Blood King (Spirit Seeker Book 1)

by Amber K. Bryant

  Elis reached towards her, steadying the knife, placing his fingers over her own. His touch sent a shiver down her spine. He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “I think that hatred needs a home. Is a psychic possessed with a seventeenth century spirit capable of taking out a few monsters in order to spend eternity in hell with her good-for-nothing, wayward husband?”

  She smiled. Upon Sybille’s full lips was contained all of Juliana’s mirth. “I don’t think Sybille would appreciate me using her body to murder anyone.”

  He took the knife from her hand. “Sybille’s not the one who gets to decide now, is she?”

  His words were a devastating blow to Sybille. It had been bad enough, watching helplessly as Juliana pressed a knife into her skin, seeing the desperation in Elis’ eyes, and in Devin’s as well. But now, whether he realized it or not, Elis had bargained his own life for Sybille’s. First, though, Juliana was going to use Sybille to seek her revenge upon an army of undead—and there was nothing Sybille could do about any of it.

  Even in her tiny box, she could feel the bloodthirsters pushing in on her where the Low pulled. She was a piece of taffy being worked over so many times she feared she would be stretched until she no longer recognized herself.

  She couldn’t tell whether Juliana felt any of that. If anything, she seemed to savor the Low’s pull. It was an enticement to her—a welcome home party—where to Sybille it was as though the Low was opening a pit below her feet.

  The bloodthirsters, however, were a different matter. Juliana loathed them. She wanted to stop them just as Sybille did, though Juliana would undoubtedly turn Sybille over to them as soon as she was done using her body. For now, however, they had that one thing in common: stop the bloodthirsters from decorating her skin with fang-sized holes.

  The more she thought about it, the more she believed this shared aim could be used to her advantage. Somehow, Sybille might still come out of this on top.

  That was a new, hopeful thought, the sort she hadn’t considered possible since Juliana had taken charge. She’d thought about ridding herself of Juliana’s command without even thinking it odd. Had she done this kind of thing before? Had she allowed herself to be controlled only to reclaim that control when the time was right? Yes. Yes, she had. In those cases, it had been easy because the spirits had been on the verge of being released to the World Beyond. They would attack her, afraid of their own freedom, but it was a futile fight and something they’d eventually come to terms with.

  A departing spirit was no challenge at all. Juliana, on the other hand, would not leave until she was good and ready, which meant one thing: Elis would have to be dead first. And who did Juliana expect to do the killing?

  The thought stabbed at her heart deeper than any knife could. She wouldn’t sit idly by while Juliana used her to kill Elis. It was the worst thing she could imagine. She let that thought spur her on, keeping her far away from her mother’s fifties kitchen.

  Sybille would take back her body from this intruder. But first, Juliana would deal with the bloodthirsters for her. In the end, it would be Sybille who used Juliana to achieve her aim, not the other way around.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Devin wrestled between staying close to Sybille and helping his sister keep the bloodthirsters out. When it became apparent that Elis had the situation under control, however tenuous, he rushed back to Raelyn. The pounding became more persistent. It was a miracle the beasts hadn’t splintered the wood and rushed into the cabin already.

  “How is she?” he called over to Charlie, who was bent over Zareen’s prone form.

  “Still breathing.” The girl held Zareen’s hand as though if she let go, Zareen would surely die.

  “She’ll be okay, Charlie,” her mother crooned. “We’ll all be. Your uncle’s going to get you out of here, I promise.”

  “What’s that?” Charlie looked around, feigning confusion. “I couldn’t hear your promise over all of the lies!”

  “Charlie!” Devin’s head shook like a bobble head every time the bloodthirster on the other side of the door pounded on it with its fists. “Don’t talk to your mama that way!”

  “She has a right to be angry with me, Devin. Bloodthirsters don’t exactly make the best mothers.”

  Devin snorted. “Or mothers at all, usually.”

  “I’m not usual.”

  The pounding stopped. In its place, a voice rose. “It’s time you let me inside, Raelyn.”

  “Shit, my damned boss is here to say hi. That’s perfect.” Raelyn brought her ear to the door.

  “I promise, it will be me and only me. The rest will stay back if I tell them to. Do you want me to order them to stay back?”

  “Do whatever the fuck you want, Nathanial.”

  “What I want is for you to let me in so I can find out what smells so good.”

  Devin moved aside as Sybille—no, he corrected himself—as Juliana—walked to the door. “The scent is wonderful, isn’t it? I’ve been baking bread. Fresh out of the oven. Do you want some?”

  She opened the door. Nathanial stood there, his fellow thirsters gathered just a few steps away, all of them swaying silently, their eyes filled with unquenchable need.

  “Won’t you come in and have a seat.” Juliana gestured towards the cabin’s interior. “I trust you will be a thirster of your word and not allow your minions to join us. We only have so much bread to break and as you can see, I’m not Jesus.”

  Nathanial sauntered in, eyeing Elis disdainfully before returning to his lustful perusal of Sybille’s body.

  “You are all kinds of different, aren’t you?”

  “You have no idea.” She led him over to the counter. Devin waited out the tension by thinking of the many ways this could all go horribly wrong.

  The Blood King circled Juliana, his nose to her neck. “First mint, then cinnamon. You can’t make up your mind, can you?”

  “But you can make up yours. You already have.” She reached out and stroked his arm. “You want me, Blood King.

  He smiled, fangs on display. “How could any bloodthirster not.”

  If it was possible to be any tenser, Elis wasn’t sure how. Nathanial was so close to biting her, so close to taking Sybille away from him. Shame flooded him as he realized he was jealous that this scumbag would get her, and he wouldn’t.

  “You’re different, too, Blood King. Do you think I can’t tell? That’s why I’ve decided on you.”

  Nathanial raised an eyebrow. “You’re already bleeding. Who did this to you?” He narrowed his eyes at Elis and scowled.

  “Why are you assuming it was me?”

  Juliana nodded. “Oh, he tried, but I prevented him. He’s no Blood King.”

  Nathanial’s eyes slid between the blood on Sybille’s shirt and her bare neck. “Either way, he doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve ordered my men to take care of him as soon as we’re finished here.”

  She took his hand and drew it around her waist, holding the other palm in her own as though they were about to begin a waltz. “That makes my job all the easier.”

  Sybille continued her vigil, witnessing Juliana’s every action, even admiring how easy it was for her to manipulate Nathanial.

  The Blood King had not expected this, the paralyzing warmth that Juliana was spreading from Sybille’s hand to his own.

  “You want to break away, and yet you do not.” Juliana sang these words, a lullaby for her resistant prey. “For a bloodthirster to feel warmth after so many years of cold—it’s the most pleasurable kind of torture.”

  Nathanial’s eyes grew until they’d become dark orbs, as though he was possessed by an alien rather than by the spirit of this madwoman. So much the worse for him, thought Sybille. She would have taken an old-fashioned alien bodysnatching over a Juliana possession any day.

  Juliana sighed, part shock, part ecstasy. Sybille could understand why. Nathanial was not like any other bloodthirster. In his own way, he was even more extraordinary than Elis. Power coursed thro
ugh him, cycling its way between his flesh and the tips of her fingers. It was shamefully intoxicating. Well, for Sybille it was. She sensed no shame from Juliana, who seemed to intuitively understand more about the Blood King than he himself did.

  “Your life force is no longer of this world. And so, you can no longer be killed.” She cocked her head from side to side, holding his hand steady. “That’s an unanticipated development. Do you know you’ve cursed your innocent soul to be trapped for eternity? You are the monster of all beasts. I may not be able to kill you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t destroy you!”

  And possibly destroy Sybille in the process… What was Juliana trying to do exactly? Sybille had hoped her unwanted body buddy was about to leave her in favor of Nathanial. Instead, she spread herself out, her energetic body filling every molecule of Sybille’s physical one, while also stretching into Nathanial.

  If Juliana’s psychic expansion went on much longer, it would strangle the life out of Sybille. The calm that had first paralyzed Nathanial gave way to panic. He fought her, gripping her hand, her waist, and pulling away at the same time, his mind flaring as it attempted to resist Juliana’s infiltration. Juliana pressed back, relentlessly attacking with the force of a hurricane.

  The battle raged and Sybille was forced into the middle of it, an unwilling player in a war between evil and evil.

  On top of her internal storms, the Low pushed at her from without, an invisible referee making all the calls against Sybille while the crowd of undead onlookers took in the show, waiting to be told that they could go from spectators to participants.

  Now would be the time to give up. Now would be the time to eat a big old slice of custard pie. Or possibly take the entire pie and lower head to dish, consuming the whole of it until she descended into a sugar coma she would never wake from. The mere suggestion brought her back to her mother’s kitchen. Margot was absent, but there the pie sat. She licked her lips as she inhaled the smell of caramelized sugar.

  It was easy to forget that Elis and Devin and the others were still in the cabin with her. Hell, it was easy to forget there still was a cabin, a bloodthirster-infested forest on an angry land, and a larger world still beyond that. Sybille could no longer grasp anything aside from the turmoil playing out in her own mind. Yet, from far away a voice called her name, reminded her that a name was still something she had claim to and with it, an identity. She was still Sybille. She was apart from Juliana, from the Blood King.

  “Sybille!”

  Elis’ voice was a child’s whisper and a volcano exploding. It brushed against her, gentle as a feather, and shook her to her core. If she didn’t crawl her way out of her increasingly tiny corner, Juliana would succeed in all her aims; she would use Sybille to take control of the Blood King, kill Elis, and feed what was left of Sybille to the awaiting bloodthirsters.

  She would not allow this.

  With the lurking undead kept at bay and Juliana distracted with her onslaught against the Blood King, now was Sybille’s chance. Steeling herself, she let the pie tin crash to the floor. The kitchen dissolved.

  Sybille stepped out from her corner.

  A door opened—that’s how Juliana thought of it. In her mind, which was really Sybille’s mind with Juliana’s willpower filling it, a door that had been closed and locked was unlocked and thrown wide open.

  She shook in Sybille’s body. The effort of possessing the hierophant while attempting to invade that wretched bloodthirster hadn’t been strenuous until this moment. Once she’d broken through Sybille’s weakened resolve, it had been easy to control her;, to become her. Having a taste of the bloodthirster merely served as an unexpected bonus.

  He wasn’t at all like what she’d thought he would be. When she first invited him inside the cabin, she thought she’d make him see that he was nothing more than a corpse rotting at the pace a garden snail crosses a continent. This was all he was, all any bloodthirster was, really: dead bodies given a reprieve from the grave probably by some demonic force long ago. Well, she would see that this particular bloodthirster’s reprieve came to an end. Then she’d deal with Elis and any other thirster that dared come near.

  That had been her strategy up until that cursed door opened in Sybille’s mind. Juliana could have sworn she caught the slightest whiff of…muffins? Cake? Pie? Something freshly baked. Then Sybille walked through that door, punching and kicking as she came. Juliana gave a jolt.

  No, she didn’t. Sybille did. Sybille raised her arm—her own damn arm, and Juliana couldn’t stop her, couldn’t force the arm back down. She was unable to do much of anything.

  “Get…out…of…me!” The words were labored, but it was Sybille speaking them. Horrified, Juliana tried to stop every single one of them. As Sybille fought to oust Juliana, the spirit found herself in a strange head-space Sybille seemed to have created for them. There Sybille thrashed at Juliana until she had no choice but to retreat through the portal Sybille had so recently come out of.

  She stopped in the center of a kitchen with black and white linoleum floors and a pink toaster matching the tiled backsplash behind the counter. “How quaint.”

  The remains of a pie lay smashed on the ground, golden custard oozing out of a bent tin. Juliana contemplated taking the time to clean up the mess, but she had more pressing things to attend to. She’d been baking cookies. She put on two red checkered mitts and opened the oven to retrieve a cookie sheet, taking in a big whiff as she did so.

  Peanut butter chocolate chunk. Elis would be pleased.

  Elis.

  Juliana whipped around the room. Where was she? And why was she wearing pearls and a ruffled apron? She shuddered as realization dawned: she had finally been released from the Now World only to end up in Hell.

  “This isn’t Hell, though I suppose for you it comes close.” Elis sat at the recently Elis-free table. “You’re not in control now, Juliana. Sybille is back and you don’t belong here. Neither do I.”

  Getting up from the table, he took a step towards her, a look of shameless desire reflected in his heavy-lidded eyes. Juliana could barely contain her surprise.

  He took another step and now there was no doubt about the lust pouring off him; he was practically salivating. Finally, after all this time, he wanted to be with her again! “Elis, I—”

  “Those look delicious! I’ll just take one before I go.” He snatched a cookie off the tray she still held, turned, then turned back again and grabbed several more. “Time for us both to go.”

  Elis took a bite and then he was gone. Juliana stood there with what remained of her cookies, uncomfortable in the realization that for once, he was right.

  “What in the entire hell just happened?” Elis shook his head. One minute, he’d been standing near Sybille’s body, doing his best to prevent Juliana from making Sybille’s vision come true. The next, his spirit was ripped from his body and sucked into Sybille’s mind; specifically, into a space all too familiar to him. And there was his fifties housewife Juliana with her damned peanut butter cookies. Only this time, he was the one with the upper hand, not her. He’d helped kick Juliana out of Sybille and gotten fresh-baked dream cookies to boot. Now he was back, soul in body, and there was no more opportunity to dissect what had occurred.

  The cabin was on fire. Not the sort with flames, but the kind of intensity that heavies the air, filling the room with a skin-burning fever. The Blood King stood in their midst, the mighty immortal of immortals, the undead undead. And Juliana, newly ousted from Sybille’s head, had now turned all her focus onto him.

  The results were terrifying. Nathanial let out a bellow, his thirster minions echoing him from beyond the cabin as though his agony was their own. Like a self-fulfilling prophesy, soon it was their own, and his as well. It brought Elis to his knees. Even Raelyn held her hands to her ears in a futile attempt to keep out the blinding pain.

  By now, Sybille had recovered enough from Juliana’s possession to crawl over to him. The humans in the room seemed immune to
the anguish inflicted by the Blood King’s battle cry. “Elis, you helped bring me back. Now you have to stay here too.” She cradled his head in her lap. It wasn’t until she wiped her hand on her sleeve that he realized he was crying.

  Juliana and the Blood King continued their battle. Nathanial’s scarlet-rimmed alien eyes were wild with terror as a fight for domination played out behind them.

  In the moments when he could see through the torture, Elis spied Devin leaning his weight against the front door, but there was no longer any pounding upon it, the thirsters on the other side being preoccupied by the brain rattling banshee cry from their leader.

  “I need you to stay, Elis.” Sybille’s voice rang out clearly over the chaos. It soothed him enough to let him do the opposite of what she wanted.

  He blinked as a sandy beach and aquamarine waters came in and out of focus in front of him. His hand grasped an icy pitcher. “Do you want another margarita?”

  “Do I…what?” Sybille slapped him hard. “Elis! Wake the fuck up!”

  Elis turned in a circle. His cheek stung for some reason. And he could have sworn he’d been talking to someone. They seemed to be gone now, though.

  No matter. Sometimes being utterly alone had its perks. More margaritas for him!

  To Sybille, the Blood King’s unearthly hollering was irritating but not nearly as debilitating as every other onslaught of supernatural madness she’d been subjected to that day. For Elis and the other thirsters, it was much more than mere annoyance.

  She’d hoped to make use of Elis’ mesmerizing abilities, thinking they might work on Juliana and the Blood King. Then he’d decided to go comatose and now he was totally worthless to her. She’d have to do this on her own.