Heart Of Atlantis

the dark-haired woman sitting silently on a bench in the middle of the space. Her back was toward them, but Quinn recognized the cut of her hair and her slight figure.
    “Yes, that is our visitor. Her name is Noriko, and it is also Gailea, as far as we can understand. She speaks in an odd language—a confusion of ancient Atlantean mixed with Japanese. Between my friend Mizuki and myself, we’ve managed to cobble together what we think she means, but she mostly has sat silent, as you see her, since she arrived, refusing to talk much at all. She was very ill when she arrived and now she appears to be somewhat better, but she will not allow us to examine her, nor will she allow Alaric near enough to attempt a healing.” Archelaus frowned. “I confess I do not know how to proceed with her. I am merely an old warrior, not wise enough in the ways of women or lost souls.”
    The woman turned her head and pinned her dark gaze on Archelaus. “You are quite wise, and your heart is evident, Old One,” she said in perfect, lightly accented English.
    Alaric stepped forward slightly so that he stood between Quinn and the woman. Probably thought he was being subtle about his protectiveness. Quinn rolled her eyes as she dodged around him.
    “Now that you have deigned to speak to me, state your name and how you appeared in our portal,” Alaric demanded.
    The woman rose gracefully to her feet and bowed, dark eyes flashing with a hint of defiance. “I needed time to discover the shape of my current reality. I am Gailea, the one you know as the spirit of the portal, and you, Alaric, are as arrogant as ever, I see.”
    “The shape of your reality. Yeah, because that makes sense,” Quinn said, studying Gailea’s delicate Japanese features and raising an eyebrow, not caring that the other woman recognized her skepticism. “You look so much like the other ancient Atlantean woman I know. You and Serai could practically be sisters.”
    Gailea bowed again, this time toward Quinn. “And I am also Noriko, the woman you see before you. She came to Mount Fuji to die. She recently discovered that she had an advanced stage of cancer, and having lost her family to the tsunami, she believed she had no reason to live.”
    Shame flushed Quinn’s cheeks with heat, but she knew better, after years of dealing with traitors, spies, and villains, to take anything that anyone said at face value. “And we should believe you why, exactly?”
    Noriko/Gailea calmly said quite a long paragraph of . . . something.
    Alaric snapped to attention, whatever it was that she’d said. His body tensed and he clenched his hands into fists at his sides.
    “Poseidon’s long-term plans and schemes can no longer rule my life,” he snapped. “I don’t want to know what you think.”
    Before Gailea could respond, Jack snarled viciously and leapt through the air toward her, knocking the woman/portal spirit to one side. As Noriko backed away toward the cave wall, Quinn automatically drew her gun and dropped into a battle-ready crouch; years of fighting with Jack at her side had trained her responses to his actions to be instantaneous. She followed Jack’s gaze up and up. The light in the chamber suddenly dimmed, and everyone else looked up at the opening in the top of the room, too, just in time to see the first of a wave of wild creatures with bared fangs and outstretched claws leap down through the air.
    Quinn’s mouth dropped open. “Monkeys? Now we’re being attacked by flying monkeys?”

Chapter 3
    Alaric didn’t even blink at the sight of a dozen or more man-sized brutish apes leaping down upon them. Their red faces contorted into feral grimaces as they shrieked and roared. After hundreds of years as a warrior and Poseidon’s high priest, veteran of thousands of battles and survivor of nearly as many deadly schemes, Alaric was surprised by nothing anymore. Especially when Quinn was around.
    Not even flying monkeys.
    “Quinn, get out of here,” he barked, as he called to his magic. First, he wove a powerful protection spell over the barrier to prevent further intruders from dropping down on their heads. Then he formed twin spheres of blue-green electricity in his outstretched palms, and he hurled the first with fatal accuracy at the lead ape. For an instant its brown fur shone with a luminous blue light, like a bizarre mammalian form of deep-sea creature. The light abruptly vanished as the ape collapsed and died.
    The harsh bark of gunfire