Heart Of Atlantis
had endured too damn much to put up with any of it. He set to work with the shining sword, with Faust at his back taking aim with his gun.
Within minutes every vamp in the room was dead and dissolving in a pile of acidic slime, and only one of the children was badly injured: a girl with a nasty bite on her neck bleeding out on the floor. Alaric could feel her life force ebbing as he watched, and she was a tiny bit of a thing, probably no older than five.
“I need to get her to a doctor, man,” Faust said, panicking.
“There’s no time,” Alaric said, as gently as he knew how.
The boy ignored him and carefully gathered the girl in his arms, and in the space of those few moments, Alaric considered his options. He was teetering on the edge of overuse of magic as it was; would the energy to heal one human child who was already so close to dying send him over the edge? Could he risk it, when the result might be to condemn thousands of Atlantean children to death?
The girl cried out, and he realized he didn’t actually have a decision to make at all. He couldn’t do nothing and watch this child die.
He stopped Faust and placed his hand over the site of the wound. Blue-green light flared as Alaric’s healing energy swept through him and into the child. She stiffened in the boy’s arms and then sat up, grinning.
“Do it again!”
The bite on her neck was gone as if it had never happened.
“But—” Faust looked wildly from Alaric to the child. “How did you—”
“The bite is healed and any vampire venom is completely destroyed, so she is not at risk from the blood bond, either,” Alaric told him. “I have to go now. Try to stay out of trouble, won’t you? I don’t have time to keep rescuing you. I have to go kill that impostor who calls himself Ptolemy.”
Faust called out to him before Alaric reached the doorway. “I can take you to him. He’s getting ready to have a press conference at City Hall at eight o’clock.”
Alaric paused and then swung back. “We’re in New York?”
The little girl he’d healed giggled up at him. “Mister, you’re not very smart, are you?”
He shook his head. “No, sweetling. I’m not very smart at all.”
Chapter 17
Outside City Hall, New York
Quinn stood on the sidewalk in City Hall Park, staring up at the grand limestone façade of the beautiful building, and considered her options. She’d been thinking subtle: steal her way into the building and find Ptolemy; confront him privately. See what he had in mind for Atlantis. For Poseidon’s Pride.
For
her
.
No dice, though. The public hadn’t been allowed into City Hall since a horde of drunken wolf-shifters had eaten all the tour guides one day a few years back, or so her laminated map said.
She was running out of choices, and Atlantis was running out of time.
Well, as Jack always said, the best defense was a good offense. She squared her shoulders and swallowed the lump of pain and regret that formed in her throat at the thought of him. Later. She could think about Jack later. For now, she’d walk right up to the front door and show them her best credential.
Her face.
The guard just inside the door didn’t look up. She was seated at an old wooden table that may have dated from as far back as the building itself and was oddly incongruous next to the modern doorway-shaped metal detector. “Next.”
Quinn was doing enough looking up for both of them, though. The soaring rotunda and magnificent staircase that winged to each side transported her to a world of nineteenth-century New York aristocracy, glittering with sparkling jewels and even more sparkling conversation. Oddly enough, it reminded her a little of the Atlantean palace, if not on nearly as grand a scale.
“Next,” the guard said again, louder. The woman was built like a warrior: sturdy muscle packed into a small, stout body. Her tightly curled gray hair was cut close to her head, and her face, like Quinn’s, was devoid of makeup. Quinn might have smiled, recognizing a kindred spirit, under other circumstances.
“I’m Quinn Dawson.”
“Key card.”
“I’m Quinn Dawson,” she repeated slowly. “Ptolemy is looking for me.”
“I don’t care if you’re Elvis, you’re not getting in here without a . . . Oh. My. God,” the woman said, finally looking up at Quinn. “You’re her? The rebel leader?”
Quinn drew a deep breath and admitted it. Out loud. “Yes.”
The sturdy woman practically hurled herself out of
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