Heart Of Atlantis

started to follow her as she headed toward the portal, head bent, gaze on the ground. Her shoulders hunched around her neck, as if awaiting another blow.
    Alaric issued a final warning to Daniel, whose quest with Serai must succeed, and then he and Jack, who still rested on his cushion of magic, followed Quinn into the shimmer of light, which would hopefully take them to the one place he doubted any would think to look for them.
    Not even the sea god himself.
    “Take us to Mount Fuji.”

Chapter 1
    A hidden cave inside of Mount Fuji, Japan
    The portal opened and Alaric, warrior and high priest of Atlantis, stepped through, followed by a shell-shocked rebel leader and a five-hundred-pound tiger shape-shifter who might have permanently lost his humanity.
    “Oh, Alaric,” said the ancient man who stood waiting for them, sighing and shaking his head. “You do get into the most fascinating trouble.”
    “Interesting you should say that, Archelaus,” Alaric said. “I need a place to hide for a time, while Quinn tries to help Jack remember that he’s human, too, and not just a tiger.”
    Quinn barely glanced at him, her eyes dull with pain and exhaustion, but she never let go of his hand. It was more physical contact than he’d allowed himself to have with her in a very long time.
    Archelaus took them all in with his sharp gaze. The old man, long since retired as mentor to the Atlantean warrior training academy, never missed anything.
    “And Atlantis? Are the Seven Isles still in jeopardy?”
    “Aren’t they always?” Alaric sliced a hand through the air in dismissal of the topic. “We need a place to rest. Food. A refuge—we need to hide a tiger.”
    Archelaus pointed at something behind them. “Who is that?”
    Alaric whirled around, shocked to see a stranger—a delicate, dark-haired woman—step out of the portal.
    “Who are you?” he demanded, pushing Quinn behind him. None but Atlanteans could call the portal, and this woman clearly was not Atlantean, but of Asian descent.
    She blinked in apparent confusion. “
Konnichiwa
,” she began, offering a basic greeting in Japanese, but then she continued in ancient Atlantean as she slowly collapsed until she lay curled up on the ground next to the tiger, who ignored her completely. “I am the spirit of the portal, and I am this woman, who came to Mount Fuji to die.”
    “
You
came here to die.
We
came here to force Jack to live,” Quinn said, and then she started laughing, a terrible, almost hysterical laugh. “Lucky we have Poseidon’s high priest with us, isn’t it?”
    Alaric stared down at Quinn and fought the tidal wave of unfamiliar, unwanted emotion threatening to swamp him. “Yes. I will do what I can for him, as I promised.”
    Archelaus sighed again. “You have amazingly bad timing, my friend.”
    “Timing has nothing to do with need,” Alaric snapped, finally out of patience with the day, the situation, and the centuries of standing alone as priest to a capricious god.
    “Timing has everything to do with danger,” the older man returned calmly, as he draped his sweater over the unconscious woman who’d claimed to be what she couldn’t possibly be. “The vampire goddess Anubisa is back from her sojourn in the land of Chaos, and this time she swears to destroy Atlantis and every member of the Atlantean royal family. You have never been more needed by your people in your entire life, I would imagine.”
    “I am needed here,” Alaric said, staring at Quinn. “Atlantis can burn in the nine hells for all I care. I have sacrificed enough to Poseidon. My days as high priest are done.”

    Quinn collapsed onto a low bench against one wall of the room or cave or wherever they’d ended up. Strange that she’d spent more time in caves since becoming the leader of the North American human rebel contingent than she’d ever dreamed possible. Straight from caves in Sedona, where she’d battled vampires and evil bankers, to Japan. A wave of grief and exhaustion, fought back and repressed for far too long, swept through her and threatened to drown her in futility and despair.
    Jack. Her comrade; her partner in the rebellion. Her friend. She could finally admit she loved him with some small part of her stony, blackened heart, although it wasn’t the kind of love he might want. She loved him like a brother; the one she’d never had and had never known she wanted. Her big, scary, wounded warrior of a brother, who just happened to shift into