The Goblin King (9 page)

Focus
!

He began to speak to the xenobe then, using a tongue ancient and virtually unknown. He wanted to gain the beast’s attention, pull it to a safer distance from the woman, and then use his magic to send her away. If he did that
, then at least he could follow his own magical signature to find her later.

The xenobe continued to stare down at the woman, however, completely ignoring Damon.

Damon frowned, his body heated up further, and one of the streetlights down the alley zapped out, casting them into partial darkness.

His magic was leaking.

He glared at the goblin and tried again, raising his voice some this time.

The woman
’s gaze shifted from one of them to the other. She took an uncertain step back.

The xenobe made a strange whining sound.

Damon had never heard a xenobe make that kind of noise before. It drew him up short, and his words drifted off into silence.

The woman frowned, blinking
. She swallowed so hard, he could hear it. He could also hear her breathing. It was a trembling breath.

But against all reason and
expectations, she shocked the hell out of him by straightening, rolling back her shoulders, and addressing the goblin first-hand. “You’re hurting… aren’t you?” she asked softly.

It was the most timid question Damon had ever heard anyone ask – a goblin.
He could scarcely believe he’d heard it right. Even more shocking was that the xenobe made a second strange sound. This time, it was a cross between a whine and a whimper.

The woman
licked her lips, taking a tentative step forward –
toward
the goblin.

All at once, Damon’s protective instincts overwhelmed him.
“Get
back
!” he bellowed. The xenobe goblin glowed for half a second before his large body was lifted off the ground and thrown backward. He hit the wall with a terrible thunk and a roar of pain and remained there, suspended like a pinned bug four feet off the ground.

Damon rushed forward, coming to stand between the xenobe and the woman, and then he spun on her.

“What the
hell
do you think you’re doing?!”

He
froze as he realized she had just asked him the exact same question at the exact same time. Her stormy eyes were shooting their lightning sparks now, every ounce of anger within them directed not at the now-helpless goblin – but at
him
.

“What do you
mean
?” he asked incredulously.

Against all reason, the woman squared
off on him. “I don’t know who or
what
you are, but you’re clearly as thick as the wall you just slammed that poor beast up against if you can’t tell he’s in pain!”

Damon was too stunned to say anything. He could feel his eyes still burned with pent-up power, but he had absolutely no idea just then what to do with it. He was in the Twilight Zone.

“Or
worse
,” she went on, shocking him to the core. “You don’t
care
that he’s in pain, and you’re hunting him down, which makes you more of a monster than he is!”

Damon stared at her. He stared at her tumultuous, emotional, starkly beautiful eyes.
He stared at her red, sensuous lips. He stared at her white teeth, bravely bared as they were against him. And for once in his very long life, he found himself utterly at a loss as to what to do next.

The xenobe goblin behind him made a mewling
sound. He could hear its obscenely long claws scraping against the brick wall to which he was being held. But Damon couldn’t bring himself to turn to face the beast. His attention was completely taken by someone else.

The woman, whose fear seemed to have quickly made way for sympathy and determination, attempted to
actually brush past Damon.

But as her arm
inadvertently touched his, a thread of his magic broke loose and found its mark.

He had no control over it. He seemed to have no control over
anything
this night.

Chapter Ten

Diana felt the jolt as if she’d touched the metal prongs of a plug she was pulling from the wall. It arced from the stranger to her, and she instantly saw stars.

And more….

She was floating, falling weightlessly down a rabbit hole. As she fell, images opened up to her left and right, clearing and coalescing into detailed visions.

She saw herself touching the monster – the monster that should not exist, the one with
the body covered in red-brown fur, the claws that were too long, and the teeth that were too plentiful and sharp in its bleeding mouth.

A
nd then that vision was replaced with another.

She was in a massive banquet room. There
was a table of polished mahogany covered in platters displaying expensive foods and drink. She heard a fire crackling somewhere, most likely in a hearth. She smelled heavenly scents but felt nervous – so,
so
nervous. She saw the gleam of the polished wood before someone swiped all the food away and the platters went flying. The glasses hit the ground, shattering.

Then that vi
sion was replaced as well.

Next, she was standing tall and proud, wrapped in an emerald green gown unlike any she could have imagined. Beside her stood a man in a tailored suit that fit his tall, powerful figure like a designer glove. She couldn’t see his face. But he had raven black hair.

Like the stranger’s.

He took her hand in his. A
s Diana looked on from her floating and falling rabbit hole, he slipped something onto her finger. It shimmered in some unseen light. Within it, she caught the reflection of a pair of eyes as emerald green as her dress… and then as burning red as the fires of an abyss.

Diana
tried to turn, tried to remove herself from this strange slip from reality, but as she did, she was faced with one final vision.

It wavered, black and white and vast. When it solidified, she stood u
pon a horizon of chessboard squares. They stretched into forever. But she did not stand alone. With her, stretched side-by-side like the line of a small army, stood twelve other women. Their hands were linked, held tightly in solidarity, in friendship, and in a desperate resolve to survive.

In the distance, danger approached. It was a darkness
and a chaos, an indescribable wrongness. It rushed toward them like a hoard of tornadoes, a hurricane of devil winds, an earthquake to suck them all up and close them all off forever and ever.

It was an entire war’s suffering, like an ungodly stampede of bony black nightmares and fiery breath.

Diana felt her hands being squeezed. She gritted her teeth.

It was
pain
that rode toward them – it was
death
.

She wanted to scream
, but her mouth wouldn’t move.

And then her eyes were flying open
, she was sucking in air, and she was – she was gazing up into the stranger’s deep, penetrating gaze.

It took her a moment to
regain her bearings. She was on the ground. The burning-eyed stranger was kneeling over her, his hand behind her head, supporting it. His touch was very slightly electric. It was warm.

She must have hit her head or something
because she could swear that his tender grip felt secure and safe and possessive and wonderful and terrifying.

“I’m so sorry,” he told her in his deep, warm voice. “It won’t happen again.”

But she barely made sense of his words. The images she’d just witnessed swam in her mind. The monster with the claws and teeth was still stuck to the wall; she could see him from over the stranger’s broad shoulder, pinned there like a swatted fly. The gray feline she’d rescued only minutes earlier hadn’t run away as she’d expected her to when Diana had set her down. Instead, she remained sitting off to the side, partly in the shadows, and watched the proceedings with uncommonly intelligent eyes.

And
Diana was feeling a little overwhelmed.

It was
traumatic enough to have to resort to fisticuffs with a bunch of very healthy and strong young men, wind up with a bunch of bruised ribs and a sprained wrist, and then heal a horribly tortured animal on the verge of death. But the moments after the incident transpired were more than she could fully contemplate.

She’d been heading toward home when she’d heard the strange scraping sounds. She’d followed them, wondering if it was an animal dragging an injured leg.

Even though she’d already healed one creature that night, she had enough energy to do it again; she’d just be tired the next day at the office. It would be worth it.
Anything
to make the world even the slightest bit more hopeful and good than its sorry ass was at the moment.

She was holding the cat gently in her arms
when the animal started to squirm, getting restless. The scraping sound had grown louder. Diana set the cat down and rounded the corner to find herself face to face with something straight out of a Wes Craven nightmare.

But
Diana was not your run-of-the-mill human. She’d possessed the innate, magical ability to heal others since she was a child. Granted, she couldn’t heal
herself
, and that was a cruel twist of fate, but she could bring another person or animal from the brink of death to perfect health with no more than a touch.

Possessing this kind of magic made her
understandably more accepting of the idea of
monsters
. Diana had long ago agreed with Shakespeare’s philosophy that “there are more things in heaven and earth….” It was an anything-goes world.

S
he had to take a few deep and shaking breaths to come to grips with the monster with shark teeth and scraping three-foot-long claws, but she managed. She could even tell the monster was not actually angry and aggressive for the sheer joy of being angry and aggressive. It was in pain.

What she
absolutely
hadn’t
counted on was the appearance of the stranger.

He was beautiful.

It was that kind of beautiful that one percent of actors and models possessed. He was tall –
so
tall. His hair reminded her of the wings of a raven or of the iridescent ultra-black of a beetle’s carapace. It was thick and wavy and framed a face that women were afraid to dream of. Imagining such male perfection was the kind of emotional shock that brought a delicious dream to an abrupt end, resulting in a split moment of heart-breaking hope and severe disappointment.

He was the most handsome
man she had ever seen, all strong jaw and slightly scruffy chin and mysterious, hooded brow. He had a scar that ran from his cheek through his upper lip, wicked and dangerous. He was dressed in jeans as tight as hers and motorcycle boots with scrapes and cuts and scuffs that proved he actually used them. Stretched tight across an amply muscled chest was a black t-shirt, covered with a black leather jacket, and crossed with a leather strap that apparently held a sword sheath across his back.

In one strong grip
, he held that unsheathed long sword. It shimmered, sharp and deadly in the low light.

But
most importantly, his eyes were glowing like two lit-up torches welcoming stray, wicked souls through the gates of Hell.

An
d every ounce of Diana’s reason was torn between awe and terror.

It should have been too much to reason with, but somehow – some miraculous how –
Diana squared her shoulders and concentrated on the massive, furry, devil-clawed monster and the fact that it was in pain. She just wanted to make it better.

It was
positively ludicrous, absolutely suicidal, and a good deal more than a touch bonkers, but there it was. It was just her. She was a healer and she wanted to heal.

So when the
gorgeous stranger used a magic as seemingly powerful and alien as her own ability to heal, but used it to
harm
the beast rather than help it, she became outraged, yelled at the stranger. Then she’d tried to brush past him to get to the monster she was quickly coming to think of as her patient.

That was when she’d touched him.

Hard came the visions that landed her on the ground at the stranger’s feet. She lay there still, with his warm hand holding up her head.

“You can let me go now,” she said, secretly hoping he would do anything
but
let her go.

The stranger’s eyes seemed to have
settled down. The fire in them had receded, leaving behind a smoldering jade that twinkled in places like emeralds. They were entrancing.

He gazed at her through them and she felt as though he was peering right through her and into the deepest, most secret parts of her soul.