Heart Of Atlantis

was making the world safe for her sister and her sister’s children to come. But now? The world could take care of itself.
    She passed some time in fitful sleep, waking and then dozing again, she didn’t know for how long, before she heard voices. Ptolemy and someone else, a woman, but the voice was familiar in a horrible way. She hadn’t heard it in a long time, but it wasn’t another rebel, it was too . . .
    Oh.
    Oh,
no
.
    She curled her legs into her chest, praying desperately for a wooden stake, a gun loaded with silver bullets, or divine intervention from God or, in fact, any of the gods. Unfortunately, she didn’t exactly believe in any of them. What kind of supreme beings would allow so much pain and suffering in the world?
    Her mind was set to full-on babble now, as the one creature alive that she feared even more than Ptolemy and his demonic raping agenda entered the room where Quinn lay helpless, blind, and bound.
    Anubisa. The vampire goddess.
    This was going to be bad. She’d been ready to die, but her mind rebelled at the thought of meeting her end by slow torture.
    “What do you have for me, my ally?” Anubisa crooned in her sickeningly sweet lilt. Her voice carried the tone and feel of rusty daggers and bashed-in skulls. Quinn winced in real pain, her eardrums aching from the sound.
    “She is not for you,” Ptolemy said harshly. “Quinn Dawson is mine.”
    “Quinn? I know that name,” Anubisa hissed. “She is mine. I must have my revenge against this one.”
    Quinn rolled over onto her stomach with her legs underneath her, ready to piston her way back and hopefully smash somebody’s face with her head before she died. It wasn’t much, but it was all she had for a plan. Bound human versus demon and vampire goddess didn’t bode well for the human.
    She heard tentative footsteps, and a new voice entered the mix. This one sounded like a girl, so Quinn put a pause on her head-bashing plan, as gentle hands lifted her and removed the scarf from her eyes. A scared-looking girl, probably in her late teens, stood in front of her, holding the cloth in shaking hands.
    “Don’t fight him,” the girl whispered. “It’s even worse when you fight.”
    Quinn studied the bruises that covered one side of the girl’s face, and any trace of fear in her own heart seeped away, to be replaced with cold, hard, welcome rage. Not the berserker kind of rage; no, not Quinn. She fueled her spirit with the kind of anger that knew how to plot, and scheme, and bide its time until she could find the best way to kill anyone and everyone who had hurt the innocents Quinn considered to be under her protection.
    Like this girl.
    “I’ll help you,” Quinn said. “Don’t be afraid.”
    The girl clearly didn’t believe her, but Quinn couldn’t blame her for that. The circumstances didn’t really support her claim.
    “Get out of the way,” Anubisa said, backhanding the girl with one small, slender white hand. The girl flew at least ten feet through the room and landed in a crumpled heap on the floor, where she lay still, quietly sobbing.
    Quinn looked up at Anubisa and smiled, careful not to look into the vampire’s eyes. “That’s one,” she said calmly.
    “One what, stupid human?” Anubisa drew her hand back to strike Quinn, too, but Ptolemy stopped her by the simple virtue of pointing a stick at her and blasting. Anubisa fell to the floor, apparently unconscious or dead. She didn’t breathe, so Quinn couldn’t tell.
    Quinn stared at Ptolemy and his stick of death, wondering if she were next. On closer examination, however, she realized it wasn’t a stick at all but the scepter with Poseidon’s Pride inset at the tip.
    “You’re pretty brave, using one god’s possession to kill another,” she said, hoping to taunt him into making a mistake. Petty tyrants could often be trapped by the gilded ropes of their own vanity.
    “She’s not dead, more’s the pity,” he said. “But, yes, it was rather fun. I wonder what I’ll do next. Maybe destroy your White House and turn the area into a parking lot for my new fleet of automobiles. Wonderful things, your cars. You actually pay money to move from place to place in vehicles that destroy your environment while you use them.”
    He shook his head in apparent wonder, and she realized something she’d only guessed at before.
    “You’re not from around here, are you?”
    He tilted his head, and for one brief second, his eyes flickered and changed from