Heart of Atlantis

The boy looked up at him with a new measure of respect. “Really? You can do that? Well, thanks.”

Alaric considered the boy. “How old are you?”

“I’m eighteen.”

Alaric said nothing, simply waited.

“Okay, I’m sixteen, or at least I will be next month,” Faust finally admitted. “But my ID says I’m eighteen, and I’ve been taking care of myself and the kids for almost two years.”

“Admirable.”

The boy visibly puffed up a little, probably surprised to hear approval instead of condemnation from an adult, even one he considered to be off his rocker.

“If you would thank me, do so by helping me find an abandoned subway station,” Alaric said, making a sudden decision to trust the boy.

Faust backed up as a group of women walked by, chattering about lunch plans. He waited for them to pass before he shook his head.

“For reals? Those places are seriously scary, and that’s before you get into the new players like this Ptolemy guy. I’m talking gang hangouts, rats, drug dens, rats, shorted-out electrical wires, and rats.”

Alaric raised an eyebrow. “You’re afraid of rats?”

“Heck yeah, I’m afraid of rats. They carry all kinds of freaky germs, like the next bubonic plague, probably.”

“You may be right. I will destroy the rats. Now, can we go?”

Faust sighed, and then brightened. “I’ll do it for a hundred bucks. I can feed the rest of the kids for a week on that, if I’m careful.”

“I don’t have any of your currency.”

“Man, that sucks.”

Alaric felt the new magic boiling up in him, wanting to destroy, and he forced it down again. “I will obtain some, or give you gold in the equivalent of five thousand of your dollars, to do this for me. Now. We’re running out of time, and I’m running out of patience.”

* * *

Nearly three hours later, Alaric admitted defeat. They’d searched every tunnel and hole that Faust could find, but there was no trace of Quinn. Finally, they’d come to a room that he was sure was the one from the vision, even down to the shabby sofa, but there was no trace of Quinn or Ptolemy, except perhaps for a faint trace of her scent.

Frustration borne of helpless despair rose up in him, and he blasted the couch into tiny shreds.

“This isn’t working,” he said, all but snarling at the boy, the room, and the situation.

Faust stared at the black hole in the concrete where the couch used to be. “I don’t know, that seemed to work fine.”

The boy flicked his finger like a gun and shot a thin finger of flame across the room to incinerate a pile of newspapers.

“Why would you fear rats, when you have that power?”

Faust shrugged his thin shoulders. “I don’t really know how to control it. My mom kicked me out when it showed up and I started fires in the house,” he said, staring down at his hands as if they belonged to someone else. “Maybe you could, you know, take me on as an apprentice when this is over.”

“I won’t be taking on any more acolytes, ever. I told Poseidon that I’m done with him.”

The boy’s shoulders slumped, but then he grinned. “You really told Poseidon—the Poseidon—that he could take his job and shove it?”

“Shove it where?” Strange human.

Faust laughed. “Never mind. Old saying. It was a song, I think.”

“I don’t care about songs or old sayings. If we don’t find Quinn soon, my entire civilization will be destroyed,” Alaric said, and then he raced out of the room and out of the tunnels, until he reached fresh air, or at least as fresh as it got in New York.

Dusk had settled its shadowy cloak around the city, and Alaric was no closer to finding Quinn. Faust arrived, slightly out of breath, and Alaric realized he had no idea what to do next. He sent his senses searching for Quinn, but only the faintest murmur of her existence echoed back to him.

Random searching was worse than useless.

He had failed. Atlantis and Quinn were doomed, and it was entirely his fault.

“What we need is some food,” the boy said.

Before Alaric could answer, that damnable voice was speaking to him again, and he whirled around to find the portal forming behind him.

“You have need?”

“No,” Alaric shouted, but yet again it was too late, and the portal took him. He and Faust fell tumbling through the vortex and into Atlantis.

“Take me back, now. I must find Quinn and Poseidon’s Pride,” Alaric roared, but the portal blinked out of existence.

A solid minute of calling it yielded nothing but a hoarse voice.

“Somehow, sometime, I will find a way to choke you to death,” Alaric told the spirit of the portal, which apparently either wasn’t listening or chose not to respond to the death threat any more than it had listened to his calls to return.

Gathering the tattered shreds of his calm, Alaric turned to find Faust slowly turning in a circle, trying to see everything at once.

“Oh this is wicked cool,” the boy yelled, gazing openmouthed up at the dome, as Marcus and the portal guards stared at the two of them in surprise.

“You would think so,” Alaric said. “Don’t start any fires. Marcus, please ask one of your men to take the youngling to the kitchens and see that he’s fed. I’m going to find Conlan and Christophe and Serai and see what’s happening before I completely lose my mind.”

“You know that you’re glowing, right?” Marcus’s face was impassive as he posed the question, as if it were a regular occurrence for Poseidon’s high priest to light up like a bonfire.

“Yes. It’s a new development,” Alaric said tersely. “I’ll explain later, if we survive this.”

It was a very big if.

When he reached the palace, it was to find Conlan attempting to destroy the throne room, using his royal sword to smash his throne into shards of wood, gems, and precious metals, while Ven tried in vain to stop him. Conlan’s shirt was loose, and his back was wet with the sweat of exertion, so he’d been at it for some time. The high prince whirled to face Alaric.

“Alaric? Do you have the stone?” Conlan pointed the sword at him. “Where is it? We need to get out of here and find Riley and Aidan and the others. Did you hear from them?”

“We need to find them, now,” Ven said, his eyes wild.

“And I thought I was the only one going mad,” Alaric said, calmly enough for a man who’d managed to lose the woman with whom he’d soul-melded. Even as he thought it, he realized Conlan and Ven were in the exact same situation.

“We will find them again,” he told them. “Healthy and whole. I swear it.”

Or he would destroy the entire world.

But they need not know he held on to sanity by only the slenderest of threads.

“We need—” Ven began again, and then the godsdamned portal decided to materialize in the middle of the throne room.

“You have need?”

And it dumped out a precious cargo, indeed: Keely and Eleni walked out, followed by Erin, and then Riley holding Aidan.

As Conlan dropped the sword and ran to embrace his family, and Ven did the same with Erin, Alaric watched the portal, hoping without cause for one final traveler, but it again vanished before he could reach it.

“You’re defective,” Keely shouted after it, and he noticed that, oddly enough, her nose was sunburned. Her entire face, actually.