Heart of Atlantis

“Greetings, old friend,” Ven said, bowing. “What have you gotten us into this time?”

Archelaus smiled and shook his head. “This, from the most unrepentant troublemaker the warrior training grounds have ever seen.”

“I did what I could,” Ven said, ducking his head modestly.

In spite of everything, Quinn laughed out loud. Ven would be Ven, no matter the situation. It was oddly refreshing to a woman who dealt in death and despair.

“The King’s Vengeance,” Noriko said, smiling a little. “You have long been one of my favorites.”

Quinn’s eyes narrowed. Another thing this woman shouldn’t have been able to know—Ven’s title.

“Ven, meet Noriko, who claims to be the spirit of your magic doorway,” she said, before turning to pin Noriko with a suspicious glare. “What exactly did you want to talk to us about that was so important? You weren’t luring us here for the attack, were you? Six weeks later, and suddenly you want to talk to us at exactly the moment shifters arrive?”

Alaric called up his energy spheres again, and Noriko took a step back and away from them all, turning even paler, if possible.

“I had nothing to do with that,” she protested. “My need to see you was to convey very dire news to Poseidon’s high priest.”

Alaric’s face hardened. “What is it?” he demanded.

“The final gem has been found,” Noriko said, twisting her hands together. “Everything in your world is in danger.”

“How could you know that?” Quinn asked. “You’ve been here, not talking to anybody, for weeks.”

“I was the portal spirit for millennia,” Noriko said, raising her chin. “Do you think that kind of magic simply vanishes? I can feel much that goes on in this world, especially that which is connected to Atlantis.”

Ven tensed, all traces of humor gone from his expressive face. “What kind of danger?”

“Atlantis itself could be destroyed,” Noriko said. “I don’t . . . I don’t . . .”

Ven rushed forward to catch the woman when her eyelids fluttered shut and she collapsed.

“If she is truly what she claims, then she is probably in shock from expending so much power,” Archelaus said. He motioned to his followers. “Or Noriko’s illness might be causing this. Please bring her with us.”

Alaric stepped closer to the woman Ven held, passed a hand over her head, and then shook his head. “She has been improving, you said, and I can detect no remaining trace of illness. This is probably simple exhaustion and shock.”

“We will move to another space, so my friends can remove the bodies and reinforce the spells protecting this area,” Archelaus said. “Thank you for your assistance in that regard, Alaric.”

“Yeah, your monkey-repelling spells didn’t work all that great, did they?” Quinn said dryly. “Maybe a nice electric fence next time.”

As they moved away from the courtyard, Archelaus led them down a corridor. Archelaus’s people took Noriko away to get some rest. Which was just as well, since Quinn was far too cynical after all of her years in the rebellion to buy her story all that easily. She didn’t trust Noriko. She didn’t trust anyone. The less the woman heard, the better.

Ven looked a question at her, and she explained the portal spirit/dying Japanese woman problem.

“You couldn’t stay out of trouble if you tried, could you?” he asked her, but then he grinned. “On the other hand, who could make this stuff up? This would be a great Syfy Saturday night movie. Sharktopus has nothin’ on us.”

Quinn didn’t know whether to laugh or punch him. She narrowed her eyes and was about to blast him with a snappy comeback when she realized he was right. Her shoulders slumped. Jack padded up behind her and nudged her hip with his shoulder, as if in moral support. Or maybe she was ascribing human motives to him as a kind of wishful thinking, when he was becoming more and more tiger by the moment.

At the entrance to the cave, a wall of air shimmered in waves of pearlescent opal, as if magic protected this opening, too. Which, of course, it did, Quinn reflected, as she walked through a barrier that had the consistency of a soap bubble. It snapped shut behind her, hopefully offering better protection than the monkey doorway.

She took a deep breath of the fresh mountain air and allowed her gaze to sweep the view from an upper slope of Mount Fuji. “It’s so beautiful here. So high above battles and blood and death, or so you’d think. Almost like a waking dream—but of someone else’s life.”

“We’re above the clouds,” Ven said. “The exact opposite of my home so far beneath the ocean’s surface. It kind of takes your breath away, doesn’t it?”

“More than eleven thousand feet elevation here,” Archelaus said, joining them. “Over twelve thousand at the summit. Fuji is one of three sacred mountains—”

“Perhaps we could save the ancient history for later and discuss the current problem?” Alaric’s voice cut through the air like a sword through silk.

Quinn could sense—just barely, though, even with her empath senses flaring to high—the tension boiling beneath his icy demeanor. She wondered if she’d be around when he finally erupted. An interesting thought: Alaric and Mount Fuji, both dormant volcanoes; both with majestic exteriors hiding barely leashed danger. She grinned at the idea of telling Alaric he was exactly like a lava-filled mountain, and he slanted a look at her, clearly wondering where her mind was.

“Nice of you to give a damn, after weeks of being mostly incommunicado,” Ven said dryly. “Anyway, that’s just it—the current problem is ancient history. Noriko was telling the truth. Archaeologists at Gobekli Tepe in Turkey have found Poseidon’s Pride.”

Alaric and Archelaus simultaneously inhaled. In anyone not an Atlantean warrior, Quinn would have called it gasping.

“Poseidon lost his pride?” Quinn glanced from face to face. “Did he also lose his gluttony, avarice, and lust? Is this some weird seven deadly sins kind of thing?”

Alaric was shaking his head before she’d finished her admittedly lame joke.

“Poseidon’s Pride is the final missing jewel from his Trident. It’s a tourmaline that gives immense, possibly immeasurable power to its wielder. We’ve been searching for it for centuries.”

“Gobekli Tepe sounds familiar,” Archelaus said. “Why is that?”

“Human archaeologists recently discovered the site. It’s an Atlantean temple built around eleven thousand, six hundred years ago, and they’re calling it the oldest known example of human monumental architecture, which is kind of surprising, now that they know about supernatural creatures and magic, but whatever. It’s the first known building bigger than a hut, basically,” Ven said. He shook his head. “They’ve all got their panties in a twist over how a bunch of people who were still nomads foraging for food could have transported sixteen-ton stones.”

“Ridiculous concept,” Alaric said dryly. “Of course Atlanteans built it. The Elders at the time sent our people to all corners of the earth to perpetuate our race before Atlantis descended beneath the seas at the time of the Cataclysm. Certainly many of them would have built temples.”

“Atlantean magic,” Quinn said, finding it easy to imagine, given what she knew of their powers. “Serai could probably move a boulder without smudging her lip gloss.”

Alaric shrugged. On him, even a shrug looked elegant. “Serai is an eleven-thousand-year-old Atlantean princess. Her magic is more powerful than mine in some ways.”

“Not many ways,” Ven said. “Not in battle ways.”

Alaric’s eyes glowed a hot green. “No. But that vampire she’s in love with isn’t likely to let her anywhere near a battle again.”

“Daniel knows better than to try to tell Serai to do anything,” Ven said. “She turned into a saber-toothed tiger, dude.”

“Never, ever call me dude.”

Quinn sighed. “So the point is . . .” She made a “move along” gesture with her hand.

“The point is that nobody but Alaric can touch that gemstone without dying horribly. So far, seven people associated with the dig have spontaneously combusted.” Ven shuddered. “Bad way to go.”

“So Alaric must go retrieve it,” Archelaus said.

“I’m going nowhere,” Alaric said. He leaned against the rock face on the side of the mountain and almost