Heart of Atlantis

Chapter 11

Abandoned subway tunnel, New York City

The one now known to the entire world as Ptolemy Reborn slouched insolently in a chair while Anubisa, goddess of Chaos and Night, matriarch to all vampires, supreme ruler of the dark, vibrated with fury as she hung floating in midair, halfway to the ceiling.

Frankly, she was boring the shit out of him.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it.” He finally interrupted her tirade. “You’ll help me in my quest to take the throne of Atlantis, and I’ll deliver the current royal family to you. Do you just want the two and a half princes, or do you want the women and the baby, too?”

She froze, mid-rant, and stared at him, then levitated back down until her silk slipper–clad feet touched the floor. “Baby? Did I know there was a baby?”

She flung her arms out and did her best impression of a mad ballerina as she capered and twirled around the room, her hip-length black hair floating around her like a cloak of spider silk. “Oh, I don’t remember, my time in the Void was so long and so dark and twisted, with lovely, broken creatures. Did I know there was a baby? Did I?”

“Whether you did or not, there is one. Conlan’s kid. Heir to the throne. Do you want him?”

She smiled at him in a grim parody of happiness, and her fangs sliced into her lips and chin, gouging flesh and blood that ran down her face.

“Oh, yes, I want the baby,” she whispered. “I must have the baby, I will count his little fingers and his little toes, and then I will bite them off and drink every drop of blood in his fat little body, and finally, finally, that will be the end of those hideous Atlanteans.”

Ptolemy was a little skeptical about her calling anybody else hideous, seeing as how she was a few dozen bricks short of a load, but as they liked to say in his world, “Evil plans make a bad day joyous.”

He planned to have a very joyous day.

“I’ll deliver them to you, and you’ll hold up your end of the bargain. The vampires will recognize me as the true king of Atlantis and uphold my sovereignty.”

She levitated again, cackling, still chanting about the baby, but then a look of sly calculation swept over her face. In spite of the gore and madness, it was still the most stunning face he’d ever seen; she had a deadly dark beauty that would cut and bleed any who dared come close.

Good enough. He had no plans to get close to this crazy bitch. Soon he’d have Quinn. He thought about all that would entail, and he finally smiled. Anubisa mistook his smile for appreciation of her wonderfulness, apparently, because she glared haughtily down at him from a few feet up.

“The likes of you will never have me, demon,” she hissed.

He yawned. “I am no demon of your realm to be cowed by you, vampire,” he said. “My Atlantean mother bore me to the Higher Demon who stole her from her home, and their blood, combined, will make me the most powerful ruler Atlantis or this world has ever seen. Join in or be left behind. It matters little to me now, and will mean even less when I use the power of Poseidon’s Trident to open the doors between worlds and allow my brethren access to this garden paradise of a planet.”

The vampire started laughing, chanting a nonsensical song, and Ptolemy laughed right along with her. It was going to be a very, very joyous day.