The Shadow King (20 page)

“What?” she asked, just out of reflex.

“Just a heads up,” he told her, again without looking at her. He seemed to be gauging something in his head; his gaze was narrow and distant. Calculating. Careful. “We’ve wasted enough time.”

Oh my gods
, she thought hastily.
I mean, yes, we have, but….
Sudden fear gripped her. It was more of a dread, really. She didn’t have her backpack, she didn’t have her books, she didn’t have her nifty, prepared set of potions and antidotes and –

Finally, Keeran looked down at her, capturing her gaze. “You’ll be okay,” he told her as if he could hear her thoughts. “I’m with you.” He turned his attention back to the portal and added with a chuckle, “And you’re pretty damned good at taking care of yourself anyway.”

“I’m coming with you,” came a new voice.

Both Keeran and Violet turned to face Hesperos, who’d come up behind them. He smiled sheepishly. “There’s strength in numbers. It makes no sense for
all
of the kings to go; it might be a trap, after all. But the Entity won’t be expecting me yet. He doesn’t know I’m here and may not even know who I am. And what better way to prove that I belong at that table?” He gestured to the table they’d vacated.

Violet had wondered whether the Entity had been trying to lure the kings or their queens into the Dark by taking Dahlia. Not that she cared. She would go anywhere for her sister.

An unexpected and abrupt sinking feeling settled in her gut, so hard and so strong that she actually placed her palm to her stomach. It was unfamiliar; she’d never sensed this before when thinking of Dahlia. She felt the blood leave her face.

Because suddenly, someone was screaming.

The scream was far off, distant but terrible. She heard it deep inside herself, in an echo-filled forest, in the depths of her spirit. It was Dahlia. Pain shot through the right side of her neck and coursed through her entire body. It took her breath away. She couldn’t cry out, she couldn’t move.

“What the hell? ” she heard someone say.

Vaguely, she felt herself being turned. Someone was shaking her. Someone was even calling her name. But her vision was elsewhere, moving through a forest, moving into the woods, toward the screaming, toward the pain. Toward Dahlia.

*****

“Shit,” Keeran muttered. Things had just taken a very big turn for the worse. Violet was still very much on her feet, but her gaze was distant, and her eyes were wide with fear. She was pale and terrified.

The remaining kings and queens were gathered around him; they’d instantly sensed what he had when Violet had suddenly gone “under.” Somewhere in the Dark, her sister was suffering, and because Violet was her twin sister, and because she was now also linked to the Dark as the queen of the Shadow Realm, she was feeling part of it right along with her.

Keeran could feel it too. He’d pushed his luck and had waited too long.

“I’ll come with you as well,” said Kristopher, the Winter King. Keeran glanced up at him. The man looked like a Viking, blonde and blue eyed and positively huge. He could have been Thor. Hell, maybe Thor was modeled after him. Any army in its right mind preparing to do battle with the devil would want him on its side. But he was also a king – and that was probably just what the Entity wanted.

“It isn’t safe,” Keeran said.

“Safe for who?” Kristopher asked, his brow raised, his expression hard. In that moment, Keeran had the very real sense that there was little in the realms capable of taking down the Winter King. It wasn’t like you could melt him. He was immune to temperatures of any kind. He was immune to a
lot
of things.

“If the Entity believes we’re on to this as a trap, he’ll think you’re coming alone,” said D’Angelo as Keeran turned back to Violet and searched for any signs that she might be in pain. He would be able to sense that. She wasn’t suffering; she was just empathizing with her sister.

“So in effect, the more, the merrier,” added Hesperos.

“Then it’s decided. Let’s go deal with this once and for all,” finished Kristopher. Spoken like a true Norse god.

Keeran looked from one of to the other, but kept his fingers firmly wrapped around Violet’s upper arms. He could feel her trembling beneath his grasp. His body responded to her discomfort in the most basic way.

His blood flooded with hormones, his eyesight shifted, his magic swirled, and his fangs were extended in his mouth. He could feel them press against his bottom lip, and distractedly wondered if anyone around him noticed. He’d never allowed the wolf in him to show before. Hell, it had never
wanted
to show. He was the Shadow King, wrapped in darkness and secrets. The wolf was a part of him from another lifetime, a
dormant
existence so to speak, that Violet had simply awakened with her perfection and brought back to life.

Keeran turned back to the multi-level portal he’d opened. He’d concentrated hard on crisscrossing shadow paths so that it would be impossible to trace his progress, and hopefully impossible to determine where he would come out on the other side. He’d used a good deal of magic taking these extra measures, and he’d done it to keep the traitor amongst the kings from interfering. However, if two of the kings were traveling with him, he may be going to the extra trouble for no reason.

One, rather. Hesperos hadn’t been amongst them when the traitor had been discovered. Still… he could also be a plant. With the Entity, nothing could be taken for granted.

In the end, this was a fight, and Keeran’s wolf was a fighter, and right now, it wholeheartedly needed to be in charge. “I appreciate the sentiment, and I accept your assistance,” he told the men. His voice had changed as well. It had always been deep, laced with magic, and accented by every corner of the world. But now there was a growl to it, there in the background like a hint of something primordial. “But if either of you further endanger Violet with your presence, I’ll rip off your shadow and drag it out through your nostrils.”

He wasn’t making an idle threat. He could do it.

There was the briefest of pauses before Hesperos smiled. “Sounds fair to me,” he said.

And Kristopher just nodded.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

He wasn’t at all certain why he, in particular, was supposed to accompany the Shadow King on this rescue mission. But the fact of the matter was – Lalura had told him to. And in the end, that woman was more powerful and more dangerous than a Norn. Hell, maybe she
was
a Norn. With Lalura, no one could tell for sure. All the kings knew was that when Lalura Chantelle made her rickety way toward you, leaning heavily on that cane, her blue eyes clear as the Aegir sea on a spring day, you did what she damn well told you to do. Period.

And that was what she’d done to Kristopher that morning:

“He’ll want to head into the Dark. You’ll want to go with him.”

“Pitch often travels into the Dark,” he’d countered easily as he summoned a floating tray sporting a steaming pot of tea and a tea cup for the old woman. It was cold in his realm. Of course, he could very quickly warm it up if he wanted, but it wasn’t something he was going to do without very good reason. That kind of magic was exhausting. “He leads the Nimbus to hunt for wayward shadows.”

Pitch’s leadership of the Nimbus was a secret to all but the thirteen kings and the Nimbus themselves.

“This time will be different,” she explained, clearly appeased by his tea offering, because she instantly summoned a rocking chair, sat down in it, and set her cane aside. Then she calmly took the pot, poured the tea, and Kristopher watched as magic whitened the liquid with cream.

“I see,” he said.

“And you will be there.”

He paused only a moment before he smiled to himself and said, “I will.”

Lalura had taken a few sips of her tea, replaced the cup on the tray hovering before her, and rose once more. Her cane flew into her firm, ancient grasp, and she turned to leave his home.

She had first appeared in the enormous log cabin in a puff of lavender-scented and purple smoke. But apparently she would leave by the front door.

Once there, she stopped and glanced at him over her bony shoulder. “One more down,” she’d muttered, as if to herself. “Four to go.”

Then his door had opened for her of its own accord, and she’d stepped through into the blizzard beyond, disappearing in a cloud of white before the door automatically shut again behind her.

And now, here he was, moving through a portal with the Shadow King and the newly appointed Nightmare King, heading into an unknown situation in the Dark.

He’d thought a lot about what Lalura had said just before she’d left him. What had she meant? One more down, four to go.

The closest he could reason was that she had decided he was not the traitor to the Thirteen Kings. Considering Hesperos most likely wasn’t either, that would leave four men at the table who were yet possibilities.

What he could
not
figure out was why Lalura had decided such a thing. Why mark him off the list? Not that he was disagreeing with the decision. After all, it was correct. He would no more betray his brethren sovereigns than have a very private conversation with Ratatosk.

The portal opened one final time, and the four of them stepped out onto a paved and deserted road.

“Where are we?” Violet asked. She was still visibly shaken, but had come-to more or less in the portals and regained her faculties. She was very pale, and her eyes were enormous in her face. But Kristopher could feel her Tuath magic flowing healthy and ready.

“The Dark.” Pitch remained so close to his queen, he could have been her shadow, himself.

Kristopher’s gaze narrowed. Something about that thought turned gears in his head, but he had no idea what it was or why it struck him as important.

He let it go and peered down the long, smooth ribbon of black before him. On either side of the road were structures. It reminded him of a Western ghost town; there were a dozen buildings, max, and those were in disrepair, the wood blackened, shutters and doors hanging loosely. There was no movement in the small town.

For some reason, Kristopher had expected the Dark to be pitch black. Like the man’s name. This was a surprise.

Hesperos beat him to the punch when he asked, “This is the Dark? I thought it would be, you know…
dark
.”

“Me too,” said Violet numbly. She looked up at her king.

Keeran’s eyes were glowing; it was something Kristopher had never seen before, but they’d been glowing ever since Violet’s episode had begun in the meeting room. He found himself wanting to know a little more about the Shadow King’s background than he did. But the two were not particularly close. They were acquaintances, more than anything. They were kings at the same table.

Nothing more.

“Many people have misconceptions about the Dark. But it’s called the Dark because it is the heart of the Shadow Kingdom. There is obviously no sunlight, and fire will not take here.”

Kristopher frowned. The ambience in the realm possessed the same brightness that would be shed beneath a full moon. He looked over his shoulder at the night sky, but where he expected to find that moon, there was only the drapery of velvet black. It was disconcerting.

He then glanced down at his feet in order to use his shadow as a reference for where the light was coming from. But there was no shadow.

“What the –”

“No one casts a shadow in the Dark,” said Pitch. “The only beings who are supposed to be able to traverse this realm already
are
shadows.”

Hesperos beat him to it again. “Then how are
we
here?”

Pitch looked at him.

Hesperos made a face. “Right. Magic. You being king and all, and her being queen. Got it.”

“My sister is there,” Violet said softly, raising her hand to point at the nearby buildings. She’d gone still, as if that terror she’d sensed earlier had her in its grips again. “She’s in pain.”

Pitch exchanged looks with Hesperos and Kristopher. Kristopher nodded. “I think Violet should remain here.”

Pitch turned to his queen. “Violet, stay with Hesperos. Kristopher and I will look for Dahlia.”

But she gritted her teeth, and without even bothering to shake her head at Pitch, she pushed past him to begin running toward the first of the dark, abandoned buildings. Tuath were agile, quick beings; she was putting fast distance between them.

“Just like a queen,” muttered Hesperos as the three men broke into a run after her. They reached her at approximately the same time, just as she was in turn reaching the lopsided door of the building. Fortunately, she stopped and looked up at it, now hesitant.

It appeared to have once been a house, or perhaps something like a church. In any case, it was Victorian in structure, three stories high, with a wrap-around porch and tall, arched windows. Those windows seemed to stare out at them from the blackened wood.

“It’s not actually burned,” Kristopher reasoned, now that he was getting a close-up look at it. At first, he’d thought the wood of the buildings was black because it had been in some sort of fire. But Pitch had said flame wouldn’t take here – and this didn’t look like burned wood, which was something Kristopher actually knew quite a bit about. Rather, it was just black. “It’s a shadow, isn’t it?” he finished.