Blood King (Spirit Seeker Book 1)

by Amber K. Bryant

  Elis almost dropped his glass. Sybille stood just outside the shack dressed in a blue string bikini, a hat with a floppy brim perched atop her head.

  She looked down at herself. “Apparently I’m in your dream now. What am I wearing? You couldn’t even give me a beach wrap or something?”

  “What for?”

  No wonder there’d been two glasses prepped on the counter. He poured her a drink and she took it from him.

  They strolled out to a couple of beach chairs that hadn’t existed five minutes ago. There they sat, listening to the gentle lap of waves gracefully hitting the shore as they sipped their drinks.

  “We don’t have time for this, you know.” She placed her glass in the chair’s cup holder.

  “We’re asleep. We have time for whatever we want.”

  She looked away. “That’s not what I mean.”

  He slid his hand behind her neck, gently rubbing her shoulder.

  “This. This is what I mean.” She tensed up but didn’t stop his fingers from working over her skin. “You’re complicating things for me. My life is already complicated. So is yours. What we’re trying to do is complicated. And dangerous.”

  “We’re not in our lives right now. We’re outside of them. I’m not asking for anything from you.” He was of course. Or he wanted to, but for right now, he wanted nothing more than to be here with her. He refused to think beyond this beach and the sand and what they could do in it.

  Slowly, she responded to his touch, leaning towards him, letting him move in front of her so that he was kneeling between her thighs, his face dangerously close to her own. Her breath caught as his lips brushed her neck.

  “None of that, thirster.”

  “No teeth, I promise. Only lips. And tongue.”

  She slid her hands over the bare skin of his back, tucking them inside the elastic band of his swim trunks, feeling the muscles tighten as he pressed himself against her. “Just because I’m letting this happen here doesn’t mean I want it in our waking life. We can’t have this. It can’t happen.”

  “You’re not awake yet.”

  Those words were spoke against her lips as his found hers.

  “You need to wake up. Wake up!”

  How were words still coming out of his mouth when he was kissing her? It made no sense. Stupid dream. “How are you still talking?”

  Wait, how had she said that if she was kissing him back?

  “Sybille, wake the hell up! We have to go!”

  Darkness fell and the beach slid away. Sybille bolted upright in her cot. Her family’s dimly lit cabin came into focus. Devin had both hands on her shoulders. “Were you shaking me?” Already missing the feel of warm sand under bare feet, she shivered and wrapped her blanket around herself.

  “I had to. You wouldn’t wake up.”

  “I was...I was dreaming. Why are you waking me anyways? It’s not even light out yet.”

  Devin frowned. “I’ve looked everywhere. I can’t find him.”

  “Find who?” There could be only one person he was talking about, of course. Her stomach tightened. Suddenly, the warm sand and salty ocean breeze weren’t the only things she was missing. Sybille’s eyes darted around the room. No one else was there besides the two of them.

  Elis was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It was entirely possible that Juliana was being deceived. If so, her new human psychic assistant made an excellent liar. Zareen appeared as disconcerted as Juliana.

  “No, no, no, they have to be here. They couldn’t have left!”

  Juliana floated next to a shaking, cursing Zareen in the alcove of a house a few doors down from where Zareen lived. Aside from a more vibrant color palette and the questionable decorating aesthetic found here, the homes were very similar—both bungalows with a living room leading through a large archway into a dining room, a kitchen visible behind that. A staircase stood off to their right and under it was an open door which appeared to lead to a small den cluttered with boxes, papers and craft items—bolts of fabric, yarn, and a random assortment of discarded, half-finished projects.

  A middle-aged man and woman stood in front of Zareen and Juliana, blocking the short hallway leading to the den. They were both spiritists and both were aware of Juliana’s presence.

  “Dear heart, Sybille doesn’t have to be here. And she did leave. With Devin and Elis.” The woman put her arm around Zareen’s shoulders and, one eye on Juliana, led her to a chair in the living room. “Why so upset about it?”

  The man, wearing an atrocious paisley vest that made Juliana’s ghostly eyes sting, sat on the couch near her. “We don’t have time to catch you up on all of the details, Zareen, but you know your cousin. She wouldn’t have made the decision she made if it wasn’t the right thing to do.”

  Zareen leaned in towards him. “That may be so, Dad, but this spirit knows Elis. She’s known him his entire life.”

  The man, Zareen’s father, raised an eyebrow. “His whole life?”

  Juliana hovered close by. Not wanting Zareen to speak for her, she could no longer stay quiet. Who knew how her story would sound filtered through a human’s mouth? “I was married to Elis. We were both bloodthirsters for many years.”

  She proceeded to tell them the cleaned-up version of her history with Elis. It pained her to talk her way through the most wretched moments of her existence for the second time in an hour, but there was no avoiding it. If she was to find out where Elis had gone, she needed them to believe her.

  Unfortunately, neither of them was won over quite as easily as Zareen had been. The woman was particularly suspicious. Juliana gathered that this was Zareen’s aunt and the mother of Elis’ pathetic crush. The woman’s words seemed intended to invoke Juliana’s ire. “You are his estranged wife then? You parted badly?”

  That was the century’s most grand understatement. “Yes, we did, but that doesn’t negate the truth of what I’m saying. Elis is dangerous. Your daughter is in danger as long as she’s with him.”

  Playing the mother-daughter sympathy card seemed to work, at least to an extent. A flicker of doubt crossed the woman’s face. Her brow furrowed in concern.

  The man handed Zareen a cup of tea. “We don’t expect you to understand all of our family dynamics… Juliana is it? The thing is, out of all of us, Sybille is by far the most powerful. She’s capable of handling a lot, and she’s also an extremely good judge of character. Perhaps the Elis you knew is gone now. His soul has reattached itself to him, after all. Quite literally, he’s been reincarnated. That’s bound to change someone.”

  “But we don’t know how it would change a bloodthirster, do we, because it’s never happened before.” Zareen placed her tea cup on the coffee table. “Sybille told me about Elis before all of this business with Nate started. She said he came to her every night for weeks. Not when she had opened herself to spirits, but afterwards. He invaded her personal space, her very personal space—her mind. Don’t you wonder why?”

  No one offered any suggestions, though Juliana could imagine exactly why he would do such a thing. It seemed Zareen could as well.

  “Whether he’s got his spirit back or not, he’s still a thirster—an old thirster. You’ve seen the way he is when he’s with her. Doesn’t he come off as obsessed? Margot, come on, this is your daughter’s life we’re talking about!”

  “He actually seems quite reserved.” Margot fussed with a button on her cardigan. “Besides, I always imagined she and Devin would eventually…you know.”

  Devin. That name had been mentioned before. Juliana stored it away at the back of her mind. Another potential love interest—a potentially jealous one—could be of use to her at some point.

  “Devin? Maybe.” Zareen laughed. “Until a sexy thirster on the lookout for a sexy eternal life partner shows up and starts making goo-goo eyes at her.”

  “All right, enough of this.” Zareen’s father crossed his arms. He was anything but an intimidating presence—short, mild manner
ed, with a receding hairline, thick glasses, and terrible fashion sense. Yet when he spoke, everyone listened. “Zareen, your cousin is the most capable person I know, but Margot, that doesn’t mean Elis doesn’t pose a threat to her. She’s already going into a dangerous situation. Devin is good backup, but he’s only one person and his position there has already been compromised.”

  Zareen sat forward in her chair again. “What position? Where? Wait, do you mean… Holy crap.” She looked at Juliana. “I know where they are. I can take you there.”

  Her father stood. “Absolutely not. Zareen!”

  Already out of her chair, Zareen led Juliana back to the front door. Her father followed her. “You can’t go there. You know that.”

  She paused, her hand on the doorknob. “If it was anyone besides Sybille, I wouldn’t do it. But it is Sybille. You can understand that, right? She’s like another daughter to you.”

  He paused and exchanged a look with Zareen’s aunt that Juliana couldn’t interpret. She had all but forgotten how messy human relationships could be. And they dared to judge her interactions with Elis as strange! She had to admit, though, such familial dysfunction provided a certain amount of entertainment value.

  Finally, the man nodded. “I’ll prepare some salts and herbal blends. Get your things together and then come back here. You can take my car.”

  A smile spread over Zareen’s face. Even Juliana, as detached as she was, could tell that her father’s willingness to help both surprised and pleased her.

  They headed back to Zareen’s house, where she gathered some essentials and aptly lied to her husband about a benign spirit needing her help in a safe, gentile town fifty miles to the East.

  She kissed his cheek. “I’ll be back in a day. Two at most.”

  He didn’t complain, but instead pressed her to him and gave her a proper sendoff. Juliana could barely watch, thoughts of all those years with Elis threatening to undo the tenuous calm she’d worked so hard to maintain.

  “He’s used to it, me having to do weird things I can’t really explain at the last minute. I don’t like lying, but I also don’t want him to worry,” Zareen whispered to her on their way out so that her husband wouldn’t hear her. “It pays our bills. Sort of. We both get to spend a lot of time with our kids. It’s never enough, though.”

  That she understood. Time was something that could be stolen away. All it took was one choice for your entire future to be undone.

  “I rest my eyes for five damn minutes!”

  “You can stop panicking any time now Devin.” Sybille threw on a sweatshirt and twisted her hair into a messy bun at the back of her head. “He’s all right, wherever he is. I mean, he’s still alive, at least.”

  “Okay, A: how do you know that; and B: do you really think I care whether he’s alive or not? Jesus, Sybille!” Devin waited for her by the front door, nervously twirling his keys around his fingers. “What I care about is that he took off on us. On purpose. For all we know, he’s playing on the Blood King’s team and he’s lured us to the Low so we can become bloodthirster ritual sacrifices.”

  “That’s absurd. Bloodthirsters don’t have ritual sacrifices. They only have the regular kind. You’re being paranoid.”

  “Am I? Did you know that Elis mesmerized me without my permission the other day?”

  This made her pause. She studied him for any telltale smugness, but if he felt self-righteous, he wasn’t showing it. The only emotion he was displaying right now was good old-fashioned anger.

  “That’s right, Sybille. He used his ancient thirster magic to get into my head and find out about my past so he could leverage that information against me. Does that sound like a guy we should be trusting with our lives?”

  “Why didn’t you bring this up earlier?”

  “Well, I mean…he didn’t actually end up using what he’d found out, but that’s only because I told everyone everything anyways. He would have though, if it had suited himself.”

  “Or he gave you the opportunity to tell us things we needed to know about this case instead of spilling it himself.”

  “Are you defending him? Seriously?”

  “I just want you to see that this issue with Elis isn’t as black and white as you’d like it to be, Devin. We don’t know where he is or why he isn’t here. We can’t go making assumptions about his guilt.”

  “Or about his innocence.”

  “Fine. Or his innocence. We need to find him and then we’ll figure out if we should save him or stake him. Agreed?”

  “Maybe. Answer my first question.”

  She rolled her eyes. “What first question?

  “How do you know that he’s alive? Did you have a vision?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” She paused. Devin wasn’t going to like this. She didn’t want him to know that only a few minutes ago, she’d been wrapped up in a hot embrace with the man he so bitterly detested. It would only hurt him and serve to prejudice him against Elis further. Plus, the thought of Devin knowing was unbearably awkward. Best to stay vague. “He was in my dream.”

  Unfortunately, those five words were enough for Devin to draw his own conclusions. “Oh God, take it back, I want to unhear that.”

  “Well, sorry, but he was. It wasn’t that I dreamed of him, though. His spirit took a field trip into my brain again. I talked to him.”

  “And during the course of your conversation, did he happen to mention why he isn’t still sleeping on that rug in front of the fireplace?”

  She shook her head. “No but I don’t think he knows that anything has happened to him. He seemed…um…” A shiver ran through her at the thought of Elis’ lips upon hers. “He seemed pretty happy.”

  “I bet he was. Ugh, I think I might be sick.” Devin turned his back to her and leaned his forehead against the door.

  “I’m just saying, this indicates to me that someone took him. I don’t know how, but it’s what I feel in my gut happened. He must be unconscious somewhere. We have to find him!”

  Devin’s shoulders stilled. He took a deep breath. “At least we can agree on that.”

  All bundled up, Sybille stood, bag in hand, waiting for Devin to open the door. Instead, he stayed put, turned back to her and placed his hands on her shoulders. Some things must be said, and he knew he’d have to be the one to say them.

  “You need to be prepared for everything not to turn out the way you want them to with him. He isn’t like…” He wanted to say, “he isn’t like me.” Couldn’t she see that? “He isn’t human. Elis thinks like a predator, because that’s what he is.”

  “So are humans.” She took one of his hands off her shoulder and held it in her own. Warm, soft skin wrapped around his rough fingers. “If we choose to be. Elis has a choice too. His spirit gives him that choice.”

  Hands clasped, they stayed there a moment and then a moment longer, both knowing they didn’t have time for this, both unwilling to break away. “Thank you, Devin.”

  “For what?”

  “For coming back to the Low with me. For helping me figure all of this out. For helping me now, even though Elis isn’t exactly your favorite person.”

  Here was his opening. It was now or never. “You should know that I’d do any—”

  She stilled his words with a finger to his lips. “There will be time for grand declarations later.”

  Devin had thought he’d have more time with his sister too and look how that had turned out. Disappointment picked away at his already frazzled emotions. He pulled his hand from hers and took a step back from her touch. The chill left by the absence of her skin upon his own set in quickly, the isolation of being next to her and a world away at the same time a familiar discomfort.

  Sybille was wrong. The future wasn’t guaranteed and time for that later was a lie people told themselves to forget the pain of the present. He couldn’t seem to muster the energy to argue with her, though. In his mind, he thought of a million ways to say the same simple thing to her. He thought throu
gh a million things he’d do to show her he was the one being truthful. He hoped a million times that he would have the right chance to tell her just once, and that for once, she would believe him.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  She had been stolen from him. One moment Sybille was in his arms, her lips willingly—even eagerly—upon his. The next moment, Elis was kissing salty sea air.

  Someone had woken her. It hadn’t been him, obviously, since there was no way he would have interrupted what was going on in that dream. It must have been Devin. Had he known what they were doing? Maybe he’d woken her out of jealousy.

  No, that wasn’t possible. Devin was as psychic as one of Larkin’s stupid, expensive rocks.

  The question then wasn’t why Devin had woken Sybille, it was why neither of them had woken him. If Sybille needed to be yanked from their sexy escapade so abruptly, why was he still here on this beach, getting drunk all alone while he stared at the sunset?

  And why couldn’t he wake himself up?

  He was usually pretty good at that. He might not remember it when he did wake up, but his wandering dream-spirit seemed to know when it was time for his physical body to shrug off sleep and start the day.

  He tried this time and got nothing. Then again, there was that margarita. Or four of them, rather. Possibly five. He had no idea how long it had been now since Sybille left, or since he’d lost track of his margaritas. The pitcher was bottomless.

  It felt good to be drunk, but damned if it wasn’t disorientating as well. He was trying to do something, wasn’t he? He was trying to wake up.

  There was someone who needed him…

  Elis stared at his salt-rimmed glass. What had he been doing before this beach, before the mountain and Sybille?

  He lifted the glass to his lips and the set it down again. Turning around, he walked the way he had first come, away from the beach, through a stand of swaying palm trees, their shoots heavy with ripening fruit. It didn’t take him long to realize his assumption that the dreamscape would change back to Sybille’s mountain had been naive. The tropical island stayed a tropical island, the trees stayed palms. There was no mountain, only a slight rise in the land that couldn’t even be properly called a hill.