Heart of Atlantis

“To have my baby?” He leaned closer and whispered. “You won’t have a choice. Nobody said you had to be conscious during the begetting.”

Ptolemy took advantage of her shock-induced paralysis to drag her in front of the cameras.

“This is my consort, Quinn Dawson, the only human worthy to be queen of Atlantis,” he said, smiling for the international audience. “We are here this morning to accept Secretary-General Filberson’s acknowledgment of our sovereignty.”

The secretary-general was made of sterner stuff than she was, Quinn thought, or else he didn’t have the ability to sense Ptolemy’s twisted magic at all, because he stepped right up, displaying no hint of fear or revulsion.

“Since the secret is out, we do acknowledge that Atlantis exists and has been preparing to rise from the bottom of the ocean and rejoin the international community. However, I have been dealing with High Prince Conlan for more than a year now. This man is a pretender, and the United Nations does not recognize or support him.”

The mayor backed away from Filberson, clearly anticipating the worst. It didn’t take very long for him to get it. Ptolemy reached out a hand that had transformed into that of a beast. His fingers now terminated in five-inch- long claws, and he slashed Filberson in the face. Then, before the secretary-general even hit the floor, Ptolemy kicked him so hard it caved in the side of his head.

Quinn gasped as the secretary-general’s emotions swung violently from calm determination to pain, rage, and terror, and then she slammed her mental shield into place. She knew from previous experience that she couldn’t feel all of his emotions as he died and still remain conscious, and if she passed out she might wake up dead.

“This is unfortunate,” Ptolemy said calmly, wiping his bloody hand on the side of Quinn’s dress.

She silently vowed to kill him. Slowly. She wanted him to suffer for what he’d done to Filberson. For what he’d done to her.

Ptolemy pointed to the mayor with his hand, which was still smeared with blood despite his use of Quinn’s dress. “Do you have something to say?”

The mayor stepped over the moaning secretary-general and faced the cameras. “Yes, we agree,” he said hastily. “The city of New York recognizes you as King Ptolemy of Atlantis. No problem. No problem at all.”

“And you?” Ptolemy pointed again, this time to the man who still lurked a dozen or so paces away.

Quinn didn’t know who he was, but he looked familiar. He walked slowly to the podium and stepped carefully around the dying vampire on the floor before facing the cameras.

“I will absolutely recognize you as king of Atlantis or any other damn continent you want to rule,” he said slowly. “I have a family and grandchildren, so I don’t want to die. And this will be my last official act as governor of New York.”

The governor walked carefully away, down the long conference room and out of the door, undeterred by anyone in the room. Quinn looked at Ptolemy, surprised that he’d let the man escape, but he shocked her by laughing.

“And so it begins,” he said. “Now, my beautiful wife-to-be, to prove your loyalty I only have one request. I need for you to end what’s left of the life of this miserable worm on the floor. If you disobey me, I will kill every human in this building, slowly and painfully—”

“Done,” Quinn snapped. She whirled around to grab a rather flimsy-looking wooden side table and snapped one leg off over her knee. Then she knelt down next to the secretary-general.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, before she plunged the makeshift stake into his heart.

She’d just committed murder on live TV. Another act for which she could never, ever forgive herself. She opened her mental shield, just a crack, for just a moment.

Good-bye, Alaric.

* * *

The blast of Quinn’s pain and remorse swept through Alaric with the force of a tidal wave, before she shut it down hard. She was trying to tell him good-bye.

Alaric needed to kill something.

Bad.

“Oh, my god, she really did it,” shouted the man with the portable viewing device. It had been Alaric’s only window to Quinn and Ptolemy for the past several minutes.

She’d had no choice. Yet again he had the thought that they were all ultimately helpless pawns in a chess game played by gods. Another stain on her soul, and Quinn had already been sure that she could never atone for the dark deeds she’d performed in her short life.

He, of all people, knew what it had cost her to kill that man. Even though the secretary-general had been a vampire, he also had been a man working for good in the world, not trying to conquer and enslave humanity. Even though she’d been forced to it—even though she’d clearly given him a quick end when his alternative was a long and agonizing death—and in spite of the threat that Ptolemy would kill humans if she did not comply.

It didn’t matter. She’d killed, again, and this time not in direct self-defense, or at least so she would believe. Alaric’s skin heated up as his very bones vibrated with fury. If he did not find an outlet for his rage, he might very well set off an explosion. The humans closest to him backed away as Alaric’s body began to glow with hot, silver- blue energy.

“Ah, hey, man, are you all right?” one of them, braver than the others, dared to ask.

“No,” he managed to say. “No, I am very far from all right. You should leave now. Leave and take all of your friends. This area is about to become very dangerous.”

“Oh, wow,” the man with the viewing device yelled. “The king of Atlantis is getting ready to do something bad, again. He has that woman he called his consort by the hair—”

“Move, fool.” Alaric snatched the device from the man, just in time to see Ptolemy pull Quinn up into his arms.

“Now I’ll be a little busy for a while,” Ptolemy said, smirking directly into the camera. Quinn’s eyes were wide and blank, staring at nothing, like she’d reached and then moved past the end of her endurance. Alaric’s mind stuttered at the thought of what else Ptolemy might have done to her in that building.

He wondered how long he could make it take for Ptolemy to die.

Ptolemy’s next words smashed through Alaric’s plans of blood and death.

“I have to impregnate my future queen.” Then, in a flash of light, he pulled another of his vanishing tricks, and this time he took Quinn with him. When the ugly smoke cleared, there was nobody left in view on the small screen but the mayor, who picked up a chair and smashed it into the camera that was transmitting the scene. The news feed went black.

“Give me my iPad, man,” the human whined, grabbing for it, and Alaric hit him in the face with his precious toy.

Alaric tried for several seconds—that lasted for an eternity—to sense Quinn anywhere within the range of his power. Nothing. She was gone. She’d disappeared as surely as if she’d died. Alaric stood silently as the prospect of his future without Quinn washed through him in waves of bleak, desolate despair.

Then he called to his power and began to destroy the world.

He destroyed the news vehicle in front of him with a single blow, and it disintegrated in a satisfying explosion that blew pieces of shrapnel thirty feet in the air. The columns in front of the building went next, one by one. He smashed every one of them into rubble.

Humans ran wildly in every direction away from him, and Alaric laughed. Madness and murder and death swirled through him, and he laughed as he hurled it outward, destroying everything in sight. He shot ropes of pure magic at a car, lifted it into the air, and threw it against the side of a building, taking out half of the wall. He levitated into the air, dimly sensing Christophe calling to him, trying to stop him, demanding to know what in the nine hells was going on. Alaric slammed shut the door to their mental communication and shot a blast of energy at the park, taking out six trees at once and leaving a giant fireball in their place.

It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. If that monster touched one hair on Quinn’s head, Alaric would drown the entire world and laugh as every human on the planet died. He froze, mid-thought, his hands encircled by glowing spheres of destructive power.

Drowning.

That was it.