the remaining monsters cowered at the sight of him.
He hurled more energy spheres at Ptolemy with his left hand and then—realizing his hands were not needed—he simply stalked forward, surrounded by spheres that formed and attacked the demon just because Alaric willed them to do so.
He was on fire—he was the most powerful high priest Poseidon had ever known—he was a
Quinn’s laughter sounded in his mind.
Her warmth and humor snapped Alaric out of the power’s seductive grip and back into himself, just in time to crush Ptolemy’s sneak attack with what appeared to be a magically created battle-axe.
The two of them battled with everything in their respective arsenals, seemingly equally matched, until Alaric balanced on the edge of utter fatigue and a potentially fatal case of magical exhaustion. He’d been carrying Atlantis’s safety and the stability of the Trident for too long, and it had drained him. Ptolemy, sensing weakness, laughed and threw a dagger at Alaric, who sent a pulse of magic to deflect it.
Except it wasn’t a magical dagger. It was ordinary steel, and the magic had no effect on it. Alaric realized it just as it pierced his side, and he felt the hot, wet gush of blood running down his ribs almost before he felt the pain of the stab wound.
“Not as good as you think you are,” Ptolemy sneered. “You don’t deserve Quinn, and I’ll remind her of that every day when you’re dead and she’s pregnant with my heir.”
Something vital snapped in Alaric, and any restraint or caution he might have felt toward accepting the full promise of his new powers vanished. He flew up into the air, trailing actual flames, and then he dove toward Ptolemy with the strength and speed of a raptor seeking its prey.
The demon never had a chance.
Ptolemy’s magical shields and weapons blew apart like tissue paper in a windstorm in front of Alaric’s towering fury. Alaric hurled the demon back, farther away from Quinn, and smashed him back to the rooftop every time Ptolemy tried to get up.
A primal rage thundered through Alaric with hurricane force. “Nobody touches my woman, do you understand me?”
But Ptolemy was beyond words. The demon shrieked unintelligible, garbled sounds of hate and frustration, and gathered his strength for one final rush at Alaric, who let him do it. When Ptolemy had almost reached him, hands outstretched for Alaric’s throat, Alaric threw open all of his shields and channeled the power.
Endless oceans of power poured into him and filled him and burned to be set free. Alaric roared out his triumph and his mastery over the magic, and it obeyed his mental command and formed into a lightning bolt of pure energy that shone as brightly as Alaric himself now did.
“Now you will die,” he told Ptolemy, and then he plunged the lightning bolt down and through the top of the demon’s skull. The magic cut through bone like butter, and Ptolemy shrieked with all the anguish of the nine hells, and then his body split in two, right down the middle, and the two halves fell to the ground, already dissolving.
Alaric watched, breathing hard, as the demon melted. And then he smiled.
The creatures who’d been trying to sneak up behind him shrieked and ran away at the sight of him, but it was too late. Alaric threw a rapid-fire burst of energy spheres at them and incinerated them all.
They’d tried to hurt his woman. They died. Nothing could be simpler.
His gaze arrowed toward Quinn, who was standing, a gun in each hand, in front of Noriko and Riley and the baby, and he laughed.
She smiled at him across the fallen bodies of their enemies.
Quinn was fiercely, overwhelmingly glad that Ptolemy was dead.
“What happened to Alaric? Why is he all Johnny Torch?” Ven shouted, but Quinn shook her head. No time.
She pulled out the Uzi and swept the roof clear of the few remaining of Ptolemy’s brethren, and she cheered at the sight until her voice was hoarse.
Threaten to “mate” with her, would they, the little monsters? Now they wouldn’t be mating with anybody.
She waved at Alaric and blew him a kiss.
A brief flare of pain alerted her to Alaric’s injury. He was still shining, but not quite as much as he had been.
She started toward him. “Tell me that again, and I’ll shoot you myself. Let me see it.”
She pulled his shirt up and her heart jumped into her throat at the sight of the wound. “That’s not nothing. Fix it. Now.”
Instead, he pulled her closer and kissed her so deeply that her knees buckled. His magic poured into her like a high-voltage current, and for a minute she was afraid she was going to have an orgasm right there on the roof surrounded by the Atlantean royal family and a whole lot of dead demons.
“Now I will heal it,” Alaric said, when he finally released her.
She blinked up at him, dazed, and he smiled that completely male, entirely self-satisfied smile again. It made her want to hit him.
It made her want to kiss him again.
She settled for neither. “You did slay an interdimensional demon for me, so I guess I’ll let you get away with this one.”
His smile faded. “But Atlantis is not safe yet. Where is Anubisa?”
As if on cue, Atlantis rocked like an earthquake had shattered its foundation, and Quinn fell against a stone pedestal and knocked off a marble statuette of a porpoise.
With her head.
“Ow,” she complained. “Why is it always my head?”
“Hardest part on you?” Ven suggested, and she groaned.
“Anubisa,” Alaric said, staring into the far distance at something only he could see. “By all the gods, Anubisa is going after the Trident.”
Conlan, who was comforting Riley and Aidan, froze. “Alaric—”
“I know,” Alaric said grimly, as he started running for the stairs. “If it falls into her hands, all of Atlantis is doomed.”
Jack snarled, and Quinn wanted to do the same.
Ven groaned. “Why can’t we ever catch a damn break?” He took off after Quinn and Alaric, and Justice and Jack followed close behind, silent and deadly.
“We need to end this, once and for all,” Conlan said, matching pace with Alaric.
Alaric nodded, the movement all the more striking since he was glowing again and tiny sparks arced from his motion. “I agree. Tonight we discover how to kill a goddess.”
Chapter 34
Alaric hit the stairs running and shot through the palace like an arrow loosed from Artemis’s bow, wondering if even his newly increased power would be sufficient to defeat a vampire goddess.
His heart ached at the idea of losing Quinn before he’d had a chance to live his life with her, but nothing
