Heart of Atlantis

His chief acolyte, voice shaky but determined, answered him through the door.

“My lord, the Trident is malfunctioning. It’s shooting blasts of pure magic throughout the temple. Two of our people are injured and one barely escaped with his life. My lord? You must help us.”

Alaric’s dazed mind took a few seconds to register that the floor probably had been shaking, after all. He snapped his focus to his surroundings and suddenly the erratic blasts of power emanating from Poseidon’s Trident stuttered through his consciousness.

How in the nine hells had he been oblivious to that?

But even as his mind asked the question, he looked at Quinn and his gaze snagged on her lips, swollen from his kisses, and he knew the answer.

“Put me down, Alaric,” Quinn said. She trembled like a leaf caught in a thunderstorm, but her expression firmed into resolve. “We have people to save, magical objects to fix, and a world to save. No time for kissing.”

He groaned, but then nodded and released her. “When this is over, if it’s ever over,” he ground out from between clenched teeth, “I am taking you so far away from duty and responsibility and civilization that it would take months for anybody to find us.”

“Maybe Fiji,” she called out, laughing a little, as she ran for the bathroom.

She dropped the robe, and he saw the delicate line of her back and the curve of her lovely ass before she moved behind the door to dress, and he groaned again. “I might have to kill something for this.”

“Count me in,” she said, walking back out, checking her knives and guns. “I’m very handy when there are things to be killed.”

He waved a hand at her damp clothes and sent the water from them, and she smiled her thanks. When they opened the door, they were both laughing, and the man standing there raising his hand to knock again looked at them as if they were insane.

He wasn’t wrong, Alaric reflected. Not even a little.

Chapter 14

Quinn held out her hand, determined to make a fresh start with bulldog guy, in spite of the way he was staring at her flushed cheeks. “Quinn Dawson. Nice to meet you.”

The man looked at her hand, and then back at her face.

“It’s human custom to shake hands in greeting,” Alaric said, already heading down the hall. “Myrken, this is the woman I’m going to spend the rest of my life with. Be nice.”

Myrken, already pale, wobbled a little, as if he were going to fall over right there in front of the ancient tapestry on the wall behind him. Silvery green dragons soared over an island kingdom of perfect, tiny stitches.

“He does that now,” Quinn confided to Myrken. “Smiles. It’s almost frightening, isn’t it?”

“There you go again, making unfounded declarations about my future without consulting me,” she called after Alaric’s retreating back.

“Sorry, I have a crisis to solve.” He flashed an unrepentant grin over his shoulder, and Myrken made a weird noise that sounded like a cross between a gulp and a yelp.

“Did he . . . Did Lord Alaric just smile again?”

Quinn shrugged. “I know. It’s kind of freaking me out, too.”

Leaving Myrken to his shock, she ran down the hall after Alaric. “Wait for me. Team, remember?”

They descended stairs and flew down hallways at top speed, arriving at a room Quinn had definitely not seen in the tour Alaric had given her on the way in. The entire room, maybe twenty-five by twenty-five square feet, was completely empty. No benches, no plants, no art on the walls. Nothing at all in the room except for a pedestal, topped with a cushion, where she guessed the Trident had previously been on display. Currently it was floating in the air, twisting and turning like it was alive, sending out brilliant flashes of white, blue, and green light.

She skidded to a stop, almost running into Alaric’s muscular back.

“Is it supposed to do that?”

He shot her a look.

“I’ll take that as a no. Do you think this has something to do with Ptolemy playing magic games with Poseidon’s Pride?”

“Almost certainly. The Trident has never, in all of recorded history, acted like this.”

She watched it as it whirled in a surprisingly elegant manner for what was, basically, an overgrown fork with jewels in it. She counted six jewels of various colors, plus one empty setting that was clearly waiting to be filled with the missing gem.

“Did you have to find all the others, too?”

“Yes, it has been an interesting time. The final gem must be safely in place in the Trident before Atlantis can rise.”

Alaric bodily lifted her and leapt to the side as one particularly bright flash of white light blasted the spot where they’d been standing and smashed a hole in the wall.

“This thing isn’t kidding around,” she said. “Is there an off switch?”

“Unfortunately, no. If I approach it, I may be able to put it in stasis, but getting that close to it may be challenging,” Alaric said. His hands glowed with blue-green light as he called to his magic, in preparation for whatever suicidal trick he was planning.

The problem was, she didn’t know how to stop him, or if she should even try. It didn’t seem like a job anybody else could handle.

“What can I do?” She scanned the room for ideas of any way she might be able to help, but came up empty. The only variance from the blank palette of bare walls and floor was a series of niches that may have been designed originally to hold plants or art, high up on the walls, above and out of the Trident’s current firing range pattern.

“What if I find a way to get up there above the line of fire and drop down on top of it? Do you have a rope —”

“If I had a rope, I would tie you up with it,” Alaric growled. He whirled to face her, and his eyes were flaring with heat and magic. “Do you ever, even once, not immediately decide to throw yourself in the middle of the most dangerous situations possible?”

She pretended to think about it for a second or two, and then grabbed his arm and yanked him out of the path of a blast of green light that blew a hole in the door behind them.

“Nope,” she said. “Lucky for you, since you’re the most dangerous man I’ve ever met. A sane woman would run away from you, not toward you.”

He cast his gaze up, as if asking for divine intervention, then grabbed her and kissed her so fast she almost didn’t realize it was happening. Then he stepped between her and the Trident and hurled a barrage of energy spheres at it as fast as he could form them.

These weren’t the destructive kind, though. Quinn watched as the spheres joined together to form a large bubble around the Trident. The bubble at first dispersed the force of the magic blasts, and then contained them altogether.

Quinn started clapping. “Great job. Now what?”

Alaric didn’t answer, and when she turned to look at him, she discovered why. His face was taut with strain, and he held his hands out in front of him as if physically holding the force field or energy bubble or whatever it was in place.

“Can’t hold this alone for long,” he gritted out. “Go get help.”

She paused to pat him on the back. “Hey, it’s the magical symbol of a god. It’s got big juju. I’m impressed you managed to stop it at all.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Big juju?”

“I’ll explain later.”

She ran out of the room, shouting for help, and almost collided with Myrken, who was wringing his hands right outside the door.

“Get all your most powerful people in there to help Alaric contain that Trident,” she told him. She paused, remembering what Alaric had told Ven back in Japan. “I’m going to the palace to find Christophe and Serai. He