The Demon King

by Heather Killough-Walden

  There was another long silence. Then Laz swore softly.

  “What is it?” Baxter asked.

  “I had my work cell. My personal cell was here and silenced. There’s a message from D’Angelo.”

  More quiet stretched.

  “I had a feeling something was wrong,” Lazarus sighed. “This is going to kill Dahlia.” Dahlia’s heart skipped a beat, then began to hammer. “I don’t know how I’m going to break it to her.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “You could try just telling me.”

  Laz spun to face Dahlia, who had made it silently down the hall and was standing in the doorway to his bedroom. Baxter stepped back as if instinctively sensing the sudden thickness of danger in the air.

  “What is it, Detective?” Dahlia asked, adding an extra pin prick to his already tender nerves by deliberately not using his name. “What is it that’s going to kill me?”

  Laz held her gaze for as long as he could before he started to notice a purple tint to the outer rings of her stunning green eyes. He knew she was running out of patience with him, but this news would tear her apart. She’d been studying with Lalura Chantelle for years. She, her sister Violet, and Poppy Nix made up the warlock coven that she’d come to know as family. And these days, Dahlia Kellen could use all the family she could get.

  However, delaying the truth wouldn’t make it any easier for her to handle. He braced himself and squared his shoulders. “I’m sorry, Dahlia. D’Angelo sent a message earlier this afternoon. Lalura Chantelle was attacked by the Entity.” He paused, suddenly finding it hard to say the words. By the time he did, the purple ring lining Dahlia’s eyes had grown in width and lightened in color. “I’m afraid he succeeded this time.”

  The air in the room had already been growing thicker, but now it felt like it was charging up. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. A crackling sound buzzed his ears. There was a pressure around him; Baxter noticed it. He backed further away, putting distance between himself and the pair of them.

  “She’s dead,” Dahlia said softly. Her gaze slipped from his and dropped to the floor. Then she whispered, “No wonder.”

  She turned from them both and headed back down the hall. Laz steeled himself. He recognized the rigid back, the stiff and purposeful walk. He knew things were about to go from hard to hellish. With a last wordless glance at Baxter, he grabbed the duffle bag from the bed and followed her out.

  Bael and the dog were waiting in the living room when they returned. Bael had been seated in the loveseat, turning the VIVE headset over in his hands and studying it carefully. Bowie lay curled beside the chair as if she and Bael had known each other for years.

  When they emerged from the hall, Bowie looked up. She leapt to her feet, tail wagging, to make her way to Dahlia, who bent and gave her a loving pet. Bael put the headset down as if he’d been caught doing something naughty. He stood and nodded to them.

  “Bael, I need you to take this and transport away from here by yourself.” Laz placed the bag on the coffee table and pulled something from its depths. It instantly caught the light, glimmering crazily. Dahlia’s eyes widened. She was a Tuath fae, and she’d seen some pretty gorgeous magical items in her life, but watching a human in an average human apartment pull out an honest-to-goodness crown from a nylon duffle bag was one hell of a thing.

  “It’s a crown,” said Bael. Laz looked up at him. He was reminded of that scene in Highlander where the cop asks Connor McLeod if he recognized the weapon on the table. McLeod deadpanned, “It’s a sword.”

  “Good eyes,” he told Bael with a rueful look. “You’re wasting your time as a messenger. You’d make a great detective.”

  Bael looked up at him with a surprised expression, and Laz smiled. He could tell the man was torn between the respect he’d been trained to have toward demon royalty and the reproachful retort that Laz very much deserved.

  He held the crown out for Bael to take. “It’s the Crown of the Akyri,” he told them all. The head piece was a black gold and platinum mix, each metal swirled into the other, its spires curved up and inward. “It was given to me when the former king was killed.”

  “You mean when you killed him,” Dahlia corrected.

  Laz looked over at her. Her gaze was hard, the green in her eyes turned to glass. They matched the cold, hard tone of her voice.

  His jaw tensed and his teeth clenched together. “Yes,” he said “That.” He held her gaze long and steady, but she didn’t look away. She was all stubbornness and strength, and right now he knew she felt like she had nothing to lose. There was no one harder to control than someone who had nothing to lose.

  He pulled his gaze away and turned back to Bael. “It’s been infused with my magic, as it has been with every Akyri King before me. Take it with you, and you’ll be taking my signature with you.”

  Bael’s eyes lit up. He took the crown. “Ah, I see my lord,” he said, holding the crown as if it were an ancient artifact and he the archaeologist who discovered it. “I am to be a diversion.”

  “Exactly. Transport again and again, one after another, and crisscross your locations. It’ll dim the trace long enough for you to get back to the Demon Realm.”

  “Yes my lord. I need to return presently anyhow. Who knows what damage Apollyon’s men have done to the palace.”

  “Take Bowie too,” said Dahlia suddenly, drawing their attention. Dahlia looked down at the dog, who looked back up at her. Laz noticed that hint of purple light to Bowie’s eyes. “She absorbed my magic,” Dahlia explained, and her voice sounded lost. “I don’t know exactly what it did to her, but she seems to be okay. So if you take her, you’ll have signatures from us both.”

  Bael nodded. “Very wise, my lady.”

  Dahlia waited a beat, then said, “But if you allow any harm to come to her, I will carve your heart out with a spork.”

  Bael froze, as did Laz. At once, Laz remembered what his mother had told him about demons and their tempers. His father had cut a man’s heart out with a plastic serrated knife. Now Dahlia was threatening to do something very similar. The implications were not lost on him.

  Dahlia smiled a raw smile and gave a small laugh. “Kidding.”

  But Laz wasn’t so sure she was. And he knew Bael wasn’t either. It was something about the tone of her voice, a note of warning that went well beyond a joke. Bael would be wise to keep the dog out of trouble.

  “But in all seriousness,” Dahlia added, her smile slipping. “Keep her safe.”

  “I give you my word that I will do my best, my queen.”

  Dahlia stiffened, and Laz could almost hear her beautiful body going taut as a pulled guitar string. The referral of her as Bael’s “queen” wasn’t helping her stress levels. Any second now, that string was going to snap, and Dahlia Kellen would go Harley Quinn on them all.

  “Now go,” Laz ordered calmly, speaking to Bael. The sooner he left, the better.

  Bael straightened and nodded, clearly accustomed to receiving orders, and comfortable with carrying them out. “Come Bowie,” he said, motioning for the dog to join him again.

  Bowie looked from him to Dahlia, and Dahlia nodded. “Go ahead,” she said. “You’ll be safer with him.”

  The dog seemed to understand, because its tail wagged just a little and it trotted obediently over to Bael. “My prince, I will be at your side in an instant should you need me. Only call my name.” Bael nodded at Laz, Laz nodded back, and the messenger and the dog were gone.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Daytime and nighttime are different between the mortal realm and the demon realm, she thought as she looked out the window of the Detective’s car and spotted a meteor shooting sprinkles across the night sky. I woke up during the day, she thought next. My stomach hurts. That Lifeblood tasted really bad. But my fangs are still there and really sharp. I think my hands might be shaking. This car smells like leather. Or maybe that’s Lazarus. I’d love to steal his leather jacket. I would paint stars on
it, galaxies, and purple fire. Purple fire… like Stale Fire.

  Her mind skipped through her thoughts without order and without slowing. They were in a fancy car, headed to some state in upper New England. They’d left Boston behind about forty minutes ago, and now the traffic had nearly cleared to nonexistent and Dahlia had never felt so much like the rest of the world had vanished.

  Cops can’t afford cars like this, she thought as she glanced at the gleaming angles of a Mercedes symbol on the steering wheel. I wonder if he stole the car using warlock magic. No, he’s not like that. Maybe he made it. Lots of warlocks do that. There’s a bridge up ahead. My stomach hurts. I need…. She closed her eyes and touched her forehead. The moment she did, she was enveloped in her pain, most of it emotional, and therefore all of it horrible.

  At once, she opened her eyes again. I need a distraction. It was going to be a very long drive to Portland, Maine, which was where Lazarus had informed her they were going. She’d gone along with the plan without a word. And why not? It wasn’t like she had any control over her life any longer anyway.

  Apparently he had a friend with a summer home in Maine. It was on the beach, no less. For a cop, he had some well-to-do bosom companions. Off handedly, she wondered if the car might actually belong to the same friend.

  Dahlia pulled her cell from the inside of her own leather jacket; they shared tastes in that at least. She pressed the round button to turn it on, allowed it to read her no doubt bizarre fae finger print, then slid through the aps until her favorite appeared. She tapped it and waited, muting the volume so as not to draw attention to it.

  “I’m sorry about Lalura,” Lazarus said softly.

  Dahlia stiffened. His tone was too gentle; she could tell he meant it. That was maybe the worst part. She curled a little toward the door, instinctively wanting to put her back to him.

  “I know she meant a lot to you. I think I must be one of the few kings at the Table who didn’t know her very well.”

  “So are you one of those good cops or one of those dick cops?” she asked suddenly. Her words surprised even her. She’d just blurted them out, but she realized once she said them that she’d done so because was desperate to not talk about Lalura. She was afraid if she did talk about Lalura, she would break down crying. And that was something she very much did not want to do in front of Steven Lazarus.

  Her fingers feverishly tapped the screen of her phone, but she was only half paying attention to what they were doing. The other half of her was trapped in a place of misery that she was trying desperately to crawl out of.

  There was a sizable stretch of silence before Lazarus, who must have been just as stubborn as Dahlia, finally said, “Nice try.” His voice was beautiful, deep and laced with a magic she readily recognized and knew damn well he wasn’t supposed to be using. He was probably doing it without realizing it. Maybe she was pissing him off and the magic was a natural reaction.

  “You’re covering,” he told her. “You need to say something, so why don’t you say it?” he prodded gently. “I can take it.”

  You want me to say it? she thought angrily.

  “I’m here to listen,” he continued, again sounding like he meant it. “We have nowhere to go and nothing to do but drive. It’s going to be a long trip. So… you wanna just let it out?”

  You want me to let it out? Her fingers tapped a little harder, and her gaze narrowed. But after a moment, her vision un-blurred, and she noticed what was going on in the app on the screen. Her attention re-focused, concentrated now on something she honestly felt was important.

  “Dahlia.”

  She ignored the man beside her. She’d been waiting for a chance like this for too long, and it was so nice for once to be engulfed in something a little less real than the paranormal chaos her life had become.

  “Dahlia? What the hell are you doing?”

  She ignored him some more and redoubled her efforts, her fingers sliding carefully but quickly across her phone’s face. Her teeth grabbed her bottom lip and gripped tight.

  “Are you… what the fuck? Are you playing Pokémon Go right now?”

  Ignore him, ignore him, ignore him – almost there….

  Suddenly, a hand wrapped around her iPhone and violently wrenched it from her grip. Dahlia felt panic rip through her like an iceberg tearing through a cruise ship hull. She spun in her seat in time to see Lazarus throwing her phone out of his rolled-down window.

  The color red infiltrated her vision and her heart jumped into hyper drive. “That was a Jigglypuff, you son of a bitch!” she screamed, fangs fully bared. She lunged for him, driven purely by rage and uncaring of the consequences. She went for his throat, intent on sinking her fangs in to the hilt and draining the mother fucker dry.

  Lazarus blocked her attack with one arm across her chest, breaking with his right boot and using his free hand to spin the car into a screeching three-sixty. The world blurred beyond the windows – until it wasn’t blurring any longer, and the blinding brilliance of oncoming headlights white-washed the world.

  *****

  Oh fuck…

  Well, he’d gone and done it. He’d finally managed to do to Dahlia Kellen what being kidnapped, tortured, turned into a vampire, saddled with a queendom, and having one of her closest loved ones killed by the Entity had failed to do. He’d driven her off the reservation and the Tuath had snapped, going Harley Quinn on him after all.

  This was his thought as the car went spinning out of control on a bridge in Boston and stopped in the opposite lane, face-to-face with oncoming traffic. But the moment he saw the bright white of the headlights, all previous thought and fury fled from his mind, and instinct took over. Elsewhere, he thought. And that was all he had time for.

  In the next instant, the bridge, the traffic, and the bright lights of oncoming traffic vanished.

  A second later, the world reappeared outside the windows of his borrowed car, and Dahlia Kellen was still coming for him. Her body impacted his with brutal and unnatural force, propelling him violently through the car door and into the space beyond. He lost his breath, feeling the impact with every fiber of his being. It temporarily shocked him, but before he hit the ground, he was refocused, breathing, and reacting.

  He waited until they landed, wanting to take the brunt of the impact himself. He almost regretted the decision when his body hit the ground and the air was again wrenched from his lungs. Pain erupted all along his spine, but that was quickly squelched by the monster in him.

  Akyri and demon battled it out for control of his systems, and he fought to maintain a clear mind as he wrapped his arms around Dahlia’s body, trapping her against him. She collapsed into him, just short of sinking her beautiful and deadly fangs into the side of his throat.

  He rolled with her in the cage of his arms until he she was underneath him. She must have recognized that he was gaining the upper hand, because her efforts to harm him redoubled, her body bucking violently under his. Laz wrestled to grab her wrists, but her fingernails found him first, and she carved large bloody grooves in the backs of his hands. He hissed in pain, but compartmentalized it, ignoring the sting to concentrate on the issue.

  His instinctive urge, of course, was to tell her to calm down. But years of police work had taught him that if there’s anything a person in the grips of feverish anger, fear, or panic hates to hear, it’s the words, “calm down.” If they could calm down on demand, they would have done so already. The only thing such a command serves to do is add an element of frustration to the situation, along with another layer of fear. Frustration, for their lack of control. Fear, because now they’re also afraid that the person dealing with them lacks any empathy whatsoever.

  So he kept quiet and concentrated on getting the situation in hand. Literally.

  He’d already used magic to get them out of what would surely have been a massive car accident, so he used it again now, allowing his hands to fill with hard, dark magic. Amidst the wild struggling, he managed to press one h
and to Dahlia’s chest just long enough to release this magic. It sucked out of his body and into hers as if propelled by a vacuum, and Dahlia inhaled sharply.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Dark magic came in all forms and served all kinds of purposes. Right now, all he wanted to do was exact control over his opponent without hurting her in any permanent manner. He’d infused this desire into his magic and let it take over. At once, she stopped fighting, the strength leached from her limbs as an unimaginable sensation rushed like fire through her bloodstream. Her eyes closed. The spell he’d wordlessly cast was the infiltration of her form by his power, and it subjugated every nerve ending, taking her breath away.

  He’d once been told that using that spell would make an opponent suddenly feel as if they were really, really high. To him, that sounded atrocious. He’d seen what people did when they were high as kites, and vomiting and falling over were only the beginning of that mess. But from the way Dahlia stilled beneath him, her cheeks and lips flushing with the prettiest pink he’d ever seen, he was getting the impression that it was different with him. Or maybe it was just different with Dahlia.

  Either way, he didn’t waste any time. Almost instantly, he had her wrists in his tight grip and was pressing them to the ground above her head. The ground was cut grass, and he found he was thankful it wasn’t anything damaging like sharp rocks and dirt.

  He leaned in close and waited until her eyes opened. When they did, he was struck with the most magnificent iris hue he’d ever beheld. Her eyes were a sparkling, stunning mix of green and violet, like tourmaline infused with diamonds. He was lost in them.

  Concentrate, you dumb fuck, he internally hissed.

  He gritted his teeth and spoke across her perfect, plump lips. “Dahlia,” he said, letting more magic lace his voice.

  She inhaled shakily and her brow furrowed. “Yes?” she asked softly, as if nothing untoward had just taken place.