The Demon King

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Just then, there was a rumble behind Laz. He spun around. Everyone took several steps back, and the dog began to bark. The house Lenore had been living in for decades rocked on its foundation. A flash of red light erupted from beyond the windows. This was joined by blue-purple light, and the sound of something crashing. The house shook further, and Laz found himself running toward the steps leading to the front door. Bael yelled for him to stop, but Laz barely heard the man, much less paid any attention to him.

  His progress was halted anyway when he reached the first of the three steps leading to the door. He saw the gleam of the bubble-like shield a split-second before he would have slammed head-long into it. He skidded to a halt and put out his hand. Lightning crackled painfully around his palm and fingers where they contacted with the shield, and he rapidly pulled his arm back.

  The rumbling grew louder, and the flashes of countering magic came to a halt. A foreboding blossomed in Laz’s gut. Instinctively, he stepped back.

  “My lord, we must leave now.”

  Laz turned to regard Bael. He stood protectively in front of the dog, and the dog stood protectively in front of Dahlia. The dog was whining, looking very nervous. Dahlia knelt down beside her and wrapped an arm around her middle protectively. “Detective,” she said, her large green eyes glued to the spectacle of the shaking house. “I think that thing is going to blow.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The fact that she called him “Detective” was like a splinter in his nervous system. It was an odd sensation, since his position with the force was something he’d put an inordinate amount of work into and something he was normally quite proud of. However, coming from her lips, it sounded distant and impersonal. And he vowed to rectify it.

  But for the record, he was pretty sure she was right about the house blowing up. Which was why he broke into another run, and as he joined the three of them, he shouted his order to the messenger. “Get us out of here!”

  Bael nodded and closed his eyes, speaking a few fast cryptic words in that language Laz almost recognized. Laz reached down and grabbed Dahlia by the arms, pulling her up beside him. He then slid his arm tightly around her waist, and before she could pull away, the world was moving. Just outside his area of perception, he not only heard but felt the house go. The explosion rocked the edges of his being, forcing the portal’s boundaries into static.

  It will take out an entire city block, he thought. Innocents will die.

  The cop in him – the decent human being in him – was accosted by the weight of this revelation. He felt the aftershock of the detonation deep in his heart. As the world went black, they blinked out of one spot, twisted time and space around them, and blinked into another location.

  His grip on Dahlia was tight. It was the grip of a man who now had something to lose and was terrified in that terrible, empathetic way, that he might lose it.

  When they came-to in their second location, they were standing in front of Laz’s apartment complex. Rather, it was the apartment complex of Steven Lazarus, head detective for the Boston City Police department. It was the building belonging to a man Laz already felt he no longer knew.

  “You’re… squeezing me really tight,” came a voice beside his ear.

  Laz looked down at the woman who was still trapped in his arms. Her lips were inches from his, and her eyes beckoned like the warm green of a tropical sea. Her body, long, lithe and lean, was hot against his, pliable and giving, but filled with immense strength. He felt like he was holding a weapon of the most ingenious and tempting design.

  He gazed steadily into those welcoming tropical eyes and realized he was drowning. He hadn’t taken a breath in quite some time. Not that he cared. If he was going to die, this was as good a place as any to do it.

  A growling sound rose at his right knee. The dog. The damned thing had managed to make it out with them after all. A part of him was irritated. But mostly, he was admittedly relieved. The animal seemed to care for Dahlia, and Dahlia definitely cared for her.

  The growling grew louder, and he could feel the corded strength in his own muscles prepping for a fight in response. Suddenly, he feared that he might be hurting Dahlia with his grip. He let go just a little.

  Dahlia relaxed a bit and her hand came to his chest as if to put distance between them. “Okay, now I can breathe,” she said as color returned to her cheeks. “But you can seriously let go. We’re here.”

  The dog’s growl became a warning bark, and they both looked down.

  “I’m fine, Bowie,” said Dahlia. “Relax, girl.”

  “My lord, I would recommend gathering anything you can use to communicate, work, and exist as a human in the mortal world for a period of time,” said Bael, drawing Laz’s reluctant attention. Bael looked helpless as he splayed his hands out and gestured to the apartments behind him. “Remember that you won’t be able to use your magic. And we should move quickly, on the off-chance that your cousin learns of a way to track a messenger after all.”

  “Bael,” said Laz as he released Dahlia and shot the dog a dirty look. He felt his whole world move slightly away from him when Dahlia took a step back, but he tried to ignore how much it pissed him off. “Is Lenore safe?” he asked.

  Bael smiled and nodded. “Yes, my prince. The explosion was your father destroying evidence and any means his nephew may have to further use her against any of you. She is with him now. And if there is anything I know in this world to be true, it is that Lord Astaroth will die in order to protect her.”

  “And the others,” said Laz, though he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to his next question. “The humans in the homes around hers. Are they safe?”

  “The explosion was contained. It may have seemed enormous, but I assure you, Lord Astaroth would not unnecessarily harm a human. It is not a demon’s way, and most definitely not his way.”

  Even while Laz was relieved beyond measure, he couldn’t help but remember his mother’s words about what Astaroth had done to the man who’d followed her home from the grocery store one night. The Demon King had caused quite a bit of harm to that particular human. But perhaps a demon’s definition of what was “necessary” was different from Laz’s. Or… maybe Laz would find such a thing just as necessary if he’d been in his father’s shoes. And maybe, one day in the not too distant future, he would be.

  Though he’d been reassured that everyone was safe back in the neighborhood they’d left, Laz couldn’t shake the black cloud hanging over him. He was feeling agitated. Could it just be the build-up of magic he was storing now? The fact that someone was trying to kill him and the woman destined to be his queen? Was he just stressed out?

  Or was it something more?

  It’s something more, he thought decidedly. He moved away from the others and headed up the metal staircase that led to the second floor of the apartment complex. His boots sounded loudly on the metal of the staircase as he took them two at a time. The complex had been converted from a motel into two long row houses of apartments, fifteen to each building, thirty in total. He smiled ruefully as he remembered that his apartment was #13.

  He stopped before the door and listened. With all that was transpiring, he didn’t want to barge in and head blindly into danger. Just about anything was possible at the moment.

  There was very little sound from beyond the door, but enough to confirm that someone was there. Laz saw light through the curtains, and it was bluish, indicating a television or computer screen. He listened, making out a gasp, and then a swear word, and then the sound of someone dropping something, followed by more swearing.

  Laz felt both relieved and irritated. He knew all of those sounds and what they meant. They meant Ray Baxter, his partner, was using Laz’s VIVE – and dropping the controllers. Laz stifled a few choice words of his own and made a show of grabbing and shaking the handle so Ray would know he was home.

  Then he opened the door and went in. Bax was just pulling the VIVE headset off his head and looking guilty. “Hey,”
he said nonchalantly.

  Laz gave him a look. “Stop dropping the controllers, Bax,” he deadpanned. “You don’t actually throw the fireball in Maniac Mages, you pretend to throw the fireball. The VIVE does the rest.”

  Ray Baxter chuckled and shrugged his broad shoulders. “Yeah, I know. Sorry. It’s easy to forget in this thing.” He stood a little straighter then, and cleared his throat. “Who are your friends?”

  Laz blinked and turned around. The other three had followed him quietly up the stairs and now stood behind him on the threshold of his apartment. None of them said anything, but he could read their thoughts plainly written on their faces. Bael was worried he would have to quickly transport the lot of them away, so he wanted to maintain proximity. Dahlia had that same look in her eyes that he felt in his gut – that something thus far unrevealed was very wrong. She was also probably feeling overwhelmed; all of this had been dumped on her in the course of a single day. And the dog? It was just there because they were.

  Laz gestured for them to enter his very un-kingly two bedroom apartment. “Come in,” he said, stepping to the side to allow them entry. “Welcome to my humble abode.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Once when she was little, Dahlia’s house burned down. It was encompassed in Stale Fire, a kind of fire immune to the magic of the Tuath. Wildfires of Stale Fire sometimes blew in through the Twixt and made it through wayward portals or old gates and into the Tuath kingdoms. When that happened, the Tuath kings had to call on outside help to squelch them. Normally, by the time the fire was out, much had been lost.

  The day the Stale Fire blew into Dahlia’s world, she and Violet had been transported out of the house in time to watch the entire mansion swallowed in unearthly flames the color of amethyst. There was little heat with Stale Fire, and a lot of crackling. The roaring bonfire belched a purple-black cloud filled with nightmares. Inhaling the smoke of a Stale Fire ensured little sleep for centuries. It was a horrible thing to come up against.

  Dahlia had lost everything she’d ever owned in that fire.

  She was alive, Violet was alive, and they’d been transported far enough away that they inhaled none of the smoke. They were lucky. But they’d lost everything they’d ever made or been given or found for three hundred years. The fields of food surrounding their estate would be forever poisoned by the Stale Fire’s smoke. The animals in the stables and menageries would all have to be treated for Stale Fire sickness. And of all the outfits she could have saved, the one she was wearing was her least favorite.

  Dahlia still felt the sting of the fire’s loss, even now more than two thousand years later. That day, she learned two things. One, she learned never to wear clothes she didn’t like. She might end up in them for a long, long time.

  And two, she learned that there was a place a person could reside, somewhere between the pain of a tragedy and the fact that things could be worse. It was somewhere between awful and hellish. In that place, there was no need for words; everyone knew instinctively what you were going through. Sympathizing with you for your loss would seem shallow. Reminding you of how fortunate you were that things weren’t even worse would seem callous, apathetic, and ignorant. So you just didn’t say anything at all.

  That was where Dahlia was right now. She’d more or less been touched by the Stale Fire once more. She’d been kidnapped by the Entity, turned into a vampire, and then made a queen. To make matters more impressive, she was a queen with a signed death warrant. Everything she’d grown to know for the last several thousand years was changed. It was in effect taken from her – just as the Stale Fire had taken everything from her when she was a child.

  There was no point in stating the obvious, in talking about how overwhelming her situation had become. And no amount of tears or complaining would turn things around. All she could really do was try to keep herself from falling completely apart. The whole of her emotion seemed to be more than the sum of all that was transpiring. It felt like there was something else wrong – something just beyond the realm of her knowledge. But maybe that was just what it felt like when a person was stuck for too long between bad and worse.

  Either way, she needed to deal. She needed to keep moving. Everything could be figured out eventually as long as she survived and didn’t lose her head. And she was pretty certain that she could keep her head, as long as one more thing didn’t fucking go wrong.

  So that’s where Dahlia was mentally when she entered the apartment of the man who was the head detective for the Boston City Police, the Akyri King, the demon prince, and her fated husband. The door opened directly into the apartment’s living room. Everything was decorated in tasteful and simple earth tones, from the beige carpet to the off-white paint on the walls.

  To the right of the door was an entertainment set up, a fairly large plasma television screen, a gaming computer with a futuristic-looking red lit face, a hutch with a number of DVD’s and video games, and a plethora of video game systems stacked neatly to the left of the television screen.

  To the left of the door was a tan leather furniture set – a sofa, a large plush chair, and a love seat. Between them was a coffee table, which at the moment hosted two beer bottles, one empty, the other half-way there.

  The beers no doubt belonged to the man in the room, who was holding a VIVE virtual reality headset under one arm and grasping the two controllers to the VIVE with the other.

  “Baxter, this is Dahlia Kellen and this is Bael. Dahlia and Bael, this is Baxter, my partner with the force,” said Lazarus by way of introduction. “Oh, and this is Bowie.” He gestured to the dog to include her.

  Dahlia and Bael nodded politely, and Bowie gave a little bark that honestly sounded just as polite. Dahlia wondered if Bael felt as lost as she did. Probably not. He was probably used to this kind of shit.

  “Nice to meet you,” said Baxter as he moved to the coffee table to set down the headset and hand controllers. “Can I get you guys a beer? They’re the perfect temperature right now. Would Bowie like some water?”

  Dahlia shook her head. Beer would be bad unless it was Lifeblood made to taste like beer. “We’re good,” she said, speaking for her and Bowie, whom she knew had just been in the demon castle’s kitchens.

  Bael also shook his head. “No, but thank you for the offer.” He looked at Laz, who nodded in understanding. They were pressed for time.

  “I need to pick up a few of my things and head out, Bax. The place is yours for as long as you need it; I’m officially out of commission.” Laz moved through the living room to the hallway, from which Dahlia could see three more doors led off. Two were most likely bedrooms, and the third, she was guessing was a restroom.

  Baxter was quiet, a look of keen interest crossing his features as he watched his partner disappear down the hall. Dahlia studied him. He was the kind of man a woman wouldn’t mind warming her bed. He was tall and well built, and his light brown hair was thick. He had interesting eyes. When she’d first walked in, she could have sworn they were blue. But now they seemed to be darker. Maybe she’d been mistaken. They looked almost brown now.

  Baxter turned to her and Bael. “Excuse me,” he said politely before turning to head down the hall after Laz. Dahlia pricked her vampire ears, listening in a way that would have been impossible for a human.

  “You in some kind of trouble?” she heard Baxter ask.

  “You know me,” Lazarus chuckled. The sound gave Dahlia a delicious chill, which she suppressed by hugging herself. “I’m never out of trouble. But this time, it’s about more than me.”

  There was a long pause. “Is it that beauty out there? I know who she is, Laz. What’s your business with her?”

  Dahlia felt a pang in her chest. She hated it when people talked about her. Nonetheless, despite the pain she found herself listening harder.

  “It’s… complicated.”

  “Shit. She’s your queen, isn’t she? You lucky son of a bitch.”

  Lazarus made shushing sounds. “Keep it d
own. And I know. But there’s more, Bax.”

  “More than that? What more could there possibly fucking be?”

  “Everything good comes with something bad, you know that. Two sides of the coin.”

  “Is it the other kings?” Baxter asked. Dahlia’s gaze intensified where she peered down the hall.

  “Yes and no.”

  She heard someone pulling something from a closet, followed by the sound of zippers. Luggage of some kind?

  “The Entity?” Baxter asked next.

  Okay, he knows about everything, Dahlia thought. Now she was wondering if Baxter was human. Maybe the strangeness of his eyes had been indicative of something bigger. An Akyri maybe? No, he didn’t have the Akyri feel to him. As a warlock, she would have been able to detect an Akyri right away. He was something else.

  “Not this time. Or….” She heard Lazarus sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe. Look,” he said, and she could tell he’d stopped moving and was facing his partner head-on. “Try to cover for me if you can. Keep communication on a need-to-know basis only. And no magic. I need to lay low for a while and figure some things out.”

  “You heading to the Akyri castle?”

  There’s an Akyri castle? Dahlia wondered, mystified. He really does know everything; he knows more than I do!

  “No. We’re going off the grid.”

  In human terms, the “grid” referred to technology. And since they both had cell phones, and neither of them had been told not to use them, she was guessing that wasn’t what Lazarus was referring to this time. She was guessing he meant the “supernatural grid.” Which, ironically, was harder for someone like either of them to accomplish. It meant not using magic. It also meant not going anywhere magical. That meant remaining in the mortal realm and not communicating in any way with anyone from the other thirteen.