The Dead King

by Pamfiloff, Mimi Jean

  “No, she pulled up behind me and honked. Your father came out. Why? Is there a problem?”

  I winced. It had to be that woman. The ward would have stopped her from coming on the property.

  Spiros’s phone rang. He glanced at the screen and answered. “Yes, sir?” He listened, nodded, and handed the phone to me. “It’s King. He wants to speak with you.”

  How King knew I was with his driver was a mystery. I didn’t care. When it came to King, he was like a black box. Ironic that he came into my life inside one, too.

  I leaned inside the car and grabbed the phone. “King? I think that crazy blonde woman took my dad.”

  “Her name is Serina, and yes, she does indeed have your father. She called a short while ago.”

  Oh God. I knew it. Blondie was Serina. I pressed my free hand to my chest, feeling dizzy. This couldn’t be happening. Why had I taken that damned nap? “What does she want?”

  “What do you think?” he said.

  I didn’t know. “Does she want me for her collection?” King tattooed me for a reason, right? I was his new prized cow, branded with a K.

  “No. Serina thinks you are useless because you’re untrained and naïve when it comes to the Seer world. She knows that I have claimed you, but she believes it was merely a speculative move on my part—that you might be worth something someday.”

  “Tell me how.” Maybe I could use myself to barter with her to get my dad free. I would do anything for him.

  “The most powerful Seers are trained by other Seers, and aside from you, they are all dead. At least in this time.”

  What in the…? Never mind. I turned my back to the car. “Just tell me what happened to them.” Maybe there was an angle, a way to sell Serina on my future worth.

  “They attempted to take over Ten Club by offering their loyalty and services to several powerful club members. In exchange for their support to have me removed, of course,” he added. “I found out and ended the coup by killing the Seers—basically taking away everyone’s favorite toys. In retaliation, those members murdered my unborn daughter, infant son, and wife.”

  I felt sick. So that’s why his family was murdered. It was payback for killing off all the Seers.

  There had to be more to the story, but now wasn’t the time. The crazy bitch had my dad.

  I pushed back my tears. I couldn’t solve this if I was too busy crying. “So if she doesn’t want me, then what?”

  “Serina is a member of Ten Club. This is how they operate; they steal, buy, or trade for things they can use to gain power—power in general or over other members. Serina probably went to your home looking for you and figured out I took great measures to protect your father, which signaled he is of great value to me. Unlike you, she believes he can be used as a pawn.”

  “Fucking shit, King!” The tears came. I couldn’t hold back any longer. I appreciated that he’d taken measures. I truly did. But how had he not seen this coming? “Goddammit!”

  “Do not raise your voice at me, woman, or you may find yourself without a tongue.” His menacing tone sent a cold shiver down my spine. Maybe I wasn’t that mousy little thing I once was, but I still feared some things. King for one. Also, anything happening to my dad. He was all I had left of my real family. Distant cousins, aunts, and uncles weren’t in the picture much since my mom passed. As for friends, I kept in touch with a few from high school and college, but after my dad’s accident, I dropped off the social map. Every waking hour was either dedicated to helping him—driving him to physical therapy and doctor’s appointments—or feeding us and keeping a roof over our heads. I didn’t regret my choices and never would, but that didn’t change the facts.

  “Just tell me how to get him back.” I felt my world crumbling for the third or fourth time in recent days. If things got any worse, I’d be a pile of rubble, nothing more.

  “We continue with my plan.”

  My grip tightened around the phone. “That woman has my dad! I don’t think your need for revenge takes priority.” My dad was still alive. His family was not.

  “I will invite her to attend the event.”

  “And?” I snapped.

  “We shall hear her demands and make the trade there.”

  So easy? I doubted it. Nothing with these people sounded simple. “How do you know she’ll show?”

  “She will come.”

  “Please stop. Just give me straight answers.”

  “All right.” King’s voice came from behind me. I swiveled on my heel to find him in a sleek, expensive-looking black suit. Another similar car was parked behind the first one.

  “Where did you come from?” My words came out rushed. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter.”

  “Shall we?” He gestured toward my front door. “Given the circumstances, I believe we should move our discussion indoors. Eyes and ears are everywhere.”

  I snarled and marched inside, heading straight for the kitchen. I grabbed a napkin from the counter to sop up my tears and then poured a big glass of tap water. I needed to get a hold of myself. I was no use to my dad if I lost my shit.

  “Jeni.”

  I turned to find King standing too close for comfort, his spicy scent filling the space around us. My body immediately reacted—half entranced, the other half wanting to run and never look back.

  “Who are you?” Tell me now, because this is our crossroad, buddy. Serina wanted King dead, the Seers tried to take him out, and he founded the evilest group of powerful individuals on the planet. He had abilities people only read about in sci-fi novels.

  King’s hypnotic gray eyes intensified. “I am damned, Jeni. Cursed for my sins in this life, the past, and the next.”

  “I need more than that.” He’d seen inside my head. He knew everything about me, which was terrifying—everyone had demons they didn’t want to share. Point was, he knew the worst of me. But even with my flaws, I could be trusted. So why didn’t he?

  He gripped my chin and forced me to meet his gaze. “Someday, you will understand, but I promise you will thank me for forcing you to remove Ten Club from your life.”

  “You said evil will always exist.”

  “This particular breed has taken several thousand years to evolve. Once they are gone, it gives people like you a few thousand more to figure out what to do.” King gazed into my eyes with what felt like affection, as impossible as it might be for a creature like him. “Life is never about absolutes. It is about possibilities and will. Some will the possibilities into existence. Some use their will to accept the fate they’ve been handed. You, Jeni Arnold, are the former. There is nothing you cannot accomplish if you put your mind to it. And that is why I have put all my faith in you.”

  I was beginning to see that King was a thing of darkness, fighting to bring light into this world the only way he knew how. Defiance. King’s defiance defined him. He even defied his own evil heart. “I wish I’d met you before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before your life took a wrong turn.”

  “Why do you say that?” he asked, sounding amused.

  “I see how much good you’re capable of. I would’ve fought tooth and nail to keep you from fucking it up.”

  “Trust me, Jeni. It would have been a waste of time. My wife was a fighter like you. She did not give up on me until her last breath. But…” His voice faded off.

  “Tell me. I want to know—I need to know who I’m really dealing with.” Could I trust him? Because now my dad’s life was riding on it.

  He met my eyes again. “Mia gave up everything to be with me, including being a Seer with more than enough power to save herself and our children.”

  I let that sink in. He’d created this monster he couldn’t control—Ten Club—and he was the reason his wife had been vulnerable, unable to defend herself or their babies.

  “I’m so, so sorry,” I whispered, trying and failing not to tear up again. “I—fuck—I don’t know what to say, other than—”

  �
�Say,” he quietly snarled, his eyes filled with torment, “that you will end them, Jeni. I do not care what price I pay. I do not care if I am torn limb from limb and left alive at the bottom of the fucking ocean. As long as Ten Club is gone, I will rest contently.”

  He mentally opened up, allowing me to experience his brutal anguish. He showed me his memory of meeting his wife Mia for the first time. He had been instantly enamored, but somewhere deep inside, he knew their story would end in a tragedy. He knew if he truly loved her, he should let her go.

  But no. Like an arrogant fool, he told himself he could change their future, and he kept on believing it until he saw what those monsters did to her and his children—Ariadna and Arch. Ten Club made sure his family couldn’t be brought back like he could. Their bodies were destroyed. Their souls moved on. And King blamed himself for everything—his greed for power, the selfish need for his wife Mia, the despicable pride he felt giving her the life she wanted: free and safe from Ten Club. A lie. She had been unaware they were still in the picture with him at the helm.

  I had no words to describe the void inside King. It felt like someone had come along with a buck knife and scraped out his insides, leaving him with nothing but his demons.

  “I should’ve known,” his voice was filled with deep regret, “that a dead king, damned thousands of years ago, had no business loving a woman like her.”

  Thousands of years old. How was that even possible?

  King continued, “That is unimportant. What matters is that I will not be repeating my mistakes.” He extended his hand and brushed his thumb across my lower lip. “When this is over, I will ensure my breed of evil never walks this earth again.”

  He wasn’t evil. He was damaged. There was a difference. “Can’t you see that what you’re doing now, everything you feel, the love you have for your wife and children, all prove you’re not evil?”

  He inhaled slowly, as if summoning his patience. “Jeni, you and your father will be the only two people walking out alive from that party. This is what I have been attempting to tell you, and there will be no discussion on the matter.”

  I frowned, not quite understanding.

  He continued, “It is like I said; you will end Ten Club once and for all. And along with them, the person responsible for sending me to the bottom of the ocean: Me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  King spent the next few minutes describing those final days before he locked himself inside a steel safe and paid some fishermen to throw him into deep waters just off the coast of Florida.

  As I listened, panicked as hell and thinking about how this would all play out for my father, I realized that King was like a dark, jagged puzzle. Each piece that fell into place painted a picture of a man who’d lost everything because he believed he could contain the evil elite of Ten Club, like the devil who ruled over the souls in hell. King believed that these corrupt, greedy, sick individuals needed a real king to lead, police, and punish them.

  Maybe they did.

  But what he failed to understand was the one thing I was beginning to see that he couldn’t: King wasn’t evil enough. It would take a very special kind of bastard to control a group who held no regard for human life, and he simply didn’t fit the profile. That was his fatal mistake.

  Nevertheless, I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that they existed. Slavery, torture, and murder as forms of entertainment? King even told me about a man who used to collect women’s skins and put them over his dead lover’s corpse like paper dolls.

  Nasty.

  And when members got bored of level one—as I called it—they went to level two and started dabbling in the occult. Also shocking was that they each paid a billion-dollar annual membership fee, and together, this money went into a sort of insurance pool, used to buy people off, shut them up, or make them disappear if they tried to interfere in a member’s business. According to King, they had politicians, judges, and CEOs from major companies from all around the world in their pockets. He called it a “membership perk,” complete immunity from the law. All it took was a net worth of ten billion dollars, an annual due of a billion, and a proclivity for brutality.

  “So if there were no rules,” I asked, “what did you punish members for?”

  “There are rules. Members are not allowed to steal from one another. They must trade and keep their agreements—verbal or written. They must obey the leader and not disclose the club to anyone outside.”

  “And if they break the rules?”

  “I had a team of powerful Seers to assist me in detaining the member, and then punished them if they were found to be guilty. Unfortunately, fate had its own punishment for me in store.”

  King went on to explain that his wife found out he was still running things after he’d sworn to dismantle Ten Club. She left him and moved in with her parents back in San Francisco, where she was from. To get her back, he decided to step down and put another person in place to keep them in check.

  He continued, “I chose Serina. She was the only member who had similar tools to mine.” He tapped the side of his head. I assumed he was referring to crawling inside people’s heads. “We worked out a deal for her to take my place. She would get my arsenal of objects and agreed to eliminate a few of the more dangerous members with axes to grind.”

  “So you tried to leave.”

  “Yes. And no. If I wanted to make things right with Mia, I needed to end them. Putting Serina in place was merely a Band-Aid. I knew eventually the members would start jockeying for leadership and eliminating competition. They are just as backstabbing as they are depraved. I thought to let it all play out—let the members do the work of killing each other off. I would take care of anyone left over. But my goal was to stay out of the picture once and for all, with the exception of that final piece.”

  I gave it some thought. I wondered why he didn’t just invite them all to a private island and blow it up.

  “When it comes to Ten Club, they have eyes and ears everywhere. To end them, one must look for the less obvious manner. I believed using their need for power against them was my best option. However, I never anticipated the Seers were busy hatching their own scheme. They thought they were more suited to lead the club and aligned with some members behind my back.”

  I was on the edge of my seat. So these Seers who worked for him weren’t exactly loyal. Why did they work for him to begin with?

  “It was more of a mutually beneficial relationship,” he explained. “I raised many from the dead. They owed me.”

  I was about to ask how he’d done that and why he couldn’t do that for his wife and children when he added, “Ten Club ensured that door was closed forever.”

  So while King was secretly planning his grand exit, where Serina would take the keys to the kingdom, the Seers were making their own plans. They wanted power. He wanted Ten Club to self-destruct.

  He nodded his head of thick dark hair. “I called a mandatory meeting at my house in San Francisco to announce my departure. But as the last members were arriving, one of the Seers slipped up—I heard one thinking about how happy she would be when it was all over. I knew right away she was up to something, so I took her into another room and pressed her. Violently.”

  I guessed he meant he tortured her.

  “Yes,” he said, “and then the events unfolded as I told you.”

  I felt my mind itching and spinning. Suddenly, I was inside King’s head:

  I stood in a big living room with white furniture and hardwood floors. Women in black cocktail dresses started falling to the floor like leaves scattered in the wind. People in tuxes and sequined gowns were scrambling for the doors, yelling or cussing. So much confusion.

  Then, as if my heart had been ripped right from my chest, I doubled over, clutching the fabric of my white dress shirt. I could not breathe. The pain was too much. And then suddenly it stopped. They’re dead. No. No. No.

  I rushed outside and found my driver. “Hurry. Get to Mia’s pa
rents’ house.” It wasn’t far, but the drive felt like a never-ending downward spiral into hell. Everything inside me already knew the truth.

  The car pulled up to the grand home on Nob Hill, and I ran up the steps. When I reached the top, the front door had been left open. I could hear the screams from Mia’s mother.

  King cleared his throat, pushing me out of his head. I was back in my dad’s house. Staring into King’s pale gray eyes.

  “You do not need to see the rest,” he said.

  I looked down at my feet. I got the gist. “I’m so sorry they did that to your family.” Despite his mistakes, my heart broke for him. I could feel the gaping hole inside him, like his soul was dead.

  “As am I.”

  “So what happened to the Seers after that?”

  “I am a cautious man. I made sure that when I raised them from the dead, I had a way to send them back should they cross me.”

  So he killed them.

  “Seers never truly die. Their souls are bound to the earth.”

  “But your wife. You said she was a Seer.”

  “She was forced to sever ties with them at one point. It is why I cannot get her back. She moved on with our children.”

  Moved on to where? I wondered if a man like him knew what was on the other side.

  “That is a complicated question. I can merely tell you that once a person crosses over, they are gone forever.”

  “And the other Seers, where are they now?”

  “The ones who moved against me are forever trapped in that house.”

  Oh god. That was why it was so cold, so dark. He killed them and left their souls to rot there.

  “After I buried my pregnant wife and child,” he said, “I warded our home, along with my warehouse, to keep people away, and I decided I no longer wished to live.”

  But why the safe? Why the bottom of the ocean in Florida?

  He gave me a pained look. “I have been resurrected more times than I can count, and I wanted to die for good this time. I asked the fishermen to take me somewhere no one would ever find me.”