“Kori?”
I spun at the familiar voice.
The king’s enclosed garden looked just like it did when I crawled through on my belly all that time ago. Luca stood under the Tree of Life’s branches. He turned fully toward me, his eyes narrowed and lips puckered. I hadn’t noticed on the dim platform, but Luca didn’t look as polished or groomed as he normally was. His hair was longer than usual, and there was a shadow of golden scruff on his chin. His black suit stood in stark contrast to his pale, waxy skin, and there was a stain on his shirt. His muscular frame had diminished. He looked ill.
Luca patted his suit pants and closed his fingers around a gun that was tucked in his waistband. He lifted the revolver and aimed it straight at my chest. His arms shook as his eyes met mine. “Hades is meeting me here. He’ll be along any second.”
“I’m not here for you, Luca.” I raised my hands. “I didn’t even know you would be here.”
“I had nothing to do with what happened to them. I’m being set up. I didn’t do this.” He staggered back a step. “I was trying to help them, but then the tree started going after…”
Before he’d even finished speaking, I was running for the Tree of Life. The trunk had stretched with two human-shaped bulges, looking like a white snake with a whole mouse in its belly. An arm stuck out of the tree on one side, like a fifth branch. The fingers curled and straightened. I clasped the fingers, and they squeezed back.
“Kori!” It was Genevieve’s voice, but it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.
“Run!” I heard, this time it was Brendan.
I yanked at the hand as the fingers continued to squeeze my palm. The tree had grown around her body completely, and wooden tendrils were snaking up her arm. I tried to curl my fingers into where the tree was growing over Genevieve, but it was attached to her skin. I stared at her wrist where there was a matte grey band. Ignis fire. They needed to break their bonds and summon flame.
“Luca, can you break these power bindings? Be a hero, Luca. You can be the hero this time. You’re powerful enough. Please!”
“No. I’m not getting near that tree again. This isn’t any of my business,” Luca called, and I could hear his footsteps getting further away.
“Luca… You loved your sister, didn’t you? In your own way. Mira is still suffering… I’ve been having dreams every night of this tree eating her alive, and her ghost has been leading my siblings back here. Now the tree has them too. We need to burn it—please.”
“I killed Mira,” he yelled, sounding even further away. “She was a murderer.”
“That’s how I know you loved her. You shot her in the head in Pioneer Square so she wouldn’t suffer, didn’t you? You were probably supposed to leave the square and get to safety before the vampires attacked—right? But you didn’t because you knew that the vampires would want to punish Mira most of all. You exposed yourself as a traitor and risked dying so she wouldn’t suffer.” I spun, only to find that Luca wasn’t alone anymore. His massive dark-haired warrior guard was striding up the path. The man stalked forward, rubbing his dark beard as he headed for the courtesan he was assigned to protect.
“She’s talking absolute nonsense, Hades,” Luca said as his gun swiveled between the massive vampire and me. “The only reason that I disobeyed orders to shoot my sister was because she needed to die for her crimes—just like I told Duchess Dread.”
“Of course Kori is lying,” Hades growled. “This one is a rebel and master of deception.”
Luca dropped his gun to his side, and the fear that had been plain on his features a second ago slid away. “Hades,” he snapped, “Why am I here—”
The massive vampire reached up and closed his hands around Luca’s head, and Hades’ fat palms twisted. A loud snap echoed through the cabin as Luca’s head turned the wrong way.
A shocked scream escaped me before I clapped a hand over my mouth. The sound reverberated around us, bouncing through the garden and growing quieter.
Luca’s body slumped, limp as an old sock. His gun clattered onto the path. The vampire’s arm dropped to his side, and his green eyes rose to mine. He stalked forward, dragging Luca over the paving stones like a child trails an old doll. As Hades walked, smoke rose from his head. His features blended together, and then King Ravage’s face formed where the bearded square-jawed vampire had just been.
I knew I should run, but I didn’t want to let go of my sister’s hand. She was still squeezing my fingers, so she had to be alive. Every time I glanced over, I saw that the tree had wound another inch up her arm.
King Ravage held up the limp body, showing me the expression of shock on Luca’s dead features. "It's one of the first things you told me you wanted." He glanced down at the corpse. "For you."
Acid surged up in my throat, feeling like fire within me. I leaned over and retched. Vomit splattered at my feet and immediately vanished into the black and white stone circle. "I didn't tell you to do that."
"Oh. You don't like my gift?" He tossed Luca's body to the base of the tree, and the pale trunk spilled out over the dead courtesan's shoulder and neck like the wood was more liquid than solid. "It really didn't have to come to this, Kori. If you had just come back when you were supposed to, I wouldn't have asked the Tree of Life to lure your siblings here. They couldn't resist, you know, not after what you did. They were like salmon swimming upstream to where they'd been spawned, only to die. Oh. You probably wouldn't get that analogy--that one was from before."
I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. "They're not dead. Please."
He shrugged. "Plants need to eat, Kori. All living things need nourishment. The tree hasn’t feasted on flesh since I fed it the corpses of the rebel army after Pioneer Courthouse Square. I suppose your siblings will stick around like the consort Mira and the other courtesans, ready to be unleashed by the Tree of Life when the time is right."
"You want something from me. Tell me what I need to do to save them." My voice broke on the words.
"That's a bit more complicated. I just wanted Portland back after King Razor stole it from me, and you caused significant problems."
"What does that mean?"
"It means... I had a very specific plan, and you unintentionally managed to derail it. Now, I need to fix it. My plan started with a coup. I provided the consort of Portland liquid silver on the stipulation that she would kill every vampire royal in the Portland court. My sister immediately volunteered an army of my warriors to help defeat the murderous and ruthless Portland rebels. It took longer than we expected to get back into Portland, but as soon as you rebels started mining tunnels out, I could come and go from the city as I pleased.”
Smoke clouded the king's features again, and they morphed. His frame lost mass, but his height remained the same. The fangs that protruded from his eye teeth shrunk into blunt human teeth, but his eyes were still that startling green. The tips of his hair reddened and spread up to his roots. A scar sliced over his right cheek. The sharp lines of his features smoothed into the plain features of the Sorcerer. “Luca practically convinced himself to turn on you. He resented his sister for never appreciating his value. He hated that so many courtesans were prized above him. Luca despised your brother Brendan most of all. We attacked, and I followed you down from the battle. I jumped in the hole after Griff mauled me. I'd wanted to make sure that you were both dead. All of the rebel leaders needed to die. You fell faster than me. I was using air to slow my descent, and by the time I made it to the bottom, I caught you picking a flower from the Tree of Life. You ate it and survived."
"You were behind everything."
"Keep up, Kori, this is important," The Sorcerer said as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I've spent my life collecting mage blood powers. It took some time to learn how, but eventually, I mastered the art. There's only one power that has always evaded me. Tempus--it's the nature of the power, Tempuses always see me coming for them. I shouldn't have let you go save the ranking members of the
rebellion. But there was no way that you could have known about the Tree of Life and what it could do. Only I know about the tree and its riddle."
"Save them. I'll give you my power." The tree was still snaking up Genevieve's arm.
"I haven't finished my story." He shook his head and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "I flew back up and realized that I created my own problem in taking back Portland. I thought that I'd be able to recapture everyone who you saved and kill them before it was a risk to my plans, but you raised Griff and some rebel officer named Timothy from the dead. They went directly to the army and led them deep into the tunnels. I had everything in place for the humans to surrender, and then we would have closed off the city. The humans would have been subdued without any leaders, and we'd be done. But the human rebels didn't surrender. The armies evaded us with an uncanny ability to know where we would attack."
From the way he was talking, he clearly didn't know about Timothy, and my younger brother had escaped.
"In that time, the Queen of Seattle sent her puppet warrior kings," The Sorcerer continued. “We couldn't kill them yet and wouldn't close down the city with all the humans in the tunnels. I would have been so impressed, Kori, if you actually meant to destroy my plans. Obviously, it was an accident. I will give you credit for figuring out what I was doing within the rebel army."
The Sorcerer's nondescript features sharpened and grew bolder as smoke rose from his cheeks. The red vanished from his hair, and his golden locks lengthened to his shoulders. King Ravage crossed his arms over his chest, wearing his own bold features once more. "I knew that I needed to lure the humans back to the city, and I have. They're taking it over right now. It's not ideal, but I'll have my city back."
I gritted my teeth. "Until they realize that you're a vampire that's stolen mage powers."
"See the thing is, Kori, I thought that you could help me with that. The Sorcerer is, of course, going to relinquish Portland to me—the rightful ruler, but the human rebels would accept me much quicker if you were my consort. There were some who wanted to surrender to the puppet kings when they knew you'd became their consort. I had to assure them that you were only a spy and planning to kill them. So, what do you say? I save your siblings, and you give me Portland."
King Ravage was asking me to betray every human in Portland to save Brendan and Genevieve, and I wanted to say yes.
Damn it, I did.
But then I thought of the field of corpses in Pioneer Courthouse Square. He’d been central in the slaughter. He might have even been the one who killed my family in the first place. Ravage had already found a way to steal our powers, so he had killed every single blood mage, and then he fed their corpses to the Tree of Life so that the courtesans would forever be a slave to his will. To a ruthless vampire like Ravage, humans were livestock. He was asking my help to trick the humans that Portland was safe under his rule, but I knew instinctively that King Ravage would be a worse monarch than Razor ever was.
“Aren’t you just going to kill me to steal my Tempus power?”
“No. Not you.” He held out a hand. “I won’t hurt you. When we’ve mate bonded, your power source will connect to mine. I have a way of making that a much stronger connection.”
With so many mage powers and Tempus, he’d be indestructible. He would see attacks coming. He could take over all of the kingdoms. My head shot up and heart raced even faster. The reason Tempuses were hunted and killed was because of a prophecy that said that someone with the power of Tempus would enslave all vampires. The prophecy didn’t say that it was a blood mage that would do that. If I gave this man my power and helped him take Portland, he would probably, in time, rule the entire human and vampire population under the domes.
Genevieve's fingers were loosening around mine. The tree had wound all the way up my sister’s arm, so I leaned in and kissed her fingers. Tears ran down my cheeks, wetting her hand. She gave the barest of squeezes, and then her fingers went limp in mine.
I spun and dove for Luca’s gun. My knees hit the pebble-lined path hard, sending pain radiating up my legs. I ignored it and closed my hands around the rough metal handle of the gun. I had intended to shoot myself, knowing that was the way my shot could do the most damage to his plans. But an intense urge overtook my arms, and I rolled onto my back and aimed up at the vampire. He hadn’t moved. He was still standing there by the swollen Tree of Life, staring up into its branches like he was in awe.
I took aim and pulled the trigger, shooting at the vampire king’s back. The gun clicked.
“No.”
I pulled the trigger again and again, and it just clicked.
“Do you really think I’d let Luca in here with you if he had a loaded gun?” King Ravage peered over his shoulder, his green eyes shining with humor. “You’re too important to me, Kori.”
“My power is, but you’re never getting it.” I looked around the garden. But there was only uninterrupted stone. There had to be a door somewhere, but there was no handle from the inside. “A bonding won’t stick if I’m not willing. You might as well kill me.”
“Your power is important to me, but it’s far from the only thing I care about.” He turned fully, crossed over to me, and offered a hand up. “I found myself so very jealous of those three pathetic kings, so much so that I would kill them right now if it wouldn’t start a war with Seattle. It might be because you’ve been mine since the moment you took that flower. I will kill them eventually for having you and thinking they could claim you.”
Bending my fingers into claws, I lunged at him, reaching for his eyes. My nails scratched across his skin, but his hands wrapped around my wrists and squeezed.
He leaned down over me, and a smile passed over his lips. “I’m never killing you, Kori. You’re going to be obsessively in love with me. You will want to share your power with me. Then I’ll make you my eternal consort. I will hone your mind like a knife. You will be my greatest supporter, my lover, and my queen.”
“I’ll try to kill you every single chance I get from now until forever.” I tried to get my feet under me, but pain seared through my arms as King Ravage wrenched me up and threw me. My stomach dropped as I was weightless for a moment, and then pain exploded through every inch of my front as I collided with the Tree of Life. I tried to wrench away, but my skin stuck to the wood. Ivory wood bulged and dripped over my arm, as solid as stone but moving fast. I screamed as the wood rolled over my forehead and down my cheeks.
Fingers wrapped around my arm that was still free. I tried to roll my wrist, but the hand was too strong as it pushed my wrist forward. King Ravage stepped into my vision and forced my hand into the tree. The wood poured over my arm.
“You’ll never have my powers,” I whispered through stiff lips. Ravage reached up, and his fingers brushed a tendril of black hair from my eyes.
“You’re so beautiful like this,” he said as his gaze passed over my face. “I found you beautiful from the moment I saw you, but you’ve never been more sensual as right now when you’re completely in my power.”
The wood dripped down my face, over my eyes, and into my parted lips. I tried to scream one more time, but the wood poured down my throat, and I couldn’t even draw a breath.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
RUIN
I slammed my foot into the wood door, feeling the pain ricochet up my leg. Beside me, Ash, Death and several other warriors kicked again.
We’d been standing there, inches away from Kori when she vanished. It was as if she’d never even been there. A sudden gust of wind had sent all of us staggering back, and then the door to the garden slammed closed. It took—at most—ten seconds, and she was gone. Panic surged through me, and I wasn’t sure if I was feeling my own emotions, Ash’s, or Death’s. We were one big live wire of terror, and it was continuously surging between our bodies.
Why hadn’t I taken her and run when I had the chance?
Ash stepped back. He grabbed two handfuls of his hair and bellowed, “Fuck!”
The man ran for the door, crashing his side into it, and then the wooden door swung back, and Ash tumbled through.
We stayed there, locked in one moment of shock, and then Ash was scrambling to his feet, and we all were racing through the entrance.
But the garden was empty. There was a path of glimmering stones that cut through beds of colorful lilies and roses. Then, central in the space, there was a wide stone circle around a white tree. The trunk was fat, lopsided, and bumpy.
Ash jogged by me and paused to growl, “No one’s here.”
“I smell her… faintly.” Death stalked up the trail and stopped before the white tree. “She was here, but her trail stops.” He stepped slowly around the circumference of the stone circle. “Where could she have gone?”
“Who fucking knows—she vanished into thin air,” Ash growled as he stopped before me.
“But she definitely came in here and walked up this path?” I considered the lumpy white wood. “She picked a flower to bring her siblings back to life… and it tore a hole between the world of the living and the dead…”
Did that mean that the tree was the doorway to the dead? How did a person open that doorway?
“Does anyone here have a knife?” I called back over my shoulder.
“Why?” Death stopped beside me.
“She came down here and picked one of these flowers to save herself and her siblings, right?” I gestured up to the colorful flowers in the branches. “Using the flower makes a gateway for the dead… or something. She’s with us one moment, and she vanishes the next, only to come here… and either stay or head straight back the way she came. What if this gateway pulled her in?”
Ash reeled back. “You think she’s…”
“Dead?” Death shook his head. “No—Kori is alive. I can feel her.” He pressed a hand to his chest in the same place that I felt Death’s emotions in the bond.
Ruin: A Reverse Harem Dark Fantasy Vampire Romance (Fire & Blood Book 1) Page 23