Heart Of Atlantis

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