Bonds of the Vampire King (Blood Fire Saga Book 7)

by Bella Klaus

  “You don’t look like a phoenix shifter,” she said.

  “King Beowulf should be arriving soon.” I ignored her attempt to make me prove myself. “Is there somewhere I can wait?”

  “Chlamydia,” she barked.

  I stepped back, my brow forming a tight frown. “What did you say?”

  The squeaking of wheels filled the hallway, and a scowling figure stepped out from around the corner. Like the other women, she had an Amazonian figure, but her shoulders were hunched and her neck bent as though she was trying to avoid being noticed. In her hands, she clutched a mop handle still attached to one of those metallic buckets known for their squeaky wheels.

  “Chlamydia can take you to the guest room.” The third woman turned on her heel and sashayed down the hallway, leaving me alone with the newcomer.

  Her hair was as white as the magnolia walls, her skin nearly as pale as mine. She met my gaze through startling blue eyes with gold flecks that reminded me of lapis lazuli.

  “Guest room?” she asked.

  “A male friend and I might be staying here for the week,” I murmured.

  “Follow me.” She turned around, steering her mop and bucket down the hallway.

  I bit down on my lip and glanced at the woman, whose awkward movements were peculiar for someone so young. Even though shifters aged as slowly as witches and wizards, she only looked a year or two from the academy.

  “Why do they call you Chlamydia?” I whispered.

  “What do you know about pack dynamics?” she asked.

  “Only what they teach us in the academy,” I replied.

  Shifters were one of the few supernatural creatures who didn’t concern themselves with inheritance laws, which meant anyone strong enough was capable of battling their way to the top.

  I knew little about their wider society and how prides interacted with packs and parliaments and the other animal groupings, but there was always an alpha at the top, the beta beneath him or her, then a small group of faithfuls acting as enforcers of the alpha’s will. Everyone else fell into the next tier with no one at the bottom… At least that’s what I thought.

  “Did you learn about what they do with outcasts?” she asked.

  “Not really, but I assume they’re kicked out of the pack.”

  The woman snorted. “If only the packs were so kind.”

  “Sorry,” I murmured. “Is there anything I can do to—”

  “No.” She stopped at a door and turned its handle. “Here’s the guest suite. There’s an adjoining room, in case you need privacy from your friend. If you want anything, just shout for Chlamydia.”

  The woman continued down the hallway.

  “Wait,” I said.

  She stopped but didn’t turn around.

  I swallowed around a dry throat. “What’s your name? Not that thing they call you.”

  “Lydia,” she said through clenched teeth. “But I’m forbidden to use it.”

  “Are you hurt?” I cringed the moment I said those words. There was only one reason someone with the healing ability of a shifter would shuffle about so awkwardly. Someone had either punished her moments before my arrival or placed an enchantment to make her injuries stick.

  Lydia turned around, meeting my gaze with sad eyes. “If you really are the fiancée of the Vampire King, the best thing you can do for me is to keep your mouth shut. Beowulf will stop the bullying while you’re around, but it will get worse the moment you leave.”

  “But what if I—”

  “If you’re thinking of offering me a job somewhere else, don’t. Outcasts never get to leave the pack unless they’re dead.” She shuffled down the hallway, pulling that wretched mop and bucket.

  A weight settled on my chest, and I stared at her twisted back until my vision blurred. If I thought my time at the academy was bad, it was nothing compared to what Lydia was likely suffering. This wasn’t the Human World where the police, social services, or the courts were available to protect the weak. In some societies, slavery still existed.

  I leaned against the doorframe, frustration welling through my insides, my chest tightening until it reduced my lung capacity to the size of my fists. For all my newfound fire magic, there was nothing I could do to help Lydia if her king insisted on keeping her close.

  With a sigh, I retreated into the room, which was about half the size of the apartment Valentine and I shared in the hospital’s convalescence suite but had the stone-clad walls and rustic wood furniture and floors of a hunting lodge, complete with a chandelier made of at least four pairs of antlers.

  Maybe Valentine might know what to do about Lydia’s predicament. The young woman talked as though pain and humiliation would plague her entire life, but maybe that was because nobody with any real power had learned about her situation.

  Trying not to think of the deer that lived in the park that surrounded Logris, I walked around the back of a leather sofa that faced a roaring fireplace, tip-toeing over rugs of bearskin, tiger-skin, and the pelts of wild animals I didn’t care to identify. Surely, there would be a door somewhere that might lead to a space less wooden and less flammable.

  After passing a wall of mounted animal heads, I found the bathroom. It was as rustic as I had suspected, with walnut-wood floors and cabinets and a shower cubicle lined with dark gray stone that looked like reinforced concrete. After slipping off my cloak and my new clothes, and toeing off my shoes, I headed into the shower, pushed my magic outward, and shifted.

  I focused on Valentine sitting in his cell and waiting to hear from me about Prince Draconius’s attempt to reach Kain. My magic flickered, but it was like bouncing against a barrier and being thrown back.

  “Wards,” I cawed.

  Pulling my magic back into my body, I shifted back and put on my clothes. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so hasty to give Valentine back the engagement ring. Now I had no means of flickering through the wards of the prison to reach him.

  I returned to the room to find afternoon tea waiting on the low table. Whoever had prepared it had placed the items on a three-tiered stand, but apart from the scones at the bottom and the pots of jam and clotted cream on a side plate, it wasn’t anything like what was available in the Human World.

  The top tier contained huge slices of cake—chocolate fudge, Battenberg, coffee, and lemon drizzle. In the middle tier, full-sized Scotch eggs sat among mini hotdogs and burgers the size of my palm. My mouth watered. This looked far more satisfying than the delicate cakes and sandwiches Beatrice and I had enjoyed in Claridge’s.

  My mysterious benefactor had also placed steaming pots of tea and coffee on the table along with jugs of milk, cream, lemon slices, and a bowl of sugar.

  As I lowered myself into the seat, something hard jabbed into my ass, making me wince. I shifted to the side, reached between the seat cushions, and extracted a remote control. As I lowered it to the wooden coffee table, my finger brushed the on button, and a television mounted above the fireplace flared to life.

  “The search for the fire angel is over, and a young woman has stepped forward to claim the million-pound reward,” a female voice said from the screen.

  I sat back, staring at footage of Kresnik’s ifrit flying through the night sky atop a phoenix. From the camera’s angle, I could only guess this came from the helicopter. Kresnik turned to the lens and bared his teeth.

  If this was the only evidence of our flight across London, it might be easy enough to dismiss as the mischief of someone with too much time on their hands and a powerful computer graphics card. That night, we had stopped traffic. Practically everyone had smartphones these days. There had to be hundreds of clips taken of us from different angles.

  The next cut was another helicopter shot but through the bare branches of the trees. It was of me waddling in slow motion beneath its canopy and shifting back into my red-haired self.

  “Bloody hell,” I whispered.

  The camera had only caught me for a millisecond and only the top of my head, bu
t it was obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes that one, I was the same phoenix from the nighttime footage, and two, I could shift back from a fire bird to a woman.

  “Sarah Thompson-Smith has come forward to identify herself as the world’s most sought-after phoenix,” said the television presenter, an Asian woman whose bright red lipstick glinted in the studio lights.

  The camera pulled out, revealing a second woman with red hair in a shade too dull to be supernatural. Captions on the screen labelled her as Sarah Thompson-Smith. Pushing her chest forward, she flashed the presenter a bright smile of whitened teeth.

  “Implants,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Tell us about yourself,” the interviewer purred. “How long have you been a phoenix, and where did you come from?”

  “It’s like you said earlier.” Sarah tossed her hair over her shoulders and flashed her too-white teeth. “Angels like me have descended from heaven.”

  I shook my head from side to side, wondering if the woman was a supernatural who had dyed her hair to match my shade, or she was a human who had fallen from a great height.

  The presenter turned to the audience. “Now, I know what you’re all thinking. You all want proof that Sarah really is the phoenix.”

  “Too bloody right.” I folded my arms across my chest.

  “What do you think?” The presenter winked at Sarah. “Could you give BBC Score and our viewers an exclusive peek of your wings?”

  The camera panned out, revealing the white space on the right of the studio, where there stood a stage and a silver stripper pole.

  I reared back, wondering if I’d stumbled across the British Jerry Springer.

  Sarah rose from her seat and sauntered toward the stage. Beneath a strapless top, she wore a pair of booty shorts, fishnet tights, and stilettos.

  Rolling my eyes, I reached for a burger and took a bite, already predicting how this would end. After a sensuous pole dance, Sarah would make some kind of excuse, saying she’d tired out her magic and would invite viewers to see her perform at whatever circus had flown into town to take advantage of the nation’s desire to meet a phoenix.

  Music blared across the surround-sound speakers. Instead of heavy metal, burlesque, or something edgy, it was the kind of new age tune we’d play in the Crystal Shop’s healing rooms. I chewed on my mouthful of burger, wondering what on earth she would do next, but then she spun in a circle and transformed into a bird of fire.

  The burger fell loose from my fingers, and I gaped at the replica of my phoenix.

  Chapter Twelve

  I stared up at the screen with my mouth gaping open and the half-eaten burger still wedged between my teeth. The phoenix continued toward the stage with her wings outstretched, curled the tip around the stripper pole, and leaned her body to the side.

  Wings didn’t work like that—you couldn’t just curl their tips around a pole and expect them to support a bird’s body weight. Wings were extraordinarily long arms with fingerless hands, and instead of digits, they had a network of feathers… At least that’s what I remembered from biology classes.

  After landing on her feet, the phoenix raised a clawed talon to the studio lights, rolled her feathery body, and grabbed the pole with both wing tips.

  “This is bullshit.” I picked up my fallen burger and took a hefty bite.

  Next, the phoenix swung herself around and around, with her legs outspread like she was doing the splits.

  I shook my head and tore my gaze away from the screen. There’s no way a real bird could do that.

  While the travesty of a phoenix continued her dance, I polished off the burger and bit into a scotch egg. Breadcrumbs spilled down my lips as I chewed the spicy sausage meat and glowered at the screen. Now the phoenix lay on her back, spreading her legs wide before bringing them together, crossing them and her talons toward the floor.

  In some circles, I supposed that was considered attractive behavior, but my skin tightened and every nerve in my body bristled at the thought of this impersonator making me look so… No word could possibly describe how I felt about this pole dancing phoenix.

  “What’s this?” a gruff voice said from the doorway.

  Beowulf and Kain stepped inside, their wide eyes fixed on the television screen.

  “Some silly cow went on human TV pretending to be me.”

  Beowulf scratched his chin. “Now that the Mage King is missing, his people think they can get away with anything.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “That is a light mage.” He pointed a thick finger at the screen. “I doubt that a witch would waste the magic needed to perform such a massive glamor.”

  “Of course.” I reached for a hot dog and took a large bite. “I was so busy being offended that I hadn’t worked out how she was impersonating my phoenix.”

  Kain lowered himself into the seat next to mine and took a Scotch egg. “Isn’t that illegal?”

  “It is,” Beowulf growled. “We made an announcement that any further breaches of the Supernatural Secrecy Act would be punishable by death. It’s possible that the light mage could have come from overseas.”

  “What’s everyone in Logris going to think? She looks exactly like a phoenix. How many people will consider that she didn’t burn the stage or melt the pole?”

  The Shifter King grunted his approval. “Be thankful that you have alibis. Before the music stops, our enforcers will have that wench in magical cuffs.”

  I glanced at the teapot, and thoughts of Lydia rolled to the front of my mind. The young woman knew her king better than I did and had warned me not to interfere, but I couldn’t sit back enjoying the food she must have brought without saying anything that might make him look favorably on her.

  “Thanks for the afternoon tea.” I raised the hotdog. “This is the best I’ve ever had.”

  Puffing out his chest, Beowulf slipped his thumbs into his belt and preened. “Shifter hospitality is more about substance than style.”

  “These burgers are really good,” Kain said around his mouthful.

  “Who made this?” I asked. “A faerie chef?”

  “One of my shifters,” he said with a broad grin.

  “Wow.” I shook my head. “What I wouldn’t do for someone like that to make me food every day.”

  His smile faltered, and he walked out of the room without a word.

  As soon as the door clicked shut, Kain leaned into me and asked, “What was that about?”

  I glanced in the direction of the closed door. Shifters’ ears were almost as good as vampires, and I couldn’t risk Lydia’s safety by gossiping about her. Instead, I mumbled something about how the afternoon teas I’d had in London couldn’t measure up to what we were served here.

  Kain picked up a teapot and held it up in question. I positioned a cup for him to fill and then another.

  “How long am I staying here?” he asked.

  “Until Valentine gets out of prison,” I answered.

  “I can’t believe they jailed him.”

  My gaze rose to the screen, where the phoenix spread out her wings and shook her shimmy. “It’s not like the cameras caught any clear footage of him flying after Kresnik and me.”

  “Maybe that’s why they’re punishing him.”

  “Huh?” I poured milk into my cup and turned to meet his glower.

  “He’s not a normal vampire anymore, is he? He’ll be able to do more than just fly, and they’re all worried about how much more powerful he’s become since returning from the dead.”

  I took a long sip of tea, its slight citrusy scent telling me that it was Earl Grey. “If that was the reason, wouldn’t they have arrested him after Kresnik disappeared? Why wait until now?”

  “My politics professor explained the unspoken hierarchy of the Supernatural Council.” Kain reached for the tongs and placed two slices of lemon into his tea. “The Angel and Demon Kings are the most powerful because their species are the oldest now that gods are obsolete.”

  �
�You mean nobody worships them?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Even if they have immortal bodies, they still can’t do much more than the most powerful angel or demon.”

  The music rose to a crescendo, and I glanced up at the screen. Sarah the phony phoenix turned her feathery back to the camera and twerked her fiery tail feathers. I rolled my eyes and reached for the top layer of the tiered plate, letting my fingers hover over the coffee cake before selecting the chocolate fudge.

  “Kresnik said he created humans.” I bit down into the richest, gooiest chocolate cake this side of Hell and hummed my appreciation. “After that, he turned a select few into shifters, vampires, witches, and mages. If the Supernatural Council believes that, I suppose angels and demons would consider themselves superior to the other races.”

  Kain nodded. “My Supernatural History professor said they evolved from a different set of gods than the Greeks. Now that Valentine is something else, his colleagues probably don’t know what to do with him.”

  “I hope you’re wrong,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Me too, but let’s see if they invent an excuse to keep him behind bars when the seven days are up.” He bit into a mini hotdog, washing it down with a swallow of tea.

  I stared at Kain’s profile, marveling at the depth of his knowledge about the Supernatural World. Having tutors and access to a king didn’t hurt, but it looked like Valentine was doing a great job in grooming him for leadership.

  “Has anyone said when you’ll be able to join the academy?” I asked.

  “Blasphemer,” a voice roared over the sound of the music.

  I stiffened, my gaze snapping to the screen. Sarah fell onto the stripper pole, her wings outstretched as though held up by an invisible force.

  “Those enforcers don’t mess around,” Kain muttered.

  A shudder ran down my spine. “I don’t think enforcers would—”

  The camera panned out to reveal an ifrit stalking across the television studio, his feet melting holes into the linoleum floor.