The King

by J. R. Ward

  "Faster," he gritted.

  "And run the risk of losing a shock absorber? We must needs get down off this pile of rock."

  Just when Assail was ready to roar, the end of the trip presented itself abruptly and without fanfare: A single-story concrete structure with all the charm of a kennel came into view, and before they even closed in, he popped his latch and began to jump out--

  At that very moment, the door to the place swung wide.

  And for the rest of his life, he would never forget what came out of there.

  Marisol was naked from the waist down, a parka that he recognized flagging wildly behind her as she lurched into the night. Spotlit and blinded by the headlights, she glowed red, blood streaking down her legs and up her ghostly torso, her face grim as death as she pointed a gun straight in front of her.

  "Marisol!" he screamed. "Don't shoot! It is Assail!"

  He put his hands up in the air, but it wasn't as though she could see him. "It is Assail!"

  She stumbled to a stop, but like a good girl she kept that gun up as she blinked myopically. "Assail ...?"

  Her voice cracked with a despair that changed him forever: As with the vision of her, he would hear that tone frame the two syllables of his name for years yet to come.

  In his nightmares.

  "Marisol, darling Marisol ... I have come for you."

  He wanted to tell Ehric to kill those lights, but he didn't know who else had been in there with her and whether anyone would be chasing after her.

  "Marisol, come unto me."

  The way her hand shook as she brought it to her head made him want to go to her. But she seemed unsure of what was reality and what might have been a phantom of her imagination. And with that gun, she was as dangerous as she was vulnerable.

  "Marisol, I promised your grandmother that I would save you. Come unto me, darling one. Come unto my voice."

  He held his arms out into the darkness.

  "Assail..." As she took a step forward, he realized she was limping. Badly. But then, of course some of that blood had to be hers.

  "She is going to need medical care," he said aloud. Damn it, how could he get her treated?

  If she died on the way back ...

  How much of that blood was hers?

  As she took another step and one more, and still nobody emerged in her wake, he had some hope that not all of what covered her was her own.

  "Come unto me." As he heard his own voice break, he could feel Ehric shooting him a shocked look from the SUV. "My darling..."

  Marisol moved that shaking hand over to shield her eyes, and for some reason, that brought the fact that she was naked into full focus.

  His throat stung so badly he could not swallow.

  Fuck this.

  Assail shoved his gun into his belt and rushed forward to meet her more than halfway.

  "Assail ... is it really you?" she whispered as he came close.

  "Yes. Please don't shoot--come unto me, darling one."

  As she let out a sob, he grabbed her and hauled her up against his chest, the muzzle of that gun of hers going right into his sternum. If she pulled that trigger, she would kill him outright.

  She did not.

  With a sob, she gave herself over to his strength, and he held her up from the ground as she crumpled. She weighed nearly nothing against him, and for some reason, that terrified him even more.

  Accordingly, he allowed only a moment of communion--and then he needed to get her safe.

  Swinging her up into his arms, he turned and ran for the bulletproof Rover, ran into those headlights as if they were a heavenly safety zone.

  Ehric and his brother anticipated what he wanted to perfection. They jumped out of the Rover and left open the backseat doors--whilst they removed Benloise from the rear and kept that man away from sight.

  Marisol did not need to know of his presence.

  Placing his female in the back, Assail broke out the sleeping bag he had packed, along with the water and PowerBars he had brought for her. Covering her nakedness, he held on to her as she fell into a fit of trembling.

  "Marisol," he said as he pulled back. "Eat. Drink. Ehric, my cousin, shall take you--"

  Her nails bit into his forearm even through the heavy sweater he wore. "Don't leave me!"

  He touched her beautiful face. "I must needs work herein for a moment. Things must be attended to. I shall meet you on the road." He wrenched around. "Ehric! Evale!"

  The two males came over--and for a moment, he considered driving her away himself.

  But no, vengeance needed to be served, and he was the one to balance the scales.

  "My darling, look unto my relations." As he eased back so they could lean in and show their faces, he was thankful they had his exact coloring, and that their features were so like his own. Indeed, the three of them had been mistaken for brothers. "They shall carry you unto safety and put their lives before your own. I shall join up with you anon. I shall not be long, I swear to you."

  Her frantic, harried eyes bounced back and forth as if she were trying desperately to hold herself together.

  "Go," Assail hissed, glancing at the facility. "Go now!"

  And yet he found it impossible to turn away from his Marisol. She had been abused and her state of undress suggested that--

  Ehric gripped his upper arm. "Be of ease, my cousin. She shall be treated as our precious sister."

  Even Evale spoke up for once. "She will be well in hand, cousin."

  Assail had a moment of connection with the males, words of gratitude clogging his throat. In the end, all he could do was bow unto them.

  Then he had to lean back into the SUV. "I shall not be long."

  On an instinct, without being conscious of deciding to do so ... he kissed Marisol on the mouth.

  Mine, he thought.

  Forcing himself to refocus, he grabbed his backpack, shut the SUV's door, and stepped away. Ehric, bless him, was careful to turn the vehicle around so that Benloise was not illuminated in the headlights--and then the Rover sped down the uneven path.

  Oh, how he wished that lane had been paved. He wished it were a fucking highway with a seventy-mile-an-hour speed limit. Or better yet, that they had come via helicopter.

  After the headlights had disappeared, he took out a headset and put it on, clicking on its miner's light. Then he went over to Benloise, grabbed him by the duct-tape straps about his ankles, and pulled him across the snowy ground to the open entry.

  Dropping the legs, he palmed his gun and pointed it at the man.

  "Just to make sure you stay put," Assail ground out.

  Pop!

  Benloise jerked in tighter, trying to protect his gut--too late. The bullet was already in there and leisurely doing its job: While painful and debilitating, intestinal wounds took their own sweet time accomplishing their goal.

  Although Assail didn't plan on keeping the bastard waiting long for his death.

  Striding into the dwelling, he kept his weapon up and his eyes sharp.

  What he found inside gave him pause.

  Directly by the open door, a severed human hand lay discarded, as if its purpose had been served and it was no longer of value. The body it had been attached to was right there as well--no, that corpse had two hands ... although no face to speak of.

  So there was at least one other dead inside.

  His Marisol had clearly fought for her freedom like a banshee.

  Walking around the open floor space, he saw nothing of value or interest--or anything that could detain an individual. But over in the far corner, there were a set of stairs descending to a lower level.

  He double-checked on his captive. Benloise remained writhing in the snow just outside the main door, his dark eyes open and blinking unevenly, his upper lip peeled back, his porcelain caps glowing in the ambient light.

  Best to take him with.

  Assail went over and yanked the man up to his feet. When Benloise failed to stand on his own, it wa
s the work of a moment to drag his hundred-and-forty-pound weight into the interior. Then together, they promenaded over to the staircase.

  Down into the underground, Benloise's useless feet bouncing behind them like balls.

  And there was the evil.

  The lower floor was made up of a large open space with three cells and a wall of horror. One of the cells was not empty. There was a man with a brutalized face and neck lying on his back, staring at what you could only hope was Hell. His right arm had been pulled through the iron bars, and the bloody stump announced that his was the hand that had been taken.

  For a moment, Assail felt his heart sting with desolate pride. Marisol had gotten herself out. No matter what they had done to her, or how few her resources had been, she had triumphed over her captors, bringing them not just to heel, but to their graves ...

  It was at that moment that he knew he was lost to her.

  He was in love with this woman--and indeed, it was sick to feel those depths in the midst of this carnage and violence, but the heart was where it was.

  And as Assail pictured his Marisol chained to that stained stretch of concrete wall, he became rageful to the point of insanity, a stampede of bulls racing through his body, their thousand hooves driving him into madness.

  Wheeling around on Benloise, he bared his fangs and hissed like the vampire he was--

  In spite of being shot, the drug wholesaler recoiled. "Madre de Dios!"

  Assail scrummed down, getting in the man's face. "That is right! I am nightmare come upon you!"

  There was only one chain hanging from the wall. The other was coiled on the floor inside the locked cell, the blood that painted the links proving it had been the murder weapon Marisol had used.

  It would be put into service yet again.

  Assail dematerialized through the bars and picked up the sticky, copper-scented links.

  Oh, Marisol, would that you had not had to be so brave.

  As Assail dematerialized back out, Benloise was no longer the in-control businessman who was used to holding all the cards. Unlike the dead bodies and the blood or even the loss of his brother and the threat to his own life--all of which he had been able to mostly retain his composure around--learning Assail's true identity sent him over the edge.

  Whimpering, crying, praying, the man lost control of his bladder, urine pooling out of his shrunken cock onto the concrete floor.

  Assail stalked over to the wall and reattached the chain. Fortunately, there was nothing fresh upon the stained surface. There was going to be, however.

  Manhandling Benloise's shrieking, flopping, pissed-on body off the floor, Assail bit through the duct tape tethers at the man's wrists, and cuffed him to the wall Christ-style by shortening the lengths until his hollow torso was pulled flat.

  Assail shucked his backpack and unzipped it. As he looked at the amount of explosive he had brought with him, he knew it was more than enough to blow the facility sky-high. He glanced at Benloise. The man was crying all over himself, shaking his head as if he were hoping to wake up.

  "Indeed, you are truly conscious," Assail gritted. "That shall not last, however."

  Pivoting to face the cell, he pictured his Marisol in there, terrified ... and worse.

  His heart thumped in his chest. If he blew this place up ... Benloise would be home free, dead and gone--mayhap to Hell, but as one could not be sure of the afterlife until one got there, it seemed far more prudent to err on the side of real-time suffering.

  He had intended to kill the wholesaler first. Then set the explosives and detonate them from a distance.

  But that was not as equitable as it should be. Marisol had suffered--

  A growl vibrated up through his chest ... as though his very body were protesting at the prospect of being cheated of the death.

  "No," he told himself. "Better this way."

  Too bad only part of him believed it.

  Assail rezipped his backpack and strapped the thing on again. Going to first one and then the other of the chains, he inspected them for security. Indeed, they were well and truly placed. The same was true for the cuffs upon those wrists.

  Snapping out a hold, he took Benloise's chin and forced the man's head back.

  With another hiss, he bit into the flesh by the carotid, ripping a hunk out and spitting it onto the floor. The blood tasted good in his mouth and his canines tingled in anticipation of more. Except they would be denied.

  The bite was but a symbol of what as a male he was driven by instinct and custom to do in the protection of his female. And he would have torn the neck fully open if Benloise himself had not been into torture.

  As his prey spoke in a rush in that foreign tongue, Assail fought the battle to leave the man alive. Cruelty was going to require self-control in this circumstance--and ordinarily that was not a problem.

  Nothing involving Marisol had been ordinary, however.

  Assail slapped the man into silence. Jabbing his forefinger into that face, he growled, "She was not yours to take. Do you hear me? Not yours. Mine."

  Before he lost his hold upon his temper, he stalked off to the stairs, leaving the lights on so that Benloise was fully aware of where he was: a prison of his own making with naught but the remains of one of his bodyguards to keep him company.

  Mounting the steps two at a time, Assail knew there was a possibility someone could come and free the wholesaler, but it was remote. Benloise was notoriously secretive, and with Eduardo dead, the only people who would miss him were guards and staff--and given the cagey manner in which the man operated, there would be a lag before the troops marshaled up conversation and discovered that each individual was not so much out of the loop as that there had been no contact from their superior to anyone on the team.

  After that? It was an open question whether any of them would actually look for their boss. People who operated in the underground world scattered when it came to complications like this--no one was going to risk getting killed or handcuffed by the human authorities just to save somebody else's skin.

  Benloise was going to slowly die, alone.

  And when someone found the bodies inside the facility? This year ... next ... a decade from now?

  The cover Benloise had constructed was going to be blown.

  Upstairs, Assail performed a sweep of the open room. He found two more phones, which he turned off, removed the batteries, and slipped into his pack. He left the guns and ammo, and was careful to shut the door and test that it self-locked.

  It did.

  Walking around the squat little building, he found a petroleum tank in the back. Locating the gauge, he noted that it was only a quarter full. Given how cold it was at this elevation, he guessed that the supply would run out within a day or two.

  The bodies would be stored in a rather cool environment. Good to keep down the smell, not that there was going to be much of that getting out, given the small windows upstairs, all of which were closed.

  He was about to take off when he noticed a car parked off to the side.

  Heading over, he lifted its camouflage cover and tested one of the doors. Locked.

  If he blew it up, the fireball would attract attention, and that was not desirable. He let the tarp fall back into place.

  Closing his eyes in preparation to dematerialize, he saw his Marisol coming out of that door. And it was as he shuddered that he became one with the night air, casting his molecules to the south, to a rest area approximately twenty miles down the Northway.

  Re-forming, he got out his cell and dialed Ehric.

  One ring. Two. Three.

  "She is just fine," his cousin said by way of greeting. "She has eaten and had some water. And she is anxious to see you."

  Assail sagged in his own skin. "Well done. I am where we agreed."

  "Did you accomplish all and sundry?"

  "Indeed. Is there anyone upon you?"

  "Neither in front nor behind, and we are but two miles from you."

 
"I shall wait here."

  Hanging up, he stared at his cellular device. His first instinct was to get her to his home, but she was going to require medical attention--and she would want to be cleaned up and clothed before her grandmother saw her.

  Assail's next call was to his own home, and when the heavily accented female voice answered, he found himself blinking away tears.

  "Madam," he said roughly. "She--"

  "Not dead," the old woman moaned. "Meu Deus, tell me she--"

  "She is alive. I have her."

  "What? You say again, please."

  "Alive." Although he wasn't sure about any kind of "well" part. "She is alive and within my care."

  Frantic speech now, in the mother tongue. And though Assail knew none of the words, the meaning was not only clear, but something he agreed with.

  Thank you, Scribe Virgin, he thought, even though he was not religious.

  "We are far from Caldwell," he told her. "We may not make it before dawn, in which case we shall be home after sunfall."

  "Speak to her? May I?"

  "Of course, madam." Up ahead, a pair of headlights mounted a rise on the highway and came down toward him, paring off on the exit ramp. "I need but a moment, and I shall put her on."

  The Range Rover piloted directly over to him, taillights flaring as Ehric slowed.

  "Here she is, madam," he said as he opened the rear door.

  Marisol was wrapped in that sleeping bag, and her color was better--at least until she looked at him and what little blush she retained in her cheeks immediately disappeared.

  As Assail felt confusion, Ehric twisted around, glanced at him--and recoiled. With a quick circle, he indicated his own face.

  Oh, shit. Assail must have blood all over his mouth.

  "Your grandmother," he blurted, shoving the phone at Marisol.

  Sure enough, that did the trick to redirect his female's attention--and as she reached out like he was offering her a lifeline, he reshut the door.

  Wheeling around, he headed to the public facility behind him at a dead run, located the men's room portion and entered the lineup of urinals and toilet stalls.

  Over at one of the sinks, he looked into the flat panel of stainless steel that served as a mirror.

  "Fuck."

  Not what any female wanted to see, especially after she had been subjected to a capture: His face was indeed covered with blood, his jaw and lips marked with the stain--and his fangs ... the tips of his fangs showed.