Heart Of Atlantis

her.
    He jerked his head at one corner of the room.
    She walked over to where he’d indicated, and found a portrait hidden in a niche. It looked incredibly old, but somehow the colors were still as fresh and vibrant as if newly painted. The subject was a woman, clearly Atlantean—she could have been Serai’s sister—holding a baby.
    “She’s beautiful,” Quinn said, feeling an unwanted flash of compassion for the monster beside her. Beauty had borne the Beast. How much must that have hurt them both?
    Ptolemy must have been able to read Quinn’s sincerity, because his hunched posture relaxed, and his features resumed somewhat of their human cast, at least enough so she could bear to look at him.
    “Yes, she was. She was also one of the
aknasha’an
, like you.”
    Quinn whirled to look at him. “Is that why? You—”
    “My kind is unable to bear children without a female who can read emotions. Whether by reason of an ancient curse none of us remember, or simply because of a cruel twist of fate, we must steal women from other dimensions in order to procreate,” he said. “You became known to me when I was studying your world, and I would have taken you simply for your abilities alone, but your exploits as rebel leader fascinated me until I became obsessed. Your strength and courage. Your leadership skills. These are qualities I want for my heirs.”
    His sincerity made her teeth hurt, so she told herself she was simply dealing with a man with serious mommy issues. “You do realize that you can’t just go around stealing women to use as breeders, right?”
    He smiled at her with teeth that were still far too sharp, and quite possibly serrated, from the look of them. She repressed a shudder.
    “But that is exactly what I have done, my dear
wife
.”
    “
Don’t
call me that.” She thought longingly of the knife in her boot and forced herself to change the subject when he leered at her again. “What happened here?”
    He paced around the room slowly. “The same thing that always happens with warlike creatures. We destroyed each other and our dimension. We’ve had to roam farther and farther afield for mates, and many of our people never return to this blasted wasteland of a realm, for obvious reasons.”
    “Why did you? What is there here for you?” She pointed at the landscape through a crumbling window frame, its glass, if it had ever had any, long gone.
    “Why, my brothers are here,” he said, and then he threw back his head and made a long, ululating whistling noise that she was sure would make her ears bleed.
    She clamped her hands over them and almost missed what he said next.
    “When you and I rule Atlantis and then the rest of your world, they will serve as my most trusted advisors and staff.”
    Her mouth fell open. He was bat-shit crazy.
    “I don’t think Anubisa is going to go along with that plan.”
    He sneered. “Anubisa is a mad relic of a time long gone. I will have no trouble with her, as you’ve seen. I plan to rule her vampires, too, or destroy them. It matters little to me.”
    She didn’t have time to form a response to that, before his brothers started arriving. And if she’d thought Ptolemy was hideous, she’d sorely underestimated the meaning of the word. He was Prince Charming compared to his family.
    She gritted her teeth and fought really, really hard not to scream.

Chapter 25
    Alaric’s first instinct was to shatter the Statue of Liberty into crumbling dust, and everyone still on the island with it. The berserker rage climbed up inside him again, and with the recently increased capacity of his power, he was likely to destroy the entire state of New York.
    Only one thing stopped him from doing so: he could still sense Quinn. Somewhere, either so far away he had no idea of how to reach her, or else nearby with her presence blocked by the pretender, but he could still feel her. The soul-meld had given him that much. She was alive and unharmed, at least for now, and he
would
find her.
    Now that the demon had gone, the police and other officials were closing in, fast, and it was time for him to disappear. He transformed into mist and soared up until he rematerialized on top of Lady Liberty’s torch and balanced on the edge. The view was spectacular, had he cared about such things.
    Below him, police and rescue workers scurried about, assisting the remaining people and searching for evidence of Ptolemy, no doubt. Alaric felt a moment’s compassion for the human