Genuine surprise crossed Ptolemy's face. "Demon? Oh, no, you have me mistaken for something far less powerful, priest. I am the king of Atlantis. I am the wizard who will destroy your house, enslave your women, and make your false princes my pets. Watch me and learn."
Ven lunged for the man, trying to create a distraction so Alaric could strike him down, but Ptolemy must have been anticipating just such a move. He leapt to the side, dragging the boy with him.
"Choose now," he taunted. "Save the boy or catch me. His name is Faust, by the way. Don't you find that deliciously ironic?"
With that, he lifted the boy and threw him out through the shattered window in one powerful heave, slammed the scepter against his chest, and disappeared in another flash of light. Alaric had a split second to decide whether to save the boy or try to follow the emanations of residual magic from the scepter.
It wasn't really even a choice.
He caught the boy five feet from the sidewalk below, and Ven was right behind him.
The upper floors of the hotel exploded into a ball of fire over their heads.
Tokyo, Japan, in a car on the way to Narita International Airport
Quinn stared out the window at the passing scenery, not really seeing any of it. She listened with a fraction of her attention as the elderly Japanese man driving her to the airport tried to give her a history lesson on the area. He was gracious and kind, and she was in the mood for neither. She'd left her only real friend trapped in a tiger's body, with no hope of ever seeing him again, and she had no idea where Alaric was. Not to mention that she'd never yet met her only nephew, who just happened to be the heir to the throne of Atlantis, and now she probably never would.
Life was just peachy.
She'd left Archelaus with only a hasty good-bye, as he worked the phone and his contacts to try to discover what the monkey-shifter attack had been about. Hello, more chaos. She had a feeling that there was more than enough on her plate at the moment, though, so she decided to stop worrying about flying monkeys--shape-shifters or otherwise. The two-hour hike to the parking lot at Fifth Station, midway down the mountain, had provided more than enough time for every worst-case scenario--many involving her own torture and death--to circle through her mind like wastewater through a gutter.
"I don't understand this," her driver suddenly said in an entirely different tone from the tour guide voice he'd been using. "We have no bad weather forecasted for this area today."
Quinn sat up in her seat and stared forward, into a sky that had gone suddenly dark and sullen. Clouds whipped in a frenzy of storm formation, and apple-sized hailstones began to pummel the car and the road around them. The car just in front of them in the long line of crazy Tokyo traffic swerved and almost hit the car next to it, and a domino effect of near-collisions began all around them.
Quinn's driver slammed on the brakes, throwing Quinn forward and almost into the dash, and then he made a weird yelping noise and pointed to his left. Quinn stared out at what he was indicating, and recoiled in horror. She hadn't seen anything like that outside of a bad movie.
It was a funnel cloud, and it was heading right at them. The car behind them stopped too late and almost rear-ended them, throwing Quinn forward again. Score one for excellent seat belts. The air bag didn't deploy, though, and she almost had time to wonder about that before the funnel cloud touched down in the single open spot of road in front of them, and a dark shape walked out of its heart.
Alaric.
He raised his arms as he walked, and the tornado flew up and away from the road at his command. He kept walking, never looking back or to the side, all of his grim focus on Quinn.
"Apparently this is my ride," she said apologetically to her terrified driver. "Thank you, and I am so sorry for your fright."
She unbuckled her seat belt, climbed out, and then stood, fists on hips, as Alaric approached.
"You don't get to hurt innocent people, Alaric. That puts you on the wrong side of the equation, and I won't stand for it." She was proud that she stood her ground while a whirlwind of fury and magic in the shape of a man stalked toward her, caught her around the waist, and leapt into the air.
"No human is injured," he told her. "Not even their machines."
"You frightened them--"
"You will never leave me again," he said into her hair, and his voice was agonized; crazed. The voice of a man driven to the brink of madness. "If Ptolemy captures you, or any of your enemies find you, now that your face is plastered across the news all around the globe . . . Quinn, you would not want the world to try to survive my insanity if I lose you."
Quinn drew upon reserves deep within herself to remain calm as she found herself swirling counterclockwise in the heart of a tornado, somehow protected by Alaric's strength and magic.
"You can't do this, ever again. You cannot hold innocent lives hostage against my cooperation. That makes you no better than the murderers--human, shifter, or vampire--who kill people every day. The ones I've spent ten years fighting," she said, her mouth close to his ear so the wind didn't snatch her words away.
He shuddered against her, as if fighting a tidal wave of emotion. "I know. Don't you think I know? I, who pride myself on my logical, rational state of existence? I don't know what to do, Quinn. You must help me."
"I'd be better able to cope if we weren't flying around inside a freaking tornado," she shouted, finally losing the edges of calm. "Get me out of here!"
He nodded, and the glimmering oval of the portal appeared underneath them just before he dropped her. She screamed all the way down.
Chapter 7
An island in the Bermuda Triangle
After Alaric had calmed the storm and dispersed the tornado so none of the humans would be harmed, he followed Quinn through the portal to the beach on the other side, but prudently walked ten or so paces away, to give her a moment to recover from the fall. Now that he had time to consider the matter, it seemed that dropping her the five or six feet to the beach like that had perhaps not been the wisest course of action. After all, the woman was armed and definitely dangerous.
Dawn was breaking, and Quinn was so fierce and beautiful in the golden light of morning that he found himself almost unable to breathe at the sight of her, until she looked up and scowled at him. She sat, face like one of Poseidon's darkest thunderstorms, in about six inches of water. Waves broke against her and splashed on the glistening white sand around her, and she was completely drenched.
"You are a total slime ball, you know that? A . . . a scumbucket, useless pile of--"
"Perhaps you should carefully consider your words," he said, cutting her off before she had the opportunity to more fully demonstrate her command of insults. "I didn't have a lot of time to control the portal, since you wanted me to protect your humans from the storm."
"The storm you created," she snapped.
He couldn't help it. He started laughing. She resembled nothing more than a kitten caught in a rainstorm, snarling and spitting her dismay.
She narrowed her eyes, scrambled to her feet, and started toward him, moving fast. He watched, expecting her to stop before she reached him.
She did not.
Instead, she hit him at a full-on run, and knocked him backward so hard that he fell flat on his ass in the surf and sat there, sputtering seawater out of his mouth and staring up at her in total shock.
Quinn's narrowed-eye stare all but dared him to stand up again. "Do not ever, ever laugh at me after you throw a tornado at me, drop me from way too high up in the sky--without a parachute, I might add--and scare me half to death. Do you hear me?"
"The situation has little likelihood of coming up again," he said cautiously.
"You are so frustrating," she shouted at him, kicking more water on him. "Why couldn't you find some other tough rebel chick to drive out of her mind? Why did it have to be me?"
He shoved his dripping wet hair out of his face and, relief finally overwhelming him, grinned up at her. "World-
bending kisses," he smugly reminded her.
Her mouth fell open, and she stood there gaping at him for several long moments before she shook her head and started laughing. "You are insane, you know that, right? Totally, entirely insane."
"The thought has often occurred to me," he admitted. "May I stand now, or do you plan to knock me over again?"
She tilted her head, as if considering her options. "Just stay there," she advised. Then she turned and walked away from him until she was about twenty feet from the surf line, where she sat down and stared out at the waves.
He waited another few minutes before he stood up. Just in case.
Clearly, he wasn't the only one on the beach who was balancing on the crumbling edge of sanity. He'd gone mad when he'd believed her to have been kidnapped or worse. Now that he knew she was safe, she could kick water on him all day long. He smiled again, and sent a fervent prayer to whatever gods were listening--although quite pointedly not to Poseidon--that he could continue to keep her safe.
No matter what the cost.
As the sun rose over the horizon, Quinn stared out at the waves and tried to let the beauty and serenity of the island sweep through her. The pure, salty scent of the ocean surrounded her as the breeze of the water played with the damp ends of her hair. The gentle roar of the tide all but demanded that she relax and let nature's peace calm her raging thoughts. She could pretend she was on a vacation. Tourists would pay a fortune to visit this unspoiled beach, and it was all hers.
Well. All hers, if she didn't count him.
She was trying to ignore him. That would teach him. Probably nobody ever ignored Alaric, Mr. High Priest Arrogant Son of a . . . Actually, she didn't know whose son he was. She didn't know anything about his family. Did Atlantean high priests even have mothers? Did they spring, full-grown, from some kind of whale egg?
It would never work between them. Yes, they had some insane animal attraction between them, but what did they even know about each other? She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, and then almost laughed as the most terrifying warrior and most powerful magic-wielder she'd ever known sat in the water, waiting for her permission to stand up. She counted down under her breath, ". . . three, two--"
He stood up before she got to one, as expected, and it ticked her off even more that he rose up out of the water with his usual elegance. Alaric moved with the grace of a predator stalking prey, and too often lately she'd felt like the bunny rabbit to his wolf. His natural arrogance and belief he was in charge of every situation and every person he encountered wouldn't allow him to understand her: her fear of losing herself to his dominating nature; her fear that if she gave in, even once, to passion with him, she'd never be able to resist him again.
As he walked out of the water and onto dry sand, a brief shimmer of blue-green magic glowed around him. When the light dissipated, his clothes were completely dry. She wished she knew how to perform that handy trick, since her jeans were soaked and sand was sticking to them.
Alaric waved a hand in her direction, and her clothes also dried in a shimmer of light, as if he'd been reading her mind again. She didn't like it. Not one bit.
She pitched her voice to carry over the crashing surf. "Can you read my mind?"
He raised one dark eyebrow and smiled. "No, I have told you I cannot. It does not take thought-mining to anticipate that you would wish to be dry, however."
"Right. Can you guess what I'm thinking now?" she asked sweetly, as he approached. What lovely broad shoulders you have, she thought, and then felt her face burning.
He studied her face, and his smile slowly faded. "Ah. I cannot imagine it is anything complimentary."
She forced her mind back to the issue at hand, and away from how well his hard-muscled body filled out his clothes. "Let's talk about how you might have gotten some of those people in the cars back there killed."
"I would rather discuss kissing you," he said solemnly, and she nearly laughed but fought it down.
"This isn't funny."
"No, it isn't funny." He shoved a hand through his hair. "You are right. I could have caused people to die. This displeases you, so I will not allow it to happen again. It's a simple solution."
She blinked. "Alaric, we're the good guys. We wear the white hats. It should matter to us that people don't die just because they get in our way."
He made a complicated gesture with one hand, and a dolphin shot up out of the air in a graceful pirouette, rising to at least twenty feet in the air, before wafting back down to the waves at a gentle pace that clearly was not governed by the laws of gravity. It was a beautiful and terrifying display of restraint and power.
So he was frustrated with her. Most people rolled their eyes when they got frustrated. Alaric made dolphins do ballet. The symbolism of the differences between them wasn't lost on her.
"I have spent hundreds of years protecting these innocents you care so much about, mi amara. You judge me so harshly?" His face was all hard angles and lines, as if he waited for her to condemn him. She found, ultimately, that she couldn't.
"Nobody was hurt?"
"None that I saw," he replied. "I must be truthful with you, however. Every person on that road could have died if that had been what it took to protect you. See me for the heartless monster that I am, Quinn, and make no mistake that your safety is my only priority."
"It's not a burden I want," she said. "I can't say the same--you can't be my only priority. I need to get to New York and confront this Ptolemy and see what he wants. Maybe I can stop him, if he needs to be stopped."
"Oh, he needs to be stopped," Alaric said grimly. He sat down next to her on the white sand and told her what had happened at the Plaza. She listened in silence until the end, when he confessed his "idiocy" in saving the boy instead of following Ptolemy.
When he finished, she placed her hand on his arm. "You just can't help it, can you? You're a hero even when it's in spite of yourself."
"You weren't there," he reminded her with brutal honesty. "If you had been in danger, the results would have been far different. The boy would have died."
She shook her head. "No, you would have found a way to save us both. Or I would have saved him and you would have saved me, or we would have saved each other and the boy. We would have figured it out together, Alaric. We're a team. We have to be, or the bad guys win. It's as simple as that."
He shrugged. He'd been doing a lot of that lately, and she didn't like it. It was almost as if he'd given up the fight, just as surely as Jack had done.
She decided to change the subject. "Well. Enough of that. Where exactly are we? This isn't Mount Fuji anymore, that's for sure."
She scanned the pristine length of beach and its beautiful palm tree-covered border. The ocean was so brilliantly blue it almost hurt her eyes, and the rising sun shone on the water as brightly as if the entire vista had escaped from a traveler's favorite postcard. Seabirds played diving games with the sparkling waves, and a trio of dolphins chose that moment to leap into the air in synchronized splendor. The only sounds were the gentle pounding of the surf in front of them and the calls of birdsong from behind them.
Alaric pulled her against him, and she leaned her head on his shoulder, trying to soak in a rare moment of peace. Not quite sure how to achieve it.
"This is an unnamed island in the Bermuda Triangle, Quinn. Atlantis is in a deep-sea trench directly underneath us, about five and a half miles down."
Quinn couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Really? Did you just tell me the real location of Atlantis after thousands of years of every explorer and crackpot in history searching for it?"
"I did. Does that buy me back into your good graces?"
"Maybe a little. Wow. But, wait. Bermuda Triangle? Really? Is something freaky about to happen? Also, I thought Atlantis would be somewhere off the coast of Greece."
She could feel his body begin to shake silently, and it took a moment for Quinn to realize he was laughing.
"What
now? Don't make me shove you in the surf again," she threatened.
"It's the way you said 'something freaky' as if that didn't describe most of your life. Caught me off guard."
She had to admit he had a point.
"Yes, we were originally located near Greece, when Atlantis rode the surface of the waves, but in the Cataclysm the gods created, Atlantis was transported here inside a tremendous magical vortex. None of our Elders or our records can say how. Since then, this area has been the center of a powerful magical fluctuation that often causes havoc with weather patterns."
"Are there sunken ships, airplanes, and spaceships littering the seafloor near Atlantis?" Quinn was fascinated and willing to continue the conversation for a while. She deserved a moment or two without worries about death, danger, or deceit.
Surely she'd earned that much over the past ten years.
"No spaceships that I know of, but I wouldn't discount the notion," he said without a trace of humor. "We did the best we could to assist any of your ships floundering in various massive storms, especially ones Poseidon caused when he was in a petulant mood, but we are limited in how much we can help, according to how many of us can travel by portal at any time. We can't exactly swim up from the dome."
"The pressure would crush you."
"Not to mention our best swimmers can only hold their breath for six or eight minutes. Five miles is a long way down."
"This may be the most bizarre conversation I've ever had, and that's saying a lot," she said. "Let's at least walk and see if we can find something to drink and some fruit."
He held up one hand, and a swirling ribbon of water spiraled playfully through the air from the trees until it stopped and hovered in front of Quinn.
"It's perfectly safe to drink."
Quinn took him at his word and drank deeply from the magical water fountain. "It's delicious," she said, surprised. "As pure as the water at Fuji."
"You're unlikely to find any purer. Nobody ever comes here but me, as far as I know. The island doesn't show up on your radar, or tracking devices, or whatever instruments your people use to chart the planet."
Alaric drank, too, and then released the swirling water, and it retreated back through the trees.