The Phantom King (The Kings) (43 page)

Just in hers.

Steven Lazarus was among them, and he was standing over the body of
Marius –
the
former
Akyri King. Steven looked different to her now. He seemed exponentially stronger. There was something to that
,
but her mind was too
preoccupied
for her to figure it out just yet.

It was Roman D’Angelo who had spoken to her.
His clothing had also seen a fair amount of
damage
. Fighting an Akyri was mean business for a being who used magic. That magic
was quickly made
obsolete. It came down to fist to cuffs. And apparently even in that respect, these men were at the top of the food chain.

“What do you mean?” she asked
.
It was strange enough for her to accept that he’d been reading
her mind, but what made it more odd
was that he’d referred to her as ‘your majesty.’

“You’re a warlock, Siobhan,” the Vampire King told her.
“
Warlocks possess the power to bring people back from the dead.
You know that in your heart.
And you are now the Phantom Queen,”
added with a
small smile. “So, the title fits.”

Siobhan digested that, pushing it through her mind like a boulder
.

“Siobhan,” said Thane, who cupped her cheek and sent rivulets of comfort down her body. She looked up at him. “You have the ability to
bring the dead back
,” he told her, clearly knowing exactly what had gone down here. “You are not only a warlock, you are a queen. Your potential is indescribable.”

“He’s right,” said Steven. His voice sounded deeper, more resonant. Definitely more certain. “If anyone can bring them back, it’s you.”

“And you’ll have help,” said another man, this one
the blonde, green eyed magic user
who had appeared at her house just before Thane had swept her away to
Purgatory. She knew who he was
. He’d called her ‘
one of his own,’ and n
ow she knew why. He was the Warlock King.

He nodded at her in recognition and went on. “For resurrection, two warlocks are always better than one.”
Siobhan got the impression of history, and lots of it. “Believe me,” he finished, “I know.”

Chapter Twenty-
Nine

“The mother
appeared to
me as an Anime and told me that Marius would kill her family next if I didn’t come to him.”
Siobhan explained
the situation
hastily as she made her way to the tarp in the corner of what Thane could now see was an abandoned and most likely condemned pier.
The smell of
blood hung heavy in the air.
Thane followed closely on her heels, as did Jason Alberich.

Once they were beside the body, Thane reached down to pull off the tarp, and Siobhan turned her head, either unwilling or unable to watch. He hurried about the business and tossed the plastic to the side.

The w
oman had been shot in the chest
at least, and not in the
brain
.
Someone filled with true,
sick unkindness would
have destroyed the woman’s head
, as it was more personal.
Thane wondered whether the Akyri who were working for Marius were doing so under duress.
They hadn’t appeared bound, but Thane was guessing someone like Marius might have other means of
causing
“duress.” Akyri often fell
victim
to
coercion
. Their need for warlock magic was a great weakness, and one that was exploited all too frequently.

But
whether she’d been shot in the face or the breast,
the woman was dea
d all the same, and
there was
somethin
g that had occurred to Thane
that he
couldn’t bring himself
to mention to Siobhan
. I
f
the dead
woman’s spirit
had
appeared
as an Anime in his realm,
she probably couldn’t be brought back. Resurrected beings never showed
up in Purgatory.

Still
, he thought.
Siobhan is different
.

She
was a special warlock to begin with. Her aura buzzed with untapped power. She was also a warlock who had been storing her power for nearly three decades. And she was his queen.

He would let her try.
A
nything was possible.

Siobhan slowly turned her head and opened her eyes. “That’s her,” she whispered, as if assuring herself that it was the same woman who had appeared to her in Purgatory.

Col
d, hard laughter suddenly rolled
through the pier. Thane spun, as did Alberich. Across the room, the other kings fanned out, preparing for another battle.
Siobhan slowly stood, and Thane wrapped his arm tightly around her shoulders
, drawing her against him
.

The air
grew heavy and thick, as if filled with a fog no one could see.

O
ne by one, the bodies on the ground began to disappear. This wasn’t necessarily a strange thing. Akyri usually vanished once they’d been killed. When there was no longer any magic being pumped through their veins to fuel th
eir physical forms, they
ceased to exist.

But this felt different.
Thane had the impression that these Akyri were not ceasing to exist – but that they were being taken.

Harvested.

The laughter
grew louder, and
Siobhan press
ed her palms to
her ears.
The sound was grating and deep and
rumbled through the building with a physical presence
. It tried to get inside of Thane, tried to wrap around his spine like a python. He had to concentrate to keep it away. His eyes searched the space near the rafters of the pier. The other kings looked warily around as well.

But nothing appeared.

Within a few seconds, the only body remaining was that of Marius, the
former
Akyri King. He’d been killed by
Steven
Lazarus – as Thane knew he would be. He also suspected that Lazarus now understood who his father had been.

Steven
Lazarus
was Marius’ son. It
was no real surprise. Marius had been
a womanizer, and he’d never been particularly picky about who he slept with.
A beautiful mortal woman was as good as a beautiful warlock.
Hence, Steven had been conceived.

And Marius had sealed his own fate.

Now Steven Lazarus, the half-Akyri former detective was the new Akyri King.
This king stepped back and watched through
wary, ready eyes as Marius’
body began to rise off
the ground.

Thane’s heart sank into his stomach. A tremendous feeling of foreboding stole over him.

Marius’ body continued to climb
, and as it did, it took on an eerie glow. It
floated higher and higher until it
nearly reached the ceiling
. The glow
thoroughly encompassed the body, flashing so bright, it resembled the light of a transport.

Thanatos squinted and turned his head just a little. The light receded and faded, leaving behind empty space and a sinking certainty that Thane and his companions had just done something
very
wrong.

The laughter was gone now. The heaviness in the air was lifting.
Now the metal
that remained was in Thane’
s gut.

“It was a set up,” said one of the kings. Thane turned
to see the
Dragon King, Arach
eyeing the blood-soaked ground and slowly turning in place. “We
were brought here to be observed
,” he continued.
His eyes were still in dragon form, but as he met Thane’s gaze, they settled back into their human charade, though still intensely vivid in color.
“
We were p
layed.
And none of this was real.”

“He’s right,”
said
the Unseelie King
, who wore a grim expression.

Thane was inclined to agree. And i
f anyone would recognize a set-u
p, it would be the Unseelie King, Caliban
.
The man was a veritable expert in the darker side of artifice and strategy.

“We’re up against more than we predicted, gentlemen,” said Roman.

“No shit,” said the
Goblin King, whose hooded
eyes shifted from a muted jade to glimmering emerald a
nd back again. He
smiled grimly. An ancient battle scar
shot like lightning through
his upper lip, lending the smile a cruel lay and allowing the tips of his fangs to peek through. “We have no idea what the fuck we’re doing.”

Thane looked from him to the other kings and then looked down at Siobhan. He was inclined to agree with that as well.

*****

“I can’t believe we did that,” said Siobhan as she came into the kitchen and took the offered ice-cold beer form his hand.

“Believe it,” he told her.
“You’re a talented young woman.” He winked at her, and she blushed before she trie
d to hide it behind her beer as she
took a swig.

She and
Jason
Alberich had worked together that morning to resurrect
two bodies, one of which Thane was almost certain wasn’t going to be
resurrect-able
.
Both the mother and the father of the victimized family from Pier 36 had been brought back from the dead.
The Healer, Dannai Caige, had managed to save the son.
The high witch,
Lalura Chantelle had used her incredible magic to rid the resurrected of their need of a phylactery for their souls.
And now the entire family was reunited – and
mind
-wiped by Roman D’Angelo so that they wouldn’t remember a thing about the attack.
Though Thane suspected they would all have unaccountable aversions to the Embarcadero in San Francisco. And maybe to fish.