The Phantom King (The Kings)

by Heather Killough-Walden

  “I don’t know,” Thane said now. He turned back to Siobhan. “He was uninjured in the fight and he left when it was over. But I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more of him.”

  She seemed satisfied with that, as she nodded. Thane bid his silent farewell to Roman and raised his right hand toward the door that led from the study into the next room. A portal swirled to life.

  He and Siobhan stepped through.

  The darkness that always greeted him within the portals felt strange this time. Siobhan was directly behind him, but the unaccountable oddness in the portal’s make-up forced him to reach back and take hold of her arm. She was surprised by the action but didn’t pull away. He glanced at her, a wavy, rather insubstantial form through the miasma of portal darkness. He could just make out her features; she was glancing around them, clearly agitated and uncertain.

  She could sense the strangeness too.

  Ahead of him, something wavered as if it were being stretched too taut, and he had the sensation of more air ripping within the tear he had already created.

  His initial instinct was to step through the way he’d come and shove Siobhan back into Roman’s study behind him. But he knew better. Such movement was impossible within a portal. It would be like forcing a bird to fly backwards; the laws of supernatural physics didn’t work that way.

  “Thane….” Siobhan’s uncertain voice was muted in the portal. Sound traveled with difficult progression, as did everything else. But he felt her other hand on his arm and sensed it trembling.

  And then the second rip occurred, and it was like watching lightning strike in the negative. A dark fissure spread across the swirling portal in front of them, crisscrossing from the darkness below to the darkness above. The force created with the unnatural reverse blast buffeted against them.

  Thane turned and drew Siobhan into his arms. It took both concentration and magic to open a portal through dimensions and move from one to the other. Over the years, it became easier. It even grew to be second nature.

  But in the grips of this unnatural event, Thane was forced to double and even triple his efforts, focusing with all he had to maintain the opening long enough for them to get through whatever was happening without the portal closing on them. If it did, they would be ripped to shreds and tossed to either end of the universe.

  “You’ll lose in the end, Phantom King,” came a deep, grating, and echoing voice. In some ways it resembled Marius’ voice, but the physical strangeness of their surroundings was morphing it, drawing it out into something wholly horrible.

  Thane raised his head and looked over his shoulder. A face appeared in the nothingness of the lightning-bolt rip behind him. It wavered like the Wizard’s head in the Wizard of Oz, and then it smiled. “You have no idea what you’re up against.”

  The massive face’s red glowing eyes seemed to turn, to shift, and to look at the woman in Thane’s arms. As if she knew she was being addressed, she un-tucked her head and looked up.

  “Come to me willingly warlock, and I will let you live. I make no promises otherwise.”

  Siobhan stared wide-eyed at the warping, wavering visage. Her grip on Thane’s arm tightened in fear, and something inside of Thane snapped with fury. He whirled, raising his hand and unleashing the magic he’d stored earlier that night.

  Every ounce of it came rushing out of his form. He’d never released magic from within a portal before; he had no idea what was going to happen.

  *****

  It made a warning sound a split second before it began to expand. Across the room, the two vampire guards Roman had dismissed slammed open the door and came rushing back in, obviously alerted by the distinctly strange noise.

  Jaxon appeared beside him as well. But Roman’s gut clenched and the experience that came with being a king in charge of kings gave him warning. He acted with blurring speed, shoving Jaxon back several feet and using a burst of his magic as a sudden thrust of force to knock the other two vampires out of the way as the portal that Thane and Siobhan had just stepped through protracted like a balloon.

  There was a rending that vibrated the walls of the safe house, and the portal shook. Instinct drove Roman.

  “Get out!” he bellowed the command. At the same time, he conveyed the mental warning not to use transportation magic. His vampires obeyed at once, every one of them rushing in a blur through the two doors that exited the study. Roman remained behind and off to one side, his dark eyes trained on the eerily unstable hole. A buzzing came from somewhere deep inside it.

  There was a cracking sound, like ice shifting in a glacier. And then the portal rapidly shrank. But as it did, a black space appeared to Roman’s right. And another across the room. A piece of the bookshelf vanished. A section of floor went next. As the portal convulsed and closed up entirely, holes began to appear throughout the room to suck away what was once there.

  Roman’s heart hammered. He didn’t dare move, and he also didn’t dare transport away. Within seconds, the holes stopped appearing, leaving three bizarre spaces of black that yawned from the study and led to some place unknown.

  Roman slowly turned in place, studying the holes carefully. Grimly, he wondered how far the effect had stretched.

  *****

  Siobhan’s instinct was to scream as she was violently thrown forward, but the impact knocked the wind from her lungs. The world spiraled out of control as she was sent into bright and swirling space.

  She hit the ground with a kind of numb feeling, as if her body were already in too much pain to notice this further indecency. After she rolled for what felt like a minute or more, she simply lay face down in the dust, her eyes closed.

  Little by little, sensations returned to her.

  There was a breeze in her hair. There was dry, cracked and dusty ground beneath her. Her chest ached a little, but she was breathing. She moved her legs and then her arms, slowly checking to see whether anything was broken.

  A hand gently grasped her shoulder and pulled, rolling her over.

  She blinked up at a too-bright sky and the shadow that moved before it, blocking it from her sight.

  The Phantom King gently brushed a bit of dust from her cheek and tucked a lock of her red hair behind her ear. He was beside her on one knee, the muscles of his arms and legs pronounced as he leaned over her. “You’re alright,” he told her, seemingly both for her benefit, and for his.

  Her gaze narrowed. “How do you know?” she said, feeling irritated. She’d just been thrown through a portal at what felt like light speed only to land face-first in the dirt. How the hell would he know if she was okay? She could have a broken leg or… or a ruptured spleen!

  He smiled down at her, instantly melting a bit of her ire. “I’ve seen every injury known to man,” he told her. “I know what the human body looks like when it’s hurt,” he explained. His eyes raked over her from head to toe. “And when it’s not.”

  A low-grade thrill went through Siobhan as he took her in with those silver-gray eyes. The woman in her felt subconscious under his scrutiny… and the warlock in her wanted to strip off her clothes so that his view was unencumbered.

  But that beautiful, coveted gaze of his lifted, leaving her feeling a bit bereft. His expression darkened, and she followed the line of his eyes, sitting up as she did so.

  Several yards away, a black hole for lack of a better term sat in the middle of the desert, a stygian space of nothingness where dirt and sand and sky once was. Beyond it, another forty or fifty feet away, was another.

  Siobhan slowly rose, allowing Thane to help her to her feet. But as she did, her gaze skirted over the horizon. Three… four… five. As far as the eye could see, these black empty spaces stretched, no rhyme or reason or pattern to their appearance. What had once been a stark and unbroken landscape was now riddled with spots like Swiss cheese.

  “What the hell is that?” she muttered.

  “Darkness,” Thane said, his tone low. “When I cast the spell within the portal, it met whatever
it is on Marius’ end. Wherever he is, whoever he is dealing with,” Thane continued, shaking his head, “it’s evil. And some of it leaked through.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “He can’t get to you here, so he attacked in the portal. He’s getting gutsy,” Thane said. “I need to see how far the damage goes,” he told her over his shoulder as he made his way toward the large metal door that led to his dimension-defying garage. “The easiest way is to take a bike out for a survey.”

  Once more, the Phantom King shrugged off his black leather jacket. It was dust-covered and as he took it off, a small cloud of the stuff hit the air. He slammed it against his side distractedly to dust it off, every inch of him masculine to the core. As he moved, his muscles flexed and bunched, and Siobhan felt her teeth clench tightly together.

  Christ, she thought as she ran her hand through her hair. I need a cold shower. She’d long ago figured out how to use her magic to keep clean so that she could go without showers during long trips. But right now, it was the cold part of the shower she was most interested in.

  The tattoos she’d spied on Thane earlier were different now. The vivid colors of the phoenix and the dragon were gone. In their places were just as beautifully rendered tattoos of black, tribal and stark, that scrolled around his biceps and up under his short sleeves. The difference was surprising enough to distract her for a moment from the mouth-watering spectacle he made as he finished pulling the door open.

  He straightened and turned to her once he was done. His eyes were vivid in the half-shadow coming from the garage beside him. They fell on her like a brand. “Come inside and I’ll get you a drink,” he said. He watched her for a few seconds more, as if contemplating something. Then he stepped into the darkness beyond and disappeared.

  Siobhan glanced over her shoulder at the dotted landscape with its ominous holes. She wondered where they led, knowing for certain that if she were to step into one, she would come out the other end where Marius was.

  She wondered whether he could use those holes the same way. Could he step through on his end? Would he be showing up now with an army of Akyri behind him? But the desert landscape was quiet save for the sound of the hollow wind. And somehow, she knew he couldn’t.

  She turned back around, took a deep breath, and made her way to the garage. Thane had switched on the interior lights by this time, and the overhead halogens shed a gleaming reflection on the polished chrome and paint below.

  Thane was nowhere to be seen, probably having slipped into the house to get drinks, so Siobhan allowed herself to walk in-between the vehicles and take them all in. They stretched on forever it seemed, their magnificent shapes and colors becoming lost in the darkness of the garage’s infinite stretch.

  She passed by the Delahaye, BMW, Maserati and Brough Superior from earlier, gave them their respectively earned glances of admiration, and moved on. There were vehicles from every decade lined up and parked within equal distance of each other. Interspersed throughout the cars and trucks were motorcycles, some on elevated platforms as if only for show, others simply kicked back on their stands as if they’d recently been ridden.

  They were all stunning. Not a scratch or smudge, all gleaming chrome and endless possibilities.

  She’d gone a ways in and lost track of time when her eyes widened and her body froze. A brilliant excitement lit her up from inside as she stood glued to the spot and gazed at the bike in front of her.

  She’d only ever seen one before, on eBay when she’d been hunting antiques to repair. It was the Vincent Black Lightning and since she was partial to things that were older, the Lightning and its predecessor the Vincent Black Shadow were her very first motorcycle loves. The Vincent motorcycle engine was once the fastest bike engine ever created, capable of doing 125 miles per hour in the late 1940’s, which had been unheard of before that. It was still fast, even for today.

  It was a gorgeous motorcycle, all shining black and light as air, trimmed down to its essentials for the sake of speed. It was what some motorcycle buffs would have called a “hooligan,” no real thought to comfort involved. Only wind.

  She couldn’t help but touch it. The handlebars called out for her grip, the saddle for her parted legs. She felt strangely wanton just staring at it….

  “Get on,” came a cool voice beside her.

  Siobhan jumped and looked up over her shoulder. Her brown eyes locked with silver. He was so close, his chest nearly pressed against her back. She wondered how long he had been standing there watching her.

  She tried to calm her heart, but his nearness was intoxicating. She licked her lips and caught his gaze flicking to her mouth. “Are you sure?” she asked softly.

  Still watching her mouth, his pupils dilated, Thane replied, “Positive.”

  The inebriated feeling she was getting off of him intensified and her fingers and toes tingled as she turned back around to face the bike. With the expert ease of someone who had ridden quite a few bikes in her short years, she moved to its left side and swung her right leg over.

  The wicked warlock in her forced her to do it slowly, stretching her leg and easing into the seat with a seductive curve of her hips.

  Thane was beside her again, moving in like a black-clad, tattooed, sexy-as-hell beast. He straddled the front tire of the motorcycle and placed his hands over hers on the handlebars, sending a buzz-like thrill up through her arms and across her chest. Her nipples hardened against the material of her bra.

  “How long have you known how to ride?” he asked. His eyes held hers like iron chains.

  “About fifteen years,” she told him.

  The corner of his mouth twitched and his hold on her hands tightened. He seemed satisfied with her response.

  “Can you move a bike the way you moved your Mustang?” His gaze was glinting with unspoken mischief.

  Siobhan wondered whether she should respond. But he had some kind of hold over her, and even if she’d decided not to, there was no way she could keep from telling him the truth now. She nodded. She could do whatever she wanted with a vehicle. It was one of the very few ways she allowed her magic to take form.

  “Yes.”

  He smiled now, and his beautiful features took on a wicked cast. His fangs were out, long and white and incredibly sharp. “I’ll tell you what, then,” he said, leaning forward a bit and blocking out the rest of the world. “I’ll make you a deal. You take this bike and I’ll take the Shadow,” he nodded toward the bike a few feet away, one she hadn’t even noticed because she’d been so wrapped up in the Lightning. It was the Vincent Shadow that was the bulkier predecessor to the Lightning.

  She looked back up at Thane, her eyes wide in her face. His smile was unforgiving.

  “If you can outrun me, I’ll sleep on the couch tonight,” he said.

  Siobhan froze, her heart thumping.

  “But if I catch you,” he warned, “then you’ll share my bed with me.”

  The world moved a little under Siobhan as his words registered, and she felt the blood drain from her face. At the same time, it seemed to be rushing everywhere else – flushing her chest and neck, turning her already hard nipples into painfully taut nubs, and warming the area below her belly as if she’d just consumed an aphrodisiac.

  But he wasn’t going to allow her any time for modesty or embarrassment. Instead, he asked, “So what do you say, warlock? Do we have a deal?”

  For a moment, all Siobhan could do was blink up at him. But then something inside of her switched up, one of her puzzle pieces moved aside for another, and the wicked in her came to the fore once more.

  “And if I refuse?” she asked, her gaze narrowing, but her lips curling.

  Thane’s silver gaze went all-pupil. “We share the bed anyway.”

  “Fair enough,” she said, trying to fake a bravery she absolutely did not feel. As if to emphasize that fakery, she used a bit of magic. The bike beneath her roared to warlock-induced life, vibrating deliciously between her long, strong legs. “W
here do we draw the line?” she asked, knowing that they couldn’t ride forever.

  But her words were a double entendre.

  Thane’s grin broadened. “You’ll know it when you reach it,” he told her. “Two rules,” he said, his low voice illogically carrying over the sound of the bicycle. “Stay clear of the darkness,” he warned, referring to the black holes that now riddled Purgatory. “And don’t even contemplate trying to leave this realm.”

  Siobhan’s gaze was caught by the flash of his fangs behind his lips. She absently wondered how she could possibly leave his realm, but didn’t ask about it. Instead, she just nodded.

  Thane straightened, coming off of the bike. He un-straddled the wheel, released her hands where they rested on the handlebars, and made his way to the Vincent Shadow. She watched him mount the bike, once more caught in the ridiculous pull of his graceful manliness.

  “I’ll give you a head start,” he said. Then, for the first time since meeting him, Siobhan was treated to a genuine display of the Phantom King’s power. He had full control over the aspects of his realm, which he demonstrated as he raised his head and focused his vivid gaze on the cars and motorcycles between them and the garage door. One after another, the vehicles shimmered out of existence and shimmered back to life somewhere else. The garage seemed to shift around them, making room for their new locations and leaving a clear path for Thane and his guest to exit.

  Siobhan sucked her bottom lip into her mouth, eyed the vast expanse beyond the garage, and felt the rumble of the bike beneath her. The engine seemed to echo the will inside of her. I can do this, she thought. There was no way she was going to lose. She had years and years of magic stored up, just waiting for something like this.

  Okay Phantom King, she thought. You’re in for the chase of your life.

  But when she looked back over her shoulder and met his gaze, her confidence hit a speed bump and her stomach jumped up into her throat. The lights in the garage seemed to have lowered; shadows cast themselves across his face, making it appear dark and hungry. The smile on his lips gave her the impression that he knew what she was thinking and that he thoroughly disagreed she had any chance of winning. It also said he would thoroughly enjoy proving it.