Heart Of Atlantis

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