Heart Of Atlantis

through him, and he laughed as he hurled it outward, destroying everything in sight. He shot ropes of pure magic at a car, lifted it into the air, and threw it against the side of a building, taking out half of the wall. He levitated into the air, dimly sensing Christophe calling to him, trying to stop him, demanding to know what in the nine hells was going on. Alaric slammed shut the door to their mental communication and shot a blast of energy at the park, taking out six trees at once and leaving a giant fireball in their place.
    It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. If that monster touched one hair on Quinn’s head, Alaric would drown the entire world and laugh as every human on the planet died. He froze, mid-thought, his hands encircled by glowing spheres of destructive power.
    Drowning
.
    That was it.
    He’d drown them all, city by city, nation by nation, until he found Quinn. If that didn’t give them incentive to cooperate, nothing would. He centered himself and reached deep into the reservoir of his power for every last ounce of magical reserves he might have, and then he ruthlessly stripped power from every human witch in a hundred-mile radius. All sorcerers, wizards, and magic practitioners of every kind suddenly found themselves bereft of power, as one of the most powerful high priests Atlantis had ever known tore their magic from them.
    It was fast, dirty, and painful—and he didn’t care.
    It left some of them screaming and some of them in comas—and he didn’t care.
    He threw all of it into the ocean, where he drove the power with a towering fury, twisting and turning, breaking and battering, until he got exactly the result he wanted. A tsunami larger than any ever seen on the surface of the planet formed in the Atlantic Ocean and headed straight for New York City.
    It was two thousand feet high and still growing when it was a mile out from shore, and nothing—
nothing
—on the eastern seaboard would survive it.
    He stared down at the fools with news cameras who’d been stupid enough to remain in the area, filming his actions.
    “If he harms Quinn Dawson, you will all die.”

Chapter 19
    Quinn lay on her side on a couch, its rough fabric scratching her face and the smell of years of dust and mildew clogging her nose. Ptolemy had bound her hands behind her back and tied a rag over her eyes. She didn’t bother to struggle. She had nothing left to fight for. She’d failed to retrieve Poseidon’s Pride in time, so Atlantis was probably lost by now, with everyone she loved in it, except for Jack, who had been lost to her for days. And Riley . . . Quinn’s heart shattered into tiny, broken pieces at the thought of her sister and nephew. She’d wanted to save them all, and now she couldn’t even save herself.
    Even if she wanted to continue the fight—even if she could find some way to care enough to keep on keeping on—she’d been outed as the rebel leader and shown to be a cold-blooded murderer on international TV.
    There was nothing left. She’d find a way to kill herself and take Ptolemy down with her. That was her one final mission. Her one final goal.
    She’d tried to reach out to find Alaric with her mind, the way he always seemed to be able to find her, but the obstacle there was that he was a powerful magic-wielding Atlantean and she was a human with only a single talent. Even that was useless; Ptolemy’s tainted, foul magic clouded her senses so badly that she was sure she’d go insane if she didn’t keep her shields up, so even if Alaric were trying to reach her, she wouldn’t hear him.
    Anyway, what good was a final good-bye? Alaric knew how she felt.
    Maybe.
    Probably.
    She didn’t bother to try to nudge the mask from over her eyes, because she could see enough to know the room was pitch-black. Ptolemy had dumped her there after they’d gone through a vortex not unlike a fun house–mirror version of the portal. He’d quickly and expertly bound her and tossed her on the couch, with orders not to move. Apparently they were someplace where he didn’t have to worry about her screaming for help. She’d tried for a while, but nobody had come running to her assistance.
    She’d waited for a long time but then finally, in spite of everything, she’d dozed off. Her body had been exhausted, and her mind had shut down to protect her from the hopeless despair of knowing she was all alone in the world. Always before, she’d had someone to fight for. She’d known she