Heart of Atlantis

the two, completely obliterating them, until only bones and the twisted steel of the chair remained.

“I’ll kill you for that,” she said, not caring that tears streamed down her face as she reeled in shock from the realization that—however indirectly—she’d caused him to kill those people. He’d wanted to prove a point to her, because she’d been acting like a smart-ass.

She looked up and saw Alaric speeding toward Ptolemy, who was clearly unaware of the Atlantean vengeance approaching, because he smiled, a slow smile, hideous in its triumph.

“Is this our first spat, my darling?”

Before she could answer—before Alaric could reach them—Ptolemy ripped open a jagged tear in reality and shoved her into his profane version of the Atlantean portal. She screamed Alaric’s name and heard him roaring behind her, but it was too late. The opening closed behind Ptolemy and sent the two of them spinning away from Alaric, New York, and probably even Earth itself.

Despair swallowed her whole and spat her back out, after another nausea-inducing trip, into a pretty good approximation of hell.

Sulfuric fumes assaulted her nose and mouth, making it difficult to breathe. Nothing in sight lived: no trees or plants, animals or birds. For miles and miles, she could only see desert and rock and the rubble of a collapsed civilization. The sky was the worst, though. Three low-hanging moons shone a sullen orange over a blasted apocalyptic landscape.

“Where are we?” she demanded, but she was afraid she knew, and terror rose up in her, flailing around like a gibbering creature strung up in a noose. Her heart pounded so hard that she was sure Ptolemy must be able to hear it.

“We’re in my dimension now, Quinn, where you can’t play games with me, because here there are no rules but mine.” He grabbed her arm with one newly claw-tipped hand and started dragging her down a narrow path between two tumbled stone columns. “Isn’t it just what you imagined, when you dreamed of a house with a white picket fence?”

He leered at her and started laughing, but his teeth were changing and growing sharper, and his face was contorting right there in front of her. If she’d ever doubted his claim to be demon kin, she didn’t any longer.

“You know nothing about my dreams, buddy.” She reached deep inside herself to where the light of Alaric’s magic and the battered but unbroken foundation of her own courage still burned. She’d pretended to go along with one despicable monster before. She could do it again, until she’d achieved her goal. She’d be so convincing that she’d deserve an Academy Freaking Award.

“You have no idea what a joyous day this is about to become,” Ptolemy said, dragging her along. His laughter grew more and more shrill, until it didn’t sound anything close to human, but that wasn’t the worst part of it. Not at all. The worst part was the twisted, grayish-orange creatures that had started crawling up out of the rubble and following them. They didn’t have any recognizable limbs or appendages at all. Mostly, all they had was teeth. Lots and lots of teeth.

* * *

Hours or minutes later—Quinn couldn’t be sure which, since time seemed to run sideways here—they reached their destination. The building, built in a twisted approximation of a Greek—or maybe Atlantean—temple, was at least partially still standing. Ptolemy dragged her inside an open stone doorway and then finally released his grip on her arm.

She rubbed her wrist and looked around warily, mostly to avoid looking at him. He’d become more and more bestial as they marched across the hideous terrain of his world, until now he was almost impossible to look at without flinching. There was something simply wrong about him. Dark and hideously twisted; just like his magic. She cast a glance back over her shoulder to see if the grotesque creatures following them were anywhere near the building, but the doorway remained empty.

The room they’d entered, though—the room was incredible. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. It was as beautifully ornate as any of the rooms she’d seen in the Atlantean palace. Vividly blue marble mosaics lined the walls, which were decorated with images of ocean waves, fish, mermaids, and fantastical flowers portrayed by ancient craftspeople with amazing artistic sensibility. The floor was cool tile in jade green—or maybe it really was jade—and it, too, was beautifully designed.

“Well,” Ptolemy said, his voice gravelly, as though his tongue no longer worked quite right. “What do you think?”

“It’s magnificent,” she said honestly.

He whirled around and snarled at her, and she took a prudent step back.

“You mock me?”

“No. Trust me, when I’m mocking you, you’ll know it,” she said bitterly. “Like ‘Hey, troll face, nice teeth.’ Or ‘Hey, way to show your courage by murdering helpless old people.’”

A flash of an indefinable emotion crossed his face, and if he’d been anyone else, she’d almost have said it was shame.

“It was my mother’s room,” he finally said, turning away from her.

He jerked his head at one corner of the room.

She walked over to where he’d indicated, and found a portrait hidden in a niche. It looked incredibly old, but somehow the colors were still as fresh and vibrant as if newly painted. The subject was a woman, clearly Atlantean—she could have been Serai’s sister—holding a baby.

“She’s beautiful,” Quinn said, feeling an unwanted flash of compassion for the monster beside her. Beauty had borne the Beast. How much must that have hurt them both?

Ptolemy must have been able to read Quinn’s sincerity, because his hunched posture relaxed, and his features resumed somewhat of their human cast, at least enough so she could bear to look at him.

“Yes, she was. She was also one of the aknasha’an, like you.”

Quinn whirled to look at him. “Is that why? You—”

“My kind is unable to bear children without a female who can read emotions. Whether by reason of an ancient curse none of us remember, or simply because of a cruel twist of fate, we must steal women from other dimensions in order to procreate,” he said. “You became known to me when I was studying your world, and I would have taken you simply for your abilities alone, but your exploits as rebel leader fascinated me until I became obsessed. Your strength and courage. Your leadership skills. These are qualities I want for my heirs.”

His sincerity made her teeth hurt, so she told herself she was simply dealing with a man with serious mommy issues. “You do realize that you can’t just go around stealing women to use as breeders, right?”

He smiled at her with teeth that were still far too sharp, and quite possibly serrated, from the look of them. She repressed a shudder.

“But that is exactly what I have done, my dear wife.”

“Don’t call me that.” She thought longingly of the knife in her boot and forced herself to change the subject when he leered at her again. “What happened here?”

He paced around the room slowly. “The same thing that always happens with warlike creatures. We destroyed each other and our dimension. We’ve had to roam farther and farther afield for mates, and many of our people never return to this blasted wasteland of a realm, for obvious reasons.”

“Why did you? What is there here for you?” She pointed at the landscape through a crumbling window frame, its glass, if it had ever had any, long gone.

“Why, my brothers are here,” he said, and then he threw back his head and made a long, ululating whistling noise that she was sure would make her ears bleed.

She clamped her hands over them and almost missed what he said next.

“When you and I rule Atlantis and then the rest of your world, they will serve as my most trusted advisors and staff.”

Her mouth fell open. He was bat-shit crazy.

“I don’t think Anubisa is going to go along with that plan.”

He sneered. “Anubisa is a mad relic of a time long gone. I will have no trouble with her, as you’ve seen. I plan to rule her vampires, too, or destroy them. It matters little to me.”

She didn’t have time to form a response to that, before his brothers started arriving. And if she’d thought Ptolemy was hideous, she’d sorely underestimated the meaning of the word. He was Prince Charming compared to his family.