“It must be a fake,” Alaric said. He stared at the television screen so hard she was surprised the heat in his eyes didn’t burn a hole in the screen. “Can you make the device speak louder?”
“Turn up the volume,” Ven said.
“As I said,” Alaric snapped.
Quinn shook her head at the two of them.
Archelaus pressed a button on the remote and the voice of the wannabe Atlantean king filled the room.
“I have documented proof that I am the direct lineal descendant of Alexander the Great, conquerer and Atlantean, and I will take my rightful place upon the throne as soon as Atlantis rises from its watery grave,” he intoned.
Ven snorted. “Watery grave? Seriously?”
Quinn was stuck on a different part of the man’s statement. “Alexander the Great was Atlantean?”
Alaric shrugged. “Narcissist. Lust for power. Amazing while it lasted, though.”
Quinn studied the man standing at the bank of microphones. He definitely looked regal. He was tall and imposing, with a TV politician kind of look to him. All toothpaste-commercial teeth and good hair. Even a tan, whether real or spray-on. But under the made-for-prime-time charisma, she could just see the jagged edges of something with real teeth. Something that would chew up enemies and vomit up their remains before calmly flossing.
She shuddered. “There’s power there. Dark power. I’ve seen enough wrong in the past decade to recognize it. He’s just . . . not right.”
Alaric slanted a measuring glance at her. “I tend to agree, even without the added incentive of his ludicrous claim.”
“He does kind of look like you,” she pointed out. “The collective you. Atlanteans. Same dark hair, same height and bone structure, but with an added layer of smarm. Are you sure there’s no chance he could be a descendant, like he claims?”
“Impossible to tell from here,” Alaric said.
Reporters surrounding the man shouted questions at him, but he stood calmly in the center of the firestorm of attention, smiling slightly as if he were mildly amused. Finally, he held up his hands, and the questions slowly died down as the reporters began to fall silent in order to hear what else he would say.
“I will answer all of your questions eventually, but what I have to say now is of the most urgent nature.” He drew a sheet of paper out of a large envelope and held it tightly, making eye contact with each reporter in turn.
“We Atlanteans have long been on a mission to protect humanity. Our goal has been, and always will be, to work with you to secure your lives and safety against the vampire menace that threatens to destroy you. To that end, I must speak with this woman. If any of you know how to contact her, please have her call me at the Plaza Hotel. It is quite literally a matter of life and death.”
He slowly turned the paper around, and revealed that it was actually an eight-by-ten-inch photograph.
Of Quinn.
Alaric swore so viciously in a mixture of English and Atlantean that even Quinn, who was well accustomed to being surrounded by people who used colorful language, flinched.
“This is Quinn Dawson, the leader of the North American rebel alliance. I understand that by revealing her secret identity on national and international TV, I have placed her in extreme danger.”
The camera zeroed its focus in on the photograph, which was grainy in the blurry picture but unmistakably Quinn.
“My cover is blown,” she said numbly. “I’m a dead woman.”
Alaric’s face was a study in icy rage. “No, mi amara. It is he who is a dead man.”
“Call me, Quinn Dawson,” Ptolemy continued. “Together, we will take back the planet. Human and Atlantean together. This I swear.”
The reporters, all swooning over the double scoop, shouted questions so fast and furiously that they were unintelligible, but the man simply bowed and held up his right hand with the enormous gemstone in it, and a flash of sickly orange-red light enveloped him. When the light was gone, so was he.
“A cheap trick,” Ven said dismissively. “Any five-dollar magician can do that.”
“But a five-dollar magician could not touch Poseidon’s Pride, let alone wield it,” Alaric said slowly. “If that truly is the missing gem, there is something to this man’s claim, at least of being Atlantean, perhaps.”
Quinn started laughing, and it was high and wild. “Well. Think they’re hiring at McDonald’s? Because that, my friends, just put me out of a job.”
Alaric stared at her in disbelief. “Out of a job? Are you insane? What he did, mi amara, was to paint a giant target on your forehead. Every faction in the vampire conspiracy, every rogue shape-shifter, and even the many humans you’ve crossed over the years—they will all be after you. I will have to kill every one of them after I kill Ptolemy.”
“I’ll be right there to help,” Ven said.
Jack, who’d been so silent Alaric had almost forgotten about him, roared so loudly the walls seemed to vibrate with the sound.
“That’s too many to kill, you idiots,” Quinn said wearily. “I may as well stay here and start a flying monkey ranch. Life as I knew it is over. Will you teach me how to speak Japanese, Archelaus?”
Alaric made a horrible snarling noise, deep in his throat, so primal that it rivaled Jack at his tiger worst. He raised his hands and hurled an intense whiplash of power so massive that the entire room flashed as bright and hot as if they huddled inside a lightning bolt, praying for the storm to end. The television shattered into a thousand pieces, as did the table beneath it, the chair next to it, and a significant part of the cavern wall.
The world itself seemed to hold its breath in the aftermath of the violence, until finally Alaric’s voice broke the silence.
“Remember what I said, Quinn,” Alaric said calmly. He turned those deadly eyes on her, but she forced herself not to flinch. “I will kill them all.”
Chapter 5
Alaric watched Quinn follow Archelaus out of the room. She’d grown quieter and quieter while they argued over what to do next, and then she’d finally said she was going to find some food.
“Not much else to do, now that I’m unemployed,” she’d said, contorting her face in what she may have intended to be a smile, but which came out as a death’s head grimace.
Jack followed, her silent, deadly shadow. Alaric realized yet again that in another world—another timeline—she could have loved Jack and, perhaps, been happy. The realization added yet another layer of tarnish to the rusted remains of his conscience, but did not in the least tempt him to give her up.
At least Alaric had stopped casually plotting ways to kill Jack whenever he thought of Jack with Quinn. That was progress, of a sort.
“That is one scary expression on your face, my friend,” Ven said. The prince folded his arms over his chest. “Do I even want to know what’s on your mind?”
“Your wants are of no concern to me. My mind is my own. I leave now to confront this fake Ptolemy. Once he’s dead, and I retrieve the gem, our problems will diminish.”
Ven shook his head. “Not by much. The world still knows that Quinn is a rebel leader. That bell can’t be unrung. She’s done being safe—or, for that matter, going undercover—forever. And we should check in with Conlan and the rest of the Seven and find out if they even know what’s going on. It’s not like they get CNN in Atlantis.”
“Fine. You check in. I’m going to New York.” Alaric called to the portal, belatedly wondering if it would even answer, if Noriko truly was the portal spirit or presence who had directed its magic.
A shimmering oval of light answered his question, but before entering he stopped and addressed it, feeling a fool.