King Of Flames (The Masks of Under Book 1)

by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

  Lydia tensed reflexively. “Wait, wait! I’m not struggling.”

  “No, but you certainly will be in short order. It is better for you to be transported in an unconscious state.” Maverick swabbed a spot on her arm and inserted the needle with no more pomp or circumstance. “I will not have you thrashing about and tearing off the bandage or, worse, re-injuring yourself,” he continued as he depressed the plunger.

  It was astonishing how quickly blood circulated in the body. All through med school, Lydia had been impressed with how fast something could go from point A to point B in the bloodstream. And this moment was no exception.

  The world began to dim. Oh. Oh, hell, please, no…

  ***

  “Master Edu wonders why you did not simply leave her unconscious the entire time,” Ylena said from Edu’s side. Her flowing red dress made a faint whisper on the wood floor as she moved to stand beside him.

  Edu looked down at the young woman on the table, the straps that held her there undone. The human girl was lying senseless to the world, her eyes shut, head rolled to one side. Her blonde hair was splayed around her face, falling in soft curls along what he decided were sultry and beautiful features.

  Edu was not one to hesitate in appreciating the beauty of those around him. But it was not her appearance that had struck an ember of curiosity in him, for he was privileged to enjoy the company of any he saw fit to have. Beauty alone did not inspire such attention as he now paid this young one—coming to fetch her from the doctor in person, as it were. It was that she had, quite simply, caught him off guard.

  The look of defiance in her flashing blue eyes as she had fired off her weapon into his head had been breathtaking. Firearms had evolved significantly over the past hundred and eighty-odd years since he had walked Earth. He had not expected so much impact out of the little pop-toy.

  The woman was undoubtedly of stronger will than most he had met in his many, many years, and she was amusing to chase, however briefly the pursuit had lasted. Edu had underestimated her strength of character when hunting her, and that misjudgment had allowed her to kill him. Edu had not died in a very long time, and it was with no small amount of chagrin that he had awoken from the injury she had paid him.

  It was an enjoyable diversion to be surprised in such a manner. It was not often Edu was caught unprepared.

  “For the same reason I suspect you come in person to fetch her.” Maverick stood from his desk and was wiping his hands off on a damp cloth. The man was shorter than Edu by a fair length, but then again, most creatures who once claimed humanity found themselves in such a state. “Curiosity. Aria wished to cast a glance into the modern mind before she is to be added to our ranks.”

  Ah, yes. The Fall was a cause for much rabble in his world. It upended the balance of things, adding new life and new invigoration into a dead and dying world. It was the cause for excitement for all.

  “Master Edu thanks you for your service,” Ylena said from his side.

  No, in fact, he had not done any such thing. He admonished Ylena silently, and her psychic connection with him would allow her to feel it as certainly as the moons might rise. Her expression did not change, and he knew she did not care for his scolding. “Do not speak for me, Ylena.”

  Ylena was often want to soften Edu’s manners. To add a sense of civility where he had none, she would usually tell him. “That is all I do,” she responded silently to him. Her voice in his head was as familiar as his own.

  “It is an honor, of course.” Maverick bowed his head.

  Platitudes and niceties. This was what Edu hated above all else. He despised such bending and scraping. Maverick no more respected Edu than he did a table lamp, and his disdain was as clear as the Earthen sun. But Maverick rightly feared Edu. Edu would have it no other way. At least terror was a real emotion. Respect was not tangible; it was a construct of man and society. Fear served a purpose.

  He had the sudden overwhelming urge to grasp Maverick by the back of the head and ram his skull through the wall. He could. He was king.

  Edu felt his hand twitch and Ylena’s presence in his mind once more. “Do not entertain this desire further,” she said into his mind. “He has done nothing to deserve your wrath.”

  But he desired to harm the man for no other reason than he wanted to do so. Edu was not keen on self-restraint. Yet in this case, the moment of indulgence would cost him more trouble and annoyance in short order. Maverick was regent and elder of a house, after all. Edu sighed from under his mask and felt the urge pass.

  Very well.

  Edu leaned down and picked the young woman up in his arms. She was a tiny thing, with curves in all the right places. She had full lips, and he wondered what it might be like to touch them. Edu was in no rush. He could have her when he wished. There would be many amusing creatures worth exploring in the years to follow, and for that reason alone, Edu always looked forward to when their worlds aligned.

  Perhaps he would bid her to his chambers for a night or two, once the ceremony had come and gone. Playing with someone so willful and with such conviction would be entertaining, with her flashing blue eyes and fiery spirit. She would be easy to take but harder to tame, he was sure. All the better.

  But that was for another time. For now, the girl must go back with the others and await her turn for the Fall.

  Chapter Six

  It was like helplessly re-watching a film where someone dies. No amount of knowing what was going to happen would help the poor, doomed character on the screen. No amount of yelling at the TV would change the outcome. It was scripted. It was unavoidable.

  And so, Lydia was helpless as she walked toward the edge of that obsidian sarcophagus in that twisted and eerie stone crypt. She was replaying the actions she did before in her dream, and just like a film, she couldn’t stop, unable to help it as she stepped up onto the stair that surrounded it and peered down over the edge at the sleeping man inside—the creature with the black mask and the clawed, gauntleted hand.

  But the tomb was empty.

  And just like that, the script changed.

  It didn’t take her long to find out where the man had gone.

  Lydia let out a startled squeak as a metal hand twisted in her hair. She was suddenly pushed forward and pinned to the edge of the obsidian sarcophagus. A body, warm against her back, was pressing her against the surface.

  “Well, hello…” a voice purred close to her ear. It sounded like a knife wrapped in velvet. “I am surprised you returned.”

  “Let me go!”

  “You invade my mind, and I am supposed to let you go? How quaint.” The man laughed. As Lydia struggled, his other hand grabbed her left wrist and crossed over her right arm, pinning it to her body. “Now, now. None of that. You are the trespasser here, after all.”

  “Not on purpose.”

  “Of that, I am certain. The mark on your arm speaks that you have not yet Fallen.” His metal mask touched her temple as he leaned in closer to her. He smelled like old books and dusty leather, like the back aisles of some ancient library. “So, by what method are you here, I wonder?”

  “I don’t know. Let me go!” Lydia struggled.

  “So feisty.” The man laughed. He released his grasp on her hair and her arm. For a moment, she thought he was going to listen and let her go. But as she whirled around, he merely let her turn to face him before grasping her wrists and pinning them to the lip of the sarcophagus on either side of her.

  The smooth black metal mask, with the single hole for his right eye, was hard to mistake. She could see now the stray few gray hairs serving as the only contrast of color in his long, jet-black hair. He was taller than average but not nearly as much as Lyon, nor was he nearly as broad as Edu. But he was just as intimidating. His appearance seemed cultivated for that purpose. It wasn’t helping that he was now leaning against her, pinning her back to the sarcophagus with the length of his thigh.

  The man’s very dated, if expensive-looking, three-piece s
uit was tailored to accent an angular but toned build. It was meant to differentiate him from all around him. He looked like a living nightmare. Maybe he was.

  Lydia was stunned to silence, looking up wide-eyed in fear at the smooth metal mask that peered back down at her.

  “I suppose it is more likely you are here by my doing,” he said thoughtfully.

  “You…aren’t sure?”

  “No.” He pulled in a sharp breath through his nose and let it out in a small sigh as if conceding a debate in his mind. “Ah, well. You will discover this soon enough. I fear my grasp on my own mind may be a bit…tenuous at best.”

  “Oh, good. I’ve dreamed up an insane nightmare man,” she griped.

  “You believe I am a figment of your mind? How charming. No, my dear. I am very real. My shattered mind may play tricks upon me, but of that fact, I am certain. You merely have found yourself inside my sleeping psyche.”

  Lydia’s heart sank into her stomach. Now it really had gone from weird to worse. She would ask how this was possible, but she had been chased through the streets of Boston by a man in a full suit of armor—after she had shot him through the head—and been thrown through a black gateway into another place. Not to mention Lyon and the corpse in her lab and her magically appearing surprise tattoo.

  Right now, logic was out the window. So, sure…why not. A strange, insane man in all black was haunting her dreams.

  “Well, that’s…just great,” she finally managed to muster.

  The man chuckled at Lydia’s candid expression of dread. “You are a sardonic one, aren’t you? Lovely.” He was caging her in with his arms on either side of her, keeping her hands held to the edge of the obsidian sarcophagus. He leaned in, and she shrank back as far as she was able. “But why have I brought you here, I wonder?” The man lifted his clawed gauntlet from her wrist and hovered the points of his knife-like fingers over her cheek.

  Lydia felt her eyes go wide. If her heart could pound in a dream, it was. “Wait, I—” she squeaked out, unsure of what he was going to do to her.

  “Once more, you ask for my restraint?” The man spoke, deeply amused. He curled his clawed fingers into his palm and ran the metal knuckle down her cheek instead. It was a tender, gentle gesture. But it terrified her all the same. At the look on her face, he let out a quiet noise in his throat thoughtfully before speaking again. “If you do not wish to be here, then simply wake up. Even if you are here by my power, you can free yourself.”

  “I—I can’t,” Lydia stammered.

  “Oh?”

  “He drugged me.”

  “Who is he?”

  “His name’s Maverick, I think,” Lydia peeped out, not quite knowing how she managed to have such a casual conversation with a monster, pinning her to a tomb and looming over her like he was.

  The man let out a deep and beleaguered sigh. He hung his head and shook it, the dark tendrils of his hair falling alongside the black of his mask. The only difference between the two was how they reflected the flickering candlelight. “That man, for all his intelligence, is an utter moron.”

  “You know him?”

  “I very well should. I am the one who brought Maverick to Under. I knew him as a mortal man before he came through the gate and Fell to the House of Words and became its regent,” he said through another amused chuckle. Somehow, he managed to sound oddly friendly, even as he was looming over her like a creature out of a slasher film.

  “House of Words?”

  “You would not understand. Once you Fall, all will be made clear.”

  “Fall where?”

  The man sighed wistfully. “The uninitiated are always so wonderfully naïve. Did you tell Maverick of our previous encounter?” The man shifted to rest his metal palm against her jawline, the dagger-like blade of his thumb running across her cheek. It made her shiver, and she pressed harder against the edge of the sarcophagus. The touch sent her heart lodging into her throat.

  “No,” she said a little too quickly. “I…thought you were a nightmare. I’m still not sure you aren’t.”

  The man leaned in insistently. “You must not tell anyone that we have spoken. Do not speak a word that you know anything of me.”

  “What will happen if I do?”

  “It will mean your life, little one. They will kill you in a heartbeat, the Fall be damned, if they learn that I have drawn you—even unwittingly—into my mind.”

  “But why?” Lydia swallowed thickly.

  The man ignored her question as he finally removed his clawed hand from her. “You wish to wake up, do you not?”

  “Yes, please,” Lydia murmured.

  “But you are drugged and cannot do so on your own.”

  “I don’t think so…?” Why was this conversation suddenly making her very nervous?

  “I suspect I know how to force the matter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What is your name, my dear?”

  “Lydia.”

  “Well, Lydia,” he purred out her name, and it made her skin flood with goosebumps, “it is a distinct pleasure to meet you. My name is Aon, and you will come to fear me.”

  Before she could react, he moved—and drove the fingers of his clawed gauntlet deep into her ribcage.

  ***

  Lydia woke from her dream with a jolt, her heart pounding in her ears. Her stomach swirled dangerously as everything moved around her. “Oh, damn it.” She guessed a nightmare shouldn’t be unexpected, given recent events. But that felt so damn real.

  And whoever that guy was, he was a piece of work. The feeling of his clawed hand digging into her ribs lingered in her mind and made her shudder. If he was real, she knew she was in trouble. If he was fake, she needed therapy.

  “Jesus Christ,” came a familiar voice next to her. “You had me scared.”

  When the world finally managed to sit still long enough that she could uncover her eyes without throwing up, she blinked the world into focus. Someone was kneeling next to her and blotting out whatever dim light was around them. “Nick?”

  “God, Lyd, you were freaking out, and I couldn’t wake you up.”

  When she went to sit up, he put a hand on her back to help. The world was still threatening to spin out from around her at any point, so she took her time. She threw her arms around him, and he returned the gesture. After a long moment of silent relief in each other’s safety, she pushed away from him to try to survey where they were.

  Lydia was sitting on the ground with Nick kneeling next to her. The terrain in question was rough, uncarved rock, dark and covered in pebbles and stones. Once, in college, she had gone on a hike through a cave, and this looked very much like that. It was lit by torches that were shoved into metal rings hammered into the cavernous walls. The fire cast flickering and conflicting shadows across the floor of the stone surfaces.

  They weren’t in here alone. There were dozens of people in the cave with them, scattered about and sitting or standing on the uneven surfaces. Some were leaning against the walls, and she saw one person lying on the ground with a coat shoved under his head. Everyone was dressed in various garbs from what seemed like multiple seasons—some in winter coats, some in summer gear—all mixes of races, colors, genders, and ages. No children, though. She noticed that reasonably quickly. Everyone here was an adult.

  There was a quiet rabble of conversation, and she couldn’t really pick up on any of it, except that a lot of it wasn’t in English. “Who are these people? Where are we?”

  “As far as I can tell, they were taken like us. They all have marks. As to where? Fuck if I know.” Nick let out a low breath and ran his hand over his short, scruffy brown hair, ruffling it. He did that when he was nervous or scared. The look on his face was that of a man who was one good startle away from losing his mind. “When that tall asshole threw me through the hole, I wound up here, sprawled out on the rocks. Same with everyone else.”

  “How long have you been here?” Lydia asked, trying to latch onto the m
ystery, instead of losing her mind in panic.

  “About four hours.” He paused. “What happened to you? You got carried in by that giant freak in the armor twenty minutes ago. Didn’t you say you shot him?”

  “I did. I don’t know how he’s still alive. He caught me a minute after the other guy got you. I didn’t even make it down the block.”

  “Then where’ve you been?”

  “I don’t know that either. I woke up in a weird medical lab out of some antique textbook. There was a guy named Maverick and his wife, Aria. They were wearing freaky masks and looked like they weren’t…they weren’t normal. He patched up my arm.”

  “What do you mean, patched up?”

  Lydia rolled up her coat sleeve, and sure enough, there was the small square of gauze, taped professionally to her arm. No blood spots had oozed through, and it shockingly didn’t hurt. She poked it curiously and still, nothing. She could feel sensation from it, but no pain. What Maverick had put on it had helped.

  “They didn’t torture you? Didn’t grill you for information?”

  “He was just doing what he was told. Then I guess the guy in the armor—Edu—came to get me and brought me back here. I was out cold by that point again. Assholes drugged me up.”

  “Huh,” was all he had to say.

  “Nobody’s hurt you?” she asked Nick.

  “Nobody’s said anything to us at all.” Nick stood from the ground and brushed the gravel and bits of dirt from his jeans. He reached out a hand to her to help her stand. Finally getting up to her feet, she wobbled for a moment but managed to stay upright.

  She took another moment to look around to really try to understand where she was. The cave was about fifty by eighty feet, give or take. A large wooden double door with iron rings on it, like you’d find in a medieval castle, looked to be the only way in or out. The doors were shut. “Has anybody tried those to see if that’s locked?” she asked.

  “Well…” Nick blinked. “No, honestly. We’re all pretty scared. The monsters you and I’ve met have been, uh, human-looking. Most people were dragged here by things that weren’t. I don’t think anyone’s looking forward to meeting what’s on the other side. I’ve tried to talk to as many people as I could to figure out what’s going on. Nobody knows anything.” Nick led her away from where she had woken up and toward where a small group was sitting as he talked.