The Phantom King (The Kings) (8 page)

Maybe he was as frustrated with
this game as she was becoming. Or maybe he knew she was right and that this really was her fault, that she could probably protect herself
with her magic
, and that nothing was going to change
for either of them
until she faced the demon who had killed him in the first place.

Whatever the reason, Siobhan was grateful for the lack of resistance as she left the house and got into her car. It was quiet and warm inside; the sun had been heating it through the glass all day.
The leather creaked under her as she situated herself behind the wheel and tossed her purse on the passenger seat. She sat back in the bucket seat, took another deep breath, and started the engine. It roared to life, sending a delicious vibration through her blood.

Sio
bhan loved the sound of a powerful
engine. There was something fundamentally
attractive
about it. It was what she w
ould call caveman logic,
old brain sort of stuff. It was loud and incredibly strong
,
and the combination was very simply sexy.

She needed to get to the grocery store and stock up on a lot of fundamental necessities before they
closed. But she had hours to go, a
nd
Highway 107
was just a hop, skip and jump away
.

The 1965 Ford Mustang
Fastback might not have technically been
the fastest car invented, but most of them didn’t have what Siobhan’s had: An engine boosted by a
hefty
dose of
warlock magic.

*****

With a glance over his broad shoulder, Thanatos made his way to the liquor cabinet against one wall and eyed the bottles behind the glass.
Across the room, the Warlock King stood tall and still, his arms at his sides, his ice green eyes glued keenly to the massive map that splayed itself out across the
otherwise vast and empty wall before him. It was a spell Alberich had cast. The wall had been blank minutes ago.

Thane really hadn’t thought that the warlock would be able to pull off a search of this magnitude. The world was a big place, and Thane was looking for one specific ghost. A spirit wronged had no business being back on Eart
h. Anime were too volatile, too
different
.
They were filled with so many negative emotions, trapped in the painful moments of their deaths,
Purgatory was a much safer place for such souls.
There, they were slowly freed of the shackles of their memories and allowed to come to peace with their fates. Here on Earth, they would remain trapped in their anger and hatred and would never find solace in death.

So while some spirits chose to remain w
ith their loved ones after dying
, this was only possible
if the person passed of natural causes.

Still, the
re were a
lot of ghosts who cho
se to do this, enough so
that Thane hadn’t put much faith in Alberich’s spell working.
It would be like finding a
clear marble in a swimming pool
.

However, the Warlock King was surprising him yet again.
Within seconds of Thane’s query for assistance, Alberich’s lips had curled into a smile, his eyes had taken on a telling gleam, and he’d responded with, “You’ll owe me.”

Then he’d turned around and flung what looked like magic up onto the wall behind him. His lips moved, and words filled the chamber – echoing, otherworldly. The wall lit up like a laser light show, revealing the continents of Earth.

For a while, Thane just stared at the wall. Little by little, as Alberich worked his dark power, the map’s continents fell away and what was left on the wall zoomed in. Before long, all that remained were North and South America and the oceans surrounding them.

When South America fell away as well, Thane turned from the wall and made his way toward the liquor cabinet. This next part seemed to be taking some time. He’d had to slow time in Purgatory to a
crawl
. The wronged spirits were stacking up in Nowhere, waiting for him to return and greet them all. It was taking its toll on his conscience. There was so much wrong with the world. The final sobs and cries of the newly murdered piled up in his mind like echoes, abrading the inside of his brain as if they were razor blades.

He needed a drink. Fortunately for him, unlike his vampire, werewolf, demon, and otherwise supernatural acquaintances, if he wanted alcohol to have an effect on him, it would. He could also will that effect away with no more than a whim. It was a silver lining to his
eternal
job, which otherwise sucked giant hairy balls.

“Help yourself, Thanatos,” Alberich said without taking his attention from the wall and his spell. “It’s unlocked.”

With that, the glass cupboard door swung open, revealing the bottles ins
ide. Thane didn’t waste energy being impressed or irritated. Instead, he reached in, grabbed one that looked good, and popped the top off of it. The
first few swigs burned a little
and he relished the feeling, closing his eyes to soak it in. At once, it was smoothing out the rough spots and taking the edge off.

“Better?” Jason asked, again without taking his eyes from the wall.

Thane upended the bottle, swallowed a few more times, and then
re-capped it and joined the Warlock King, the liquor still held firmly in his grasp
.

“I’ve narrowed it down,” Jason said. He smiled a white-toothed smile and shook his head. “You’re not going to believe where to.”

Thane looked up at the map and watched as North America spun toward them, zooming in as if they were ridin
g a falling star, until at last
only one state remained. It filled the entire wall, its highways glistening like trails of headlights, its metropolis glimmering like multi-colored diamonds.

“
Massachusetts
,” Thane said, frowning. “Boston?”

Jason shook his head, his smile broadening. “Salem.”

Chapter Four

He’d dropped the alcohol buzz in favor of the high he always got when he took one of his bikes a good distanc
e. This was one of his favorite sports bikes
,
a Ducati Diavel Carbon,
and in the early Boston twilight, its glossy paint job streaked and gleamed beneath
the
street lights and neon signs as he made his way through town.

His ultimate
destination
tonight was
Salem,
a smaller town about
thirty
minutes away,
but Thanatos had never been to Boston. It had been a very long time since he’d allowed himself to stay out of his realm for this long. The meetings of the
kings drew him to this realm but were always straight-forward, to the point, and ended mere minutes after they’d begun. Each and every one of the kings
had a job to do, and little time to spare.

The last time he’d
wandered the face of the planet this much
, it had looked decidedly different than it did now. He wasn’t going to waste the excuse he had to be here
; it was time to open the bike up and see what
she could do on a real highway rather th
an the endless expanse of dirt that
Purgatory currently wore.

With a twist of the throttle and a determined lean, Thane tore up the on
-
ramp
and
merged with traffic.
Rush hour had ended two hours ago, but stragglers muddled along at the speed limit, slowing down everyone’s progress. Thane made it around these vehicles with expert, incredible ease, carving some short distances to the point that his foot pegs scraped along the road, sending sparks shooting behind him.

The sky grew darker, t
he lights brighter, and the exits became fewer as Thane left Boston’s city limits and took 107, also known as the Salem Turnpike, through Lynn toward Salem
.
The wind picked up a little, spraying rogue raindrops across the tarmac. Thane’s wheel
s sailed over these on a hydroplane of speed
and bliss, eating up the miles with absolute carelessness.

He rode well ahead of everyone and fell into a contented rhythm u
ntil a black Ford Mustang streaked
into place
beside
him, seemingly out of nowhere, and drew his attention sharply to the right. The windows were darkly tinted; he couldn’t see through them, and he had only a second to try before the car sped on past, leaving him a full ten car lengths behind.

Thanatos had repaired and ridden a lot of e
ngines over the last century
. Just like everything he pulled into his world and focused on, it was a hobby he’d begun to pass the time that had quickly become the only thing standing between him and solitude-induced insanity.

So he knew a thing or two about horse power – enough to know full well that while the 1965 Ford Must
ang Fastback was not a slow car
per se, there was no way in hell it should have
been capable of the kind of acceleration
this one was now exhibiting.
In fact,
no
car should have been capable of it.

Thane was intrigued.
He was troubled
too, though he didn’t immediately recognize the sensation, but mostly he was curious. His steel gaze narrowed, his gloved grips on the handlebars tightened, and he twisted his throttle once more to send the bike careening forwa
rd into the distance between
himself and the Mustang.

He’d expected to catch up right away. However, as if the driver of the car detected the chase, the car sped up. Almost impossibly, it weaved between two cars
in the next lane
that were no more than a car length apart
from one another
, and
then
shot into the darkness.

Oh no you don’t
, he thought as he automatically picked up speed to match it. He was running on auto-pilot, it seemed, his body leaning with the bike, his grip on the throttle unforgiving.
Every nerve ending in his body was humming with the thrill of the chase.
The cars blurred past, their lights becoming one long stream of energy as he weaved this way and that in some unaccountable pursuit of the car ahead of him.

The maneuvers the driver pulled were inconceivable, and the only reason Thane was able to keep up was because he was on a bike.

At one point, the Mustang passed between no more than five feet of space as the vehicle
slammed on its brakes, spun around to face him, amazingly accelerated without spinning any wheel, and
literally shrank to slip between the ends of a median wall
.