The Phantom King (The Kings) (42 page)

He had been
assuming that Lazarus would find
her
trail right away.
He hadn’t expected the Akyri King to
be able to hide the scent this well
.

From where he stood,
Lazarus
also
turned
to face the Vampire King
.
Roman
D’Angelo
looked from
him to Thane
, and then
to Jason Alberich, who stood silently watching
a few feet away.

Jason met Roman’s
gaze and then nodded.
“Perhaps you’
ll have better luck if you use
this,” Jason said
, speaking to Lazarus
.
He raised both of his hands, and a
split second later,
what looked like the power of G
od came shooting out of
his palms straight for the former detective’s
chest.

Lazarus
didn’t have time to dodge or run or
even
duck. He barely had time to
blink
before the Warlock King’s magic was slamming into him and
then
pouring over him
like a rogue wave
.
Thane watched it in grim fascination
.
The light was bright enough
to cause a sunburn,
and it was loud enough to
ring a small, sharp pain in Thane’s
ear drums. It was like
a cone of
lightning, pure and simple, and
undoubtedly would have fried a small army
.
Jason Alb
erich was becoming more
impressive by the second.

But Lazarus of course
was unharmed.
Quite the opposite.

From beneath the waterfall of electricity, his face took on a blissful cast. His eyes darkened from blue into indigo then purple and finally red. For the first time since his Akyri identity had been realized, his fangs began to grow. Some Akyri had them, others didn’t. They seemed to be a demonic holdover and purely decoration since Akyri did not use them to pierce flesh.

Regardless of their purpose, the current Akyri King had fangs like a vampire – and so did Steven Lazarus.

The similarity reinforced Thane’s suspicions about the man, but those suspicions were something best pushed aside for the moment and left to fate.

As soon as the barrel of warlock magic began to recede from its “attack” on Lazarus, the former detective turned once more to the empty space in which he’d been trying to open the same portal Siobhan had used. He raised his right hand – and the air split wide open.

Darkness greeted them
from within
.

“She’s there,” Steven said, his magi
c-enhanced voice echoing off
the garage walls.

Thane didn’t hesitate. He broke into a run and leapt into the portal.
He sensed backup coming from behind; the other k
ings were following him, but he didn’t slow
down or wait
. He had no plan and no real idea what he was going to do once he came out the other side, and he barely cared. If he could just get to Siobhan, if he could just stand between her and Marius….

It was all he could think about.

*****

Siobhan’s legs had turned to lead and the world was receding. What she was seeing couldn’t be real. Everything that had hammered its way into her world recently, from Steven’s death to Thanatos to Purgatory to the existence of so many supernatural factions you couldn’t count them on two hands
, all meant nothing. It was easy to accept, easy to get through. It was fantasy, and so it was smooth, like a sweet wine or a piece of chocolate. It was just there.

But this…. The way the son’s body jerked in the chair when the bullet entered his heart, the way his father bent over him, his voice and breath choked in disbelief, his fingers clutching
his son’s shoulders
as everything he’d ever held dear
in life was ripped from him…. This
was impossible.

The second bullet entered the father’s chest and it took a moment for him to fall. It took a moment because
he believed it
as
impossible
as she did
. It was
unreal, not there. It took an eternal moment for him to realize he was dead.

And then he slid to the ground
, and into that death
he
took a piece of Siobhan with him.

She didn’t notice when the air opened up behind her. Her ears had gone
mostly
deaf with the sound of the first bullet leaving its chamber. The world was moving in slow motion now.
She felt trapped under water, watching through
an atmosphere clouded with trauma and hate.

There were flashes of light that entered her world like camera bulbs, illuminating a scene that broke into chaos at a surreal funeral’s pace. The Akyri around the father and son dispersed. The faintest sound of shouting reached her
, muffled
and fractured
.
She told her heavy limbs to move forward, instructed them to make their way to the father and son.
They ignored her, and she stood immobile as a numbness
crept
in.

T
hen
they must have decided to listen
, because she was
moving. She took one step after another
until she was kneeling beside the
father and pressing her fingers to his throat.
There was nothing. A breath later, there was still nothing.

She moved as if in a dream, taking her fingers from his body and pressing them against the boy’s neck next. There was nothing.

And then, quite suddenly, there was
something
.
A single beat, weak – but there.

With that beat, the
world returned to Siobhan
. Time reverted to its normal, harried pace,
the numb heaviness lifted from her body,
and sound burst through the cotton haze of her shock to play like a
cacophonous
symphony in her ear drums.

Blasts were being fired.
Magic
blasts. Lights of every color of the rainbow flashed against the pier walls, illuminating the spray paint
graffiti
as if a rave were taking place.

Without looking up, Siobhan called out, “He’s still alive!” It
was a plea born of
a knowledge that she was surrounded by
magical people
and that the chances of someone there being able to help were higher than they would have been for anyone else.

“The Healer can save him,” came a deep voice beside her. She looked up to fin
d herself caught in the
glowing amber gaze of a massive African American man. He knelt down at her side, and with incredible ease, lifted the boy into his arms.
He glanced one last time at Siobhan, nodded, and then a small stone on the end of a leather medallion he wore flashed bright. Siobhan squi
nted and raised her arm to shield
her eyes from the light.

When the light
was gone, so were the man and the injured boy he carried.
She stared at the empty space. Then she
looked at the unmoving black plastic tarp against the corner of the pier wall. Next, she
looked down at the dead father.

And then she realized that the
pier had grown quiet once more. Everything was still.

B
ut for the sound of motorcycle boots slowly making their way toward her.

Siobhan turned
as she slowly
stood
.
Thane was there in fr
ont of her, all six and a half
feet of him, tall and dark and fresh from the fight. His t-shirt was ripped across his abdomen and left shoulder, and the
tattoos
on his arms were black as midnight, coiled and complex and angry. Blood soaked fragments of his clothing, causing the material to adhere to the muscle underneath. Siobhan wondered whether he was badly injured, but his silver eyes glowed as white as stars in his handsome face, drawing her attention and holding it fast.

His fingers curled under her chin
, the touch soft but replete with unused strength. “Are you okay?” he asked. His voice entered her mind where nothing else could, easing into her system and
soothing her soul like spiritual liquor.

She closed her eyes, her memory echoing with the sound of bullets. She nodded, not reall
y meaning it. But what could she
do?

“There’s quite a lot you can do, your majesty,” came a deep, familiar voice from behind Thane.

Siobhan blinked. Thane dropped his hand, releasing her chin as she craned her neck to peek around him.

More than t
wo dozen Akyri bodies littered the pier’s blood-soaked ground. Siobhan’s eyes widened, her s
tomach turning over
with
the beginnings of
nausea
. Where had they come from? There
hadn’t been
so many men
there moments ago.
Only three. Had Marius called them all in somehow?

She was guessing that was
the case.

But that wasn’t the biggest shock. Amongst the dead bodies stood at least a dozen men
so dripping with charisma and power, they stole her breath. Tall, every one of them.
Beautiful and terrifying and overwhelming
.
Glowing eyes of all colors and irises of different shapes greeted hers. She swallowed hard.

These are the kings
, she thought. They had to be. These were the men Thane had told her about. She looked at them one after another
, knowing that she was able to do so only because they allowed her to,
and
she
felt as if she were trapped in some kind of adolescent dream. Men like this? They didn’t exist. Not in the real world.