Heart of Atlantis

worried in the least. In fact, she was smiling.

“No wonder you always lose. You’re all moronic buffoons,” the vampire said, slowly turning in a circle to try to watch all of the Atlanteans surrounding her. “Do you think I swore an oath five thousand years ago to destroy you, just to have it end like this?”

“Really? Is that all you’ve had to occupy yourself for five thousand years?” Quinn laughed as scornfully as she could manage. “You need a hobby, chick. Get your nails done. Watch Survivor: Vampire. Do something. You’re a one-note wonder, and everybody here is bored.”

If success was measured as “the screaming vampire nearly took off my head just from the sound of her screeching,” then Quinn figured her taunt was a rousing success. The part where she collapsed to the ground with her ears bleeding? Not so much.

“Enough,” Alaric said, shining so brightly with barely restrained magic that Quinn had to shade her eyes to look at him. “Now you die.”

“I think not, priest,” Anubisa said, laughing. And then she screamed and flung her hands out and down, as if opening something.

Something like a portal.

Quinn’s skin tried to crawl off her bones again, and she only had time to think, oh no, oh no, oh no, before the empty air near Anubisa opened onto a toxic orange landscape, and Ptolemy leapt through, leading a horde of the atrocities he called family. Anubisa, laughing, transformed into a cloud of oily black smoke and disappeared.

The demons poured forth, more and more and more, racing in all directions to attack, and Riley screamed, high and wild. Quinn started shooting, but a wave of hopeless, helpless revulsion and despair threatened to shake the foundations of her courage like never before.

Alaric hurled an enormous energy sphere straight at Ptolemy’s head, but the demon almost casually deflected it, and it smashed into one of the crystal spires of the palace and shattered it.

Justice and Conlan fought like madmen to defeat or even contain the horde of demons, and Ven, like Quinn, fired shot after shot into the swarming masses.

“Now that is butt ugly,” Ven yelled, stomping on a foot-high creature that was all teeth and elbows as it tried to bite him, but Quinn only heard him with a fraction of her attention, because all of her focus was on the monster she’d seen being impaled back in his own dimension.

“Hello, honey,” Ptolemy said, his face and body shape monstrously distorted. He flashed a giant, shark- toothed smile. “I’m ho-ome.”

Chapter 33

Alaric’s rage exploded outward in a storm of lightning bolts at the sight of the monster who had abducted Quinn not once, but twice. The demon who’d forced her to kill an innocent man.

Alaric had gotten his wish. Ptolemy had come back from the dead, just so Alaric could kill him again. Slowly and painfully.

From across the roof, Jack’s roar sounded over the noise of battle.

Ptolemy glanced back at the tiger, and then he started laughing. “Oh, the gang’s all here. Even my beloved’s kitty-cat friend.”

“You die tonight,” Alaric said, and he started toward Ptolemy, striding over dead vampires and striking down any not yet dead ones that got in his way.

“How does the interdimensional demon speak perfect English, even down to American slang?” Ven called out.

“We’ll discuss later,” Quinn said, and then she shot Ptolemy in the head.

Or at least she tried to. Apparently the demon’s head was made of bullet-deflecting materials. She screamed in frustration as the bullet bounced off Ptolemy, but Alaric steered its path so that it ricocheted right into the ass of one of the atrocities and the entire creature exploded. Then it was Ptolemy’s turn to scream in rage, and Alaric smiled the smile that had made fully trained warriors fall to their knees.

“Hey, guess your baby brother won’t be looking for any emotional empath mates,” Quinn said, taunting.

“I will hurt you for that,” Ptolemy snarled. “I will make you bleed and beg when I fuck you.”

“I think not,” Alaric said, and when Justice finally turned from the four vampires he’d been slaying, he saw Alaric and gasped.

“What in the nine hells?” Justice was so busy staring at Alaric that he almost missed the atrocity getting ready to jump on his leg, teeth first.

Quinn shot it for him. “Two,” she called out, and Ptolemy gnashed his teeth, tearing strips of skin off his face as his features grew even more bestial in form.

“Quinn, to Riley,” Alaric commanded, forgetting that Quinn didn’t take commands very well.

Naturally, she took a step toward Ptolemy, pointing her gun again. Another creature rushed her, and Alaric incinerated it with another lightning bolt.

“Isn’t lightning somebody else’s gig?” Quinn said. “What’s Poseidon going to say about that?”

“That is no longer my concern. The impending death of this demon, however, is,” Alaric said calmly. He circled his hand in the air—once, twice—and a miniature tornado formed at the edge of his fingertips and shot across the roof toward Ptolemy.

The demon didn’t even see it, though, because all of his attention was on Quinn. As he stalked toward her, Ptolemy’s shape enlarged and contorted, until he was nearly unrecognizable as the suave politician they’d first seen on TV.

“You took it, didn’t you, you sneaky thief?” Ptolemy took another step, and the tornado, which had grown to at least ten feet tall, crashed into him, whipped him up off the roof, and smashed him into the stone wall of the palace, hard. The demon screamed, and Alaric’s eardrums reverberated with the echo of Ptolemy’s rage.

He scanned the rooftop. Conlan, Ven, Justice, Jack, and Quinn were destroying the rest of the creatures who’d rushed through the portal, and Riley, holding Aidan, was crouching down near Noriko, who was awake now and holding a force field around the three of them.

In the chaos, Anubisa had vanished. Again. But one glance at the night sky, spectacularly lit up by the stars, the moon, and Alaric himself, showed a new problem. A black swarm was advancing on Atlantis over the open sea.

“It’s the fucking apocalypse,” Justice said, his face hard. His deadly sword slashed and sliced, decapitating demons in a vicious whirlwind of death. “I have to go to Keely. Now.”

“How is that possible? Vampires can’t travel over the ocean,” Ven said, staring at the sky. “They’re terrified of water. It messes with their powers.”

“They’re more afraid of Anubisa. If she tells them to stick stakes in their own hearts while munching on garlic and wearing crosses, they’ll do it,” Quinn said grimly. “And maybe they hijacked one of those ships. All it would take is for Anubisa to have rolled one captain with her eyes, and the ship would be hers.”

“Don’t ignore me,” Ptolemy screamed, picking himself up off the ground. “Where is it? Where is my gem?”

“Not too worried about your family, are you?” Quinn taunted him, as she shot another of the creatures.

Ptolemy screamed with rage again.

“Poseidon’s Pride wasn’t yours, and it never will be. Nor will Quinn,” Alaric told the demon, launching himself across the rooftop toward the demon and blasting him with his new and more powerful energy spheres. He got a direct hit, and the demon screamed and bled, but then Ptolemy called up his own power and formed a spear made of hideous orange-red light, which he hurled at Alaric with every ounce of his demonic strength.

The spear was only inches away from Alaric’s chest when he destroyed it with an energy sphere. He hadn’t expected that kind of speed from a monster who’d become as bulky and grotesque as Ptolemy’s new shape.

He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Alaric called to his new, vastly increased power and drew a shining sword from thin air. The sword’s edge burned with the pure white energy of magic, and Ptolemy flinched before it. Alaric himself blazed ever brighter, until