Heart of Atlantis

Chapter 32

Quinn knew that Alaric wanted nothing more than to sweep her up and deposit her someplace safe, but he could feel from the soul-meld, burning brightly between them, that she’d try to kill him if he even attempted it. Not to mention that she was currently wrapping her arms around an enormous tiger.

“Jack, you came. You came,” she repeated.

The tiger licked the side of her head in one giant slurp, and Alaric glared at them.

Please tell Jack that I will punch him in the head as soon as I am able to make him human again.

“You can punch anybody you want, as soon as we defeat the vampires,” Quinn said.

Jack turned his enormous shaggy head toward Alaric, and she could have sworn that the beast was laughing at him.

“Now, Quinn,” Alaric said. “We need to get Riley to safety, and I think if you would stay with your sister and the child, you could—”

Quinn stood, one hand still on Jack’s head, and glared at him. “This is what I do, Alaric, and you know that about me. I fight.”

“Fight later, if you please, but now we should run,” Noriko said, bowing to both of them.

“Alaric,” Conlan shouted, as he swept his wife and child into his arms and started running.

“Already doing it,” Alaric replied, before briefly closing his eyes.

Before he’d even opened them again, an overpowering wave of fear buffeted Quinn. The people all around them blasted her with the powerful emotion as they turned to look at Alaric, either nod or bow to him, and then began herding their children toward the nearest available buildings.

“I sent out a warning,” Alaric said. “They will arm themselves and protect their families. My concern is that, other than ceremonial pieces and the odd family heirloom, none but the warriors keep weapons.”

Quinn dodged to get out of the way of a woman running with one child by the hand and a baby in her other arm. The woman’s emotions were a mixture of fear and determination. She’d fight hard for her children—of that Quinn had no doubt.

“Well, they haven’t had to protect themselves for a long time,” Quinn said. “But they’ll do their best. Are we on the way to find weapons for ourselves?”

Alaric simply nodded and sped up his pace, until they were practically running.

“Wherever Anubisa disappeared to, I have a bad feeling she didn’t go far,” Quinn said, shivering as goose bumps rose on her arms.

“Evil is never far enough away,” Noriko said, keeping pace next to Quinn. The former portal spirit glanced at Alaric. “So you did find a measure of peace, and the soul-meld. I am pleased for you.”

Jack, who was padding along between them, snarled, and Quinn rolled her eyes.

“Arigato,” Quinn said. “I don’t want to know how you know that, though. And you? Have you found peace? Also, would you have any idea what the current portal spirit is up to? He has been kidnapping people left and right and sending them wherever he feels like sending them.”

“He?” Noriko shook her head. “No, I have no idea. But Poseidon has much control over our actions. It is he who released me from my bond.”

“And Jack?”

Jack’s ears flicked back, but he didn’t look at Quinn.

“Nothing has changed, unfortunately,” Noriko said, but she did briefly touch Jack’s head.

“We don’t have time for this now,” Conlan said, pointing up. “That doesn’t look like anything good.”

They all looked up to find swarms of darkness covering the twilit sky. A blinding burst of pure, primal terror flooded Quinn, and she couldn’t breathe for a moment, until she realized most of it was coming from the Atlanteans who were still outdoors. Of course they wouldn’t have seen vampires before. Their fear tasted like acid in Quinn’s mouth—there was nothing more primal than the loathing and terror of creatures who wanted to drain your blood, and these were attacking in such masses as to block out the first sunset the Atlanteans had seen in eleven millennia.

“She’s back, and she has reinforcements,” Quinn shouted, slamming shut her emotional shields so she could survive the massive amount of terror pounding her brain. “Run!”

Seconds later, the swarm of vampires hit Atlantis like a plague of locusts, attacking everyone in sight. Alaric turned and walked backward, hurling energy spheres as he moved. Wherever one of his deadly little balls landed, vampires screamed and died.

But most of the screaming and dying was happening to the Atlanteans and their guests. Quinn flinched as three of the bloodsuckers attacked a man and ripped him apart.

The palace finally rose up in front of them and she raced Jack indoors. Once inside the palace, Conlan stopped running and let Riley walk on her own.

“I’m taking her to the safest place in the palace,” Conlan said. “Our rooms are warded and defensible.”

“Take Noriko,” Quinn advised. “She has a killer force field. She can help protect Riley and the baby.”

Conlan nodded, and they sped away. Quinn headed down a corridor after Alaric.

“The armory is this way. How are you with a sword?”

She rolled her eyes. “Not all that great. I don’t have much practice with boiling oil or cannonballs, either.”

Ven met up with them and caught the gist of what she was saying. “Stick with me, kid. We non-magic types have to work to our strengths.”

He opened a locked door just past the larger doors to the palace armory, which was swarming with warriors gearing up before running back outside to protect their people. Ven threw open the cabinet to display an impressive range of all the best tech for the serious gun enthusiast. Quinn chose a Glock similar to the one Ptolemy had melted, another just like it, a selection of throwing knives and stabbing knives, and then she slung a mini-Uzi over her shoulder.

She looked down at Jack. “Want an Uzi?”

He snarled and lifted one massive paw, tipped with very sharp claws. She nodded. “Still not coming back, huh? Well, now is a great time to be a tiger.”

Ven was arming himself with enough weaponry to single-handedly assault a small country.

Quinn loaded her pockets with extra ammo. “Silver?”

Ven nodded. “Best kind.”

Alaric’s patience, what little there was of it, had evidently reached its end. He backed her into the wall and got right in her face. “If you are outnumbered, you run. If you find yourself in an indefensible position, you run. If—”

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. “I love you, too. Now, let’s go save the day.”

Ven’s mouth fell open, and then he whistled. “Nobody is going to believe this. The terrifying Alaric brought to his knees by luuurve.”

Alaric bristled and took a step toward Ven, but Quinn spoke up.

“Oh, yes, Erin dear. Can I rub your back, Erin darling? Should we watch that chick flick again, Erin dearest?”

Ven flushed a dull red and muttered something, and Alaric grinned at her before they all settled down to the deadly earnest job of defending Atlantis.

Marcus ran down the hall, damn fast for his age. “My lords, Anubisa is on the roof of the palace, and she has the princess and the baby trapped. Conlan ordered me to find you and Lord Justice.”

“I’m going to kill that bitch,” Quinn shouted, and Marcus nodded.

“If I don’t get a chance first,” he said grimly.

“Go find Justice. We’ll take it from here,” Alaric said, and he, Ven, and Quinn ran up the stairs toward the roof and the vampire goddess who had taken so much from so many of them.

Quinn checked her weapons as she ran, although she privately doubted any of them would suffice to kill a vampire so old that she claimed to be a goddess. She hoped Alaric and his new magic could help with a knockout punch—even Quinn could behead an unconscious vamp.

“If she has hurt Riley again, or the baby—” Quinn couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t even think the unthinkable. She’d get there in time to prevent it.

She had no choice.

When they reached the roof, they stopped to assess the situation. Night had fallen hard, and only the moon and a few scattered torches illuminated the scene. A clearly terrified Riley stood just out of reach of at least fifty vampires, and Noriko was unconscious—or dead—on the ground near her. Conlan stood between the vamps and his wife and child, armed with nothing but a single sword. Anubisa, leading her contingent of bloodsuckers, walked up to the prince, only stopping when she was almost close enough to reach out and touch him.

“Oh, my princeling,” the vampire goddess said happily, clapping her hands like a gleeful child. “It’s so wonderful to see you again, after we made so many lovely memories together.”

Jack snarled, and the vampires nearest to him edged nervously away, but Anubisa and Conlan didn’t notice any of it, since they were so intensely focused on each other.

“I will take your head for a trophy, if you don’t leave immediately,” Conlan said from between clenched teeth. “You have already harmed my wife and threatened my child, so you deserve the most hideous of deaths, but I will offer you this one chance, and one chance only, to leave us in peace and take your filthy swarms with you.”

As bluffs went, it had no teeth, since the prince was overwhelmingly outnumbered, even now that the three of them had arrived. Quinn sent a wave of emotional reassurance to her sister, only to discover that Riley was like a mama wolf, and much tougher than she looked. She was prepared to kill anything and anyone who came near Aidan—with her teeth and bare hands, if that’s what it took.

Anubisa glanced back at Quinn, Alaric, and Ven, and she laughed at them all. “The weak, the stupid, and the human. What a pathetic group you make.”

“Well, you’d know all about pathetic,” a new voice drawled from the other side of the roof, a voice coming from the warrior strategically positioned behind Anubisa’s vampires.

Justice stepped into view, his braid hanging over one shoulder and his massive sword held casually at the ready. Quinn estimated that it probably weighed more than she did. She was quite happy with her Glocks and Uzi.

Anubisa shrieked, practically vibrating with rage. Quinn knew she’d hated Justice with a particular passion ever since he’d pretended to be attracted to her in order to save Ven and Erin.

“You!” the vampire screamed. She turned to her bloodsuckers. “I want him dead!”

Her minions obediently attacked, but in her rage she’d forgotten to give explicit directions, so they all headed for Justice, leaving Anubisa’s army undefended from behind. Alaric took advantage of the situation to blast them with an intense surge of white-hot magic, destroying at least ten of them in one blow.

Alaric threw back his head and roared out a command that was so powerful, Quinn was surprised the air itself didn’t catch on fire.

“Poseidon! Trident, tool of the sea god! To me! Lend me your power to destroy this monster,” he shouted, and this time, the glowing didn’t happen gradually.

This time, Alaric blazed.

He blazed like a beacon—like a signal fire. He blazed like the hope of Atlantis made flesh.

And then he waded into the masses of vampires that rushed him, at Anubisa’s command, and they all began to die horrible, flaming deaths.

“What in the nine hells?” Ven shouted, but then he shrugged and started forward.

Quinn used him as cover and ran through the vampires and toward Anubisa, with no thought but to protect her sister. Jack leapt into the fray, ripping and shredding vampires like a crazed kitten playing with a catnip-infused toy.

Quinn aimed and fired steadily as she ran, but Anubisa batted the bullets out of her way as if they were pesky flies. Conlan used her distraction to advance on Anubisa from behind, and Ven tore into the fight near Alaric, with a gun in one hand and a silver stake in the other.

Conlan let out a yell of pure berserker rage, and Anubisa hurled a bolt of black and foul-feeling energy that smashed into him and knocked him back, but he jumped up and came at her again.

The hideous cacophony of vampire shrieks, tiger roars, and Atlantean battle cries pounded against Quinn’s skull. She ran toward Riley and Aidan, but Anubisa shifted to block her path.

“I don’t think so, little rebel leader,” the so-called goddess said, sneering. “I have other plans for you.”

But within another few moments, Alaric, Conlan, Ven, Justice, and Jack had destroyed the goddess’s blood pride, or at least the faction that was on the roof with her, and the three brothers and Alaric surrounded Anubisa while Jack ran over to Noriko and sniffed the fallen woman’s head, nudging her gently as if to wake her up.

“It’s okay, Anubisa, you’re going to die,” Riley said in a singsong voice.

Quinn realized that her sister was going into shock. Not surprising, considering the amount of blood Riley had lost earlier while lying on the ground watching an insane vampire toss her son around in the air. Magical healing always made a person tired, and in need of food, too, so that probably didn’t help.

“I’ll get you out of here, and we’ll make you some tea,” she called out to Riley, feeling like an idiot for talking about tea in the middle of such danger, but trying to be reassuring.

But Quinn wasn’t feeling particularly reassuring, because she noticed something that snaked a chill of ice down her spine. Although Anubisa stood alone on the roof, surrounded by enemies, she didn’t seem afraid or 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.”