The Warlock King (The Kings) (5 page)

Yet despite this immense power, a more unassuming man did not exist. Graves appeared uncomfortable in the tailored suit he wore. His presence felt impatient. As he easily met the gazes of every King there, aside from that of the Shadow King whose face remained hidden in his cowl, Jason was struck with the impression of a man who kept quiet not because he didn’t know what to say, but because he was accustomed to the world not listening. Which made him perhaps one of the wisest men in the room.

Graves nodded at the men, and as one they nodded back. A fourteenth chair that had been kept empty for the Overseer was now taken.

As for Lalura, she remained standing at the head of the table, her sky colored eyes scrutinizing each of them in turn.

“It isn’t you he’s after,” said Lalura without preamble. Jason blinked. The room grew absolutely still. “He isn’t interested in the 13 Kings, not any more. He has what he wanted from you. Rather, it is your queens he desires now.”

No one said anything,
but Jason could practically hear their supernatural spirits sitting up and growling.

Lalura sighed wearily and sat down, taking D’Angelo’s large leather-backed chair and leaving the Vampire King standing. D’Angelo’s lips curled with amusement.

The powerful vampire glanced at the tabletop in front of Lalura. His eyes flashed a bright, glowing red, and a tea tray replete with sandwiches and biscuits appeared before the ancient witch.

Lalura picked up a sandwich as the water and cream pots magically concocted her the perfect cup of tea.

The kings waited as the high witch slowly chewed.

They waited a bit longer as she noisily sipped from her dainty porcelain cup. D’Angelo’s smile broadened. The powerful vampire was enjoying this.

When Lalura took another bite of sandwich rather than continue speaking, a few of the kings fidgeted in their seats. But no one dared interrupt her.

Now Jason was smiling as well.

Finally, she swallowed the bite she’d been chewing, took another sip, and placed her cup in its saucer. “The queens on a chessboard are more powerful than their male counterparts in spades,” she said. Her quaking voice carried easily across the room, despite its weathering of age. “The one responsible for the attack on the pier a month ago has what he wanted from all of you. You played directly into his hands, and now he will use what you’ve unwittingly given him to go after the women you love.”

A ripple of disquieting darkness passed across the table and through every King seated around it. It was anger, and it was fear. And it was strong.

No one questioned where Lalura had obtained this information. Everyone at the meeting was well acquainted with her abilities – and with the fact that she was never wrong.

“What occurred with Evie and the safe house,” continued Roman, “was merely the stirring of the pot. It has yet to be heated, much less come to a boil. Our enemy stands as a leader with an army of unknown minions, not the least of which is Ophelia’s previously mentioned ‘master.’”

He moved around Lalura’s chair as she refilled her teacup.

“Mr. Graves, would you care to fill us in?” Roman asked as he paced to the wall on one side of the room, leaned against it, and slid his hands into the pockets of his expensive suit.

Jesse Graves nodded. “At the moment, I can tell you that the Hunters have switched sides again. We’ve captured and questioned a number of them. Months ago, they fell under the influence of a man who called himself Ramses and who displayed a disproportionate amount of power. However, when he ceased leading in the slaughter of werewolves, he fell out of favor with the vast majority of the Hunters.” He paused, letting the information sink in before continuing. “Little by little, the Hunters trickled away. Now no one knows what has become of ‘Ramses,’ and the Hunters appear to have re-grouped under the leadership of a force none of them can identify.”

He leaned forward, folding his hands on the polished wooden surface of the table. His amber eyes sparked with warning. “Dannai Caige, one of our female werewolves and a high ranking witch in her own coven, seems
to have won the attention of the former Hunter leader, Ramses.” Here, Jesse broke off and met Jason’s gaze. Unspoken messages passed between them. Jason was all too familiar with this recent “attention.”

“Or rather, her children have at the very least,” Jesse went on. “Based on the results of several informative spells and the visions of Lily Kane and other seers, we’ve come to believe that ‘Ramses’ may actually, for lack of a better term,” he smiled wryly, “be on our side.”

“Why do we care?” the Shadow King asked, his deep rumbling words reverberating off the meeting room walls. “If he is nowhere to be found?” It was the first time Jason had ever heard him speak. It was unnerving.

However, Jesse hid any discomfort he might have felt very well. “We care,” he said calmly, “because we’ve also come to learn that Ramses may in fact be connected with the one who is responsible for the attack on the pier.” He looked up at Roman. “And for Ophelia.”

“In other words, if he’s connected to these events but he’s on our side, then he’s powerful enough to help us fight our enemy,” suggested Avery.

Jesse nodded.

“So now all you boys have to do is find Ramses,” said Lalura around a mouth full of crumbling cookie. It looked like one of the chocolate dipped ones.  She looked up, capturing Jason in her blue beams. “And your queens,” she added. “Before the bad guy does.”

She pushed away from the table then, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. “Thank you for the tea, Roman.”

With that, the ancient witch popped out of existence in a tremendous flash and puff of pink smoke and sparkles. The smell of lavender filled the air.

Chapter
Five

There were two reasons Chloe had chosen Maui as her escape. The energy on the island was different; it was ancient. This was a land of old magic and older gods, and in her world, older meant more powerful. There was a force that ran through life on Maui li
ke water, rippling around everything on the island.

This energy provided a kind of camouflage for Chloe. More importantly, it provided
sustenance
. It wasn’t warlock magic, but it helped. Chloe felt she could breathe just a little easier here, which was why Mili felt that Chloe fit in.

The other reason she’d chosen it was for its remoteness.

Its inhabitants were few, and they were relatively peaceful. Maui headlines talked about weather and surfing, never murder or rape. And this was important to Chloe –
very
important.

Chloe was composed of the same stuff as space, and because there was no dark magic inhabiting her spirit, her body and mind tended to act as a vacuum for the sensations around them.

She’d heard of people who were highly sensitive. They couldn’t stand to watch the news or read the newspaper or subject themselves to sad movies because they absorbed the emotions of other people, took too much into themselves, and became absolutely miserable. Chloe was like that.

She didn’t read headlines, she didn’t troll Facebook for news posts, and
she didn’t own a television. A newscast for her was an agonizing dichotomy between the tragedy being reported and the tainted hint of jaded boredom and arrogant glee from the reporter telling the story. It was one more miserable reminder of the nonsensical way the world worked. Chloe wanted nothing to do with any of it.

Because she was forced to hide from supernaturals who would
use her empty weakness against her anyway, Chloe protected herself from the harsh sensations of the world by hiding away in tiny towns around the globe.

There, she
worked jobs that tended to the physical and emotional needs of others, trying her best to minimize negative emotions around her. Like the magic on Maui – every little bit helped.

But several months ago, Chloe
caught wind that the notorious Jason Alberich was searching for his queen, as all 13 Kings suddenly were. For some reason… this struck Chloe in a profound way.

As if she’d subconsciously known she would be the one he searched for, s
uddenly, she felt like running again. She took Miliani up on her offer in Maui and booked her flights. The soonest trip she could get would take her from Boston to New York to Hawaii.

What she hadn’t counted on was that
technical difficulties would wind up canceling her flight from New York, forcing her to stay overnight – and that she would run into Jason Alberich himself as she traveled from the airport to her hotel.

What were the chances of that?
They were infinitesimally small. The fates had been at work.

She’d been crossing the street and hailing a cab when it
occurred. She felt the sudden weight of him. She sensed his eyes on her and
knew
that it was him. One hand on the taxi door handle, she turned – and found herself gazing into a tall, dark spire of desire that hit her like a freight train.

The shock Jason
experienced at seeing her, and the need that followed it, rolled across the distance between them and bowled her over, knocking the wind from her lungs. Her own responding desire redoubled the effect, kick-starting a rapid succession of painful beats of her heart.

It was all she’d been able to do to scramble into the back seat of her taxi, close her eyes tight, and give the driver his instructions.

She hadn’t seen him since then…. And now he was on the island.

I can’t feel him right now
, she thought.
At least there’s that.

Lahaina
, Maui was a lit up harbor at night, with tourists milling through the streets, shops and restaurants, and locals still out surfing in-between anchored sailboats. A few other locals would linger and lounge on the grass, high on weed or love or both and would smile bright white smiles and greet passersby with friendly “alohas.”

Chloe sat on the cement and rock wall over the shoreline of the harbor below and listened and watched. The wall abutted a small park with a few smaller trees and lush green grass. The local children loved climbing the trees and adults enjoyed resting at their bases. A bearded
longhaired man in shorts and flip-flops a few yards away from Chloe was on his older model cell phone. “… I’m telling you, it’s all the blacktop and asphalt in the world,” he insisted to whoever was on the other end. “That’s why we have global warming. It’s heating everything up.”

Chloe turned her attention to the dots of white and brown sitting patiently on the swells in the distance. The die-hard surfers and body boarders remained where they were well beyond sundown to catch the last waves in. There were two reasons for this. Every surfer or body boarder was under the same spell: there was an eternal lure in the
next wave
, and it grabbed and paralyzed man and woman alike,   seducing them to stay on the water just a little while longer.

But
this late in the day, when the nocturnal creatures of the ocean awakened to hunt, it was also safer to sit still on your board and wait for a wave strong enough to take you all the way back into shore than it was to paddle back yourself. You drew less attention to the animals below if you let the water move you than if you splashed along on your board. Movement and sound drew the eye of the “mano.”

Chloe
sighed. The fingers of an ocean breeze brushed through her long blonde hair. The temperature was perfect.

But she
was not at peace.

Despite the remoteness of Maui, there was
actually little quiet on the island. It wasn’t as you would have expected. All over Maui’s shorelines could be heard the susurrus and whisper of the water moving in and out, and the crash of their vibrato as the waves hit the sand. But even this natural orchestra is drowned out by the human made sounds of progress.

In Lahaina, bands on open restaurant verandas played long into the night. In Kihei, several miles south along the shore, the drunk became boisterous and
messy. Not even under the sea was there to be found a respite from the non-stop noise. Crabs clicked and clattered away, chattering like marine cicadas, and the scuba gear’s regulator formed bubbles that burst in the eardrums, deafening and disorienting.

There was no
real silence, no real peace. Not even here, on a tiny remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Chloe’s
stardust blood yearned for the annals of space. It longed for its homeland. It always had.

If she’d possessed the power she should rightfully have possessed, she
could have transported to the astral plane. It was composed of the same magic of space and time that she was. She’d always wanted to visit. She could have spent a day there, maybe two. She imagined that she would have grown stronger, remembered who and what she was, grown more confident. She could be herself again – and figure things out.

But gaining the power it would take to do that would mean giving in and subjecting herself to the servitude of a warlock.

“And you’re not one for giving in, are you Chloe Septeran?”

Chloe’s eyes shot wide open. H
er breath hitched in her suddenly constricted throat and she sprang to her feet, spinning with tremendous speed.