The Shifter King (The Kings Book 10)

by Heather Killough-Walden

  But Silence’s eyes were not on them. They were on Sam. And when he spoke, his voice carried to her calmly, clearly and with unnatural volume. It rolled over everything, cutting through outside noise as if he and she were the only two beings in the universe.

  “This has been fun,” he told her, and damned it all if he didn’t sound as if he meant it wholeheartedly. “It’s always good to stretch one’s muscles and get the blood pumping again. But I do believe we shall call it a night.” He raised his long arm and snapped his long, shadowy fingers. The single sound was deafening.

  The room around Sam grew quiet and still in the resonating aftermath of the sound. Sam watched as every piece of junk or debris, every tire, every scrap of metal, and every piece of trash began to rise from the arena floor. The living beings came next. Every shifter or werewolf, the Warlock King and his queen, and even the dragons, were lifted from the cement as if gravity had reversed itself. They hovered in the air, powerless and frozen, and spun slowly in place.

  Sam watched with wide, terrified eyes. She experienced a painful sinking feeling, especially when her gaze met Jack’s. He said nothing. He couldn’t even move.

  The sinking feeling was caused by new knowledge, deep, hard and real. The Entity was grossly powerful. He was stronger than she was. He was stronger than all of them. And he’d been playing with them all along.

  The Entity smiled; it looked like a slice in his face, it was so broad. He flicked the same fingers he’d snapped, and everything he had lifted into the air went sailing toward the outer edges of the arena to slam into the walls.

  Now all that remained in the middle of the arena were Sam, the Entity, and Darius Walker, who had yet to be released from his cruel upside-down bonds. His eyes were closed. She wondered if he was alive.

  The Entity gestured behind him without looking. The metal manacles that had bound Walker to his wooden “X” released, and an unconscious Walker rose from the wood to hover in the air just as all of the others had a moment ago.

  Something nasty slithered to life in Sam’s belly. Her protective instinct was back, and she was suddenly very afraid for Walker’s life. “What are you going to do to him?” she asked outright. She was proud of the fact that the pain from her arm and cheek were no longer enough to make her voice shake.

  “That is up to you. He lives still. His heart beats, but softly.” He closed his eyes. “It sounds like a lullabye.”

  Sam’s teeth gnashed together, and she finally heard the painful crack at the back that verified she’d broken one of her molars after all. Ow! Crap! her head screamed. But her eyes burned, and she was refocused in a flash.

  “What do you want from me exactly?” she growled.

  “Your body.”

  “Like hell,” said Jack.

  Sam spun to see that two of the souls who had been tossed against the outer walls were stirring again. One was the green dragon, mighty and majestic. It was slowly pushing itself up from where it had fallen, its massive scaled head glimmering in the lamplight as it rose. Its teeth gleamed, sharp and deadly.

  The other was Jack Colton. Sheer will alone must have been driving him, because Sam saw blood at the corner of his mouth – and at the corner of his single blue eye. He’d been hit so hard, there was internal bleeding. She could see it, sense it, and even smell it. But he’d not only maintained consciousness, he’d managed to get to his knees, and now with one booted leg under him, the tall, strong man was rising to his feet.

  “Interesting,” said the Entity. “I’m impressed.”

  But then he lifted his left arm toward Jack, and the Shifter King was once more lifted magically into the air.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Sam rushed forward, at once alarmed. “No!” she screamed.

  But she needn’t have moved, because the green dragon who had been rising from the ground in slow motion now burst into unnatural speed. There was an audible crashing, as if the beast had broken through a crystal barrier around it and now that barrier lay in shattered ruins. Freed from its mire of sluggishness, the animal rose into the air and shot through the arena like a giant iridescent-green bullet.

  The air from its wings was beat so hard, it buffeted Sam as it sped by, and she fell back, landing on her rump. She heard a scream of rage, followed by a roar of wrath so mighty, it vibrated the entire arena. The Entity raised his arms in front of his face, perhaps so surprised by the attack, he was left acting on the basest of instincts. Freed from the evil power that held him aloft, Walker fell to the floor behind him, and Jack followed suit, landing hard several yards away.

  Sam caught the scent of poison a split second before it might have become deadly for her. She rolled over quickly and pulled her jacket over her head, covering her nose and mouth. There was another human bellow of absolute fury before a blast shook the arena.

  What windows had not been completely relieved of their glass now shattered entirely, and Sam was glad she was covering her face and head with her clothing. Sharp slivers and chunks cascaded over and around her.

  When they’d settled, Sam pushed herself up, pulled the jacket off her head, and turned where she lay on the ground. The green dragon was gone. The Entity remained standing, and though he was still dressed in the stolen body of the Hunter leader, that body had most certainly seen better days. His suit was burned away, his forearms and shoulders were melted as if by acid, and his face had been deformed by the same poison, parts of his cheek burned so deeply, his teeth showed through.

  Several feet away, the remains of the green dragon smoldered. The once magnificent beast had been reduced to broken wings, melted scales, and a neck twisted at an unnatural angle. But the Entity was apparently not finished with him.

  “Bloody dragons,” the Entity hissed. “I never have cared for them.” He thrust one of his injured arms outward toward the dragon’s unconscious form, and the beast burst into green flame. That flame climbed like a bonfire, and burned so hot, Sam turned around once more, shielding her face from the enormous heat.

  But it lasted only seconds, and when she felt the heat fade again, she turned back around to see that the dragon was now gone entirely. All that remained was a large black mark on the cement of the arena. Tendrils of green-black smoke rose from the mark and drifted away.

  “Sam, get out of here!” came Jack’s sudden command from across the arena.

  Her head snapped to the side. Jack was hastily getting to his feet. A second later, there was a bright, familiar flash as he shifted, taking on the form of the massive black cat that had chased her through the streets of Chicago. Long, lean, lithe and deadly, the cat crouched, gathering its strength before it leapt at the Entity, crossing the great room in even greater strides.

  The twisted visage of the Entity sneered at the oncoming animal. But Sam was already moving. Her body had erupted into action before her brain had fully worked it out.

  Time seemed to slow. Sam was jumping over tire remains, glass and rubble before the black panther had closed half of its distance to the Entity. She moved faster than she’d ever moved in her life. As she blurred across the room and the world slipped into its surreal funeral pace, her body changed. Light engulfed her, a tingling warmth that started at her fingertips and toes and worked its way in. It was comforting and powerful.

  The Entity slowly glanced her way, his head turning like a waking dream, and his fiery eyes widened on her. But again, it happened like molasses, as gradual as an iceberg or the melting of snow in Spring.

  She was moving so fast, for the first time in her life, time itself was on her side.

  Her arms were on fire, their flames flickering and dancing in the wind of her movement, and she tasted that fire on her tongue and felt it in her heart by the time she reached the Entity. She stopped before him for a split heartbeat, just long enough to hold his gaze. “You can touch me now,” she said darkly.

  Like whiplash, she reached out and grabbed him, wrapping her arms around him tight as her body made its final transform
ation, erupting into the mighty blaze of the Phoenix.

  The Entity made a strangled, horrified sound and Sam bit down, holding the man’s neck in her giant beak before she beat her blazing wings, lifting them both from the ground. She looked overhead and concentrated on the arena’s crumbling roof. There was no fear. There was no hesitation.

  They crashed through it, the heat of a thousand suns both melting and shredding the ceiling as she took them past that last barrier and into the night above.

  Once they were airborne, she released the Entity’s throat and caught him in her merciless claws, her infernal wings taking them higher and higher. The Phoenix’s cry wailed through the atmosphere, the sound like a volcano’s eruption, a bolt of lightning, and a ghostly echo. She held on tight and kept on climbing until the body in her grip slowed in its struggles, and then stopped struggling altogether.

  Little by little it diminished, growing smaller in the grip of her burning talons. At last, there was nothing but ash remaining, which the night wind caught in its nocturnal dance and sent flying to the stars.

  But a deeper dark pursued her, and she knew it. Freed from the confines of its mortal coil, it chased her now, relentless in its desire. The Phoenix corkscrewed higher and higher through the darkness. She rose until the thin atmosphere threatened the fire of her being, and then she finally leveled out and soared.

  The darkness hovered just outside of her deadly, flaming reach. And then, quite unexpectedly, it fled. And Sam was alone with the stars and the multiverse.

  Somehow she knew the war would continue to rage. But the battle was over. For that night, the fighting had come to an end.

  A heaviness lifted from her heart. The blessed breezes of evening carried her. She glided on their support for centuries that were really minutes. And then, when she had flown enough at last, she turned toward Earth and let the currents convey her home.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  “I should have been there.”

  “If you had been there, you would have been defeated like the rest of us,” Roman told the Nightmare King. “You were much more useful where you were, destroying the Hunter headquarters from far away. Only around two dozen managed to transport into the arena at the Entity’s behest. And that was because you destroyed the rest.”

  Roman D’Angelo and his wife sat side-by-side on one of the couches in his mansion. They looked pale. But otherwise, they looked as good as new. It was difficult to kill a vampire.

  The air in the room was subdued. They were in a kind of shock, all of them silently reeling over what had occurred in the night, none of them capable of fully comprehending it.

  “I should have been there, though,” said Raven poutily from where she sat at one of Roman’s tables, her hands playing with the complicated guardian medallion that Sam had since learned was called a waypiece. It was an interesting device, capable of trading in a guardian’s living years for power. There were several spells embedded in the device, from transportation spells to warding spells. Apparently, a guardian always lived at least as long as its magishifter. So if Sam never died, neither did Raven. But if she did die, Raven would become mortal. Then, every year she had traded into the waypiece for power would be deducted from what remained of her now mortal existence. The idea behind it, Sam guessed, was that if a guardian planned on using the waypiece, he or she had better make damn sure the magishifter didn’t die. It was incentive. And pretty damned good incentive, too.

  “If you’d been there,” Sam told her, “you would have been used against me. Everyone else was. Believe me.”

  No one said anything. They all knew it was true.

  “What I don’t understand is why he didn’t just possess you like he has everyone else,” said Jason Alberich, who looked a little worse for wear as well. There was a darkness under his eyes, and his wife, Chloe, who sat with her legs curled beside him on the rug in front of the electric fireplace, looked just as tired.

  “That struck me as strange as well,” said Evie, where she rested against Roman’s chest. She sat up straight and leaned forward, clasping her hands in front of her as she placed her elbows on her knees. “I mean, he seemed unable to do it without touching her or something.”

  “Maybe Sam was simply stronger than we were,” said Chloe softly.

  “Or maybe the Entity is getting weaker,” suggested Sam. She recalled her climb into the night sky when she’d become a Phoenix. She remembered the darkness that had escaped Abraham Silence’s burned body. It had circled near her hesitantly, before coming to some kind of decision. She had the impression that he decided it was too difficult, that it wasn’t worth it, and that he’d better reserve what strength he had.

  “It lost the battle,” she continued. “So it had to regroup to continue fighting the war.”

  “Maybe,” said Jack. Sam glanced over at him. He sat on the edge of Roman’s desk, his tall, black-clothed beauty a welcome yet stimulating sight. “Or maybe Chloe’s right, Firebird. I’ve never seen an animal move as fast as you did in that arena. You were a fireball.”

  Sam blushed and looked down. She could feel the eyes of the people around her, and she desperately wanted to change the subject. Fortunately, it was changed for her when Evie said what they’d all been thinking.

  “We were wrong about Arach.”

  Silence filled the empty spaces between the room’s inhabitants. It was pregnant, though, filled with doubt, regret, remorse, and loss.

  “Just because the Entity killed him doesn’t mean he wasn’t the Traitor,” said Jason.

  “But doesn’t it?” asked his wife with a glance at him. “I mean, why would he destroy his inside man?”

  “To keep the Kings and Queens on their toes,” said Evie. “What better way to screw with us?”

  “Well, whether he was the Traitor or not, it would seem Chantelle was wrong at least,” said Jason. “She said we would lose a king who had found his queen. Arach hadn’t yet found her.”

  Roman D’Angelo took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I find it difficult to think of Lalura Chantelle as being wrong about anything,” he said softly. “Ever.” And then he licked his lips and slowly rubbed his palms together, his expression one of deep thought. “However… the cat who led me to believe Arach was the Traitor….” He seemed unable to finish his thought, and he smiled a tired, wry smile. “I feel a fool now, but the truth was, it reminded me so much of her, for a moment I could have sworn it was her. Come back from the dead. Just to warn us.”

  Now Raven turned where she was seated at the table and focused on the Vampire King. “Maybe it was her,” she said sternly. “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio,” she said.

  “Than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” finished Roman, quoting Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

  “And a white cat just like that one came to me and helped me find Sam,” Raven continued. “Remember? Seems a bit too coincidental, doesn’t it?”

  Roman smiled again, then thought for a moment. “Perhaps.” He nodded. But he still looked doubtful. “But how could she be mistaken about Arach?”

  “No offense, I promise, but maybe it wasn’t her that was mistaken,” said Sam. “Maybe it was you. Maybe her message wasn’t trying to tell you that the Dragon King was the Traitor. Maybe she was trying to warn you that he was in danger. That he was in fact the one who was going to die.”

  They all processed that, their silence deep. And then Evie asked, “But what about the part where the king who died was supposed to have found his queen?”

  “Well, how do you know he didn’t?” Sam asked. “You guys don’t always tell each other everything, do you? Not right away, anyway. And maybe he was afraid you wouldn’t believe him, either. You did suspect him as the Traitor, after all. And maybe, most of all, he was just trying to be careful – protective of the woman he loved.”

  “You mean Arach’s queen might be out there somewhere?” asked Evie. “Alone and in danger?”

  Sam blinked. “Well… yeah,”
she admitted. “I guess it could happen, right?”

  With that thought hovering in the air between them, the room again fell into silence. The fire in the hearth crackled merrily, at odds with the deep contemplation and sorrowful quiet of the kings and queens.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  The sun had not yet risen, and fog coated the ground like a blanket, dusting massive clover in droplets of moisture and swirling around their feet as Sam and Jack walked side by side down a Redwood Forest trail. Normally, hikers desiring a rest from humanity would bump into each other out here in the woods, but this trail was hidden from human kind. It took a portal to get here, and a way past the wards. This was D’Angelo’s land, and right now Sam could not have been more grateful for the privacy it afforded them.

  She and Jack were taking a time out, utilizing the few minutes they had before they were expected at Jack’s first official meeting of the Kings, where he would introduce himself, and where Sam knew he hoped to introduce his new queen. For the moment however, they were alone, and the woods seemed filled with peace.

  “He came after me because I hadn’t yet decided,” she said softly. An animal scurried under a bush to her left, and a bird took flight overhead. Jack walked beside her in silence for a moment.

  Then he said, “Yes, he did. But it couldn’t be helped. You weren’t ready.”

  “No,” Sam agreed quietly. “I wasn’t.”

  Are you ready now? she could almost hear him ask. She caught the question on a breeze, unspoken but louder than anything, and she knew he desperately wanted to ask it out loud.

  However, more quiet followed them on their slow stroll, until Sam changed the subject. “Were you and the Dragon King close at all?”

  “Well, no,” Jack admitted with a shrug. “Remember, I haven’t been an official King at the Table until now. But to be honest, not even Walker was that close to him. Arach was a bit of a loner. Dragons are like that. They tend to be xenophobic, in fact. Arach tolerated the other Kings and always worked with them. He was a powerful addition to the Table, but not particularly friendly.”