He paused only a moment before he smiled to himself and said, “I will.”
Lalura had taken a few sips of her tea, replaced the cup on the tray hovering before her, and rose once more. Her cane flew into her firm, ancient grasp, and she turned to leave his home.
She had first appeared in the enormous log cabin in a puff of lavender-scented and purple smoke. But apparently she would leave by the front door.
Once there, she stopped and glanced at him over her bony shoulder. “One more down,” she’d muttered, as if to herself. “Four to go.”
Then his door had opened for her of its own accord, and she’d stepped through into the blizzard beyond, disappearing in a cloud of white before the door automatically shut again behind her.
And now, here he was, moving through a portal with the Shadow King and the newly appointed Nightmare King, heading into an unknown situation in the Dark.
He’d thought a lot about what Lalura had said just before she’d left him. What had she meant? One more down, four to go.
The closest he could reason was that she had decided he was not the traitor to the Thirteen Kings. Considering Hesperos most likely wasn’t either, that would leave four men at the table who were yet possibilities.
What he could not figure out was why Lalura had decided such a thing. Why mark him off the list? Not that he was disagreeing with the decision. After all, it was correct. He would no more betray his brethren sovereigns than have a very private conversation with Ratatosk.
The portal opened one final time, and the four of them stepped out onto a paved and deserted road.
“Where are we?” Violet asked. She was still visibly shaken, but had come-to more or less in the portals and regained her faculties. She was very pale, and her eyes were enormous in her face. But Kristopher could feel her Tuath magic flowing healthy and ready.
“The Dark.” Pitch remained so close to his queen, he could have been her shadow, himself.
Kristopher’s gaze narrowed. Something about that thought turned gears in his head, but he had no idea what it was or why it struck him as important.
He let it go and peered down the long, smooth ribbon of black before him. On either side of the road were structures. It reminded him of a Western ghost town; there were a dozen buildings, max, and those were in disrepair, the wood blackened, shutters and doors hanging loosely. There was no movement in the small town.
For some reason, Kristopher had expected the Dark to be pitch black. Like the man’s name. This was a surprise.
Hesperos beat him to the punch when he asked, “This is the Dark? I thought it would be, you know… dark.”
“Me too,” said Violet numbly. She looked up at her king.
Keeran’s eyes were glowing; it was something Kristopher had never seen before, but they’d been glowing ever since Violet’s episode had begun in the meeting room. He found himself wanting to know a little more about the Shadow King’s background than he did. But the two were not particularly close. They were acquaintances, more than anything. They were kings at the same table.
Nothing more.
“Many people have misconceptions about the Dark. But it’s called the Dark because it is the heart of the Shadow Kingdom. There is obviously no sunlight, and fire will not take here.”
Kristopher frowned. The ambience in the realm possessed the same brightness that would be shed beneath a full moon. He looked over his shoulder at the night sky, but where he expected to find that moon, there was only the drapery of velvet black. It was disconcerting.
He then glanced down at his feet in order to use his shadow as a reference for where the light was coming from. But there was no shadow.
“What the –”
“No one casts a shadow in the Dark,” said Pitch. “The only beings who are supposed to be able to traverse this realm already are shadows.”
Hesperos beat him to it again. “Then how are we here?”
Pitch looked at him.
Hesperos made a face. “Right. Magic. You being king and all, and her being queen. Got it.”
“My sister is there,” Violet said softly, raising her hand to point at the nearby buildings. She’d gone still, as if that terror she’d sensed earlier had her in its grips again. “She’s in pain.”
Pitch exchanged looks with Hesperos and Kristopher. Kristopher nodded. “I think Violet should remain here.”
Pitch turned to his queen. “Violet, stay with Hesperos. Kristopher and I will look for Dahlia.”
But she gritted her teeth, and without even bothering to shake her head at Pitch, she pushed past him to begin running toward the first of the dark, abandoned buildings. Tuath were agile, quick beings; she was putting fast distance between them.
“Just like a queen,” muttered Hesperos as the three men broke into a run after her. They reached her at approximately the same time, just as she was in turn reaching the lopsided door of the building. Fortunately, she stopped and looked up at it, now hesitant.
It appeared to have once been a house, or perhaps something like a church. In any case, it was Victorian in structure, three stories high, with a wrap-around porch and tall, arched windows. Those windows seemed to stare out at them from the blackened wood.
“It’s not actually burned,” Kristopher reasoned, now that he was getting a close-up look at it. At first, he’d thought the wood of the buildings was black because it had been in some sort of fire. But Pitch had said flame wouldn’t take here – and this didn’t look like burned wood, which was something Kristopher actually knew quite a bit about. Rather, it was just black. “It’s a shadow, isn’t it?” he finished.
“Yes,” Pitch replied. Kristopher noticed he’d grabbed Violet’s hand and was holding it none-too-gently. But she didn’t seem to mind. “Everything here is.”
“I’m cold,” said Violet suddenly. Her voice still contained that dreamy quality of someone who was numb from shock or fear. But Pitch released her and straightened, his glowing eyes going on high-alert.
“Do either of you feel cold?” he asked.
Kristopher wouldn’t know if the temperature in the Dark had dropped. He was immune to the sensation of hot or cold. He looked to Hesperos.
The Nightmare King’s expression was concerned. “Come to think of it, it is colder than it was when we arrived.”
Pitch swore under his breath. He turned a full circle, his gaze peering deep into the recesses of the darkness around him. When he exhaled, steam formed before his lips. That was normally something only Kristopher’s breath did, and only when he wasn’t paying attention or was letting his guard drop.
But then the air in front of Hesperos frosted as well. Then Violet’s.
“The Darkfire,” Pitch said, his tone filled with dread. “It’s gone out.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It was the worst possible situation. The Entity had played everything out just right. It had used Keeran’s weakness, that loss of control over his realm of late, to come into the Dark and wreak havoc with his world. The Darkfire had gone out, Dahlia Kellen was in this building, and Keeran was caught between the two.
He looked down at Violet, who was clearly within an inch of swallowing her fear and racing into the house to find her sister. There was no way she was going to accompany him back out of the Dark at that moment so he could relight the fire, no matter what the stakes were. Her bond with her sister was too strong.
Keeran could either leave her alone and save his kingdom, or stay with her and lose his entire realm.
“Son of a bitch,” he swore again, knowing full well that he was trapped between a rock and a hard place.
“I’m going in,” Violet suddenly said, turning toward him. Her jaw was set in determination. “We’re wasting time. You have to re-light the Darkfire and I need to help Dahlia.” She was at once fully lucid, entirely resolute and frustratingly sensible.
“There’s no way in hell I’m leaving you. It’s exactly what the Entity wants.”
“Then st
ay,” said Kristopher.
Keeran looked up at the Winter King. For once, the man wasn’t breathing steam – just when the rest of them were.
“I will take care of the Shadow Realm,” he said.
Keeran stared at him. He’s not breathing steam. Some memory nagged at him –
And then he remembered. The Winter King wasn’t always about cold. He could control the temperature, even the very weather, in general.
“Now I know why the old bat wanted me to come,” Kristopher muttered with a half-smile.
“This is a big realm,” Keeran warned. That was putting it lightly. It was as large as the mortal realm, and then there was the Dark, its very heart. It was gigantic.
“You’re wasting time,” Kristopher replied. He nodded at the house beside them, just as Violet broke free, running through the front door.
Keeran bolted after her, trusting everything behind him, and the future of his very existence as Shadow King, to another man.
*****
The cuffs had burned red-black grooves into her flesh long ago, but she barely felt it any more. She was so weak, she had to concentrate just to keep her own heart beating.
One beat – two. Keep going. Again. That’s it.
It hurt everywhere. The wood beneath her body was bruising her, the wall behind her head gave her a headache. Her vision was beyond blurry, now no more than a host of dim, dark colors separated by vague, waggly shapes. Everything was dark. Really, it was so fitting.
I want to give up.
It wasn’t a direct thought, not one she meant to think. It was just a feeling that kept rolling through her over and over again. She wanted to give up so badly. It was Violet alone that kept Dahlia going. It was the knowledge that Violet was coming for her, that she was in danger, and that Dahlia needed to hang in there long enough to tell them what she’d learned.
If she didn’t hang in there, the Entity would get to Violet. Her sister would be struck with a grief that would weaken her defenses. And the Entity would take her. That’s what he wanted.
He wanted a queen.
There was something about a queen that he needed in a host. So, he’d used Dahlia, tortured her, and attempted to extract information from her, as he’d bided his time until Violet learned her place as the Shadow Queen.
And now that she was finally there, she was ripe for the Entity. And Dahlia had been left out as bait.
But Dahlia Kellen had always been a strong woman. It was something she shared with her sister. They were strong in every aspect, from physical to spiritual, and neither one had ever been known to back down from a fight.
That’s what she kept reminding herself that this was. A fight. She heard her sister’s words in her ear, like the time Violet had made her keep walking on the path that would take them home, even after they’d gotten cocky in their deft abilities and ended up falling down a cliff. They’d sustained too many injuries for their Tuath bodies to heal. You want to lose a fight, Liah? Violet had asked, her voice pissed off and laced with pain. No. No, you don’t. So keep fucking fighting.
Keep. Fighting.
It was hard to see dark things in the dark. The Entity was so dark himself, he had overlooked the same aspects in Dahlia when he’d first kidnapped her. And when she realized he had done so, she’d decided to use the oversight to the best of her ability. She was a warlock, and the Entity didn’t know it. He assumed she was simply a Tuath, and that it was Violet who was the warlock. This was Dahlia’s only weapon.
She continued to hide her warlock abilities from him. The moment he left her alone to recover from any one of his visits, she used that magic. But rather than use it to better her own situation or attempt to escape, she used it to remember. She used it to log every single thing she learned about him, every tiny, miniscule detail he let slip. She kept this information locked safely away, protected by the same dark magic, and bided her own time until the inevitable moment that he determined Dahlia physically useless to him – and Violet was queen.
Now was that time.
She was cold. Maybe I’m dying, she thought. No! You have to hold on! But the Entity had done something to her in those final moments… and now Dahlia wasn’t so sure.
He had transformed, taken on solid form. It was fleeting, lasting only seconds. But it was fierce. He had been trying to get to her by inhabiting her body and making it do things she would not have done. But she’d shut herself down, decided it was no different from having sex with someone to regain magical power, and he’d failed again and again.
At last, he lost his temper with her – and before her fading vision, he became solid.
In her exhausted state, all she could remember was that he was so tall, like a person made of stretched-out rubber. Rather than flail at her with his magic as he had been doing so far, rather than rip at her very nerve endings with energy that made her scream or moan or cry, he leaned over her, solid and dark.
She felt hands on her as she was lifted.
Then a searing pain pierced through her neck and traveled like lightning down her spine. At first, she thought he had bent her in two. Maybe he’d broken her neck, twisted her head. She couldn’t tell. There was pain, and then he was dropping her to the floor again, and the realness of his form dissipated into the black, misty substance he preferred to occupy.
He left her alone.
A while later, Dahlia awoke to find she must have been out for some time, because she was in a different place, she was handcuffed with human handcuffs to a radiator, and she was weaker than she’d ever been in her life. The cuffs were steel, which was an alloy of iron. And that iron had left marks on her that would probably never fade. Like so many things.
Her stomach hurt, her skin hurt, her neck hurt. Her very soul hurt. But… she heard something now. Footfalls? Soles on wooden planks! Oh gods, it’s help. Finally, someone is coming. And in that moment, she almost didn’t care whether the person coming was coming to save her or slaughter her. She was just too miserable.
“Dahlia!”
She heard her name. She heard it coming from a voice she would have given anything to hear again.
She tried to call out, to answer, but there was not enough strength. She could either respond or keep her own heart beating. She chose the latter.
Keep… fighting.
“Oh gods, Dahlia!”
At last. Someone fell to their knees beside her, and Dahlia could just make out the shimmering gold color of a mass of long, thick hair. “Vi….” She tried to say her sister’s name. But again, no sound came out. She tried to swallow, but her throat was so raw, so swollen.
“What’s wrong with her?” Violet asked. Again, Dahlia was being lifted. She was being shifted, and someone magically did away with the cuffs. She heard them hit the ground. “Oh my…gods…. Keeran, she has… she has fangs.”
Dahlia heard cursing, low and filled with dread.
“What the fuck did that thing do to my sister?” Violet asked. Dahlia felt a hand on her cheek, tender and warm. It was the first kind contact she’d had in what felt like forever. “Keeran, what did he do?”
“It isn’t possible,” a man’s voice said. It was a beautiful voice, deep and resonant. But he sounded bewildered. “I don’t know how it has happened, Violet. But your sister is a vampire.”
Chapter Thirty
The moment Pitch disappeared inside the house, Hesperos could sense something was about to go down. The king had made his decision, and the Entity wasn’t happy about it. Hess could feel the creature’s hatred, his resentment over not having what he wanted. It was like reading a soul and sensing the evil within it, something that all Nightmares could do. Only this particular soul was all around them. It was intangible and hard to pin down.
“He’s pissed,” he whispered as his eyes skirted the heavens. Hesperos had no idea what to look for, but he looked for it nonetheless. “He really wants Violet.”
“I know,” said Kristopher.
Hesperos glanced at the Win
ter King. Kristopher Scaule reminded Hesperos of some sort of Viking turned biker boy. He supposed that was because in essence, that’s exactly what Scaule was.
In the mortal realm, his transportation consisted of either “icing” from one location to another, or riding one of various motorcycles he kept housed in a glacial garage in a non-disclosed location. His two favorites were a 1927 Brough Superior SS100, a motorcycle dubbed by many as the “Rolls Royce” of motorcycles, and the Vincent Black Shadow. His dark blonde hair was longer than any good boy’s hair should be, his ice blue eyes were pretty much killer, and his jeans had grease stains on them.
“You should have been born an incubus,” Hesperos commented regretfully.
Kris smiled as he raised his arms at his sides. He was standing about three feet from the stairs that led to the Victorian home’s porch, and Hesperos could feel that the king was pulling in his power in preparation to use it on a grand scale. “So you’ve mentioned. And flattery won’t get you off the hook. Pitch might have chosen a scorpion for your chair, but personally I was thinking more along the lines of an ice dildo.”
Hesperos grinned. They were somewhat acquainted, he and Kristopher… Hesperos having slept with Kristopher’s beautiful little sister long, long ago – and Kristopher having stuffed Hesperos into an iceberg for a few decades for revenge.
Ah, good times, thought Hesperos.
Kris closed his eyes, and Hesperos felt a wave of something warm wash over him as it formed a ring and expanded through the Dark like a ripple on a pond. The Winter King was negating the freezing effect of an extinguished Darkfire – whatever the hell that was. Clearly Hesperos was the new kid in school, and there were some things about the realms of the Thirteen that he needed to study up on. But suffice it to say, Kris was doing his job.
A sudden impact against his side took Hesperos off his feet and knocked the wind from his lungs. He flew several yards, hit the ground, and rolled, switching into fight mode. He regained his legs and his vision shifted into reds.
“Boys, it’s time to clean up shop.”
The voice coming from the one who’d attacked him sounded fragmented and gravelly, like a beast that had been frozen, shattered, and glued back together again. So, it was with some confusion that Hesperos found himself face to face with a band of boys. Strictly speaking, they weren’t boys so much as very young men. He supposed it was the expressions on their faces, filled with youthful rage, that made him associate them with immaturity.