Heart Of Atlantis

moral support. Or maybe she was ascribing human motives to him as a kind of wishful thinking, when he was becoming more and more tiger by the moment.
    At the entrance to the cave, a wall of air shimmered in waves of pearlescent opal, as if magic protected this opening, too. Which, of course, it did, Quinn reflected, as she walked through a barrier that had the consistency of a soap bubble. It snapped shut behind her, hopefully offering better protection than the monkey doorway.
    She took a deep breath of the fresh mountain air and allowed her gaze to sweep the view from an upper slope of Mount Fuji. “It’s so beautiful here. So high above battles and blood and death, or so you’d think. Almost like a waking dream—but of someone else’s life.”
    “We’re above the clouds,” Ven said. “The exact opposite of my home so far beneath the ocean’s surface. It kind of takes your breath away, doesn’t it?”
    “More than eleven thousand feet elevation here,” Archelaus said, joining them. “Over twelve thousand at the summit. Fuji is one of three sacred mountains—”
    “Perhaps we could save the ancient history for later and discuss the current problem?” Alaric’s voice cut through the air like a sword through silk.
    Quinn could sense—just barely, though, even with her empath senses flaring to high—the tension boiling beneath his icy demeanor. She wondered if she’d be around when he finally erupted. An interesting thought: Alaric and Mount Fuji, both dormant volcanoes; both with majestic exteriors hiding barely leashed danger. She grinned at the idea of telling Alaric he was exactly like a lava-filled mountain, and he slanted a look at her, clearly wondering where her mind was.
    “Nice of you to give a damn, after weeks of being mostly incommunicado,” Ven said dryly. “Anyway, that’s just it—the current problem
is
ancient history. Noriko was telling the truth. Archaeologists at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey have found Poseidon’s Pride.”
    Alaric and Archelaus simultaneously inhaled. In anyone
not
an Atlantean warrior, Quinn would have called it gasping.
    “Poseidon lost his pride?” Quinn glanced from face to face. “Did he also lose his gluttony, avarice, and lust? Is this some weird seven deadly sins kind of thing?”
    Alaric was shaking his head before she’d finished her admittedly lame joke.
    “Poseidon’s Pride is the final missing jewel from his Trident. It’s a tourmaline that gives immense, possibly immeasurable power to its wielder. We’ve been searching for it for centuries.”
    “Göbekli Tepe sounds familiar,” Archelaus said. “Why is that?”
    “Human archaeologists recently discovered the site. It’s an Atlantean temple built around eleven thousand, six hundred years ago, and they’re calling it the oldest known example of
human
monumental architecture, which is kind of surprising, now that they know about supernatural creatures and magic, but whatever. It’s the first known building bigger than a hut, basically,” Ven said. He shook his head. “They’ve all got their panties in a twist over how a bunch of people who were still nomads foraging for food could have transported sixteen-ton stones.”
    “Ridiculous concept,” Alaric said dryly. “Of course Atlanteans built it. The Elders at the time sent our people to all corners of the earth to perpetuate our race before Atlantis descended beneath the seas at the time of the Cataclysm. Certainly many of them would have built temples.”
    “Atlantean magic,” Quinn said, finding it easy to imagine, given what she knew of their powers. “Serai could probably move a boulder without smudging her lip gloss.”
    Alaric shrugged. On him, even a shrug looked elegant. “Serai is an eleven-thousand-year-old Atlantean princess. Her magic is more powerful than mine in some ways.”
    “Not many ways,” Ven said. “Not in
battle
ways.”
    Alaric’s eyes glowed a hot green. “No. But that vampire she’s in love with isn’t likely to let her anywhere near a battle again.”
    “Daniel knows better than to try to tell Serai to do anything,” Ven said. “She turned into a saber-toothed tiger, dude.”
    “Never,
ever
call me dude.”
    Quinn sighed. “So the
point
is . . .” She made a “move along” gesture with her hand.
    “The point is that nobody but Alaric can touch that gemstone without dying horribly. So far, seven people associated with the dig have spontaneously combusted.” Ven shuddered. “Bad