by Stephen King
Not even flying monkeys.
"Quinn, get out of here," he barked, as he called to his magic. First, he wove a powerful protection spell over the barrier to prevent further intruders from dropping down on their heads. Then he formed twin spheres of blue-green electricity in his outstretched palms, and he hurled the first with fatal accuracy at the lead ape. For an instant its brown fur shone with a luminous blue light, like a bizarre mammalian form of deep-sea creature. The light abruptly vanished as the ape collapsed and died.
The harsh bark of gunfire reverberated through the room, and the second ape dropped to the ground, dead, directly in front of Gailea. Alaric whipped his head around to glare at Quinn, who glared right back at him.
"Run from danger?" she called out, taking fresh aim at another attacker. "Have you met me?"
Alaric snarled out an Atlantean oath and whirled to protect Gailea, but she'd already thrown up a protective shield around herself in the form of a miniature dome of transparent energy. Two of the apes thudded against it as he watched, but it held firm.
Alaric spared a glance for his other companions, and discovered Archelaus wielding a sword he'd produced from somewhere, slashing and stabbing at the creatures in a whirlwind frenzy. Across the room, Jack tore into two more of them with the primal fury of an apex predator.
"Behind you," Quinn shouted, and Alaric formed a sword of pure, flashing magic and spun around, slicing through the air and sending three of them to the nine hells. The echoing report of Quinn's gun barked again and again, and only the sure knowledge that none of the creatures came even close to approaching her kept Alaric sane.
One of the apes jumped on Alaric's back and dug its sharp claws deep into muscle and flesh. Alaric roared out in wordless denial, twisted his body enough to grab the large furry head, and wrenched it to one side. The thick neck snapped with an audible crack, and the ape fell heavily to the ground. After that, it was fur and fangs and blood for several long minutes until the final ape crashed into the cave and met Alaric's grim brand of justice.
Alaric scanned the room and glanced up at the skylight entrance, but no new creatures appeared. The room was filled with dead and dying apes, but as far as he could tell, none of his companions were injured. He knew Quinn, at least, was unharmed. He could always feel everything she felt. Every single scratch. Even the tiniest bruise.
It was enough to drive a man mad.
"Jack, hold!" Archelaus ran across the room toward the snarling tiger far faster than his age seemed to allow. "We need one of them alive to talk."
It was a futile attempt. Jack never even hesitated as he leapt up and bit down on the shoulder and neck of the final ape still attempting to fight. The tiger shook the ape in his mouth in a grim parody of a house cat with a rat, and then he hurled the dead ape across the room and roared; whether in triumph or defiance, Alaric was unsure.
"Damn it, Jack," Quinn said, but her voice was filled with exhaustion, not anger. "What if they were shifters? They must have been. It would have helped if we could have coaxed one of the monkeys back to human shape long enough to tell us what is going on here."
Jack bared his fangs in Quinn's general direction but didn't return to human form to argue with her, unfortunately. He might never again regain human form. But that was another problem, for another time.
The floor was covered with the bloody shapes of the current problem.
"They're definitely shape-shifters, but they invaded the sanctuary," Archelaus said. His face was drawn and pale, as though he'd aged a hundred years in an hour.
"The sanctuary," he repeated. "We have had agreement here with the shifters and vampires alike for more than a century. What possibly could have caused them to break it?"
"What were those?" Quinn asked, shoving her guns into their hidden holsters under her shapeless shirt. "I've never seen apes that looked like that, outside of a horror movie."
"They were a grossly distorted version of a Japanese macaque. The real thing has the same brownish fur and red face but runs about twenty-five pounds," Archelaus said. He was breathing hard, and Alaric sent a silent, questing tendril of magic to discern the extent of his injury, if any.
Archelaus raised an eyebrow, and Alaric realized he'd been caught. "I'm just old, Alaric. Nothing you can do about that, unless you've suddenly learned how to turn back time."
"I'm feeling rather old myself, Wise One," Noriko said, finally emerging from behind her shield, which she let disperse slowly. The woman's face was as pale as a snow-dusted grave. "I never had to deal with attacking apes in the portal. I must apologize for my cowardice. All of you fought the attackers, but I have no weapons, nor do I have knowledge of how to do battle."
Alaric shook his head. "No one expected you to fight. You did well to protect yourself so we did not need to expend resources to defend you."
Noriko bowed. "Arigato gozaimasu."
Quinn abruptly sat down on the floor next to Jack and started laughing. "Don't make me get my flying monkeys," she said, shaking her head.
Everyone stared blankly at her, except Jack, who tilted his shaggy head, his tongue lolling out, as if sharing an inside joke.
Quinn looked up and saw them all looking puzzled. "Never mind. It's The Wizard of Oz. It's--never mind. So, what now? Attack by flying monkeys doesn't strike me as a random act. Who's after you, Archelaus? Or do they know we're here, and it's an attack against me or Alaric? Or even Jack? Plenty of targets to choose from in this room."
Noriko collapsed down on a bench. "I thought the opportunity to be mortal again would be a precious gift. Instead, I find I desperately miss the power to be anywhere I want to be and nearly omniscient. What can I see--where can I go--trapped in this body?"
"Welcome to my life," Quinn said, with only a trace of bitterness. "I'm surrounded by vampires, Atlantean warriors, and powerful shape-shifters, and all I've got is a gun or two and whatever street smarts I've picked up over the years. It's like fighting the Spartan army armed with a toothpick."
"I would challenge the Spartan army for you, Quinn," Alaric said quietly. "You don't always have to take it all on by yourself."
"I didn't," she said simply. "I had Jack. And then, if only for a little while, I had you and your prince and his warriors. Now I'm not sure I want any of it. I'm tired. Ten years of fighting the good fight should be enough for anybody."
Jack sneezed and rolled over on his back, all the while keeping those orange eyes trained on Quinn.
She almost smiled. "No, I'm not giving up and showing the bad guys my belly, fur face. And if you want to give me crap about my decisions, you're going to have to change back into a human and do it out loud."
The tiger deliberately turned his head away, and a shimmer formed in Quinn's eyes before she dragged one sleeve across her face.
Several white-robed people appeared at the entrance to the courtyard, wearing expressions of horror, disbelief, and even shock. Alaric attempted to view the scene through their eyes and realized it was, in fact, worthy of horror and shock. Dead, bloody bodies lay in crumpled heaps all over the floor. The peace of the sanctuary had been brutally invaded.
He was too tired, too jaded, or too hardened to feel horror, though. Just a grim resignation that now, yet again, the battle was on. Even when he tried to escape the fight, it followed him. As did skepticism, cynicism, and suspicion. Why were these people only arriving now? Had they been part of a larger betrayal?
One of them started babbling. "Archelaus, what happened? You-- We heard-- The portal--"
"I'd like to know that, too." A calm voice interrupted the man's broken words.
"Ven," Alaric said. "I should have guessed."
"Somebody needed to save you from yourself," Ven said, striding into the room. "I figured it oughta be me."
Quinn's lips quirked into a grin as another six and a half feet of Atlantean warrior--this one a prince--joined the party. "Ven. Always a pleasure to see you. Do we need somebody beat up and I forgot?"
Ven
laughed and scooped her up off the ground and into a bear hug. "Hello, little sister. Glad to see you in one place. What in the nine hells happened here?"
"Flying monkeys."
He roared with laughter. "So does that make kitten over there Toto?"
Quinn noticed Alaric's face darkening as he watched her in his friend's arms, and she didn't have to be an emotional empath to know what he was feeling. She tactfully stepped away from Ven and glanced at Jack, who was snarling at them all.
"Don't flash those fangs at me, Meow Mix," Ven advised, but she could see the concern underneath the banter. He and Jack had developed a friendship over the course of time they'd known each other. Of course, it was hard not to like Ven. He was gorgeous and didn't know it; a funny, direct, "let's grab a beer and watch some bad movies" kind of guy, who just happened to be hell on wheels with a sword, a gun, and pretty much every other kind of weapon. He was the high prince's brother and guardian--which made him Quinn's sister Riley's brother-in-law--he was known as the King's Vengeance, and he was pure adrenaline in a battle.
And his girlfriend Erin was the most powerful witch Quinn had ever met.
Right now, though, there was no trace of amusement on Ven's face as he scanned the destruction. "Do you want to explain this?"
Alaric scowled but said nothing, so Quinn filled Ven in on what had happened.
"That's it? No reason? No evil villain monologuing on why he's attacking you, blah blah blah?" Ven whistled. "This stinks of something bigger than a random monkey attack."
"Not to mention, they're not random monkeys," Archelaus said, from where he'd been sitting in the shadows.
"Greetings, old friend," Ven said, bowing. "What have you gotten us into this time?"
Archelaus smiled and shook his head. "This, from the most unrepentant troublemaker the warrior training grounds have ever seen."
"I did what I could," Ven said, ducking his head modestly.
In spite of everything, Quinn laughed out loud. Ven would be Ven, no matter the situation. It was oddly refreshing to a woman who dealt in death and despair.
"The King's Vengeance," Noriko said, smiling a little. "You have long been one of my favorites."
Quinn's eyes narrowed. Another thing this woman shouldn't have been able to know--Ven's title.
"Ven, meet Noriko, who claims to be the spirit of your magic doorway," she said, before turning to pin Noriko with a suspicious glare. "What exactly did you want to talk to us about that was so important? You weren't luring us here for the attack, were you? Six weeks later, and suddenly you want to talk to us at exactly the moment shifters arrive?"
Alaric called up his energy spheres again, and Noriko took a step back and away from them all, turning even paler, if possible.
"I had nothing to do with that," she protested. "My need to see you was to convey very dire news to Poseidon's high priest."
Alaric's face hardened. "What is it?" he demanded.
"The final gem has been found," Noriko said, twisting her hands together. "Everything in your world is in danger."
"How could you know that?" Quinn asked. "You've been here, not talking to anybody, for weeks."
"I was the portal spirit for millennia," Noriko said, raising her chin. "Do you think that kind of magic simply vanishes? I can feel much that goes on in this world, especially that which is connected to Atlantis."
Ven tensed, all traces of humor gone from his expressive face. "What kind of danger?"
"Atlantis itself could be destroyed," Noriko said. "I don't . . . I don't . . ."
Ven rushed forward to catch the woman when her eyelids fluttered shut and she collapsed.
"If she is truly what she claims, then she is probably in shock from expending so much power," Archelaus said. He motioned to his followers. "Or Noriko's illness might be causing this. Please bring her with us."
Alaric stepped closer to the woman Ven held, passed a hand over her head, and then shook his head. "She has been improving, you said, and I can detect no remaining trace of illness. This is probably simple exhaustion and shock."
"We will move to another space, so my friends can remove the bodies and reinforce the spells protecting this area," Archelaus said. "Thank you for your assistance in that regard, Alaric."
"Yeah, your monkey-repelling spells didn't work all that great, did they?" Quinn said dryly. "Maybe a nice electric fence next time."
As they moved away from the courtyard, Archelaus led them down a corridor. Archelaus's people took Noriko away to get some rest. Which was just as well, since Quinn was far too cynical after all of her years in the rebellion to buy her story all that easily. She didn't trust Noriko. She didn't trust anyone. The less the woman heard, the better.
Ven looked a question at her, and she explained the portal spirit/dying Japanese woman problem.
"You couldn't stay out of trouble if you tried, could you?" he asked her, but then he grinned. "On the other hand, who could make this stuff up? This would be a great Syfy Saturday night movie. Sharktopus has nothin' on us."
Quinn didn't know whether to laugh or punch him. She narrowed her eyes and was about to blast him with a snappy comeback when she realized he was right. Her shoulders slumped. Jack padded up behind her and nudged her hip with his shoulder, as if in moral support. Or maybe she was ascribing human motives to him as a kind of wishful thinking, when he was becoming more and more tiger by the moment.
At the entrance to the cave, a wall of air shimmered in waves of pearlescent opal, as if magic protected this opening, too. Which, of course, it did, Quinn reflected, as she walked through a barrier that had the consistency of a soap bubble. It snapped shut behind her, hopefully offering better protection than the monkey doorway.
She took a deep breath of the fresh mountain air and allowed her gaze to sweep the view from an upper slope of Mount Fuji. "It's so beautiful here. So high above battles and blood and death, or so you'd think. Almost like a waking dream--but of someone else's life."
"We're above the clouds," Ven said. "The exact opposite of my home so far beneath the ocean's surface. It kind of takes your breath away, doesn't it?"
"More than eleven thousand feet elevation here," Archelaus said, joining them. "Over twelve thousand at the summit. Fuji is one of three sacred mountains--"
"Perhaps we could save the ancient history for later and discuss the current problem?" Alaric's voice cut through the air like a sword through silk.
Quinn could sense--just barely, though, even with her empath senses flaring to high--the tension boiling beneath his icy demeanor. She wondered if she'd be around when he finally erupted. An interesting thought: Alaric and Mount Fuji, both dormant volcanoes; both with majestic exteriors hiding barely leashed danger. She grinned at the idea of telling Alaric he was exactly like a lava-filled mountain, and he slanted a look at her, clearly wondering where her mind was.
"Nice of you to give a damn, after weeks of being mostly incommunicado," Ven said dryly. "Anyway, that's just it--the current problem is ancient history. Noriko was telling the truth. Archaeologists at Gobekli Tepe in Turkey have found Poseidon's Pride."
Alaric and Archelaus simultaneously inhaled. In anyone not an Atlantean warrior, Quinn would have called it gasping.
"Poseidon lost his pride?" Quinn glanced from face to face. "Did he also lose his gluttony, avarice, and lust? Is this some weird seven deadly sins kind of thing?"
Alaric was shaking his head before she'd finished her admittedly lame joke.
"Poseidon's Pride is the final missing jewel from his Trident. It's a tourmaline that gives immense, possibly immeasurable power to its wielder. We've been searching for it for centuries."
"Gobekli Tepe sounds familiar," Archelaus said. "Why is that?"
"Human archaeologists recently discovered the site. It's an Atlantean temple built around eleven thousand, six hundred years ago, and they're calling it the oldest known example of human monumental architecture, which is kind of surprising, now that they know about supernat
ural creatures and magic, but whatever. It's the first known building bigger than a hut, basically," Ven said. He shook his head. "They've all got their panties in a twist over how a bunch of people who were still nomads foraging for food could have transported sixteen-ton stones."
"Ridiculous concept," Alaric said dryly. "Of course Atlanteans built it. The Elders at the time sent our people to all corners of the earth to perpetuate our race before Atlantis descended beneath the seas at the time of the Cataclysm. Certainly many of them would have built temples."
"Atlantean magic," Quinn said, finding it easy to imagine, given what she knew of their powers. "Serai could probably move a boulder without smudging her lip gloss."
Alaric shrugged. On him, even a shrug looked elegant. "Serai is an eleven-thousand-year-old Atlantean princess. Her magic is more powerful than mine in some ways."
"Not many ways," Ven said. "Not in battle ways."
Alaric's eyes glowed a hot green. "No. But that vampire she's in love with isn't likely to let her anywhere near a battle again."
"Daniel knows better than to try to tell Serai to do anything," Ven said. "She turned into a saber-toothed tiger, dude."
"Never, ever call me dude."
Quinn sighed. "So the point is . . ." She made a "move along" gesture with her hand.
"The point is that nobody but Alaric can touch that gemstone without dying horribly. So far, seven people associated with the dig have spontaneously combusted." Ven shuddered. "Bad way to go."
"So Alaric must go retrieve it," Archelaus said.
"I'm going nowhere," Alaric said. He leaned against the rock face on the side of the mountain and almost casually drew Quinn back against him, wrapping his arms around her waist. She felt his breath in her hair as she stared out at the clouds, and for a moment she tried to pretend they were the kind of people who could go sightseeing together.
The kind of people who could say no. No to duty. No to honor.
It didn't work.
She let herself lean against his powerfully muscled chest for just a few seconds longer, and then she forced herself to move away, trying to ignore the pain that pierced her chest. Even a rebel leader could fall in love, after all. It's just that nobody could ever know.
Ever.
Not even Alaric.
"Christophe can go. Or even Serai. They both wield sufficient magic," he said grimly. "It doesn't always have to be me. Look what Serai did with the Emperor. She's an expert in retrieving lost gems."
