Heart Of Atlantis (13 page)

Chapter 15

At the portal landing area, next to one section of the dome, an hour later

A single drop of water.

Only one.

Quinn and the rest of the group stared at that single drop of water as if it held the answers to all the questions of the universe. It was impossible, or so they’d told her, but the impossible drop beaded along the edge of one of the thousands of cracks and then trickled down the side of the dome to the grass.

And Quinn’s latent claustrophobia flared into excruciating existence.

“It’s really true,” she whispered, as if any sound could send the whole structure crashing down around their ears. Of all the ways she’d imagined her demise over the years, death by suffocation and drowning, while being crushed by water pressure, had not even once been among them.

Figured.

“What are we going to do?”

Alaric put an arm around her and pulled her close to his side, as if he could protect her from anything, even a collapsing dome over a soon-to-be-lost-for-real continent.

“We shore up the dome’s magical barrier, continue to stabilize the Trident, kill Ptolemy the pretender, retrieve Poseidon’s Pride, restore it to the Trident, force Atlantis to rise, and save, as you would say, the day,” Alaric said calmly.

But she was
aknasha
, and even as fiercely as he was shielding, she could feel that some very strong emotion was going on under that veneer of control. Not quite yet “oh, god, oh, god, we’re all gonna die” emotion; not Alaric, maybe not ever that, but certainly “oh, holy whale shit, how am I going to pull this out of my
ass” emotion.

She was feeling kind of “oh, holy whale shit” herself.

So it was more than a little surreal when one swam by. An actual whale. She stared into its massive eye as it looked back at her, and she wondered hysterically if they could hitch a ride.

“How can a whale survive down here at this pressure?”

“There are many species of marine life who have adapted to a deep, deep sea environment,” Alaric said.

She knew it wasn’t important, given the situation, but it was still interesting.

“We will also start evacuating everyone we can through the portal, but it takes no more than several at a time, so it would be an impossibility to save everyone that way,” Conlan said, lines of strain clear on his face.

“Riley and the baby must go,” Quinn said immediately. “Are they even awake?”

“Yes, I sent to her to grab whatever she needed for the baby, and Marcus, my captain of the guard, will escort them here in a few minutes,” Conlan said.

“You will go with them,” Alaric told Quinn. “If I have to throw you into the portal myself.”

“I’m not leaving if there is anything here I can do,” she said. “I can help organize the evacuation. I’ve had a lot of experience with large groups over the past ten years.”

Alaric’s eyes glowed such a hot green she was almost distracted from their argument. “Don’t your eyes get hot when they get all glowy like that? I’d think it would fry your eyeballs. You’re going to get cataracts or something. Also, haven’t you learned by now that you can’t order me around?”

Alaric snarled—actually snarled, like a feral animal—and she was only saved from whatever he’d been about to say when the portal suddenly flared into existence.

“What is this?” Conlan took a step back.

“Did you call?” Alaric asked.

Conlan shook his head. “No. Riley’s not here yet.”

That same deep, resonant voice she’d heard before spoke from the heart of the portal. “You have need, Quinn Dawson?”

Quinn’s mouth fell open. “What? No, I don’t need you. Thanks, but I’m going to stay and help out—”

The rest of her words were cut off as the portal swept Quinn into its center. The last thing she saw was Alaric leaping after her, reaching for her, before he crashed to the ground as both she and the portal vanished in a vortex of swirling light.

All she had time to think was
Oh, he’s going to be so pissed off
,
before the portal abruptly dumped her onto a street that looked vaguely familiar.

“Oh, how did she do that? Is she part of your act?”

Quinn blinked in the early light of what she realized was dawn. They’d somehow spent the entire night dealing with the Trident, at least if she’d stayed in the same time zone this time. The elderly woman who’d asked the question about an act was dressed in pink from the hat perched on top of her blue-tinted white curls to the tips of her neon-pink tennis shoes.

“What act? Where am I?” Quinn looked around, but her tired brain hadn’t yet caught up with the rest of her.

“Tied one on last night, I bet,” a man said. He was not wearing pink, but a very large blue sports jersey that said
TEAM BEER
and strained against his oversized belly. “Doesn’t even recognize the Naked Cowboy.”

Quinn whipped her head to the side, and sure enough, there he was in all of his not-so-glorious reality. The Naked Cowboy. She looked up, and up, and up, and confirmed she was standing in the middle of Times Square, New York.

The portal certainly did have a sense of humor.

She suspected the members of the NYPD approaching the group, however, did not, and she was carrying three knives and two guns. Two
unregistered
guns for which she did not hold a concealed carry permit.

She smiled at the tourists and bowed with a flourish, as if she were indeed part of the act, ducking her head to avoid photographs, and let out a relieved breath when the police kept moving on by. Then she started walking, slowly and nonchalantly, as if she had all the time in the world, in the opposite direction. She was exhausted, starving, and worried sick about her sister, her nephew, Alaric, and everyone else in Atlantis. One problem at a time, though, and the only one she could solve in the middle of Times Square was breakfast.

After purchasing a bagel and coffee from a sidewalk vendor with some of the small amount of cash in her pocket, she headed down a side street, away from the tourist heart of the city, to eat, caffeinate, and think. She spent a few more of her precious dollars on a pair of sunglasses and a ball cap, since her face had been plastered all over the news by Ptolemy and his stunt. As she approached an electronics store, she noticed a crowd gathering in front of its banks of screens.

“What’s going on?” she asked a man wearing a couple of weeks’ worth of straggly beard, a ragged flannel shirt, and jeans at least three sizes too large for him. He smelled like he lived in a doorway and, unfortunately for him, he probably did. The vampires in Congress weren’t big on spending money on social programs for homeless humans.

They preferred to just eat them.

She schooled herself not to flinch at the stench, though. She didn’t want to insult a potential source of information any more than she wanted to hurt his feelings, and anyway, there had been times in her life when she hadn’t had a roof over her head, either.

“They’re talking about that Atlantis fella again. Says he’s going to unite with the vampires, since the United Nations won’t listen to him.” The man looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Nice-looking bagel.”

She broke off half and handed it to him. She’d been hungry, too, more times than she could count. “Another press conference? Dude’s a glory hound, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, but not till eight
A.M.
Wants prime coverage, I guess.”

The news reporter on the screen arranged her too-perfect features into a smile. “So there you have it. Ptolemy Reborn, who claims to be the rightful king of Atlantis, will be holding a joint press conference with the mayor and Senator Hengell at nine. Back to you, Ann!”

Quinn ventured one more question before she moved on. “Where is that, do you know? That building she’s standing in front of?”

The man rolled his eyes. “Didn’t take you for a tourist. That’s City Hall.”

Quinn thanked him and headed off, careful to amble like she didn’t have a care in the world, as she heard the news anchor on the TVs behind her make a reference to Ptolemy’s message for “alleged rebel leader Quinn Dawson.”

“Hey! Hey, lady!”

She ignored the shouting and kept walking, only hurrying her pace a tiny bit. Nothing too suspicious to any observer.

“Hey, thanks for the bagel!”

Her shoulders slumped in relief, and without slowing, she raised a hand in acknowledgment and kept right on going. She didn’t take a full breath, though, until she’d reached the end of the block and rounded the corner.

That was too close. Any one of those people could have recognized her through her pitiful disguise, and then what? She didn’t have time to be detained. She needed to find Ptolemy, retrieve the gem, and return it to Alaric before he blew some kind of magical gasket trying to keep the Trident from blowing up the dome.

Alaric was probably furious by now. She couldn’t help it; she grinned.

“You won’t like me when I’m angry,” she growled in true Bruce Banner fashion, and then she started laughing when a woman passing by gave her the finger.

“Oh, yeah. I’m in New York.”

She finished the coffee, dumped the cup in a handy trash can, and headed for a souvenir shop to find a map of the city. She needed to be at City Hall by eight.

Alaric paced and ranted and swore and raved until Conlan threatened to hit him over the head with the nonpointed end of a spear.

“She’s gone. Unprotected. Every single murderer and thug on the planet will have seen her face by now, and she’s up there all alone because the portal has decided, for the first time in all of recorded history, to do whatever in the nine hells it feels like doing!” Alaric was shouting by the end of it, and Conlan narrowed his eyes and picked up the spear.

“I’m not kidding. I will hand your ass to you on a plate, and you are too busy keeping the Trident from nuclear meltdown, and the dome from collapsing, to zap me with magic, so for once it would be a fair fight,” the pain-in-the-ass high prince of Atlantis said.

Alaric forced himself to take a deep breath. “Fine. I will calm down. I will pretend that the entire continent is not about to be destroyed. I will pretend that the sea god is not ignoring us. I will pretend that I can do this on my own, even though the Trident grows more unstable with every second that passes, and I am nearly at the limits of my strength already.”

He bared his teeth at Conlan. “Don’t we all feel better already?”

His entire body pulsed with the strain of pushing more magic than he’d ever channeled, and the Trident kept increasing its erratic instability. He knew he didn’t have much longer, if something didn’t happen to shore up the balance on his side of the equation.

“We need one for the good guys, as Quinn would say,” he said, flinching as a sharp pain stabbed him in the temple.

Conlan’s eyes widened a fraction, and he reached over to touch Alaric’s ear. His finger came back red with blood.

“Just how much power are you having to expend to keep the dome from shattering?”

Alaric grimly shook his head. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

A shout heralded Marcus’s arrival at the head of an armed contingent of half a dozen warriors surrounding Riley and the baby, Erin, and Keely with Eleni.

Erin and Keely were both furious, and they immediately started letting Conlan know it.

“We are not about to scuttle through the portal like rats abandoning a sinking ship, when we can stay here and help,” Erin said.

“I’m surprised Marcus managed to drag you out here,” Alaric said, before wincing as another sharp pain in his head nearly blinded him. At this rate, he’d be dead before the dome collapsed, anyway.

“He threatened to stab us,” Keely said dryly. “When we didn’t believe him, he threatened to stab that guy.” She pointed to a youngling barely old enough to hold his sword.

Marcus nodded grimly. “And they knew damn well I’d do that.”

The young warrior gulped audibly, but stood tall and tried to look brave. Conlan laughed a little before he pulled Riley and Aidan into a fierce embrace. Alaric tried not to envy Conlan those last moments with his family, even as every fiber of his being demanded that he abandon the battle to contain the Trident and go after Quinn.

“You know, he would have done it. He stabbed me once, in training,” he told the young man, whose eyes grew huge.

Keely took in the situation with her scientist’s keen grasp of a problem, and then turned to Alaric. “Right. Where’s Quinn? You two need to reach the soul-meld, right here and now, or Atlantis isn’t going to survive.”

Chapter 16

Alaric glared at the damnable woman. “What in the nine hells are you talking about?”

“I tried to tell you last night, but nobody wanted to listen. What happened to Nereus was his power increased exponentially when he achieved the soul-meld with Zelia. He became the most powerful priest in the history of Atlantis
,
” she said. “That’s why the Elders decreed celibacy for the high priest. They decided nobody should have that kind of magic. They were afraid he could gain enough power even to challenge Poseidon, if it came to it.”

“So you just want them to throw down right here?” Riley’s face turned hot pink. “I know this is a crisis, but after all those years of celibacy, I doubt Alaric wants to strip down in the middle of a field and—”

“No,” Alaric shouted. “No, no, no. We are not having this discussion. Quinn is gone, in any event. The portal abducted her, but even if she were here, we
would not be having this discussion
.”

Ven made a choking noise, like he was strangling on his own tongue, and Alaric whipped an ice ball right at his head, then immediately regretted it, as calling to even that tiny bit of water magic increased the strain on his overtaxed powers.

“Where is my sister?” Riley demanded, and little Prince Aidan started crying.

Alaric closed his eyes and tried to pray for patience, but he realized that he was done with praying to any gods. Poseidon could have his damn temple, just as soon as Alaric saved the people of Atlantis from this current disaster. Atlantis would rise, and he and Quinn would head to a beach. Or maybe mountains, far, far from any ocean.

Maybe the Alps.

“Alaric? Did you hear me?”

Alaric opened his eyes to find Keely staring up at him. He didn’t have the strength to be angry at her.

“He can’t risk it,” Conlan said. “Even if Quinn were here. The Elders say the loss of celibacy is the end of power. If there’s even a chance that they’re right—the Trident would destabilize and we’d lose the dome and everyone in Atlantis. It’s not a chance we can take.”

Alaric closed his eyes again, as rage and humiliation battled for supremacy inside him. He’d be better off if he just let the damn dome collapse.

A piercing whistle interrupted his misery, and when he opened his eyes, everyone was staring at Erin.

“Alaric, you don’t have to have sex to reach the soul-meld. If we can find Quinn, and she agrees, you can soul-meld and expand your power without risking the anti-celibacy oath-breaking thing,” she said, her cheeks flaming red.

“I cannot believe everyone in Atlantis is discussing my sex life,” Alaric said from between clenched teeth.

“Actually, we’re discussing your lack of sex life, dude,” Ven pointed out.

“If you call me dude again, I will drop the dome on your empty head.”

“Can he do that?” the young warrior asked.

“Silence,” Marcus said, staring at the dome, where the warm light of magically created dawn highlighted the water trickling down, now in a small but steady stream.

Alaric tuned them all out and searched for the still, cold center of his being, where he retreated when there was no choice but blood, battle, or death. He reached a conclusion so devastating that it pushed everything else out of his mind.

“Here’s the situation,” Alaric finally said, pretending to be calm, as if the lives of all of his people were not at stake. “Even drawing upon the magical reserves of everyone in Atlantis, I am not quite powerful enough to hold the increasingly unstable Trident and also support the dome. We need Poseidon’s Pride, we need to return it to the Trident, and Atlantis must rise. However, there is no one else who is strong enough to retrieve the gem without being burned to ash by its power. So, as I see it, we have two choices. First, I can do nothing but what I’m currently able to do, and Atlantis will slowly be destroyed as the leaks increase and my magic is depleted. Everyone dies.”

He took a breath and continued. “Second option: I can somehow find Quinn and attempt the soul-meld, if she agrees, and hope that the story of Nereus is true and it gives me enough power to solve these problems. The issue there is that I’ll be channeling my magic at a very long distance, if the portal even takes me to her, which will further weaken me. And if the story of Nereus is false, everyone dies.”

He looked around at the people he could finally admit he loved. His family. He would willingly die for them. And he probably would. Soon.

“Bye-bye, Alaric,” Eleni said, smiling a sweet, gap-toothed smile.

Everyone stared at her. The child had the ability to see a short distance into the future, so of course she must see that she would be leaving through the portal. He wondered, though, why she’d named him in particular.

The portal flashed into existence before anyone could venture an opinion, and again that deep male voice called out to them. “You need?”

“Wait,” Conlan shouted, but the light flashed a brilliant sapphire blue, and two things occurred simultaneously: Riley, Aidan, Keely, Eleni, and Erin all disappeared, and Christophe and his soul-melded mate, Lady Fiona, flew out of the portal and landed on their asses on the ground.

Then the portal winked out of existence again.

“I have had enough of this,” Conlan said.

Alaric could only nod, as he stumbled forward, the pressure in his skull reaching an unbearable level. “Christophe, I’m going to need some help,” he said, and then he fell forward into the relentless dark.

When the world snapped back into focus, Alaric realized that his subconscious had somehow maintained his magical hold on all the dangerous balls he was juggling, and the dome had not collapsed.

He somehow wasn’t even shocked to see Christophe sitting across from him on the grass, grinning.

“Please tell me this is all part of the nightmare,” Alaric said wearily.

“Got your back, my friend,” Christophe said smugly. “Feel free to say thank you at any time.”

Alaric took stock and realized that the warrior was indeed carrying some of the magical load. Quite a bit, in fact. He leaned back and took his first full breath since the crisis began.

“Thank you,” he said, and then enjoyed watching Christophe’s shock. Alaric didn’t have a history of expressing appreciation or gratitude.

“We were a bit worried for a moment,” Lady Fiona said in her crisp British accent. “Lovely to see you up and about. Now what do we do?”

Alaric stood up and nodded to her. “Welcome. Now that Christophe has taken more than his fair share of the magical burden, I can leave to find Poseidon’s Pride. All we need is for the portal to—”

“You need?” came the voice and flash of light, and Alaric went spinning through the vortex.

“I know you’re sentient. I met Gailea,” he shouted. “What in the nine hells do you think you’re up to?”

“Ask your sea god,” came the cryptic response, and then Alaric plummeted down through an early-morning sky. Before he had time to transform into mist, he crashed through a skylight made of blacked-out glass, and he landed on his feet in the middle of at least a dozen vampires.

“This,” Alaric said, looking around for who he’d have to kill first, “I did not need.”

The room was high-ceilinged and lit only by a couple of bare lightbulbs hanging drunkenly from frayed cords. Stark black-and-red graffiti, both words and images, crawled across the walls like the spreading stain of blood from a wound. The stench of vampire permeated the room, making him think the abandoned building must have long been their lair.

“You’ve interrupted lunch,” one of the bloodsuckers hissed. “That means you become part of it.”

“Always with the cheesy dialogue, as Ven would say.” Alaric shook his head and got ready to turn into mist and escape, until he saw exactly what they were preparing to eat for lunch.

Whom
they were preparing to eat for lunch.

Damn
.

It was kids.

“You again?” The kid in the red shirt looked familiar, and Alaric realized it was the same boy he’d saved from Ptolemy.

“That is far too large a coincidence. What are you doing here?”

The vamp who thought he was the leader snarled at Alaric. “You can address me if you have something to say.”

“Shut up. You were saying, kid?”

The kid jerked his chin at the group of five smaller children who were huddled and crying in the middle of the group of bloodsuckers. “I take care of them.”

“Not very well, apparently.”

The kid lunged at Alaric, trying to get away from the vamp who held him, but bloodsuckers had unnatural strength, so it was a futile struggle.

“You’re angry at the wrong person, Faust,” Alaric advised, forming a sword out of pure energy and slicing off the kid’s captor’s head before anybody could move. “I’m not the one trying to eat you and your friends for lunch. What do you say we take care of this and get out of here?”

Faust dropped to the floor, pulling a gun out from underneath his shirt in one quick motion and firing on the nearest vamp before Alaric had come to the end of his sentence.

“Guns don’t work on—”

“Silver to the brain stem does,” Faust interrupted, surprising Alaric. Not many humans knew that. “Help me get these kids out of here?”

The vampires started shrieking, hissing, biting, and clawing—all the things vamps usually did—but Alaric had endured too damn much to put up with any of it. He set to work with the shining sword, with Faust at his back taking aim with his gun.

Within minutes every vamp in the room was dead and dissolving in a pile of acidic slime, and only one of the children was badly injured: a girl with a nasty bite on her neck bleeding out on the floor. Alaric could feel her life force ebbing as he watched, and she was a tiny bit of a thing, probably no older than five.

“I need to get her to a doctor, man,” Faust said, panicking.

“There’s no time,” Alaric said, as gently as he knew how.

The boy ignored him and carefully gathered the girl in his arms, and in the space of those few moments, Alaric considered his options. He was teetering on the edge of overuse of magic as it was; would the energy to heal one human child who was already so close to dying send him over the edge? Could he risk it, when the result might be to condemn thousands of Atlantean children to death?

The girl cried out, and he realized he didn’t actually have a decision to make at all. He couldn’t do nothing and watch this child die.

He stopped Faust and placed his hand over the site of the wound. Blue-green light flared as Alaric’s healing energy swept through him and into the child. She stiffened in the boy’s arms and then sat up, grinning.

“Do it again!”

The bite on her neck was gone as if it had never happened.

“But—” Faust looked wildly from Alaric to the child. “How did you—”

“The bite is healed and any vampire venom is completely destroyed, so she is not at risk from the blood bond, either,” Alaric told him. “I have to go now. Try to stay out of trouble, won’t you? I don’t have time to keep rescuing you. I have to go kill that impostor who calls himself Ptolemy.”

Faust called out to him before Alaric reached the doorway. “I can take you to him. He’s getting ready to have a press conference at City Hall at eight o’clock.”

Alaric paused and then swung back. “We’re in New York?”

The little girl he’d healed giggled up at him. “Mister, you’re not very smart, are you?”

He shook his head. “No, sweetling. I’m not very smart at all.”