Heart Of Atlantis

silk. “Oh, I don’t remember, my time in the Void was so long and so dark and twisted, with lovely, broken creatures. Did I know there was a baby? Did I?”
    “Whether you did or not, there is one. Conlan’s kid. Heir to the throne. Do you want him?”
    She smiled at him in a grim parody of happiness, and her fangs sliced into her lips and chin, gouging flesh and blood that ran down her face.
    “Oh, yes, I want the baby,” she whispered. “I must have the baby, I will count his little fingers and his little toes, and then I will bite them off and drink every drop of blood in his fat little body, and finally,
finally
, that will be the end of those hideous Atlanteans.”
    Ptolemy was a little skeptical about her calling anybody else hideous, seeing as how she was a few dozen bricks short of a load, but as they liked to say in his world, “
Evil plans make a bad day joyous
.”
    He planned to have a
very
joyous day.
    “I’ll deliver them to you, and you’ll hold up your end of the bargain. The vampires will recognize me as the true king of Atlantis and uphold my sovereignty.”
    She levitated again, cackling, still chanting about the baby, but then a look of sly calculation swept over her face. In spite of the gore and madness, it was still the most stunning face he’d ever seen; she had a deadly dark beauty that would cut and bleed any who dared come close.
    Good enough. He had no plans to get close to this crazy bitch. Soon he’d have Quinn. He thought about all that would entail, and he finally smiled. Anubisa mistook his smile for appreciation of her wonderfulness, apparently, because she glared haughtily down at him from a few feet up.
    “The likes of you will never have me, demon,” she hissed.
    He yawned. “I am no demon of your realm to be cowed by you, vampire,” he said. “My Atlantean mother bore me to the Higher Demon who stole her from her home, and their blood, combined, will make me the most powerful ruler Atlantis or this world has ever seen. Join in or be left behind. It matters little to me now, and will mean even less when I use the power of Poseidon’s Trident to open the doors between worlds and allow my brethren access to this garden paradise of a planet.”
    The vampire started laughing, chanting a nonsensical song, and Ptolemy laughed right along with her. It was going to be a very,
very
joyous day.

Chapter 12
    The war room, Atlantis
    Quinn sat in the chair the farthest away from anybody who’d recently pissed her off, which included everyone except her sister, so the logistics were tricky unless she wanted to move out into the hall. She put her empty plate down on the table next to her and considered going back for more roast chicken. She might be angry, but long years of fighting and hardship had taught her that you ate when there was food, slept when there was a bed, and felt grateful for either or both.
    Riley leaned over and handed Quinn a chocolate cookie. “Are you going to even look at him? Poor man is dying over there. He’s the scariest guy in the world, and yet I think he’s a little bit afraid of you.”
    Quinn scoffed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. He’s not afraid of anything, although you’d think the size of his over-inflated head would be terrifying as it crashes into walls.”
    She crammed the cookie in her mouth and tried not to bliss out too obviously as the melted chocolate and spices exploded on her tongue.
    “He’s worried about you,” Riley murmured. “And he doesn’t know how to worry about anyone. His life has been all about power and command; balancing the demands of a capricious god with the bleak reality of his loneliness. For Pete’s sake, Quinn, you should have seen him when I was pregnant. He practically set a peacock on fire for daring to walk across my path in the garden one day.”
    Riley screwed up her face into a fierce scowl. “It might have tripped you and damaged your womb or the heir to the throne, Princess,” she said gruffly, clearly imitating Alaric.
    Quinn started laughing. “Damaged your
womb
? Oh, no, he did not!”
    Riley handed her another cookie and sat back in her chair. “Oh, yes, he did, and I could tell you worse stories. Let’s just leave it at this: Alaric has never been in love in his life and he’s head over heels for you. He has been since that first day we found you on the ground, with a bullet in your shoulder, and now he thinks he might be able to do something about it, thanks to