Heart of Atlantis

complex that Alaric doubted anyone still walking the earth had seen its like. Mere seconds passed before Jack’s body arched up off the ground, and he coughed harshly.

“Does he know who he is?” Alaric demanded.

“Honestly, I don’t know what he knows,” Serai said. “Or who he knows. If he has reverted fully to tiger and only tiger, he’s not safe to be around.”

“Thank you. No matter what else, you brought him back from death. We’ll figure the rest out. I owe him that much,” Quinn said.

Alaric healed the tiger’s bloody wounds and tried to feel for a shred of humanity, but he could not. “I can’t tell. I just don’t know. Shape-shifters are too different from Atlanteans, and Poseidon’s power recoils from trying to analyze the mind of a tiger.”

“Your magic is unbalanced without the soul-meld,” Serai said, rocking Alaric back on his heels.

The soul-meld? When he was sworn to an eternity of celibacy and isolation?

“What do you mean? I am the most powerful—”

“Yes, yes, I’ve heard it,” Serai interrupted. “Most powerful high priest in the history of Atlantis. But it’s not true, you know. I’ve been around for all of them since Atlantis dove beneath the sea. Your power is not even close to what Nereus wielded. At least, before his wife died and he almost drowned the world.”

“What—”

Quinn cut him off. “I don’t care. I don’t care about any of it right now. Not the bankers, or the rebellion, or any damn part of it. I sure as hell don’t care about Atlantean ancient history. I’m leaving, and I’m taking Jack with me. Somewhere he can be safe, until we figure this out. I owe him that. I owe him my life, several times over.”

“Of course. I know just the place.” Alaric drew in a deep breath and called to power, and he swore a new and different oath—one that he had no intention of ever breaking. “I’ll take you there now, and I’ll never, ever leave your side again.”

He called to the portal, wondering if the capricious gateway magic would bother to answer him. As the familiar silvery ovoid shape formed, he remembered his duty and turned to Serai.

“You should come with us, princess,” Alaric said. “We can help you.”

“You need my help, priest. I have protection beyond your knowledge in the presence of the mage beside me.” She moved closer to Daniel, who snapped his head up and stared at Alaric.

“I can help, possibly. Let me try to reach Jack,” the vampire said.

“What can you do? Try to blood bond a tiger?” Quinn shook her head. “Go away, Daniel, there’s no need for your special skills here.”

“I have forgotten more magic than most of your human witches ever possess, Quinn, and one of my talents as senior mage of the Nightwalker Guild was to teach others to call out to the souls of dying mortals,” Daniel said. “Let me try. It can’t hurt him, not now. Maybe I can help.”

Quinn nodded, and Alaric, in spite of serious misgivings, allowed it. He felt the brush of powerful magic, so very foreign to his own that he couldn’t begin to comprehend it, and then the feeling passed as swiftly as a bird seeking prey in the cool night air.

The tiger shivered and then lay still. Daniel shook his head.

“I don’t know if he’ll ever return. All I know is that he’s somewhere in there. Deep inside, or maybe even not inside the tiger, but very nearby. But he won’t come back because we push him. He warned me quite specifically that if we try, he’ll choose never to come back.”

“If he thinks he’s more stubborn that I am, he’s sadly mistaken. Let’s go, Alaric. Take us away, and give me time to let this tiger heal and find himself again,” Quinn said, finally rising from her knees.

Alaric took her hand and called to his magic to lift Jack on a wave of power. He took a step toward the portal and then hesitated.

Duty, again. Somehow, after centuries thinking of nothing else, it was suddenly so hard to remember. He looked to Reisen, the warrior who had first betrayed Atlantis and now worked so hard to redeem himself. Or so Quinn said. Alaric had his doubts. One never trusted a traitor a second time. But Reisen wasn’t his concern. Healing the injured was.

“Do others here need healing? I forget my duties.”

Reisen shook his head. “No, we have only minor injuries in those still alive. You . . . you go to Atlantis?”

“You can return home,” Alaric said reluctantly. “Your exile was self-imposed. Conlan offered forgiveness and healing.”

Reisen didn’t move. “I have one final mission to perform for Quinn.”

The small human from Quinn’s group moved closer to Reisen and offered her thanks for his help as tears streamed down her pale face. She said something to Quinn; something about taking care of Jack, but Alaric didn’t listen. Didn’t care.

Everything he cared about in the world was wrapped up in Quinn’s happiness, and he’d failed her. He’d been unable to bring Jack back to himself. He started to follow her as she headed toward the portal, head bent, gaze on the ground. Her shoulders hunched around her neck, as if awaiting another blow.

Alaric issued a final warning to Daniel, whose quest with Serai must succeed, and then he and Jack, who still rested on his cushion of magic, followed Quinn into the shimmer of light, which would hopefully take them to the one place he doubted any would think to look for them.

Not even the sea god himself.

“Take us to Mount Fuji.”

Chapter 1

A hidden cave inside of Mount Fuji, Japan

The portal opened and Alaric, warrior and high priest of Atlantis, stepped through, followed by a shell- shocked rebel leader and a five-hundred-pound tiger shape-shifter who might have permanently lost his humanity.

“Oh, Alaric,” said the ancient man who stood waiting for them, sighing and shaking his head. “You do get into the most fascinating trouble.”

“Interesting you should say that, Archelaus,” Alaric said. “I need a place to hide for a time, while Quinn tries to help Jack remember that he’s human, too, and not just a tiger.”

Quinn barely glanced at him, her eyes dull with pain and exhaustion, but she never let go of his hand. It was more physical contact than he’d allowed himself to have with her in a very long time.

Archelaus took them all in with his sharp gaze. The old man, long since retired as mentor to the Atlantean warrior training academy, never missed anything.

“And Atlantis? Are the Seven Isles still in jeopardy?”

“Aren’t they always?” Alaric sliced a hand through the air in dismissal of the topic. “We need a place to rest. Food. A refuge—we need to hide a tiger.”

Archelaus pointed at something behind them. “Who is that?”

Alaric whirled around, shocked to see a stranger—a delicate, dark-haired woman—step out of the portal.

“Who are you?” he demanded, pushing Quinn behind him. None but Atlanteans could call the portal, and this woman clearly was not Atlantean, but of Asian descent.

She blinked in apparent confusion. “Konnichiwa,” she began, offering a basic greeting in Japanese, but then she continued in ancient Atlantean as she slowly collapsed until she lay curled up on the ground next to the tiger, who ignored her completely. “I am the spirit of the portal, and I am this woman, who came to Mount Fuji to die.”

“You came here to die. We came here to force Jack to live,” Quinn said, and then she started laughing, a terrible, almost hysterical laugh. “Lucky we have Poseidon’s high priest with us, isn’t it?”

Alaric stared down at Quinn and fought the tidal wave of unfamiliar, unwanted emotion threatening to swamp