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."
Chapter 33
Alaric's rage exploded outward in a storm of lightning bolts at the sight of the monster who had abducted Quinn not once, but twice. The demon who'd forced her to kill an innocent man.
Alaric had gotten his wish. Ptolemy had come back from the dead, just so Alaric could kill him again. Slowly and painfully.
From across the roof, Jack's roar sounded over the noise of battle.
Ptolemy glanced back at the tiger, and then he started laughing. "Oh, the gang's all here. Even my beloved's kitty-cat friend."
"You die tonight," Alaric said, and he started toward Ptolemy, striding over dead vampires and striking down any not yet dead ones that got in his way.
"How does the interdimensional demon speak perfect English, even down to American slang?" Ven called out.
"We'll discuss later," Quinn said, and then she shot Ptolemy in the head.
Or at least she tried to. Apparently the demon's head was made of bullet-deflecting materials. She screamed in frustration as the bullet bounced off Ptolemy, but Alaric steered its path so that it ricocheted right into the ass of one of the atrocities and the entire creature exploded. Then it was Ptolemy's turn to scream in rage, and Alaric smiled the smile that had made fully trained warriors fall to their knees.
"Hey, guess your baby brother won't be looking for any emotional empath mates," Quinn said, taunting.
"I will hurt you for that," Ptolemy snarled. "I will make you bleed and beg when I fuck you."
"I think not," Alaric said, and when Justice finally turned from the four vampires he'd been slaying, he saw Alaric and gasped.
"What in the nine hells?" Justice was so busy staring at Alaric that he almost missed the atrocity getting ready to jump on his leg, teeth first.
Quinn shot it for him. "Two," she called out, and Ptolemy gnashed his teeth, tearing strips of skin off his face as his features grew even more bestial in form.
"Quinn, to Riley," Alaric commanded, forgetting that Quinn didn't take commands very well.
Naturally, she took a step toward Ptolemy, pointing her gun again. Another creature rushed her, and Alaric incinerated it with another lightning bolt.
"Isn't lightning somebody else's gig?" Quinn said. "What's Poseidon going to say about that?"
"That is no longer my concern. The impending death of this demon, however, is," Alaric said calmly. He circled his hand in the air--once, twice--and a miniature tornado formed at the edge of his fingertips and shot across the roof toward Ptolemy.
The demon didn't even see it, though, because all of his attention was on Quinn. As he stalked toward her, Ptolemy's shape enlarged and contorted, until he was nearly unrecognizable as the suave politician they'd first seen on TV.
"You took it, didn't you, you sneaky thief?" Ptolemy took another step, and the tornado, which had grown to at least ten feet tall, crashed into him, whipped him up off the roof, and smashed him into the stone wall of the palace, hard. The demon screamed, and Alaric's eardrums reverberated with the echo of Ptolemy's rage.
He scanned the rooftop. Conlan, Ven, Justice, Jack, and Quinn were destroying the rest of the creatures who'd rushed through the portal, and Riley, holding Aidan, was crouching down near Noriko, who was awake now and holding a force field around the three of them.
In the chaos, Anubisa had vanished. Again. But one glance at the night sky, spectacularly lit up by the stars, the moon, and Alaric himself, showed a new problem. A black swarm was advancing on Atlantis over the open sea.
"It's the fucking apocalypse," Justice said, his face hard. His deadly sword slashed and sliced, decapitating demons in a vicious whirlwind of death. "I have to go to Keely. Now."
"How is that possible? Vampires can't travel over the ocean," Ven said, staring at the sky. "They're terrified of water. It messes with their powers."
"They're more afraid of Anubisa. If she tells them to stick stakes in their own hearts while munching on garlic and wearing crosses, they'll do it," Quinn said grimly. "And maybe they hijacked one of those ships. All it would take is for Anubisa to have rolled one captain with her eyes, and the ship would be hers."
"Don't ignore me," Ptolemy screamed, picking himself up off the ground. "Where is it? Where is my gem?"
"Not too worried about your family, are you?" Quinn taunted him, as she shot another of the creatures.
Ptolemy screamed with rage again.
"Poseidon's Pride wasn't yours, and it never will be. Nor will Quinn," Alaric told the demon, launching himself across the rooftop toward the demon and blasting him with his new and more powerful energy spheres. He got a direct hit, and the demon screamed and bled, but then Ptolemy called up his own power and formed a spear made of hideous orange-red light, which he hurled at Alaric with every ounce of his demonic strength.
The spear was only inches away from Alaric's chest when he destroyed it with an energy sphere. He hadn't expected that kind of speed from a monster who'd become as bulky and grotesque as Ptolemy's new shape.
He wouldn't make that mistake again.
Alaric called to his new, vastly increased power and drew a shining sword from thin air. The sword's edge burned with the pure white energy of magic, and Ptolemy flinched before it. Alaric himself blazed ever brighter, until the remaining monsters cowered at the sight of him.
He hurled more energy spheres at Ptolemy with his left hand and then--realizing his hands were not needed--he simply stalked forward, surrounded by spheres that formed and attacked the demon just because Alaric willed them to do so.
He was on fire--he was the most powerful high priest Poseidon had ever known--he was a god.
Quinn's laughter sounded in his mind.
Don't get carried away, there, god-boy.
Her warmth and humor snapped Alaric out of the power's seductive grip and back into himself, just in time to crush Ptolemy's sneak attack with what appeared to be a magically created battle-axe.
The two of them battled with everything in their respective arsenals, seemingly equally matched, until Alaric balanced on the edge of utter fatigue and a potentially fatal case of magical exhaustion. He'd been carrying Atlantis's sa
fety and the stability of the Trident for too long, and it had drained him. Ptolemy, sensing weakness, laughed and threw a dagger at Alaric, who sent a pulse of magic to deflect it.
Except it wasn't a magical dagger. It was ordinary steel, and the magic had no effect on it. Alaric realized it just as it pierced his side, and he felt the hot, wet gush of blood running down his ribs almost before he felt the pain of the stab wound.
"Not as good as you think you are," Ptolemy sneered. "You don't deserve Quinn, and I'll remind her of that every day when you're dead and she's pregnant with my heir."
Something vital snapped in Alaric, and any restraint or caution he might have felt toward accepting the full promise of his new powers vanished. He flew up into the air, trailing actual flames, and then he dove toward Ptolemy with the strength and speed of a raptor seeking its prey.
The demon never had a chance.
Ptolemy's magical shields and weapons blew apart like tissue paper in a windstorm in front of Alaric's towering fury. Alaric hurled the demon back, farther away from Quinn, and smashed him back to the rooftop every time Ptolemy tried to get up.
A primal rage thundered through Alaric with hurricane force. "Nobody touches my woman, do you understand me?"
But Ptolemy was beyond words. The demon shrieked unintelligible, garbled sounds of hate and frustration, and gathered his strength for one final rush at Alaric, who let him do it. When Ptolemy had almost reached him, hands outstretched for Alaric's throat, Alaric threw open all of his shields and channeled the power.
All of the power.
Endless oceans of power poured into him and filled him and burned to be set free. Alaric roared out his triumph and his mastery over the magic, and it obeyed his mental command and formed into a lightning bolt of pure energy that shone as brightly as Alaric himself now did.
"Now you will die," he told Ptolemy, and then he plunged the lightning bolt down and through the top of the demon's skull. The magic cut through bone like butter, and Ptolemy shrieked with all the anguish of the nine hells, and then his body split in two, right down the middle, and the two halves fell to the ground, already dissolving.