this goddess, the scourge of Atlantis for millennia, had at least a superficial resemblance to mortal woman.
    He wondered if she’d ever been one.
    Wondered if he’d ever dare to ask.
    “You know that there is,” he growled as, rolling the dice that she wouldn’t kill him for his temerity, he grasped her arm and yanked her down next to him. “Your beauty is flawless, and well you know it.”
    A scarlet light flashed deep in the centers of her pupils as she slowly smiled. “There is much about me that is flawless, warrior. Shall you discover more?”
    Her smile widened, and her fangs descended as she lifted her head to strike.
     
    Knowledge shot Justice into consciousness even as pain ate the memory. So he‟d cooperated?
    Had pretended to desire her? His skin tried to crawl off of his body at the thought.
    At what point did evil permeate one‟s soul? Lie down with dogs . . . So what if you lay down with dog goddesses? Visions of mutant fleas the size of mountain lions eating his liver did nothing to reassure him of his sanity, but the brief flare of black humor reminded him of someone.
    Of something.
    Perhaps of himself?
    But sanity dwindled, and his brief return to lucidity faded under the pain. He was Justice, and he had been buried in the pain for years or centuries or millennia—or merely minutes?—but the pain existed outside the reality of time until only the insanity of stretched and tortured perception remained.
    But the flickering point of light that was all that remained of his Being waited and watched and plotted. Because he was Justice and—no matter the eons of time that passed before his time finally came—Justice would be served.
    As if to reward the courage flying in the face of utter futility, hope crouching in the shadow of utter hopelessness, a window opened into the darkness and he saw through the shadows to a face. The face was Other, not his face, not his mind, not Justice. The face was Female, but not evil. Not female death or destruction or despair. As he watched the face, watched her , entranced by the vividly green eyes that shone so brightly they cast a shimmer of light into his eternal darkness, his vision expanded to include her upper body and her hands, which touched something at her throat.
    A wooden carving?
    She held it up and pressed it against her lips, even as tears shimmered in the emeralds of her eyes and slowly traced a path down her cheeks.
    Suddenly the flash of recognition struck him, nearly enough to yank him back to sanity. The carving was a small wooden fish, an oddly shaped species somewhat like a clownfish, but one he‟d only seen in the very depths of the ocean. They clustered near the base of the dome covering Atlantis and seemed to entertain the children who loved to