Hours or minutes later—Quinn couldn’t be sure which, since time seemed to run sideways here—they reached their destination. The building, built in a twisted approximation of a Greek—or maybe Atlantean—temple, was at least partially still standing. Ptolemy dragged her inside an open stone doorway and then finally released his grip on her arm.
She rubbed her wrist and looked around warily, mostly to avoid looking at him. He’d become more and more bestial as they marched across the hideous terrain of his world, until now he was almost impossible to look at without flinching. There was something simply wrong about him. Dark and hideously twisted; just like his magic. She cast a glance back over her shoulder to see if the grotesque creatures following them were anywhere near the building, but the doorway remained empty.
The room they’d entered, though—the room was incredible. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. It was as beautifully ornate as any of the rooms she’d seen in the Atlantean palace. Vividly blue marble mosaics lined the walls, which were decorated with images of ocean waves, fish, mermaids, and fantastical flowers portrayed by ancient craftspeople with amazing artistic sensibility. The floor was cool tile in jade green—or maybe it really was jade—and it, too, was beautifully designed.
“Well,” Ptolemy said, his voice gravelly, as though his tongue no longer worked quite right. “What do you think?”
“It’s magnificent,” she said honestly.
He whirled around and snarled at her, and she took a prudent step back.
“You mock me?”
“No. Trust me, when I’m mocking you, you’ll know it,” she said bitterly. “Like ‘Hey, troll face, nice teeth.’ Or ‘Hey, way to show your courage by murdering helpless old people.’”
A flash of an indefinable emotion crossed his face, and if he’d been anyone else, she’d almost have said it was shame.
“It was my mother’s room,” he finally said, turning away from 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 police, who’d had to adapt to so much when the vampires and other paranormal creatures made themselves known. Regular handcuffs didn’t do much to restrain a wolf shifter in a full-on rage; he couldn’t imagine that any of their weapons would have had any effect on a demon.
Quinn was definitely correct in that—Ptolemy was undoubtedly some kind of demon. The taint of his magic was so different from any that Alaric had previously encountered that he was beginning to believe the tale of a different dimension, too. If the monster had taken Quinn to a different dimension, Alaric might never be able to find her.
Therefore, it could not be so. He would not allow it.
He glanced down at his hands, unsurprised to find them glowing again, and forced his fingers to relax before he inadvertently destroyed the Statue of Liberty, thereby insulting both the United States and France before Atlantis had even had a chance to make diplomatic overtures. He almost smiled at the thought of Conlan trying to explain that one. Instead, he took a deep breath and called out to Christophe.
Status?
Yeah, hello to you, too, Alaric.