Read Online Heart Of Atlantis by Alyssa Day - Free Book Online

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