The Vampire King (23 page)

“Just say the words, Evie. For the love of God,” her captor said as he knelt in front of her and took her chin once more in his hand. She kept her eyes closed, unable or unwilling to meet his gaze even one more time. “You can make all of this stop,” he told her. “You can make it so that you never have to feel pain or fear again.”

Evie moaned softly in response. She knew he was lying. Even if she said the words and became like him, he would find a way to hurt her. Her body already hurt so much. She didn't underestimate Ward’s potential for cruelty.

Her captor released her chin and Evie’s head fell back against the wall. She felt colder than she had ever felt before.

“He isn’t coming, Evie,” he told her. “He can’t find you, and you don’t have long to go. I know you want to see your parents again. Your brothers. Speak the words, Evie, and you’ll live to do so.”

She almost said the words then. She almost surrendered and gave him what he wanted. She just wanted the torture to stop. But instead she shook her head, dizzy as it made her, and pushed the thoughts from her mind.
No
, she told herself.
Just hang on a little while longer
.

Her heart seemed to flutter, as if sighing in helpless response. She’d lost too much blood. She could feel herself slipping.

Oh God, Roman
, she thought miserably.
Please hurry.

*****

Charles took a slow, deep breath when he’d returned to the first level and shut the basement door. He stood on the landing for a moment, regaining his composure before he turned toward the closed door and slowly ran his hand across it. The door rippled, shimmered, and vanished, leaving behind a smooth wall that bore no sign of entry.

Charles turned from the hidden wall and made his way into the living room where he sat on the couch and leaned forward thoughtfully, resting his elbows on his knees.

He contemplated the woman in the cellar below. It wasn’t a real cellar – this wasn’t a real house. But since he’d been an Offspring child, he’d been capable of escaping to the astral plane and molding it to his fit his desires.

He’d brought many women here to feed from them. None to the last drop, of course, as that would have broken the king’s law, and Roman D’Angelo was the only other living, breathing person in the world who could travel the astral plane. He would have found out sooner or later.

But to Evie, the cellar was real enough and it was cold enough and it was depressing enough. She should have given in by now.

Charles ran his tongue over the tips of his fangs and swallowed. The taste of her blood was still in his mouth, temping him with an unnatural hunger for more. He was technically sated, but somehow insatiable.

He hadn’t planned for this to go on for so long. He really thought she’d give up by now. One bite should have done it. He hadn’t gone easy on her. He’d made sure it hurt. And the second bite had been rougher than the first.

But she continued to fight. He knew she held out hope that D’Angelo would find her, but it was more than that. There was an aura around her that was getting stronger with each passing second. She was physically weak, and he could hear her heart falter, but her spirit, her
essence
, felt just the opposite.

“Oh little Evie,” he said to himself as his blue gaze began to burn. “You’d better give in soon, sweet heart. Or all of that potential will be wasted.” He sighed heavily, put his hands on his knees, and stood.

Distractedly, he ran a hand through his brown hair, but jerked with sudden surprise as the sound of gunfire split the astral plane. He turned at once to face the mansion’s front door.

And Roman D’Angelo cold cocked him hard enough to send him flying into the wall on the opposite side of the room.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Roman strode across the room after him. The punch would have killed a human. Ward was not human, so it merely knocked him senseless for a few seconds, long enough to keep him out until he slid down the cracked plaster behind him and fell forward onto the hardwood.

Roman didn’t hesitate before he bent, grabbed the vampire warlock by the front of his shirt, and lifted him up off of the floor once more. He could smell Evie’s blood on Ward’s breath as the two came face to face.

“
Where is she?
” Roman hissed through fangs fully extended and itching to rip a canyon in the man’s windpipe.

“You’ll never find her,” came the reply, blue eyes glaring, fangs gleaming.

A fissure of fear rippled through Roman. As soon as he’d entered, he’d scanned the house for any sign of Evie and couldn’t find her. He could smell her. He could feel her. But he couldn’t fucking
find
her.

Roman hesitated as he considered this, and it was a half a second of hesitation too long. In that space of time, Ward recovered and struck back.

The ground bucked under Roman’s feet, shooting upward and then splitting apart to reveal a chasm of rising steam. Roman spun, trying to move out of the way, but his grip on Charles’ shirt slipped, and the warlock head butted him in the nose. Both bodies went tumbling to the ground as the buckling floor lifted like a volcano.

Roman slid down the side of the rising rock, rolling once before he got to his feet. Charles stood on the other side of the chasm, his eyes now blazing as red as Roman’s. Steam warped the air between them.

“I can send her anywhere, Roman,” Charles taunted, his fanged mouth grinning with hatred. “All I have to do is want it and she’ll blink out of existence in one place and reappear in another. I own this realm, you know. It obeys my every command. You haven’t got a chance.”

Roman watched as Charles began to change then. Before his eyes, the warlock vampire grew taller. He grew broader. His skin darkened and took on the cast of scales. Wings erupted from his back, and his face elongated. Within seconds, he’d gone from humanoid to a Hollywood representation of what could only be called a dragon. It wasn’t what a real dragon looked like – Roman knew this first hand. But Charles wouldn’t. Charles Ward had never seen a dragon in real life. Charles would have no idea that the Dragon King was one of Roman’s closest allies and friends.

Not that it mattered.

Roman’s jaw ticked. His body tensed. Illusion or not and
accurate
or not, on the astral plane, whatever Charles created would feel very, very real. He readied himself as the dragon went from red to black to some kind of mixture in-between, and that’s when Roman noticed something odd.

There was an aura around Charles that fluctuated with every change in his form-altering spell. The aura surrounded him, but trailed off at his left, creating a stream of red-orange magic that Roman followed to its source.

It was coming from a small black leather-bound book that rested on a table against one wall of the astral house. The book bore no markings and no lock.

Roman had only a moment to register its existence before Ward was on him. At once, Roman opened his mind to the plane around him and called out into it.

Thane!

He needed someone to get to that book. Somehow it was helping Charles; Roman would bet almost anything on it. Roman was the Vampire King and practiced at mind control, yet Ward’s mind was closed off to him, barriered by some kind of dark wall that felt inky and wrong. It also felt familiar. It was the way Malachi Wraythe used to feel.

Roman was betting that book used to belong to late Warlock King. If he could somehow get to it and destroy it, Ward would be a lot less difficult to deal with.

There was no response from Thane, but as Ward’s massive claws swiped toward Roman and he blurred into motion to evade them, he felt an equal sense of urgency coming from outside of the illusory home. Thane’s bullets had only done so much damage to the Akyri – and now he was taking them all on himself.

Get to the book! The black book!
Roman commanded, hoping Thane would hear him anyway.

For the briefest moment, it occurred to Roman that he might have done Thanatos a grave injustice by asking him to help in this. While Thane was not strictly living, he was not strictly dead either. And even in the astral plane, a mortal wound could destroy him forever.

But the momentary doubt fled quickly. Like all of the Thirteen, Thane was a king for a reason.

Roman gritted his teeth and made a pain-filled sound as he evaded both of Ward’s claws and his massive toothy maw only to be slammed up against the wall by an enormous barbed tail. One of the spiky barbs shot through Roman’s chest like a giant needle, slicing clean through to embed itself in the wall behind him.

He choked on his own blood as it welled inside his esophagus, but somehow managed to repair enough of the damage on the inside that the internal bleeding stopped almost as soon as it had begun. The spike would be a problem, however.

A vampire could become mist if he wished. He could transport away from any location. He could even change forms, taking on the visage of certain non-human animals, depending upon his age.

But Ward’s tail was anchoring Roman. It was a magical shard of Universe that didn’t belong within Roman. It disrupted the flow of his power, keeping him lodged firmly in place.

Roman had to admit that he was impressed with Ward’s tactics. Not many vampires were aware that it was possible to anchor another vampire in this manner. Roman could see now up close that the scales on Ward’s dragon body were metallic. Where they abraded Roman’s skin, they felt cold. Ward had armored himself in this illusion. He’d covered all of his bases.

The dragon’s laugh was monstrous, laced with a deep evil reminiscent of the devil as it echoed off of the crumbling walls around them and mixed in with the steam. His hot breath bathed Roman’s face as the dragon leaned in, his once blue eyes burning with black fire. “Who made you judge and executioner?” Ward growled. “What gave you the right to interfere?”

Roman knew what he was talking about. Ward was well aware that Roman had aided in Malachi Wraythe’s ultimate demise and Roman had been right. Ward wanted revenge.

With no further warning, Ward pulled back, raising his giant scaled head. To Roman’s right, the black leather book pulsed with power and a thicker stream of magic poured forth from it to envelop Ward’s dragon form.

Roman braced himself for what he knew was coming. Only two things could kill a vampire. The sun and fire. Ward was about to give him the latter with everything he had.

*****

Thane felt the Vampire King’s power rush out from the mansion like a shock wave. It poured over him and the Akyri he was fighting. It felt like liquid lightning, and if he hadn’t already been on the ground, it might have knocked him over.

Thane!

D’Angelo’s voice roared through his head, and Thane’s storm-gray eyes swirled with glowing, liquid metal. He bared his fangs, threw the Akyri off of his body, and made it to his booted feet. Another came at him without missing a beat. Thane had no attention to spare; he couldn’t even answer.

Get to the book!
Roman bellowed next as if he could tell Thane didn’t have the means to reply.
The black book!

The connection broke off and there was a roar from within the mansion. The ground beneath Thane’s boots shook again. He looked up, gauging the situation with practiced speed. Three Akyri were down and the other three were coming in for him again. It was exponentially more difficult to take down an enemy without killing him.

The mansion several yards away was beginning to fall in on itself. Smoke billowed from one of the windows. Behind the mansion were the several dozen wispy shapes of the anime Thane had sent out to find Ward. They waited now, on the periphery of Ward’s astral illusion.

Thane spun in time to meet the Akyri behind him head-on. At the same time, he sent out a spiritual command.

*****

Evie had no idea what happened. One moment, she was sitting curled up against the damp wall of the horrid basement Ward had locked her in, and in the next, she was back in one of those foggy-walled rainbow rooms. Alone.

She was weak and pain still racked her body, but the cold was gone and the depressing illusion was gone and surprisingly, that seemed to be a lot of it. Within the clean, white clarity of the astral room that now surrounded her, Evie found a small respite.

Her heart still skipped and faltered. She knew that she had still lost too much blood. But this unexpected change allowed her to pull some kind of strength from somewhere deep inside, and she got to her feet.

Behind her, the astral wall rippled slightly like water behind a plastic sheet. She had no choice but to trust it as she braced herself on it and took a few tentative steps out into the middle of the room.

Gingerly, Evie cleared her throat. It felt raw from screaming; the second time Ward had bitten her, she hadn’t been able to hide how much it had hurt her.

And then the walls began to shift and move inward. Evie gasped, her body freezing in place as her head whipped around. The mists were separating, the walls breaking down. They were leaking into the room all around her like a shrinking prison cell.

Oh no
, Evie thought. What happened when there was no more room? Did she disappear? Become mist too? Everything she’d been through and
this
was how she was going to die?

Evie licked her lips and turned back around to face the mists that were closest to her. With wide eyes, she watched them come.