He’d drown them all, city by city, nation by nation, until he found Quinn. If that didn’t give them incentive to cooperate, nothing would. He centered himself and reached deep into the reservoir of his power for every last ounce of magical reserves he might have, and then he ruthlessly stripped power from every human witch in a hundred-mile radius. All sorcerers, wizards, and magic practitioners of every kind suddenly found themselves bereft of power, as one of the most powerful high priests Atlantis had ever known tore their magic from them.
It was fast, dirty, and painful—and he didn’t care.
It left some of them screaming and some of them in comas—and he didn’t care.
He threw all of it into the ocean, where he drove the power with a towering fury, twisting and turning, breaking and battering, until he got exactly the result he wanted. A tsunami larger than any ever seen on the surface of the planet formed in the Atlantic Ocean and headed straight for New York City.
It was two thousand feet high and still growing when it was a mile out from shore, and nothing—
He stared down at the fools with news cameras who’d been stupid enough to remain in the area, filming his actions.
“If he harms Quinn Dawson, you will all die.”
Chapter 19
Quinn lay on her side on a couch, its rough fabric scratching her face and the smell of years of dust and mildew clogging her nose. Ptolemy had bound her hands behind her back and tied a rag over her eyes. She didn’t bother to struggle. She had nothing left to fight for. She’d failed to retrieve Poseidon’s Pride in time, so Atlantis was probably lost by now, with everyone she loved in it, except for Jack, who had been lost to her for days. And Riley . . . Quinn’s heart shattered into tiny, broken pieces at the thought of her sister and nephew. She’d wanted to save them all, and now she couldn’t even save herself.
Even if she wanted to continue the fight—even if she could find some way to care enough to keep on keeping on—she’d been outed as the rebel leader and shown to be a cold-blooded murderer on international TV.
There was nothing left. She’d find a way to kill herself and take Ptolemy down with her. That was her one final mission. Her one final goal.
She’d tried to reach out to find Alaric with her mind, the way he always seemed to be able to find her, but the obstacle there was that he was a powerful magic-wielding Atlantean and she was a human with only a single talent. Even that was useless; Ptolemy’s tainted, foul magic clouded her senses so badly that she was sure she’d go insane if she didn’t keep her shields up, so even if Alaric were trying to reach her, she wouldn’t hear him.
Anyway, what good was a final good-bye? Alaric knew how she felt.
Maybe.
Probably.
She didn’t bother to try to nudge the mask from over her eyes, because she could see enough to know the room was pitch-black. Ptolemy had dumped her there after they’d gone through a vortex not unlike a fun house– mirror version of the portal. He’d quickly and expertly bound her and tossed her on the couch, with orders not to move. Apparently they were someplace where he didn’t have to worry about her screaming for help. She’d tried for a while, but nobody had come running to her assistance.
She’d waited for a long time but then finally, in spite of everything, she’d dozed off. Her body had been exhausted, and her mind had shut down to protect her from the hopeless despair of knowing she was all alone in the world. Always before, she’d had someone to fight for. She’d known she was making the world safe for her sister and her sister’s children to come. But now? The world could take care of itself.
She passed some time in fitful sleep, waking and then dozing again, she didn’t know for how long, before she heard voices. Ptolemy and someone else, a woman, but the voice was familiar in a horrible way. She hadn’t heard it in a long time, but it wasn’t another rebel, it was too . . .
Oh.
Oh,
She curled her legs into her chest, praying desperately for a wooden stake, a gun loaded with silver bullets, or divine intervention from God or, in fact, any of the gods. Unfortunately, she didn’t exactly believe in any of them. What kind of supreme beings would allow so much pain and suffering in the world?
Her mind was set to full-on babble now, as the one creature alive that she feared even more than Ptolemy and his demonic raping agenda entered the room where Quinn lay helpless, blind, and bound.
Anubisa. The vampire goddess.
This was going to be bad. She’d been ready to die, but her mind rebelled at the thought of meeting her end by slow torture.
“What do you have for me, my ally?” Anubisa crooned in her sickeningly sweet lilt. Her voice carried the tone and feel of rusty daggers and bashed-in skulls. Quinn winced in real pain, her eardrums aching from the sound.
“She is not for you,” Ptolemy said harshly. “Quinn Dawson is mine.”
“Quinn? I know that name,” Anubisa hissed. “She is mine. I must have my revenge against this one.”
Quinn rolled over onto her stomach with her legs underneath her, ready to piston her way back and hopefully smash somebody’s face with her head before she died. It wasn’t much, but it was all she had for a plan. Bound human versus demon and vampire goddess didn’t bode well for the human.
She heard tentative footsteps, and a new voice entered the mix. This one sounded like a girl, so Quinn put a pause on her head-bashing plan, as gentle hands lifted her and removed the scarf from her eyes. A scared-looking girl, probably in her late teens, stood in front of her, holding the cloth in shaking hands.
“Don’t fight him,” the girl whispered. “It’s even worse when you fight.”
Quinn studied the bruises that covered one side of the girl’s face, and any trace of fear in her own heart seeped away, to be replaced with cold, hard, welcome rage. Not the berserker kind of rage; no, not Quinn. She fueled her spirit with the kind of anger that knew how to plot, and scheme, and bide its time until she could find the best way to kill anyone and everyone who had hurt the innocents Quinn considered to be under her protection.
Like this girl.
“I’ll help you,” Quinn said. “Don’t be afraid.”
The girl clearly didn’t believe her, but Quinn couldn’t blame her for that. The circumstances didn’t really support her claim.
“Get out of the way,” Anubisa said, backhanding the girl with one small, slender white hand. The girl flew at least ten feet through the room and landed in a crumpled heap on the floor, where she lay still, quietly sobbing.
Quinn looked up at Anubisa and smiled, careful not to look into the vampire’s eyes. “That’s one,” she said calmly.
“One what, stupid human?” Anubisa drew her hand back to strike Quinn, too, but Ptolemy stopped her by the simple virtue of pointing a stick at her and blasting. Anubisa fell to the floor, apparently unconscious or dead. She didn’t breathe, so Quinn couldn’t tell.
Quinn stared at Ptolemy and his stick of death, wondering if she were next. On closer examination, however, she realized it wasn’t a stick at all but the scepter with Poseidon’s Pride inset at the tip.
“You’re pretty brave, using one god’s possession to kill another,” she said, hoping to taunt him into making a mistake. Petty tyrants could often be trapped by the gilded ropes of their own vanity.
“She’s not dead, more’s the pity,” he said. “But, yes, it was rather fun. I wonder what I’ll do next. Maybe destroy your White House and turn the area into a parking lot for my new fleet of automobiles. Wonderful things, your cars. You actually pay money to move from place to place in vehicles that destroy your environment while you use them.”
He shook his head in apparent wonder, and she realized something she’d only guessed at before.
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
He tilted his head, and for one brief second, his eyes flickered and changed from normal, dark brown human eyes to something different. Alien. There were no pupils at all; only swirling traces of color on a pitch-black background. No whites at all. His eyes weren’t the demon red she’d been halfway expecting. They were far
