The Phantom King (The Kings) (39 page)

Without loos
en
ing his grip on her, the Phantom King
lowered his lips to her ear and a hard ripple of pleasure-wrath made its way relentlessly through her body.

“Be nice to them, Siobhan. If I hear you
’ve
misbehaved when I return, I’ll have to punish you.”

With that, he released her almost as quickly as he’d grabbed
her
. Siobhan stumbled, and b
y the time she got her f
eet steady under her once more –
he was gone.

Chapter Twenty
-
Six

There had been more than hunger and desire involved when Thane had decided to play “chase” with the young warlock across the desert of his realm.
A certain amount of strategy had gone into
it as well.

He’d known she would use her magi
c to escape him. And in so doing
, she would drain herself dry. Should Marius get his hands on her while she was in this state, he would not be able to glean any
power off of her
, not for a while
anyway. He would need to allow her
both sustenance
and rest. And this would b
u
y Thane time.

The down side was that it did leave Siobhan defenseless against anyone the Akyri King might employ to aid him in her capture. But the chances of him using anyone but Akyri were slim enough that the plan had been worth it.

Everything the Phantom King thought about
now was fundamentally
for Siobhan, including
what he planned to do now.
Despite
having her safety at heart, it was certain to come back and bite him in the ass
.

This isn’t the way to treat a newlywed bride, Thane.

On the inside,
he
was kicking
himself up and down and sideways and backwards
. His leave of her
had admittedly been handled not at all well
. But time hadn’
t been on his side, and
he couldn’t manipulate its length any more in such short order.
It was tearing him up, but
he’d had little choice.

And n
ow he was feeling the grim weight of impending misfortune as he moved through
the portal to leave the outer realms and return to Earth.
He wouldn’t have tried if he hadn’t sensed that everything within the portals had returned to normal. The dark holes he’d inadvertently ripped into his realm had disappeared, and interdimensional travel was now safe again.

That was more than he could say for himself if he returned to Purgatory unprepared.
She’s going to rip me
to shreds
, he thought.
He’d sensed the swell in her power after he’d given her his mark, his ring, his
promise
. Once he’d drawn it and she
had
accepted it, she’
d become his wife. She had officially become h
is
queen
.

C
ommon knowledge about the queens on a chess board was that they were far more powerful than their kings.
Thane knew
Siobhan would grow stronger
.
In time, she would not only be able to cast magic as a warlock, but absorb it from others as he did. It could mean many things.
She
might
become her own rechargeable battery
,
never running out of magic. The thought
was stagg
ering. She w
ould become a force to be reckoned with
.

Siobhan Ashdown was going to rock the world.
And though he was actually looki
ng forward to her evolution
in some ways, he was
currently
dreading their next confrontation.

The rip in time and space opened
one last time
before him, the light at the end of the strange, beautiful tunnel,
and Thane stepped into the
predestined location where he would be meeting Roman and several members of the werewolf community
.

He
glanced at their surroundings
very quickly, taking it all in.
It was
a clearing in the midst of a giant forest,
and
as the sheer height of the Redwood trees around him made their indomitable impression, he
recalled that vampires were particularly fond of the Western Seaboard. The air was wet, but the temperature was mild, and vampires had some kind of affinity for Redwoods, in particular.

The unspoken leader of the
13
Kings, Roman D’Angelo, stood apart from the others
who had gathered
and now met Thane at the center of the clearing.

The Vampire King studied him closely.
“
Based on
the new ink on your
right ring
finger, I might assume
things went well.
” He paused, looked back up at Thane’s eyes, and smiled a rather amused smile. “
But from the aura you’re currently sporting,
I would ultimately guess
otherwise.”

“She’s stubborn,” Thane said by way of explanation.

Roman’s smile broadened,
flashing fangs. “The best ones are
.”

He turned and faced the others now, who slowly joined them near the center of the small field.
The smell of wet bark, sea salt, and earth seemed to cleanse the air.
It was mid-morning
, and despite the dangerous
, predatory
power gathered in the forest, small fauna could be heard going about their business not far away.

Six werewolves in all had agreed to meet with Thane: Three men and three women.
Jesse Graves, the werewolf council Overseer, had apparently brought them up to speed and asked them this favor.

The man Thane recognized at once
among the group
stood at well over six feet and had eyes like clouded emeralds. He would have been recognizable to millions of people, in all fairness, but only a few select individuals knew him to be more than a rather famous author of bes
t-
selling murder mysteries.

Malcolm Cole
stood with his arm wrapped both lovingly and possessively around the shoulders of a tall, beautiful red-head that reminded Thane a little of Siobhan. He knew who she was, of course. Everyone did.

Cole
and his
fiancé
Charlie, also known as Claire, were the two werewolves Thane was most hoping would help him in this. The red-headed Charlie was a beautiful woman, tall and lean and wickedly fast. She was the granddaug
hter of the former Overseer,
and most importantly, she herself had been the subject of a very dangerous obsession.
Thane
had asked for her specifically because he
was hoping s
he could help Siobhan come to grips with what was happening. And if worse came to worst, Thane trusted Charlie to put up one hell of a fight in defending
Thane’s bride
.

Four couples
constituted
the most famous werewolf couples alive today. The eight wolves were a close-knit group, the best of friends, and had been through a veritable war to make that bond strong. Thanatos was incredibly encouraged
that
three of those four couples were here
right now
. And he completely understood the
absence
of the fourth.
The Healer Dannai Caige
and her husband had their
own issues to deal with, and she
had her own loved ones to protect.

Thane and Roman approached the group.
Malcolm looked straight into Thane’s
eyes. “He’ll never stop coming for her,” the werewolf told him.

Thane nodded. “I know.”

“We’ll take care of Siobhan
,” said Charlie, who turned to gesture toward her two female friends. “Lily and I will see that she isn’t alone. Kat will go with you.”

Katherine Dare, a tall white-blonde haired woman with porcelain skin and an unidentifiable fierceness about her nodded at Thane.
Beside her stood Byron Caige, a man with
light gray
eyes much like Thane’s, and who apparently possessed th
e mind-boggling ability
to manipulate electricity. It was an indescribable boon.

“The Curse Breaker is
a former Hunter and
one of our most skilled fighters,” said Daniel Kane, the
black-haired, blue-eyed Cajun
man that Thane knew was the police chief of Baton Rouge.

“Then I would rather that
you
stay
with Siobhan,” said Thane
as he turned to face the fair-haired woman
. He was having
a very hard time leaving his queen
behind in his realm. He knew she was safer there. Marius might be able to traverse the same portals as Thane could, but Purgatory was off-limits to anyone Thane didn’t want there.

But at the same time, he couldn’t shake the feeling that she was vulnerable. All alone. He wanted to surround her with a
SWAT team, with an arm
y of dragons,
shadows
and goblins,
and with
Iron Man.

However
, it took a lot of energy and effort to bring someone into Purgatory. If they were quintessentially of another realm, it was infinitely more difficult. Vampires and werewolves were
of Earth. Whatever else might be said about their supernatural statuses, they were born of the s
pinning blue planet. Like mortals, they were made of star stuff.

He could send them into Purgatory without draining himself, and that was essential.

“Your problem won’t go away until we
make
it go away,” Cole told him, using a placating and gentle tone. He was speaking from experience.