by Alyssa Day
“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 safety 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.
Alaric watched, breathing hard, as the demon melted. And then he smiled.
The creatures who’d been trying to sneak up behind him shrieked and ran away at the sight of him, but it was too late. Alaric threw a rapid-fire burst of energy spheres at them and incinerated them all.
They’d tried to hurt his woman. They died. Nothing could be simpler.
His gaze arrowed toward Quinn, who was standing, a gun in each hand, in front of Noriko and Riley and the baby, and he laughed.
I see you have rescued yourself again.
She smiled at him across the fallen bodies of their enemies.
Not bad yourself.
Quinn was fiercely, overwhelmingly glad that Ptolemy was dead.
“What happened to Alaric? Why is he all Johnny Torch?” Ven shouted, but Quinn shook her head. No time.
She pulled out the Uzi and swept the roof clear of the few remaining of Ptolemy’s brethren, and she cheered at the sight until her voice was hoarse.
Threaten to “mate” with her, would they, the little monsters? Now they wouldn’t be mating with anybody.
Quinn, my love, leave me something to kill.
She waved at Alaric and blew him a kiss.
I think you’ve done enough.
A brief flare of pain alerted her to Alaric’s injury
. He was still shining, but not quite as much as he had been.
Hey, you’re hurt. You need to heal that right now.
It is nothing, he replied.
She started toward him. “Tell me that again, and I’ll shoot you myself. Let me see it.”
She pulled his shirt up and her heart jumped into her throat at the sight of the wound. “That’s not nothing. Fix it. Now.”
Instead, he pulled her closer and kissed her so deeply that her knees buckled. His magic poured into her like a high-voltage current, and for a minute she was afraid she was going to have an orgasm right there on the roof surrounded by the Atlantean royal family and a whole lot of dead demons.
“Now I will heal it,” Alaric said, when he finally released her.
She blinked up at him, dazed, and he smiled that completely male, entirely self-satisfied smile again. It made her want to hit him.
It made her want to kiss him again.
She settled for neither. “You did slay an interdimensional demon for me, so I guess I’ll let you get away with this one.”
His smile faded. “But Atlantis is not safe yet. Where is Anubisa?”
As if on cue, Atlantis rocked like an earthquake had shattered its foundation, and Quinn fell against a stone pedestal and knocked off a marble statuette of a porpoise.
With her head.
“Ow,” she complained. “Why is it always my head?”
“Hardest part on you?” Ven suggested, and she groaned.
“Anubisa,” Alaric said, staring into the far distance at something only he could see. “By all the gods, Anubisa is going after the Trident.”
Conlan, who was comforting Riley and Aidan, froze. “Alaric—”
“I know,” Alaric said grimly, as he started running for the stairs. “If it falls into her hands, all of Atlantis is doomed.”
Jack snarled, and Quinn wanted to do the same.
Ven groaned. “Why can’t we ever catch a damn break?” He took off after Quinn and Alaric, and Justice and Jack followed close behind, silent and deadly.
“We need to end this, once and for all,” Conlan said, matching pace with Alaric.
Alaric nodded, the movement all the more striking since he was glowing again and tiny sparks arced from his motion. “I agree. Tonight we discover how to kill a goddess.”
Chapter 34
Alaric hit the stairs running and shot through the palace like an arrow loosed from Artemis’s bow, wondering if even his newly increased power would be sufficient to defeat a vampire goddess.
His heart ached at the idea of losing Quinn before he’d had a chance to live his life with her, but nothing mattered more than defeating Anubisa. If she managed to kill him—and the odds were against him—she’d use the Trident to destroy Atlantis and everyone in it.
Quinn could not die. She would not die. If it took his life to save her, he’d gladly sacrifice it. But that was not the optimal choice.
Dying was, as Ven would say, Plan B.
He stopped twenty paces from the Trident’s chamber, caught Quinn’s arm, and used her momentum to swing her into an empty room.
“You will stay here,” he commanded her.
Before she could argue, he took her face in his hands and kissed her with every ounce of his longing and his love. His entire body shook with his passion, and he felt her tremble against his body.
“If you are safe, I can survive this, I think, mi amara,” he said. “Please, just this one time, stay back.”
Quinn’s eyes flashed and he could see on her very expressive face the internal battle she waged.
“Fine.” She lifted her chin. “Fine. Go fight your magical battle, but you’d better remember that all you need to do is call me, and I’ll be there to back you up.”
“I can never deserve you,” he said roughly, his muscles tensing up at the thought that he might not live to see her again.
She grinned her perfect, irrepressible grin. “Killing Anubisa would go a long way toward changing that.”
He laughed and headed for the most deadly, dangerous fight of his life.
Conlan, Ven, Justice, and Jack caught up to him as he reached the door to the Trident’s chamber.
“Jack, please stay back with Quinn and protect her,” Alaric asked, one warrior to another. “If I cannot . . . If I do not survive this, I will go to the afterlife knowing that you will be at her side.”
Jack roared and ran back toward the doorway where Quinn stood, watching Alaric, her eyes enormous but dry.
“Now?” Conlan asked.
“Now,” Alaric agreed.
They entered the chamber together, Justice and Ven right behind them. Alaric’s shoulders relaxed a fraction at the sight of Anubisa levitating near the Trident’s pedestal, where it still rested on its cushion. She hadn’t been able to take it, yet.
“You cannot touch the tool of the sea god, you foul creature,” he told her contemptuously.
“I kind of hope she tries,” Ven said, as the princes fanned out to flank him. “I’m looking forward to watching it melt her hands off.”
Anubisa shrieked with laughter, and Alaric saw Conlan’s face harden at the sound. The dark memories of torture that must be contained in her laughter for Conlan made Alaric all the more determined to kill her, once and for all.
“You cannot stop me, even with your new abilities, O priest of light,” she sneered. “Poseidon has abandoned his children while he plays power games with other pantheons, and I am delighted to step into the breach and finally, finally, murder every last one of the hideous Atlantean royal family.”
She turned her horrible red gaze to Conlan, and she cupped her breasts with her hands. “Shall I nurse your fat baby with milk from my breasts, princeling? Shall I tell him bedtime stories of how his daddy bled and screamed at my whim for seven long years?”
“You will never touch my son,” Conlan roared, and he ran toward her, raising his sword.
“No, Conlan,” Alaric shouted, but it was too late.
Anubisa threw a spear formed of oily black smoke at Conlan. It smashed into his thigh and took him down. The spear disappeared, but the gaping wound in the prince’s leg pulsed blood.
Ven ran to his brother and applied pressure to the wound, but when Alaric tried to go to Conlan, Anubisa laughed again.
“I think not. I like Conlan best when he is bleeding on the floor,” she crooned, and she shot a barrage of magical arrows at Alaric that forced him to dodge and twist out of the way while blocking them with his own magic.
Alaric hurled a series of energy spheres at Anubisa, but she shattered them with ease, all the while keeping up her perusal of the Trident and continuing to shoot her deadly black spears and arrows at Conlan, Ven, and Alaric.
Justice, who had been quietly edging around the room, leapt at Anubisa from behind, but she waved a hand in the air, and he slammed backward against the wall so hard, headfirst, that he collapsed, either unconscious or dead, on the floor.
“I’ve wanted to kill that one for a while,” she said, doing a little pirouette.
She reached out a hand—so close, almost touching the Trident—and Alaric took advantage of her distraction to hurl a spear of his own at her. She twisted away at the last second, but the weapon, formed from pure, glowing, silvery blue light, sliced through her side, and she screamed as a flow of inky black blood stained her dress.
“I will kill you even more slowly for that,” she shouted, levitating higher and higher into the air, until she floated above them.
Drops of her blood fell from her side, dripping steadily, but she appeared no weaker for the injury.
Alaric called to his new power and created a magical shield between Anubisa and Conlan, and he ran to the prince and sent a pulse of healing power through the leg wound. Conlan no
dded his thanks, and he and Ven stood up and ran to the side just as Anubisa hurled a blast of power at them, destroying Alaric’s shield.
“You cannot escape me, fools,” she said, twirling around in midair. “I am all powerful. I am the goddess of Chaos and of Night. I am—”
“You are an ugly, twisted, sadistic, old hag, and my entire family has had enough of you,” Conlan said, moving to stand side by side with Alaric.
Anubisa snapped to attention at his words, and her howl of outrage nearly shattered Alaric’s eardrums. From the way the princes flinched, he could tell they’d felt it, too.
“Hag? Did you call me an ugly hag? I’m the most beautiful woman any of you have ever seen,” she shrieked, floating down nearer to them either by intent or through sheer rage.
Ven took his place on Alaric’s other side, quickly catching on. “Have you ever seen a vamp blood junkie? All strung out and filthy, hasn’t bathed in weeks? Most of them are better-looking than you, you ugly, washed-up, old woman.”
She howled again and began firing her dark spears, but Alaric blocked and destroyed every one of them. He glanced at Justice, wondered briefly what was even possible with his new powers, and decided that nothing ventured . . .
He threw a burst of healing energy across the entire chamber toward Justice, still lying on the floor behind Anubisa, and Justice sat up and grinned and gave Alaric the two-thumbs-up signal.
Anubisa never noticed a thing, because she was still shrieking with rage and throwing energy bolts at them with manic, deadly intent.
Justice, using the stealth he’d gained during centuries as one of the most lethal warriors in Atlantis, ran up behind Anubisa, raising his sword, and swung it with every ounce of his strength at her neck.
At the last possible second, some primal instinct warned the vampire, and she ducked, but the blade caught her in the shoulder and sliced her arm from her body. She screamed so long and so loud that Alaric was sure his skull would explode, but he ignored the pain and ran toward her, gathering every ounce of his magic as he ran.
This is it, Quinn, my beloved, my life, he sent to her. If I survive this, I will never leave you again.