The Demon King

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Lalura chuckled, and as always, Roman was reminded of leaves skittering across an autumn landscape. “You make it sound like we’re the mob ready to move in with acid and shovels.”

  Roman smiled, letting his fangs show. “Been there, done that. This is less messy.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The growling from below demanded Laz’s attention. It was one of those kinds of growls that managed to cut through any kind of tension or silence because it meant death – if it wasn’t tended to immediately. It was a warning growl to be sure, but it took a very long time for Laz to pull his gaze from the dark-haired woman and finally look down.

  The growling was coming from a mix breed dog with a good deal of pit in it. The animal had suddenly appeared next to them and now bared its teeth at Lazarus in a none-too-friendly manner. It was also edging its way carefully and threateningly in-between the two of them, its back to the woman, its menacing snarl to Laz.

  Every nerve in his body was alive with something he’d never felt in his entire life, and had been from the moment he’d transported into the warehouse. It had taken him split seconds to analyze the scene as he’d stepped onto it: his men piling through the door on the opposite side, several robed figures unconscious or dead on the unfinished floor, strange symbols drawn into the cement, and the air thick with the mixed smells of different kinds of magics, dark, powerful, and even wrong. His instincts told him something bad had been going down in the warehouse and that someone else had stopped the proceedings.

  Probably her.

  She stood in the midst of it all like a figure from a comic book dream. He had never seen a creature so stunning. Not as a cop, not as a king, not as a man.

  She had hair so dark, thick and lustrous it looked like someone had woven obsidian into silk strands. It cascaded over a tall, lithe body that was frankly impossible for humans to accomplish without the help of cosmetic surgery. It was exceedingly obvious to him that she wasn’t mortal. The magic of her movements, the sway of her hips, the taunting and delicious lilt of her voice as she spoke to the officers in the room weren’t even the dead giveaways. It was her power, flowing out from her like candy and alcohol and sex all wrapped into one.

  But when she turned around to face him, Laz entered another world altogether. It was a world entirely different from the one he’d lived in for thirty years. It was still his, but would now be forever changed. In a pivotal heartbeat, he knew who she was. He didn’t know her name or where she was from or why she filled the immense room with an even more immense power. But he knew her.

  Oh, he knew her.

  He’d made a quip about her biting, but when she turned around, he realized just how accurate his sarcastic assessment had been. The creature before him was one from fairytales, probably literally. She was a being of perfect fair skin with a fevered blush to her cheeks and lips that any man would give his right arm to kiss just once. And then there were her eyes, a green that transitioned from emerald to jade. They were impossible. No woman had eyes like this. And if he wasn’t mistaken, there was just a hint of something sharp revealing itself when she spoke. Vampire? Akyri? She felt like both and neither. Not that it mattered. All that mattered to Lazarus at that point was getting her out of that warehouse and to some safer, less conspicuous place where they could be alone.

  But now? Now he was staring down at a dog, of all things, and one that was clearly ready to rip his leg off. Dogs weren’t something he would have pegged as a companion for a creature like the woman before him. Dragons maybe. Or some sort of unicorn-bunny-kitten mix. Something sparkly, at the very least, with really big eyes. Not mutt dogs. And he was pretty sure this one had fleas.

  Confusion joined the vexation of his growing impatience. He forced himself to remain calm. “A friend of yours?” he asked, looking back up. Locking eyes on her was like an immediate reward. But the dog’s growl intensified.

  The woman’s brow furrowed. She blinked as if she were coming out of something, and his fight or flight instincts kicked in. He prepared to do the former – because he was afraid she would do the latter.

  “Yes,” she said, and her expression changed. Fierceness slipped into her eyes, and her jaw set. She looked from the dog back up to him. As she did so, she placed her hand tenderly on the dog’s head. The animal let out a soft whine, licked its lips once, then slid back into warning mode, baring its teeth at Laz. “So if you don’t mind, we’ll be leaving now.”

  Laz’s attention spiked. “Oh, I won’t argue with that,” he said. She would be leaving, just not without him.

  His double meaning was read loud and clear by the green-eyed angel across from him. And as if the dog, too, understood what he meant, it chose that moment to attack.

  Laz jumped back as the animal jolted forward, jaws snapping. They closed millimeters from where his thigh had been the moment before, and Laz’s instincts took over. Magic flooded the air around him. Without conscious direction, his power acted primally, encasing the four legged beast in a crackling bubble that sparked black and red. The animal cried out, a howl that was both high-pitched and growling, and the woman in front of Lazarus was suddenly a blur.

  Something hit him square in the chest. The impact was so sudden and so solid, he felt and heard his sternum crack away from the ribs surrounding it. The pain was immediate and immense, and he was airborne. By the time he realized fully what had happened, he was hitting the opposite wall of the warehouse and sliding once more to the floor.

  She’d hit him with some kind of magic, point-blank, and remnants of it encircled him. Chaos was now reigning in the warehouse. The cops on the other side of the room seemed to snap out of whatever spell the woman had previously had them under. Laz heard them remobilizing, shouting orders to one another – just before the sound of guns going off filled the space with reverberating death.

  Fear ripped through him. The thought of the woman being shot was unconscionable to him; it was something so wrong, he could not even fully process it. He only knew the knowledge of the possibility was more terrifying than anything he’d experienced up to that moment in his life. For just a heartbeat, it paralyzed him.

  Then he was up and moving so fast, time slowed down around him. Ahead of him, in the fray of the battle, the black-haired woman dodged bullets that he could now somehow, impossibly, see carving through the air. As she spun, magic poured from within her and into her hands, pooling into a dark, crackling fire he’d never seen before.

  The dog remained by her side, now free from the painful red magical shell Laz had encased it in. As one of those errant bullets neared the animal, the woman’s magic arced out like a shield to protect it. It covered the dog’s body like a purple, sparkling glove.

  Fury seemed to wrap around the woman as surely as her power. He could feel her anger; it was palpable. It was a warning, but even though time had slowed down for him, the warning came too late. Her magic swelled again, building up like a violet bonfire before it lashed out with seething wrath toward the officers who had opened fire.

  He’d fully expected to lose a few men in that moment. He was a split second away from her, and he was still too late. Her magic was faster even than their bullets had been, fueled by vehemence, or perhaps something stronger – the need to protect, the need for revenge. It didn’t matter. The bolt of purple fire reached the crowd of policemen like a torpedo zeroing in.

  Lazarus watched in that slowed-down time, and knew he would see his men fall dead beneath the onslaught. But rather than strike any of them dead-on as he’d thought it would, the magic moved between them, almost wrapping around them as if it meant to miss. It hit the wall behind them and the ground beneath them and exploded.

  The explosion was so strong, it knocked every officer off his feet and sent him flying in a wave of aftershock. The world blacked out for a moment, and Lazarus ducked his head against the brutal backlash of her power as his body impacted with his hers. At once, his arms wrapped tight around her lithe form, caging her against his own
body as he took them both to the hard, cold ground.

  Chapter Eighteen

  She was immediately fighting him, struggling against him with inhuman strength. “Let me go!” she yelled as they rolled, and it took every ounce of his training and a good deal of his own supernatural strength to gain the upper hand and straddle her into submission. Once he was above her, he wasted no time taking both of her wrists and pinning them to the cement.

  “Stop fighting me!” he growled, leaning in close. “I mean you no harm!”

  Her fangs were fully bared now, sharp and white and unnervingly sexy against the plump red of her sultry lips. She stilled and glared up at him. And then she smiled.

  Suddenly, the solidness of her wrists in his hands began to dissolve. Before his very eyes, she slipped from tangible form into sparkling, swirling purple gas, and he recoiled. “Oh hell no!” he swore. Still driven by instinct, his power pooled in his right hand. With all his strength, he thrust it forward as if to grab hold of what was left of her. His only coherent thought was, solid.

  There was a jolt in the atmosphere around him. Something slammed against his hand, but he felt it in his heart. The air crackled and zapped, light faded and came back, and when it returned, his right hand was wrapped tightly around the woman’s throat. At once, he loosened his grip, and shock moved through him. But he stayed where he was, intent on maintaining control.

  The woman’s impossible emerald eyes were huge in her face. A split second passed before both of her hands were clawing at his arm, and her body bucked beneath his. He could feel her magic swirling inside her as if it were madly banging against the walls of its prison in search of a way out. It was trapped.

  Had he done that? Just now?

  “Get the fuck off me!” she hissed, fangs glistening. Her green eyes began to glow, shifting from emerald to yellow, then nearly orange. He could sense the heat behind them, and he wondered what they felt like from her side.

  The fact that she could yell at him meant she wasn’t suffocating. Though, he was doubting she actually even needed air to survive. As far as what she was, he was thinking more along the lines of vampire now. Still, he’d never met a vampire like her. There was another layer to her. Maybe several.

  One thing was for sure. Whatever she was, she was not happy. If she was a vampire, then she was most likely hungry, and that was probably why his men had basically been hypnotized. Vampires radiated that kind of shit when they were peckish.

  He leaned in until his face was inches from hers, which felt both dangerous and tempting. He annunciated carefully, wanting to be sure she understood him implicitly. “You are going to stop fighting me,” he told her frankly. “And when you do, we will leave this warehouse. Together.”

  “Like hell,” she hissed.

  “It can be,” he said. “If you want. But I’m guessing you’re feeling pretty bad right now. If you want to feel better, then stop fighting me.”

  “You don’t know anything about me,” she told him. But the glow in her eyes dropped back from orange into yellow. She was either weakening, agreeing with him, or realizing she had no choice in the matter. Or she could be playing him. He was hoping it wasn’t that.

  “No, I don’t,” he admitted freely. “But I know you stumbled onto something bad and that you tried to do something about it.” He was guessing there, but his gut was telling him it was a good guess. “That makes you a good guy,” he continued. He paused, then went on clearly. “I’m a good guy. We can work together, and I can help you.”

  She looked right at him then, as if she were looking through him. Her entire body relaxed as she began to laugh. It wasn’t the cruelest laugh he’d ever heard, but it was damn close. It was the kind of laugh that told you loud and clear the laugher knew something you didn’t. “I very much doubt that,” she said through the laughter. “Now let me go and get off me before I get really angry.”

  From just behind him, near his left ear, Lazarus heard a familiar and highly irritating sound. The dog was back, having been protected from the blasts and bullets by the woman’s magic. It was once more standing near him and once more threatening him with bared teeth.

  “Okay, that’s it.”

  He stood up in one fluid movement, grabbing the woman by the arms to take her along with him. She cried out in surprise, but gained her footing. He maintained his grip on her, spinning her around so that her back slammed up against his chest before he wrapped his arms firmly around her. He’d moved so fast, she had no time to react.

  The dog had time, however. It lunged for Laz’s leg again, but this time it seemed to smack up against the magical shield the woman had placed over it, like a peanut rattling up against its shell. The shield crackled into visibility, purple-black with power. The dog froze, stunned for a moment as the magic slipped out of the protective casing around it and skated over its fur. A split second later, a purple-white flash lit the dog’s eyes.

  The woman in Laz’s arms froze. “Bowie?” she asked softly, her tone now completely changed and laced with genuine concern.

  A second later, the purple-white light to the dog’s eyes was gone, and the animal yelped in general surprise. It sat down hard on its back haunches. Then stood back up. And then it shook itself heartily as if shaking off water. It stared up at the two of them and tilted its head to the side in curiosity.

  Across the room, his men were stirring to life again, as were the robed figures on the floor – all but one of them. The unmoving figure was laying face-up on his back and looked decidedly more pale than the others. Laz wondered if the woman in his arms had anything to do with that. He desperately needed to get to the bottom of what had transpired in that warehouse, especially since it was still pulsing with latent Akyri magic. But he had his priorities, and at the moment, getting her out of there and alone was at the very top of his to-do list.

  Like an angel appearing just when you needed him most, a dark figure outlined itself in the shadows on one side of the warehouse. Red eyes gazed out at Lazarus, followed by the sound of a leather-soled shoe on pavement. Roman D’Angelo stepped out of the shadows, enshrouded in silent purpose. The vampire glanced at Laz, at the men on the floor, at the cops, and then back at Laz – and the woman in his arms. Recognition and understanding flashed in his eyes. He nodded.

  Laz nodded back.

  “Hold on tight,” he told the woman. “We’re leaving now.”

  With that, he spoke the words to call up a portal and willed it to move fast. The woman in his arms redoubled her efforts to escape, and he tightened his grip. The portal swirled to life, and with more strength than it should have taken, he pulled them both into it.

  Blessedly, the portal closed behind him, shutting the two of them off temporarily from the rest of the world. One step down. Ten thousand to go.

  Chapter Nineteen

  She seriously couldn’t believe this was what was going down in her life right now. Or maybe she could. Her existence was shit-eating crazy, after all, wasn’t it? Going from Tuathan to traitor to vampire – to this? Was this really so odd? Wasn’t it actually par for the course? Come to think of it, when had she ever had even a semblance of control over her life? Ever?

  Never. That’s when.

  So why the hell was she surprised to turn around in the warehouse full of magic users and cops and Akyri and demon beasts and find herself face to face with one of the Thirteen Kings? Which one of the kings he was, she had no idea. She’d yet to meet most of them. But oh, she knew he was a king. They all had an aura about them that was unmistakable. It separated them from everything and anything around them like chocolate to water. It was potent as hell.

  And so was he.

  Every ounce of her wanted him on sight. She wanted to hold him and be held by him, she wanted to kiss him and be kissed by him, she wanted to goddamned eat him – sink her teeth right in and suck hard. Hell, she wanted him to want her. Just like the song said.

  And that was probably what pissed her off the most. The stag in t
he path to her cottage had been right on schedule. Fate had once more taken the reigns of her stage coach and told it where to go, and now she wanted to do the same thing to fate, frankly – tell it where the hell to go. And then she wanted to tell it what it could do when it got there.

  So she’d fought the king in her weakened state, consequences be damned. And when that had failed, she’d tried to flee. But fate was such a domineering son of a bitch, it allowed the king to use his magic to pull her right back into her bones and lock her there. She couldn’t believe it! What the hell was that all about? How in the many realms did he have enough power to do that to her? She was a vampire Tuath warlock!

  What… did this mean for her? What kind of changing tide was this? Where was she bound from here?

  She had no idea. She honestly couldn’t see a light at the end of her tunnel just then. She was doomed. At that moment, she was literally a few quarts low, she was stuck in a portal heading to an unknown destination with a stranger – never go with a predator to a second location – and that “stranger” was none other than one of the Thirteen Kings. And he was her king.

  The queens were supposed to be stronger. That’s what they all said. But right now Dahlia was beginning to have her doubts. Maybe they got it wrong and she was cursed. Maybe she would never get to feed again, and that would be okay. Because at least then she would have regained some control over something, even if it was only control over her own death.

  The portal swirled around them, and the king behind her had both of her wrists in a firm grip. Her arms were twisted into a position that wasn’t painful now, but would be if she pulled too hard or tried to go anywhere. A strange and utterly unwelcome feeling was moving through her, beginning at their point of contact. It was warm to the point of being hot, and her gums ached furiously.