The Phantom King (The Kings) (9 page)

Thanatos
burned rubber as he skidded
to a stop
. He put his boot down and watched as the Mustang
then expanded once more on the other side before taking an exit ramp
going in the opposite direction.
Most impressive of all was the fact that a cherry top sat waitin
g behind a billboard on Thane’s side
of the street – in plain sight of everything the Mustang had just done. And yet no sirens sounded, no lights winked on, and the cop stayed where he was.

Insane son of a bitch
, Thane thought, shaking his head as he watched the shiny black car speed out of sight. It would take too
many on-road acrobatics to chase it any further, but at least he’d come to a
solid
realization
about the driver,
and part of his curiosity, a
tiny
part, was placated.
Clearly this was the work of magic
.

The Phantom King was no stranger to magic. Practically everything he knew, everything he dealt with on a daily basis, was
composed of some kind of
magic. The ironic thing was, as long as Thane was on Earth and not in his own plane, said
magic had virtually no effect
on him. It was as if he were a ghost here
;
magic passed right through
him
.

Nonethe
less, it worked on everything
around
him
,
including the car that had just escaped into the night
,
and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Thane didn’t move or tear his eyes from the off-ramp and the road beyond it until the last of the car’s lights had disappeared from view. Then he straightened in his seat, revved the bike’s engine, and pulled it once more off of the median and into traffic. He realized, as he passed
a sign a second later, that he was now in Salem and probably had been for some time.
Highway 107 had become Highland Avenue and then Essex Street.

There was an odd humming in his bones when he pulled off
of the highway
at the
next
ramp and m
ade his way through streets a touch darker and
quieter than they’d been in Boston.

He could sense the spirits
of the wronged dead
waiting for his. He could feel them there, just out of reach, in that depthless line between life and nothingness. There were children there. Slaughtered in
a war fought for reasons their parents’ parents couldn’t remember.
Time was running out for him
; he’d stretched it beyond its limits
. He needed to find that ghost and set things right.

Thane gritted his teeth and sped into the night.

*****

Siobhan
slammed the door of her car and looked up the road in front of her house. Her head was spinning and her heart was pounding. If she held her breath, it was almost like she could still hear the motorcycle’s engine. But there were no lights, and a gentle breeze passed through the grasses and flowers in the neighbor’s yard, and bugs buzzed beneath the street light. She was alone.

Hurriedly, she jammed the car keys into her pocket and ran up the drive to her front door. Once it was bolted tight behind her, she leaned against it and took a deep breath. Then she turned and looked through the peep hole at the jet black car that waited, engine still hot, in the driveway. A house this ancient didn’t come with a garage big enough for a real car; it had been built with wagons and horses in mind. And she hadn’t had a chance yet to “build” one onto the side of the drive. So the car sat out there.

Like a big black sign that read
, “Here I am.”

She had no idea who the bi
ker had been who’
d followed her, and she also had no idea why she was so afraid of him, but something had taken ahold of her.
Driven
her. She’d never run from anyone before. Maybe it was the fact that he’d given chase in the first place.

Or maybe it was his strong frame – she’d been able to tell he was tall.
Very
tall.
He’d had black hair; he hadn’t been wearing a helmet,
stupid man. And
she was almost certain his eyes had been not gray, but
silver
. T
hey’d flashed once beneath a streetlamp
, almost like lightning
.
He had a strong jaw; his profile was Roman and masculine.
But
she’d taken it all in d
uring quick, furtive glances. T
hat was all she’d had
time for
as she raced
down the highway at break-neck speeds, casting spells left and right.

He’d kept up beautifully. It was uncanny and frightening and alarming and
intriguing and thrilling. H
e’d come closer and closer, until he’d finally sent her magically careening through a tiny hole in the median wall and
barreling
down the
off-ramp
to get away.

She’d been terrified.
Excited, but genuinely scared.

How
strange
.

With that thought, Siobhan waved her hand at the car beyond the door and muttered a quick few words that would cloak the vehicle. It disappeared.
She exhaled.

“Where are your
groceries?”

Siobhan squealed and jumped, spinning around to face
Steven
. He stood in the hallway, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed casually over his chest, his ghost
gray
eyes
even more solid than they’d been before she’d left that afternoon.
Siobhan blinked. Was there a hint of blue to them?
It was as if he were re-forming… becoming whole again.

“The store was closed,” she came back, not thinking before she told the lie.
At once it felt wrong.

Steven
’s brow raised. “
Over the course of the
three hours
you were gone
, you could have made it to the nearest Wal-Mart in Boston,
which is open twenty-four-seven
.”
He straightened, coming off of the wall and dropping his arms at his sides, and Siobhan was
reminded of why
she’d begun dating him in the first place. He was impressive. He was smart, he was
built tall
, and he was good-looking.
He’d grown up an orphan, but had taken society by the balls and made the most of it like only the best could.
Not much got past
him. He’d even been a goalie on
his college hockey team.

And now he was dead. Because of her.

Steven
came forward, brushing by
her and once more filling her with an eerie chill as he bent to peer th
rough the peephole on
the door.

“You want to tell me who it is you’re hiding from?” he asked as he finished looking and turned to face her.

Siobhan found that she was hugging herself; a
n unconscious gesture in the wake of his ectoplasmic cold
.
“No one.”
Lame
, she thought.
Really, really lame
.
It wasn’t like her to
lie, and here she was blowing smoke like a steam engine.

Steven
smiled, but it wasn’t a kind smile. “Let’s see,” he said, as if about to tick off a list of evidence he’d been writing in his head. “You were gone three hours
with no explanation, y
ou
r heart rate is elevated –
I can see your
pulse pounding in your neck – a
nd
you just hid your car from view.” He cocked his head to one side and narrowed his gaze.

Definitely blue
, she thought absentmindedly.

“You sure this is the story you want to stick with?”

Siobhan gazed up at him. She thought about the man on the motorcycle – silver eyes flashing, hair the color of night – and swallowed past a lump that had formed in her
throat. She opened her mouth to reply, not at all certain what it was she was going to say – when a sound came out of the darkness, distinctive and harsh in the otherwise quiet Salem night.

Siobhan’s goldstone colored
eyes widened. It was the motorcycle. She had n
o idea how she was able to tell it apart from the sound of any other bike, but she did
.

Steven
’s
chin lifted, his eyes flashed,
and he vanished.
Poof
.

“
Steven
?” Siobhan moved forward, receiving
goose bumps
off of the residual cold he’d left in his wake. He was gone.

Outside, a
sports bike
turned the corner at the end of her block and headed her way. Siobhan stiffened.
Her house was in the
cul-de-sac
. There was no reason for the bike to be moving in this direction.
Maybe he just needs to turn around.

Her heart hammered and her stomach felt strange. Slowly, as if someone would see her, s
he moved up to the door
a second time
and peered through the peephole.
A single light grew brighter in the middle of the street. The bike drew nearer.

Siobhan held her breath.
Nearer… nearer.

As if he would see her through the tiny porthole of glass, Siobhan shrank from the door and shut her eyes tight.

She listened as the bike swung
around in the
cul-de-sac
,
and for half a second she wondered if he was going to pull right up into her driveway and run into her hidden car. But he didn’t. A few loud sec
onds passed, and a moment later
the bike could be heard heading back down the same road in the other direction.