The Dragon King

by Heather Killough-Walden

  That proof was the beautiful aspect of the nightmare. Every dark cloud had a silver lining, it would seem.

  “Every promise a Nomad makes must come to fruition,” she told him, and her smile broadened. “Arach…” she whispered conspiratorially, beckoning him closer.

  He moved in. After all, what could she possibly do to him? She was tied up, and he held a wicked sharp knife. He drew close enough that she caught the faint scent of the tainted power that had made him whatever he was. But his eyes remained locked on hers.

  “I have a secret to tell you,” she said.

  “Do you now?” he whispered, equally quiet in their sudden closeness.

  She nodded, her smile broadening into a grin. “My father was a Legendary, yes… but my mother was a Nomad.”

  Arach blinked. A second flicker of that unmistakable doubt crossed over his handsome features. And she knew at once that he understood.

  “Her blood runs through my veins, Arach. I am of their kind. I am a Nomad.” She gave him just a split second more to digest her words. Then she said, “And I promise you here and now….”

  The world grew still, and she felt Arach’s fury flare like a bonfire before she’d even finished her sentence, before he even budged an inch. It was only them, eyes locked, knowledge passing so very clearly between them.

  “…that I will never, ever agree to wed you, much less become your queen. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not ten years from now.” She showed him her teeth, and this time she bore fangs of her own, sharp and strong. “Never.”

  Eva watched shadows move across the green of Arach’s eyes – and then her gaze slipped to his right hand, where his fingers clenched tightly around the hilt of the wicked blade he held. It was his voice that drew her attention back to his face.

  “I see,” he said simply. “I suppose, then, that it’s time I come clean with you as well, Eva. Duplicity is not the only thing Nomads are incapable of. Did you know they also can’t kill one another?” He stepped forward, a single, slow step that echoed ominously in the room.

  Now he was inches from her, and she was caught in a gaze that felt like a tidal pool. It was taking her down. “No matter what they do to each other,” he whispered, turning his head so his words brushed against her ear. A chill went through her. “No matter how vicious the blow or deep the pain. There will be no end.” He paused, and she felt him move against her, inhaling softly to take in the scent of her hair. He sighed, moved his lips to her ear again. “Death will not come.”

  The blade entered her abdomen with swift, decisive fury, and buried itself to the hilt.

  Eva’s eyes went wide. The feeling of the metal slicing through her skin, muscle, and organs was no more than a strange sensation at first, surprising and wrong. The pain came a few seconds later, and as it settled into her, Arach withdrew his dagger – and plunged it into her once more.

  She cried out, a strangled and shocked sound, but Arach’s free hand fisted in her hair, yanking her head back to expose her throat.

  The truth crashed into her like falling books from a tipped book stack. One after another, they struck her:

  He was a Nomad.

  The Entity had made him thus, changing him completely. The dragon Arach was long gone. That was why he’d taken her blood. He was a vampire. In this, his first incarnation as a Traveler, he had actually taken the form of one of Roman D’Angelo’s kind. And he would be a vampire until he somehow died and was reborn as some other powerful manifestation of dark magic.

  He was like her. She couldn’t lie to him. And he couldn’t kill her. And now that she had poked the bear of his fury and spurned him completely, he meant to prove it to her.

  By hurting her just as completely.

  “You’re beginning to understand now, my beauty.” He pulled the dagger out again, and Eva’s legs gave out, placing all of her weight on her arms. The cuffs around her wrists bit in deep and cruel. She distantly felt her blood running down the length of her arms.

  She heard something metal hit the floor, clanging loudly, but echoing down the tunnel that was becoming what remained of her consciousness. And then Arach’s hand was pressing cruelly over her new, fresh wounds. It whipped her back into wakefulness, ringing another pain-filled sound from the depths of her throat.

  His hand moved, sliding none-too-gently across the damage he’d done to her to encircle her waist and lift her against him. Her blood pressed into his clothes, drenching them, and Arach’s teeth scraped in a threat against her throat. “But let me drive the point home for you.”

  She saw stars behind her eyes when he thrust his fangs deeply into the side of her neck, piercing her jugular with a violence only pure, searing anger could birth. Eva at once felt her life’s blood rise to his demand and leave her body. Sickness coiled then roiled inside her. Once more, she began to fade.

  And once more he brought her back, manipulating her body to the point of conscious pain to deny her any freedom from his punishment. She moaned softly, absolutely and pathetically unable to prevent it.

  He laughed against her throat… and drank deeper.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “Because he’s a Nomad,” said Roman as he ran his hand over his face and glanced at his wife, Evelynne, whom everyone called “Evie.”

  Cal looked from one to the other.

  “And not just any Nomad,” said Evie, “but basically the offspring of two of the most powerful and most evil Nomads in existence.” She straightened from the table over which she and several other people had been performing complicated scrying spells in a desperate attempt to find the twelfth queen. “But more importantly, he probably has the help of his parents, so to speak. The Entity has a promise to keep. From what Lilith says, the drive to fulfill your end of the bargain is very strong for a Nomad. No doubt, they are helping to hide Arach and Eva. That’s why we can’t find them,” she said with a tired sigh.

  The room was filled with nearly every powerful witch, warlock or mage known to the Thirteen Realms, which made it crowded. Most of the attendees who were more familiar with scrying spells were bent over the table and the scrying bowl at its center, lending it their strength.

  Calidum looked away from Roman and Evellyne and turned to face the woman who was presiding over the proceedings. She had long, very light blonde hair, delicate features, and enormous, highly luminous blue eyes. He would have recognized those eyes anywhere, and on anyone.

  Her name was Lilith McLaren now, but it had once been Lalura Chantelle. More importantly, she had once been a firebrand of a woman born into her first human body as a red-haired lass named Katrielle. Mother to Evangeline.

  And not even Katrielle could find her. Evellyne was probably right.

  What was worse was that Calidum couldn’t feel her either. He knew she was alive. Never mind the fact that Eva would probably be the last person in the world Arach would want dead – this was just something that Cal knew deep down. She was alive.

  But in San Francisco on the Embarcadero, he’d sensed her fear, he’d been able to detect her worry. On the cable car, he’d felt the wound the Entity had given her as if it had been his own. In one way or another, for as long as Cal could remember, he’d been able to feel Evangeline’s presence in the world. Sometimes it was small, only in the background, like a heartbeat you’d stopped listening to long ago because it was your own. But if you concentrated, if you stopped and listened, you would recognize it, beating steadily – to let you know you were still alive.

  That was silent now. There was nothing.

  It was one hell of a shield.

  And while they were shielded, what would Arach be doing to her?

  Nothing without a whale of a fight, he reassured himself. Eva was strong. She was the epitome of strength, in fact, the daughter of the Great Black and a Nomad… she would find a way to give as well as she got. He knew that.

  But no one’s strength was bottomless, and Arach had the help of two other powerful beings. It was an unfair match.


  Calidum turned away again so that Lilith wouldn’t see the look on his face, and he closed his eyes. They were hurting anyway, burning far too bright for far too long. He had been on the verge of changing completely for hours, and soon the transformation would be unstoppable.

  I have to find another way, he thought. We’ve been trying to breach the boundaries of space, and it isn’t working…. Cal frowned and looked around the room again. Thinking of space made him think of time. That was when he noticed not who was there, but who wasn’t.

  William Solan, the Time King, was missing.

  *****

  “Are you ready, my love?”

  Coy, beautiful laughter floated around the Entity, brushing along his skin like a caress. As nothing else could, this single laugh coaxed a smile to his now handsome face. He was whole again, fully draped in the body of a human male, tall and dashing and deceitfully normal.

  He left the mirror to face his long, lost queen and cupped her cheek so he could look upon her longer. She was so animated, so filled with the fire that made her who she was. Her eyes sparkled, and her smile was beautiful. She fussed with his tie for a moment as a human mate might, straightening it where he’d failed.

  Then she gave him a shy shrug and said, “I admit I’m excited. There’s so much to experience in this new world.”

  “The theatre is only the beginning,” he told her. “Man is flying now.”

  Amunet’s dark eyes widened. “How do you mean?”

  He chuckled, the sound as beautiful as her laughter. “Not like you or I can, but in great machines.” He gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead. “Never mind. You will see it all soon.”

  “I hope so,” she said with another nervous laugh. “Before it is all destroyed.”

  “Indeed,” he said casually as he took her hand and led her to the door of the apartment. “Perhaps they will rebuild it.”

  She shook her head as he helped her put on her light coat. “They never regained the knowledge they lost when the library was burned.” She sighed. “They chose fiction.”

  “And a zealous defense of it, I might add,” said the Entity. Then he grinned. “But you and I would not be here had they not.” He opened the door for her. “Remember that.”

  “True enough. I’m hungry.”

  “It’s all the energy we’re using protecting our younger son.” He locked the door behind him as any human would, and somehow the small, random all-too-human act made him happy. “Soon he will have what belongs to him, and the power to defend it on his own.”

  “Yes. I can feel him growing stronger. And she grows weaker.” But this last part, Amunet said without the certainty of her previous statements.

  The Entity stopped them in the hall and regarded her. “You sense something. That there is more to her….”

  Amunet thought for a moment. Then she smiled again, and her brilliant happiness was back, washing over him like a miracle. “Whatever happens, whether this is a hard lesson learned for Arach or an easy one, she will make a lovely addition to our family.”

  The Entity smiled as well, and his chest felt light. “Agreed.” He crooked his elbow, and she took it like the lady she was. “Now let us hurry. The curtain will soon rise.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “Hungry?”

  His voice was distant to Eva. She was so tired. She’d lost too much blood. But her will had always been stronger than her body, and somehow Eva managed to get her eyes opened.

  Arach was across the room, leaning on the back of the couch, his long legs crossed at the ankles. He was eating something. Some kind of pastry. He stopped mid-bite when she opened her eyes, and then he slowly finished.

  When he’d chewed and swallowed the last of it, he shook his head. “Wow.” He pushed off the couch, brushed his hands together to de-crumb them, and casually slid them into the pockets of his pants. “Your eyes are stunning when you are suffering. They lighten to the faintest lilac, nearly white.”

  Eva watched him as he moved from the living room to the kitchen, and then she allowed her eyes to slide shut again. It was so hard to focus. All she knew was pain and exhaustion. Her single consolation was that he hadn’t yet violated her. But it was an overwhelmingly slight consolation, given how evident his desire was.

  He’s saving up, she knew bitterly. To celebrate your defeat.

  “I see the rumors about your inability to heal yourself are true,” he told her conversationally as she imagined he rummaged through the fridge or perhaps a cupboard. She could hear him moving but couldn’t have cared much less what he was doing. Not any more.

  She’d never wished to be dead before, could never even imagine actually wanting to be dead, but… right now….

  Come now, little one. Your death is not what you desire.

  Eva’s eyes snapped open. The voice in her head was not her own. Nor was it Arach’s. Nor was it Calidum’s. It was strange. It was a new male voice, deep, resonant, beautiful, comforting, and utterly unrecognizable.

  I’m going crazy, she thought. I’m literally hearing voices. Arach actually drove me nuts.

  “I can feed you, Eva. I can give you the nourishment you need to heal from your wounds. You might not have the ability to heal them for yourself as you can for others, but dragons do mend quickly, as I’ve heard do Nomads.”

  She could hear the smugness in his voice, but rather than the sickness she’d been feeling of late at the sound of it, she was distracted. There was a presence in her mind. It wasn’t just the voice; there was something else. And actually, it wasn’t just in her mind. It seemed to wrap around her from far away, like a warm blanket.

  “All you need do is acquiesce,” continued Arach. “Rescind your promise.” The sound of his shoes on the floor brought him before her, and Eva met his green gaze. She hated how beautiful he was. Becoming a Nomad and a vampire had only amplified what he’d already possessed. In a way, she wished she were a Nightmare, an incubus. Nightmares saw what was on the inside of a person. She would be able to view Arach like the slug worm maggot piece of shit he actually was, and not the deceptive prince he appeared to be.

  “Vow to spur the Dragon King,” he told her softly as his gaze narrowed, and he held up a single, perfect apple in his right hand. It was her favorite kind of apple, and her stomach panged at the sight of it. Her dragon senses could smell it.

  “And all of this,” he said, gesturing to her worn and drained body, “will end. You can not only eat anything you desire, you will be showered with riches beyond your wildest dreams.” He moved closer, his expression appealing. “Or you can continue to deny me. And I can introduce you to my new toy, the wooden pony. I could watch you ride it in exquisite torment for days.”

  Eva looked away from him to deny him the pleasure of seeing her revulsion.

  “Surely you must realize that I will win in the end. This can only continue as it has, Eva. I can keep going for weeks. Months.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Centuries.”

  “What you want… is not even possible… and you know it,” she said softly. Arach was suggesting something that she knew couldn’t happen. A Nomad had to keep their word once it was given, and that was that.

  She finally let her head fall forward. It was getting hard to hold it up. Her throat hurt. He’d bitten her twice and taken so much blood. Her hair brushed over her bruised shoulders to frame her face. The strands were thick and silver-white, shimmering like a waterfall before her eyes. She allowed herself to get lost in it. It was more pleasant.

  But a finger under her chin lifted her head and brought her gaze back to his. He smiled warmly. “For a full Nomad, you’re right. But you’re half dragon, Eva. Legendary, no less. That half still holds some sway.”

  She hated to admit it, but that had her attention. Because if it was actually possible, then Arach would fight for it until she gave in. She couldn’t die. Not by his hand. This really could go on forever.

  Arach maintained his hold on her and looked down at the apple in
his hand. He took a massive bite out of the apple, his strong teeth cutting cleanly into the flesh of the fruit and chewing heartily.

  “I hate your face,” she hissed, which only made Arach laugh.

  Then rid him of it, little one.

  Eva blinked again. It was the voice, back in her head – and she felt its presence around her even stronger than before. It warmed her hands and feet where they’d gone cold. It seemed almost a salve on her wounds.

  There was a sigh in her mind, forlorn, deep, and powerful. Look what he’s done to you… That was said as if he were speaking to himself and not her. The presence grew angry; she could feel its agitation like a sudden brush of sandpaper on her soul. She winced.

  At once, the harshness of the presence abated. The voice’s owner was suddenly holding back, and it seemed for her sake. She could sense that for some reason, he cared.

  Think, little one, he told her, his focus back on speaking gently but persistently. Arach made promises too. He must keep those promises now.

  Evangeline blinked a third time – not only because of the one-sided conversation going on in her head, but because what it was telling her was true, and she only now realized it. Arach was a Nomad, and he’d told her he would not “try” to hurt Mimi and Calidum, but would hurt them. It was a promise he would have to keep now.

  Will you let him?

  No, she thought, horrified.

  No, the voice repeated.

  No, she whispered to herself. In her mind’s eye, she saw Mimi smile, heard her laugh. Then the redhead faded, and she caught the scent of storm and leather, and in the darkness, a grayscale fire burned, peering deep into her soul.

  The voice sighed again. Ah, yes. Korridum… he bore the lie well. Again, it was a string of words not necessarily directed at her. It felt more like she was listening in on someone else’s thoughts, sad and ancient. They rumbled through her like a whisper so deep she felt it in her bones.