Heart of Atlantis

Grace and Alexios brought a very surprised rebel training class.”

Conlan pointed at the group of mostly young humans standing off to one side gaping at everything.

“Denal?”

“He left Maeve behind, but he’d planned to do so, anyway, he says, so he’s not in the least upset.” Conlan scowled at the youngling. “I see he’s already hugging my wife again.”

Alaric started to reply, but a mental blast cut through the noise and the chatter and all but stripped the gears in his brain.

Alaric, I need you right now, Quinn mentally shouted at him.

I’m on my way, he sent back, and then he clapped Conlan on the shoulder so hard he nearly knocked the prince off the temple steps.

“She’s back. She’s back, and I know just where she is,” he crowed. “That hotel must enjoy replacing windows, though.”

“What do you need?” Conlan asked, instantly grasping the situation.

Alaric yelled for Justice, who was standing near Alexios. “Bring me a sword.”

If his magic misfired around the demon, he wanted a backup option. To Conlan he said, “What do I need? Interesting question.”

“Hey, portal,” he shouted. “Come listen to what I need, or I’ll let Atlantis be crushed under five and a half miles of water.”

“Nice touch,” Conlan murmured. “I’m guessing portals don’t understand about bluffing.”

Alaric shot him a look. “Who says I’m bluffing?”

Conlan’s smile faded, but then the portal appeared, surprising both of them.

“If these people and my baby die because you kidnapped them and dumped them here, I’ll make it my mission in life to exterminate you, you egotistic, pathetic excuse for an elevator,” Riley said, marching up to the portal with a sleeping baby in her arms.

Aidan didn’t even open an eye. Perhaps he was used to his mother’s fierce personality and was comforted by it. It occurred to Alaric with the force of a spear to the chest that perhaps he and Quinn would one day have a child a lot like Aidan. He suddenly found it hard to breathe.

“Get in before it disappears,” Conlan said. “Hurry up, Alaric, we need that stone.”

Alaric jumped into the portal. “Take me to Quinn.”

As he traveled through the vortex, the strangest thing happened. Alaric thought he heard the portal say, “Duuude.”

Before he could analyze that bit of oddity, it dumped him in the middle of a room filled with a gang of armed men, a dead man, and one human female who glowed—at least to his senses—with the intensity of a miniature sun. The sight of the Atlantean energy gave Alaric hope he hadn’t dared to feel, which surged up inside him, dancing with his joy and relief from Quinn’s presence.

She was alive and safe. Thank all the gods.

But then Quinn turned her head toward him, and he saw that the side of her face was one massive bruise, and her lip was split and swollen.

A blinding rage swept through him, and he attacked the men with the sword and with his power, driving ice spears through their throats one by one. Distantly, he heard her yelling at him to stop, but a primal fury had crushed his reason and destroyed his logic. He sensed that Poseidon’s Pride was enhancing and increasing his power, but he had no intention of trying to stop.

They’d hurt her, so they had to die.

There was only one left alive—a man dressed in all black who’d tried to shoot Alaric until he’d frozen the man’s gun to his hand in an impenetrable block of ice. Alaric raised his sword again, but then Quinn stepped between him and his target.

“No,” she shouted, waving her arms. “This one protected me from the others, and even more important, he might know more about Ptolemy’s plans.”

Alaric slowly lowered the sword as her words penetrated his raging mind. “He hurt you. I see your face.”

“No, that was Ptolemy. I’ll tell you everything, but it wasn’t this man. He protected me.” She stepped closer and put her arm around Alaric’s waist, careful not to block his sword arm.

“This one protected you,” he repeated, still not believing it.

She nodded. “He shot the dead one for trying to hurt me.”

“And yet he held you captive at gunpoint,” Alaric said, his outward calm back in place. “He will die for that alone.”

“I can’t tell you anything if I’m dead,” the man said, finally speaking up. He must have had ice in his veins, since he wasn’t shaking or begging or crying.

“Do you know anything to tell?” Alaric placed the tip of his sword against the man’s throat and pushed, just hard enough to cut the skin. Blood dripped down the man’s neck.

Quinn nudged Alaric to the side a little. “What’s your name, and what did Ptolemy tell you?”

“I’m Westbury. He didn’t tell me much, unfortunately,” the man said. “His plan once he arrived was to head to the Bermuda Triangle, if that makes any sense at all.”

Alaric exchanged a grim glance with Quinn. It told them far too much.

“It’s a measure of your integrity that you admit you know little,” Alaric said. “And yet you have no loyalty, to admit so much.”

“He doesn’t deserve my loyalty,” Westbury said, holding up his ice-encumbered right hand with his left. “He took my sister and promised to give her back to my family in exchange for my services. Now I may never see her again.”

Quinn’s eyes widened. “What does she look like?”

“I have a picture, but . . .” The man glanced pointedly down at his frozen arm.

Quinn looked at Alaric. He considered, then nodded. Made the ice vanish.

Westbury showed her a photograph on his telephone, and Quinn smiled.

“I met this girl. She’s fine, or at least she was mostly fine when I last saw her. Bruised but mostly unharmed,” Quinn said. “I don’t know—”

The man’s phone rang at that moment, and a different photograph of the same girl flashed on the screen. Westbury answered it, spoke briefly but with unmistakable emotion, and then closed the phone.

“She’s in the emergency room. She said that you saved her, and I was . . . I can never make this up to you,” he said hoarsely to Quinn, and Alaric watched as she made another conquest right before his eyes.

“Go. She needs you,” Quinn said, brushing Westbury’s gratitude aside.

She was embarrassed when they did this, the thankfulness. The devotion. Alaric knew her well enough to understand this.

Westbury was wise enough to look to Alaric, though, before moving. “Either kill me or let me go to my sister.”

Suddenly, Alaric wanted nothing more than to be alone with Quinn . He came to a decision.

“Go. Your actions were somewhat offset by your motives,” he said abruptly. “But never let me see you again.”

Westbury nodded before taking a card out of his pocket and handing it to Quinn. “Any time, any place. Just call me, and I’ll be there.”

As soon as the man left the room, Alaric called to the portal, which again appeared almost instantly. He wrapped his arms around Quinn, and together they stepped into the portal.

“Back to Atlantis, now,” he commanded.

“I had to sacrifice the shell you gave me. I needed the weight for the switch,” she told him.

“I’ll find you another,” he promised.

“I have it,” Quinn whispered. “Poseidon’s Pride.”

“I know,” he said, and then he healed her lip and face before kissing her senseless. He sank into her emotions with the first touch of her lips, and he claimed her mouth with every ounce of possession and need he felt for this miracle of a woman.