Heart Of Atlantis

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