“What are you, really?” Alaric demanded. “Tell me now, and I may at least make your death quicker.”
“Ah, such a generous offer,” Ptolemy said. He laughed mockingly. “Who exactly are you that you dare to make it when I hold the most powerful jewel of Atlantis in my hand?”
“How do you know that jewel is Atlantean?” Ven asked, edging closer to Ptolemy’s right, to flank him.
Ptolemy pointed the scepter at him. “You must be one of the false princes. I recognize the stench of undeserved arrogance.”
“I am the King’s Vengeance, and you are going to die if you don’t start answering questions right now.” Ven pulled his daggers from their sheaths and dropped into a battle-ready stance.
Ptolemy aimed the scepter at Ven and fired off a blast of sickly reddish-orange power that slammed Ven into the wall. When Alaric called to his own magic and drew back his arm to hurl an energy sphere at the pretender, the man yanked the teen boy in front of him.
“I think not,” Ptolemy taunted Alaric. “Not unless you want to kill this boy, and you don’t do that, do you? You think you’re the good guys. Humanity’s heroes from legend—what a joke. Which one are you, anyway?”
“I am Alaric, high priest to Poseidon, friend to the true ruler of Atlantis, and I am the one who is going to rip your intestines out by way of your throat,” Alaric told the impostor. His teeth ached from the residue of tainted magic, and he still couldn’t figure out exactly what Ptolemy was. Demon or human? Not vampire, that much was clear.
If demon, he was the most skilled demon Alaric had ever encountered. Most of them couldn’t hide their true forms for longer than a few seconds, or a minute at most. This one had done the press conference, and still now he stood before them in human form.
As Ven struggled to his feet, swearing a blue streak, Alaric decided simply to ask, “What makes you think you’re Atlantean, demon?”
Genuine surprise crossed Ptolemy’s face. “Demon? Oh, no, you have me mistaken for something far less powerful, priest. I am the king of Atlantis. I am the wizard who will destroy your house, enslave your women, and make your false princes my pets. Watch me and learn.”
Ven lunged for the man, trying to create a distraction so Alaric could strike him down, but Ptolemy must have been anticipating just such a move. He leapt to the side, dragging the boy with him.
“Choose now,” he taunted. “Save the boy or catch me. His name is Faust, by the way. Don’t you find that deliciously ironic?”
With that, he lifted the boy and threw him out through the shattered window in one powerful heave, slammed the scepter against his chest, and disappeared in another flash of light. Alaric had a split second to decide whether to save the boy or try to follow the emanations of residual magic from the scepter.
It wasn’t really even a choice.
He caught the boy five feet from the sidewalk below, and Ven was right behind him.
The upper floors of the hotel exploded into a ball of fire over their heads.
Tokyo, Japan, in a car on the way to Narita International Airport
Quinn stared out the window at the passing scenery, not really seeing any of it. She listened with a fraction of her attention as the elderly Japanese man driving her to the airport tried to give her a history lesson on the area. He was gracious and kind, and she was in the mood for neither. She’d left her only real friend trapped in a tiger’s body, with no hope of ever seeing him again, and she had no idea where Alaric was. Not to mention that she’d never yet met her only nephew, who just happened to be the heir to the throne of Atlantis, and now she probably never would.
Life was just peachy.
She’d left Archelaus with only a hasty good-bye, as he worked the phone and his contacts to try to discover what the monkey-shifter attack had been about. Hello, more chaos. She had a feeling that there was more than enough on her plate at the moment, though, so she decided to stop worrying about flying monkeys—shape-shifters or otherwise. The two-hour hike to the parking lot at Fifth Station, midway down the mountain, had provided more than enough time for every worst-case scenario—many involving her own torture and death—to circle through her mind like wastewater through a gutter.
“I don’t understand this,” her driver suddenly said in an entirely different tone from the tour guide voice he’d been using. “We have no bad weather forecasted for this area today.”
Quinn sat up in her seat and stared forward, into a sky that had gone suddenly dark and sullen. Clouds whipped in a frenzy of storm formation, and apple-sized hailstones began to pummel the car and the road around them. The car just in front of them in the long line of crazy Tokyo traffic swerved and almost hit the car next to it, and a domino effect of near-collisions began all around them.
Quinn’s driver slammed on the brakes, throwing Quinn forward and almost into the dash, and then he made a weird yelping noise and pointed to his left. Quinn stared out at what he was indicating, and recoiled in horror. She hadn’t seen anything like that outside of a bad movie.
It was a funnel cloud, and it was heading right at them. The car behind them stopped too late and almost rear-ended them, throwing Quinn forward again. Score one for excellent seat belts. The air bag didn’t deploy, though, and she almost had time to wonder about that before the funnel cloud touched down in the single open spot of road in front of them, and a dark shape walked out of its heart.
Alaric.
He raised his arms as he walked, and the tornado flew up and away from the road at his command. He kept walking, never looking back or to the side, all of his grim focus on Quinn.
“Apparently this is my ride,” she said apologetically to her terrified driver. “Thank you, and I am so sorry for your fright.”
She unbuckled her seat belt, climbed out, and then stood, fists on hips, as Alaric approached.
“You don’t get to hurt innocent people, Alaric. That puts you on the wrong side of the equation, and I won’t stand for it.” She was proud that she stood her ground while a whirlwind of fury and magic in the shape of a man stalked toward her, caught her around the waist, and leapt into the air.
“No human is injured,” he told her. “Not even their machines.”
“You frightened them—”
“You will never leave me again,” he said into her hair, and his voice was agonized; crazed. The voice of a man driven to the brink of madness. “If Ptolemy captures you, or any of your enemies find you, now that your face is plastered across the news all around the globe . . . Quinn, you would not want the world to try to survive my insanity if I lose you.”
Quinn drew upon reserves deep within herself to remain calm as she found herself swirling counterclockwise in the heart of a tornado, somehow protected by Alaric’s strength and magic.
“You can’t do this, ever again. You cannot hold innocent lives hostage against my cooperation. That makes you no better than the murderers—human, shifter, or vampire—who kill people every day. The ones I’ve spent ten years fighting,” she said, her mouth close to his ear so the wind didn’t snatch her words away.
He shuddered against her, as if fighting a tidal wave of emotion. “I know. Don’t you think I know? I, who pride myself on my logical, rational state of existence? I don’t know what to do, Quinn. You must help me.”