Heart of Atlantis

mattered more than defeating Anubisa. If she managed to kill him—and the odds were against him—she’d use the Trident to destroy Atlantis and everyone in it.

Quinn could not die. She would not die. If it took his life to save her, he’d gladly sacrifice it. But that was not the optimal choice.

Dying was, as Ven would say, Plan B.

He stopped twenty paces from the Trident’s chamber, caught Quinn’s arm, and used her momentum to swing her into an empty room.

“You will stay here,” he commanded her.

Before she could argue, he took her face in his hands and kissed her with every ounce of his longing and his love. His entire body shook with his passion, and he felt her tremble against his body.

“If you are safe, I can survive this, I think, mi amara,” he said. “Please, just this one time, stay back.”

Quinn’s eyes flashed and he could see on her very expressive face the internal battle she waged.

“Fine.” She lifted her chin. “Fine. Go fight your magical battle, but you’d better remember that all you need to do is call me, and I’ll be there to back you up.”

“I can never deserve you,” he said roughly, his muscles tensing up at the thought that he might not live to see her again.

She grinned her perfect, irrepressible grin. “Killing Anubisa would go a long way toward changing that.”

He laughed and headed for the most deadly, dangerous fight of his life.

Conlan, Ven, Justice, and Jack caught up to him as he reached the door to the Trident’s chamber.

“Jack, please stay back with Quinn and protect her,” Alaric asked, one warrior to another. “If I cannot . . . If I do not survive this, I will go to the afterlife knowing that you will be at her side.”

Jack roared and ran back toward the doorway where Quinn stood, watching Alaric, her eyes enormous but dry.

“Now?” Conlan asked.

“Now,” Alaric agreed.

They entered the chamber together, Justice and Ven right behind them. Alaric’s shoulders relaxed a fraction at the sight of Anubisa levitating near the Trident’s pedestal, where it still rested on its cushion. She hadn’t been able to take it, yet.

“You cannot touch the tool of the sea god, you foul creature,” he told her contemptuously.

“I kind of hope she tries,” Ven said, as the princes fanned out to flank him. “I’m looking forward to watching it melt her hands off.”

Anubisa shrieked with laughter, and Alaric saw Conlan’s face harden at the sound. The dark memories of torture that must be contained in her laughter for Conlan made Alaric all the more determined to kill her, once and for all.

“You cannot stop me, even with your new abilities, O priest of light,” she sneered. “Poseidon has abandoned his children while he plays power games with other pantheons, and I am delighted to step into the breach and finally, finally, murder every last one of the hideous Atlantean royal family.”

She turned her horrible red gaze to Conlan, and she cupped her breasts with her hands. “Shall I nurse your fat baby with milk from my breasts, princeling? Shall I tell him bedtime stories of how his daddy bled and screamed at my whim for seven long years?”

“You will never touch my son,” Conlan roared, and he ran toward her, raising his sword.

“No, Conlan,” Alaric shouted, but it was too late.

Anubisa threw a spear formed of oily black smoke at Conlan. It smashed into his thigh and took him down. The spear disappeared, but the gaping wound in the prince’s leg pulsed blood.

Ven ran to his brother and applied pressure to the wound, but when Alaric tried to go to Conlan, Anubisa laughed again.

“I think not. I like Conlan best when he is bleeding on the floor,” she crooned, and she shot a barrage of magical arrows at Alaric that forced him to dodge and twist out of the way while blocking them with his own magic.

Alaric hurled a series of energy spheres at Anubisa, but she shattered them with ease, all the while keeping up her perusal of the Trident and continuing to shoot her deadly black spears and arrows at Conlan, Ven, and Alaric.

Justice, who had been quietly edging around the room, leapt at Anubisa from behind, but she waved a hand in the air, and he slammed backward against the wall so hard, headfirst, that he collapsed, either unconscious or dead, on the floor.

“I’ve wanted to kill that one for a while,” she said, doing a little pirouette.

She reached out a hand—so close, almost touching the Trident—and Alaric took advantage of her distraction to hurl a spear of his own at her. She twisted away at the last second, but the weapon, formed from pure, glowing, silvery blue light, sliced through her side, and she screamed as a flow of inky black blood stained her dress.

“I will kill you even more slowly for that,” she shouted, levitating higher and higher into the air, until she floated above them.

Drops of her blood fell from her side, dripping steadily, but she appeared no weaker for the injury.

Alaric called to his new power and created a magical shield between Anubisa and Conlan, and he ran to the prince and sent a pulse of healing power through the leg wound. Conlan nodded his thanks, and he and Ven stood up and ran to the side just as Anubisa hurled a blast of power at them, destroying Alaric’s shield.

“You cannot escape me, fools,” she said, twirling around in midair. “I am all powerful. I am the goddess of Chaos and of Night. I am—”

“You are an ugly, twisted, sadistic, old hag, and my entire family has had enough of you,” Conlan said, moving to stand side by side with Alaric.

Anubisa snapped to attention at his words, and her howl of outrage nearly shattered Alaric’s eardrums. From the way the princes flinched, he could tell they’d felt it, too.

“Hag? Did you call me an ugly hag? I’m the most beautiful woman any of you have ever seen,” she shrieked, floating down nearer to them either by intent or through sheer rage.

Ven took his place on Alaric’s other side, quickly catching on. “Have you ever seen a vamp blood junkie? All strung out and filthy, hasn’t bathed in weeks? Most of them are better-looking than you, you ugly, washed-up, old woman.”

She howled again and began firing her dark spears, but Alaric blocked and destroyed every one of them. He glanced at Justice, wondered briefly what was even possible with his new powers, and decided that nothing ventured . . .

He threw a burst of healing energy across the entire chamber toward Justice, still lying on the floor behind Anubisa, and Justice sat up and grinned and gave Alaric the two-thumbs-up signal.

Anubisa never noticed a thing, because she was still shrieking with rage and throwing energy bolts at them with manic, deadly intent.

Justice, using the stealth he’d gained during centuries as one of the most lethal warriors in Atlantis, ran up behind Anubisa, raising his sword, and swung it with every ounce of his strength at her neck.

At the last possible second, some primal instinct warned the vampire, and she ducked, but the blade caught her in the shoulder and sliced her arm from her body. She screamed so long and so loud that Alaric was sure his skull would explode, but he ignored the pain and ran toward her, gathering every ounce of his magic as he ran.

This is it, Quinn, my beloved, my life, he sent to her. If I survive this, I will never leave you again.

She sent back no words, but simply a wave of courage and reassurance and warmth—she enveloped him in her love, and it gave him the courage to do what he almost certainly would not survive.

He put his hands around the throat of a goddess.

“You dare to touch me! I will kill you all,” Anubisa screamed in his face, and a blast of such twisted, black, and powerful magic smashed into him that he very nearly lost his grip on her as she hissed, clawed, and fought him.

She regenerated her arm with little effort and swung out at the princes, but Conlan easily ducked her spear