“Jeni is correct,” King said to Serina. “And it is the very reason I planned to make you an offer first.”
Serina cackled with delight. “And what do you have that I could possibly want this time? I already took control of Ten Club without any help from you and your Seer bitches.” Her brown eyes went wide. “Oh, wait. You weren’t planning on offering me all your stuff again, were you?” She swiped a hand through the air and laughed. “I’ve got my own collection of goodies.”
“No. This is a much better deal,” he said.
“Can’t wait. Bring it.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Your life.”
“Sorry?” She laughed.
“I am offering to let you live. Just turn around, walk out that door, go back to one of your many mansions with your dozens of sex slaves, and enjoy your life. Or stay and die along with the other Ten Club members.” He flashed a sadistic smile.
She frowned. “Funny. You think you can take me? Go ahead. Try.”
His smile melted away. “I do not wish to take you. Death does. And he’s standing right behind you.”
The moment he said that, my mind couldn’t help thinking about that night when Randall attacked me and he died, and also the night I killed King. Serina had shown up for the second one, so she’d seen my handiwork.
Serina’s mouth flapped for a moment. “But she…I thought she was…”
“What?” King said, all cockiness. “That Jeni was just another little Seer who channeled energy or predicted the future?” He shook his head. “Who do you think brought me back from the dead after twenty-five years, Serina? Who resurrected me from the bottom of the ocean?”
“You had that ring on,” she argued.
He shook his head no. “You witnessed it yourself the other day when you encountered me with Jeni in my warehouse. No ring. Yet here I am. So choose. Death or life?”
“But what did I do—what’s death want?” She sounded like a child trying to whine her way through getting caught.
“Like the other members of Ten Club, you have been meddling in things you should not. Death wants its pound of flesh, Serina.” He leaned in. “Everything comes with a price.”
“What about you? You’re the biggest offender. You’re a thousand times worse than me.”
“That is not your concern.” He drew a slow breath and stared at her with a drab expression.
Serina didn’t flinch.
“Very well.” He looked at me. “You know what to do.”
“I’m going. I’m going!” Serina started to leave.
“Wait,” I said to King. “That’s it? She fucking has my dad. She tortured and killed him!” Her actions couldn’t go unpunished!
King said nothing. No emotion on his face.
“You’re an evil bastard,” I said to him and rushed after Serina. “You bitch! Give me back my dad!”
She turned just before reaching the front door and held out her hand. I felt a sharp pain inside my head like she was pushing my brain through my eye sockets.
I groaned in agony.
“If I give him back, what do I get in exchange?” she said.
“I’ll kill you,” I croaked.
“And cross King?” She laughed. “Doubtful. He and I have a deal, and you won’t break it. I heard your thoughts. You’re in love with him.”
I fell to the ground, clawing at my neck, choking. I want my dad back.
“I think I’ll keep him.” She laughed out her words. “Just in case you decide to pull any tricks. Besides, he’s very handy around the yard.”
The room filled with a dark presence, pushing the others—the dead Seers—away. The air got colder, and the lights flickered.
It was here. Death.
The two times before, I hadn’t been able to see what it was, because it had been nighttime. In my memories, it was a shadow and nothing more. But this time was different. The moment it entered the room, I saw it clearly. Every feature—the curve of its lips, the definition of the jaw, the thick black hair.
Serina released her hold on me and stood shell-shocked next to the front door.
I righted myself in the middle of the room just a few feet away from it, trying to make sense of what my eyes were registering.
King waltzed into the room and stopped. I could tell by the look on his face that he was just as surprised as we were.
The dark shadow was no longer some unknown entity. It was King. Or at least, it was a shadow that looked exactly like him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
KING
I had led an extraordinary life filled with more impossible events than I could ever count or recount. I traveled the world, collecting knowledge and power from the ancient Egyptians, the Druids, the Maya, and a hundred other lost civilizations. All because I wanted to live. An ancient Minoan king fighting to stay alive so that he might someday find the woman he was meant to be with yet hadn’t been born: Mia. She was a Seer who traveled from her time to mine. And before returning home, three thousand years in the future, she changed everything—the fate of my people and brother, the future that awaited her, and my cold heart.
I did not want her to leave, but circumstances demanded it. And when I vowed to find a way to see her again, I intended to keep it.
But, as with everything in this world, our reunion would come with a price. And now I was paying it.
In my three thousand years walking this earth, enduring torment, loss, and rage, I had never seen such a thing so dark: my soul. And it was staring back at me.
The shadow shook its head and extended its hand, reaching straight for my heart. It wrapped its ice-cold fingers around my organ and squeezed. The pain sent me to my knees.
In an instant, Serina and Jeni faded away. The room melted into a circle of faces. So many souls I’d trapped inside this house—most of them Seers from the time of the Minoans, from when I was a true king who cared for his people above all else.
“What do you want?” I growled at the faces.
The women said nothing, but I knew. I knew what they wanted. I knew why this was happening, why I felt so empty and hollow inside.
It seemed they too had taken measures, just as I had when I brought them back from the dead to serve me. I had taken out insurance to secure their obedience, and so had they.
“I did it for Mia,” I said, rising to my feet despite the agony. “You all know that.” When my son came along, I did it for him, too. And then my daughter. I had lived for three thousand years and watched the greed of men destroy countless tribes, villages, and civilizations. Their hunger for power never stopped. And those with it ultimately fed on the goodness of the weak.
So who would protect my Mia?
Not a saint.
Not even a man with means.
The only option was to be at the top of the food chain. The man everyone feared. Then and only then could I keep those I loved safe.
But everything comes with a price, the women said without speaking.
“I paid it. I lost her. I lost my children.”
Yes, but all that power, all the evil you brought into this world must be punished.
“I am going to make things right. I am going to end Ten Club.”
It wasn’t enough, they said. The cancer I’d created had taken on a life of its own. Corruption, the hunger for power, the darkness in people’s minds. I had planted the seed, and that seed was Ten Club. And now the roots had taken hold, souring everything around us.
And as fate would have it, the woman who could have fixed it was gone. Mia. She had been the most powerful Seer ever to be born, with the ability to travel through time, but she gave up her gift to be with me. She was gone because of me.
So now you see, they said.
“No. I do not. What is it that you want?” I asked.
The circle opened up. A young woman with large brown eyes and dirty blonde hair appeared. I knew right away who she was. My daughter.
“You’re still here?” I
could hardly speak. She was so beautiful.
“Yes. Thanks to you.”
She even sounded like Mia.
“How? How is this possible?” I was told that Seers, their souls, never left the earth, but Ariadna hadn’t been born yet. I thought perhaps that changed things.
She smiled, and her lips were just like her mother’s. I had not realized how much I missed that smile.
“Why are you here? In this house?” Why wasn’t her soul free to join their ancestors? This house was filled with the Seers who betrayed me, which led to the murder of her mother and brother.
“Our family’s blood is on your hands,” Ariadna said. “Every choice you made, every action, every lie and broken vow to my mother. And when we died, she knew she wouldn’t be able to return. She knew she would have to cross over with Arch. So she sent me with a message.”
I understood right away what that meant. I had executed all the Seers in my employ and bound them to this house. “You were here, too, weren’t you?”
She nodded.
“I am sorry. I did not know.”
“Father, I am here to tell you that you must set things right. And until you do, your soul will not be allowed to cross over.”
“This was your doing? I cannot die because of you?” They’d been contained here for over twenty-five years.
“We might not have been able to leave, but these walls and your wards could never keep us from speaking with our ancestors whose souls still roam free. That is why you will remain here. Every misdeed, every thread of the tapestry, every footprint must be erased.
“You were never meant to live for three thousand years, Father. Rules were broken. And because of that, this world is changed. Because of you, because of your choices, and because of Ten Club.”
As she spoke, I realized her words were something I already knew. It was why I’d cursed myself to forget. After all my sins, I did not deserve the happy memories of my wife and children. I wanted to punish myself.
“Your suffering is not enough. This is why we bound you to Jeni,” Ariadna continued. “The last living Seer, whose gifts are befitting of a man like yourself.”
Jeni was the last. I’d suspected as much given how many Seers I had personally killed, all for reasons I did not care to rehash.
What was her gift? It wasn’t summoning death, as I had believed. That dark, sadistic creature had been me all along, my soul bound to Jeni instead of my own body. It was why I felt a massive dark void inside and could not cross over. No soul meant I was merely an empty shell—living, but not complete.
“Jeni can see you for who you truly are,” said Ariadna. “You cannot trick her. You cannot use your powers to manipulate her will. And you will learn from her.”
The king. Learn from a meek, twenty-three-year-old woman who just last week was afraid of her own shadow?
“Father,” Ariadna said sternly, “the only reason you are getting this chance is because I made a promise to Mother.”
“What promise?” After all the lies, and how my sweet Mia must’ve suffered upon her death, having to watch our son executed, I deserved whatever punishment was coming.
“She said to tell you that she loved you and that she forgave you. Her only regret was that she couldn’t save you from yourself.”
“What did you promise her?” I repeated.
“To give you one more chance. Don’t waste it.”
I blinked and found myself staring into Jeni’s brown eyes. “King? King? Are you okay?” Her head whipped around. “Where’d it go? Where’d that thing go?”
“Fuck if I know,” Serina said, reaching for the door.
My conversation with my daughter had ended abruptly, but I knew what had to be done. If I ever wanted to cross over and see my wife and son again, I had to make things right. I had to pay for all my sins.
“Serina.” I righted myself and stood tall. “Not so fast.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
JENI
I wasn’t sure what had happened to King in that living room, but he didn’t say much after the shadow thing appeared. Then disappeared. All I knew was he’d muttered a few curses, and the room turned into a churning gust of wind. Then Serina dropped dead right where she stood. No fanfare. No struggle. Just…dead—a testament to King’s power.
A moment later, the gust stopped, and the house was empty. The eyes I’d felt on us were gone. How or why? I didn’t care.
“Dad!” Tears streaming down my cheeks, I rushed outside to Serina’s red sports car—some expensive-looking Italian thing. Please let him be okay. Please! The thought of what she’d done to him broke my heart.
I found the lever next to the driver’s seat and popped the trunk. I rushed to the open compartment and gasped. Oh God. Oh God. I covered my face, unable to look. He was dead, like she’d said, lying there like a lifeless ragdoll.
“Let me help you bring him inside.” King appeared with a blanket. He covered my dad and carried him inside to the big white couch in the living room. Serina’s body had already been removed, probably chucked down the basement stairwell. That hellhole was the perfect place for her. Evil to the core. It was probably why she’d been able to take control of Ten Club after King left. Zero redeeming qualities.
I unwrapped my dad’s limp body and brushed my fingers over his soft sandy blond hair. His eyes were closed, like he was sleeping, but his skin had a light gray hue. The image would haunt me forever.
“I’m so sorry, Dad. Please forgive me.” I didn’t see any marks, but I knew what Serina had done to him. I felt like it was all my fault.
“Come.” King’s warm hand gripped my shoulder. “Take a moment to gather yourself while he heals.”
I didn’t want to leave my dad’s side.
“He will wake soon,” King pushed. “He should not see you like this.”
King was right. Dad didn’t need to witness me in hysterics on top of everything else.
I slowly got to my feet and followed King to the kitchen.
“Here.” He handed me a white piece of cloth.
A handkerchief? Who used those anymore? Holding it in my hands suddenly made everything feel real. King was not from this time. He was not from the world I’d been born to. He was something altogether different. I didn’t know why it took so long for that to sink in, but it finally had.
“Are you all right?” he asked, not sounding particularly sympathetic. Typical.
“No.” I shook my head. “Why? Why would Serina hurt him like that?”
“Do not worry. He will be fine.”
“I know he’s got your ring, but that’s not going to address his memories.” My dad would wake, totally fucked up in the head after what he’d gone through.
“I will take care of it,” said King. “He won’t remember a thing. It will be like nothing happened.”
That was a relief, but I still felt sick to my stomach, overwhelmed by everything.
“What just happened?” I stared at King’s beautiful face, noting a subtle shift in his eyes. The silvery gray had flecks of blue.
“Eventually, all debts must be paid.” His tone was even.
“Will Serina come back to life? If yes, I’d like to help her pay her debts.”
“She will not be returning, and you will never speak of revenge again. Leave the dirty work to me. On that note, you are no longer needed at the Ten Club gathering tomorrow.”
“No. I’m going.” The man who murdered my mother would be there, and I looked forward to seeing his life end.
“Your hands must remain clean. I will take care of him myself along with Ten Club. Here on out, they are my problem.”
After all his efforts to persuade me to kill Ten Club, that was a weird thing to say. “But how will you…”
My mind offered the answer before I could finish the sentence. That thing, the dark shadow that killed Randall and King, was actually him—a piece of King or something.
“Tell me what happened,” I demanded. King was keeping
something big from me. I could feel him mentally pushing me back.
“It is time for you to return to Florida and move on with your life. I will give you enough money for graduate school and so that your father may retire.”
I frowned, feeling completely confused. One minute, I had been fighting for my dad, and the next, a big King-shaped shadow appeared and Serina was dead. And now I’m being sent home.
“I’m not leaving.” I didn’t want to go. I felt like I still had unfinished business, not to mention the fact that my feelings for King hadn’t changed.
“Jeni,” he pierced me with his eyes, “the woman I was fated to love is gone. There will never be another. I will never have feelings for you. Not even if I wished it.”
“I am not asking you to lov—”
He cut me off, showing me what he meant. That shadow was more than a dark assassin at his beck and call. It was his soul. Dark, bloodied, cursed.
Jesus. I inhaled sharply. How the hell was that his soul? And why was it running around protecting me?
“A topic for another day,” he said, listening in as usual. “But that is not the point. You now see I have been telling you the truth.”
He was not a good man. His soul was tainted.
Yes, yes. For fuck’s sake, I get it! You’re bad and evil and horrible and dangerous. But he was overlooking one important fact: I couldn’t help how I felt. I saw something in him. Something good. And I was drawn to it. His salvation gave me hope, because if he could be saved, maybe this fucked-up world wasn’t a lost cause. Maybe I’m not a lost cause.
I knew he heard me. And I knew it made no difference to him.
He came around the counter and placed a warm hand on my cheek, beaming down at me. “And you would be wrong, little Seer. It makes all the difference in the world.”
If I lived a million years, I would never understand how King’s gifts worked. He was a brain surgeon, only he performed operations on people’s memories. He could walk right into someone’s head, look around, pluck out specific things, and throw them out.
The Dead King Page 15