He knew what they were, though. There wasn’t a creature in the realms that could hide what it was from a well trained Nightmare.
They were Pan Shadows. And from the look of them, they’d recently been through some shit. Scars crisscrossed their skin like puzzle markings, and Hesperos understood why their voices sounded so strange. They really had been torn apart and sewn back together.
“You kids lose your way coming home from school?”
The thing that made Pan Shadows hard to fight was that they could dissipate into gas at will. That gas-like form was incorporeal to attacks from enemies, but would still deliver attacks like a solid substance. And Hesperos was guessing that the half dozen in front of him right now were more than prepared to use that ability. They looked positively furious.
They can feel it, he thought. They’d been physically destroyed and slopped back together, and he could sense their pain right along with their anger. But there was something else, too…. A stronger influence.
They weren’t here of their own accord. The Entity had sent them.
Shit. That would make them even more difficult to defeat. Because it meant he wouldn’t be able to just out and out kill them. If they were there unwillingly, then slaughtering them would go against everything he believed in and make him no better than the Entity.
“Fuck you,” said the one in front. He was a blonde, but his hair was matted with darkness, and his eyes, once blue, were blood-shot with broken veins.
“He’s not the one we’re after,” one of the boys in the back reminded his leader. The six of them looked beyond Hesperos to Kristopher, where he stood with arms outstretched, white-blue streams of power wrapping like lightning around his arms and pooling in his palms.
Fuck, Hesperos added to his inner line of cursing. He couldn’t allow them to interrupt the Winter King. The entire Shadow Realm would suffer if they did.
“You may as well step aside, old man,” one of the Pan said. Hesperos raised a brow.
“Even if you delay us,” said blondie, “you’ll lose in the end. There are more of us on the way, and we’ll stop at nothing to get to the king.”
Whether the Pan Shadow was talking about Kristopher, who was keeping the realm from freezing, or the Shadow King, who was inside with his queen, Hesperos was unsure. But it didn’t matter. He could tell the boy was telling the truth. And knowing the Entity’s power, no doubt, things were going to get overwhelming very quickly.
“Very well,” he said. “I guess it’s going to be a long night.”
Without taking his eyes off the trouble makers in front of him, he sent out a mental call. It would have to go through one major border between the Dark and the Shadow Realm, and an even more major one between the Shadow Realm and the world beyond, but fortunately for him, the call he was sending out was to incubi, who were very accustomed to getting past borders.
Incubi, or Nightmares as they were referred to amongst those who knew them well, were the rogues of the supernatural world. They were the trouble makers, so to speak. Hesperos preferred to think that they had this reputation simply because the rest of the paranormal world was jealous of the fact that their entire existence was centered on sex. But in truth, he knew some of his people could sometimes get a little out of hand. On the upside, when a friend knew how to pick a lock, yes, he might rob you one day. But he could also open your door for you when you locked yourself out.
Hesperos was counting on the latter at the moment as he sent out that call and hoped for the best.
The half dozen Pan Shadows in front of him began to melt into black mist, and he took a deep breath. There was no time to waste now. He had to attack before their leader fully vaporized. So this is what it means to be one of the Thirteen. He stepped into position between Kristopher and the enemy and began to transform.
In the multiverse, there were a very few fortunate beings who had seen an incubus’s true form and survived to tell the tale. Those survivors were the reason the incubi were referred to as “nightmares.” It wasn’t because they went to women at night; hell, Hesperos enjoyed a good morning roll in the hay as much as the next healthy man. After-lunch specials were a favorite of his as well.
The reason they were called Nightmares was because they were the things people saw in bad dreams.
Hesperos resolved himself to the fact that it was going to be a long night as he took on that infamous, rare form and attacked the nearest Pan.
Chapter Thirty-One
Keeran wasted no further time. Shit was going down outside; he could sense as well as hear it. The Entity had fully infiltrated his domain. Dahlia Kellen needed help from someone qualified to provide it. And the Entity itself was still at large and waiting to attack, gods only knew when.
He strode forward, knelt beside Violet, and pulled her sister into his arms before standing again. “We have to get out of here.”
Violet stood beside him, and as he turned and made his way to the door of the upstairs bedroom, he called for the Nimbus.
An echo of a call slipped silently from his shell of magic and slid into the shadows. There, it amplified, sending arms of alarm into the furthest reaches of his realm. His men would hear him. They had been carefully selected and trained over the course of millennia. They were like him in the one way it mattered most. They knew the darkness like they knew themselves.
They would come.
Keeran took the stairs leading down fast and burst through the dangling front door of the black shadow home. Kristopher Scaule stood a few feet from the base of the house, his body encased in blue-white energy, his arms outstretched, his hair moving in an unseen breeze. Keeran could feel the warmth coming from the Winter King’s magic-laden form. Several feet from the Winter King stood Hesperos, the newly appointed Nightmare King. At his feet were the unconscious bodies of six Pan Shadows.
Keeran frowned at them. They looked familiar. He blinked. They were the same Pan Shadows that Violet had defeated. They appeared to have been dismantled and put carelessly back together. Considering what Lovelace’s magic had done when Violet had released it during her spell, Keeran wasn’t surprised. “The Entity must have found them and sent them after us.”
Hesperos strode over to him and looked down at the woman in his arms. “Pitch, this woman is dying.”
Violet came up beside them. “We have to get her to D’Angelo! The Entity turned her into some kind of vampire! I can feel her heart stopping!” Panic had taken her. Keeran could feel her magic fragmenting, a reflection of the state of her desperately terrified mind.
“You have to stay with me, and Hesperos will take her to D’Angelo.”
Hesperos reached out as if to take Dahlia, but Violet’s hand grasped his arm fiercely. “Keeran, I’m going with her! I won’t leave her side! She needs me!”
He turned to face his queen. She was ashen, tears stained her face, and pulses of white-hot rage were escaping her form. He recognized that sensation. It was the kind of rage Lovelace had possessed. Only now, it was Violet’s. And it was just as potent.
“I can’t let her die!”
“Violet, I know.” Believe me. He knew that if Dahlia died, he would lose both sisters. He would lose his queen. It was just that the appearance of the Pan Shadows troubled him greatly. If the Entity could control Pan Shadows… well, there were about seven billion shadows arriving in his realm every single night. A good portion of those strayed from the Shadow Realm and went missing. And the number of those who became rogue Pan every night were going up as surely as was the population of the planet.
If he was powerful enough to take over these six, he might be powerful enough to take over all of them. He could very easily use their masses to overcome the Shadow King, separating him from Violet for good, opening her up for a full-on attack. Keeran couldn’t let her out of his sight.
He turned back to Hesperos, allowing him to take Dahlia from his arms. “You need to get back to the mortal realm and have D’Angelo meet you.” Whatever they did, they w
ould have to do it fast. He needed to re-light the Darkfire too, before the Winter King ran out of magic. “You might need a healer as well.”
Violet’s hand slipped from his arm behind him. A hot wind brushed past him, a pain erupted in his chest, and a voice spoke behind him. “That won’t be necessary. We’re good now.”
Keeran slowly turned. As he did, his world shaded itself with dread because he knew what he would find when he faced what was behind him.
“Hello, Lovelace,” the Entity said. Only now, it now spoke from between the perfect, plump lips of the Shadow Queen. She hovered a foot off the ground, her thick halo of hair floating around her like a golden veil. Her beautiful quartz-like eyes had dulled into pure pitch black, and her already pale complexion had faded into a dead white.
She’d been so upset over her sister, her defenses had crumbled. And the Entity had moved in.
This was his fault too. Everything that had happened, from the kidnapping of Dahlia Kellen to the infiltrating of his realm by the Entity – to this, right here, his beautiful queen possessed by the very devil himself – was Keeran’s fault. Because of what he was. And because of what he needed. And the fact that he didn’t have it.
Keeran’s entire life flashed before his eyes. The strange thing was, it consisted of only a few frames, each filled with Violet’s face. Because before her, there had been no life.
Somewhere, in the periphery of his consciousness, he was vaguely aware that the ground was shaking and the Nimbus was coming. He was aware that there were Pan Shadows in the wide paved street that split two rows of Victorian shadow houses in the middle of The Dark. They’d been called there by the Entity and were under his control.
He knew he’d been right to worry about the Entity’s power over the wayward and lost. There were so many of them, more each night. And he was fairly sure the Entity had found every last one of them.
They were fighting now, all around him. The Nimbus, the Pan Shadows, the Nightmare King… even incubi. He could sense them too. He could sense anything and everything in the shadows.
But he was trapped in time, staring at the only thing that mattered to him in his life as she stood before him, possessed by the one thing he couldn’t protect her from. No matter what he’d done, no matter how hard he’d planned or tried, the Entity had won. It had its queen now.
“You really are some kind of bully,” he hissed. He was in awe in that moment. He was amazed at the Entity’s evil. And he was amazed that he was able to talk. But it was like he was once more split in two. There was the shadow part of him, and then there was the wolf.
The wolf was a mean little fucker. “I have a feeling you possess women because you’re afraid of what it would feel like to actually own a pair of balls.”
The Entity just smiled and shook its head, giving Violet a completely unnatural expression. It was one she would never normally wear, condescending and disgusted, and even slightly bored. “Say what you want,” it told him snidely. “But you and I both know it feels damn good inside this body.”
Keeran’s vision shifted into predatory shades, his fangs erupted in his mouth, and a growl crawled out of his throat.
All around him, a battle raged. He saw bodies flying. He witnessed forms turning to mist and back again. He saw flashes of demons or devils, something from the deepest pits of the most terrifying nightmares. He felt fire and ice and the abrasive scrape of powers brushing against one another in mortal combat. But it was all on the sidelines, in the back seat of his consciousness.
“Oh, the warlock has teeth. I see you haven’t forgotten what it feels like to own a pair of balls.” The Entity grinned a nasty grin, and Keeran felt the ultimate violation in witnessing it use Violet like it was. “You emptied those balls into this vessel recently, in fact. You know, there are always remnants, and I can feel yours inside her. Man, she’s tight.”
Keeran curled his hands into fists and felt his nails pierce his palms. The Entity seemed to have taken on a decidedly vulgar personality this time around. Base. Cruel. Maybe the Entity was smart enough to know it would rattle Keeran. Maybe he could just tell.
The thing was, Keeran had dealt with a lot of anger in his life time. If Wolfram Lovelace had taught him anything, it was how to exist amidst a flood of fury. So, as his body reacted, and his blood boiled, and adrenaline poured into every last inch of his tall, strong frame, Keeran’s mind continued to work.
It was the shadow part of him that persistently studied, concentrated, and planned. It was that part of him that had been connected to Lovelace, separate but there, always learning, always watching. And though Keeran was grateful that Violet had reawakened the aspects of his spirit that he’d thought long dead, he was in that moment especially grateful that he’d managed to become something else as well.
Keeran Pitch was a shadow, but not just any shadow.
He was a Pan Shadow. He was the world’s first.
Chapter Thirty-Two
He didn’t know what the Entity’s end-all plan was or what he was going to do now that he figured he had a suitable body to inhabit. For all Keeran knew, the monster could vanish from sight at any given moment and proceed to rip the realms apart at their seams. No one had any idea how powerful he was, or even what purpose possessing a queen’s form could serve for him. All Keeran knew was that if he was going to save the woman he loved, he needed to act now.
So that’s what he did.
“How fast do you think the dark moves, acorn? As fast as light, if not faster.” His words to Violet played through his mind as he shifted momentum to take on the velocity of the very darkness he was composed of.
He wasn’t even sure this was going to work. But where the sense of his logical mind failed, the older, more fundamental aspects of him excelled. Keeran allowed his instinct to rule, and after this many thousands of years, he had the strange feeling that it wasn’t going to lead him astray. He was a predator, after all. Instinct was his life blood.
He recognized the uncertainty on the Entity’s face a split second before he had dissolved completely into the black mist he was so famous for as the Shadow King. That black mist then took on the form of a massive black wolf.
The wolf rushed forward, leaping onto the Entity so hard and so fast, they flew backward twenty feet. In the air, Keeran materialized again, still moving at the impossible pace that caused the rest of the realm to appear frozen. They spun and landed, and Keeran positioned himself just right.
When they came to a stop, he straddled his possessed queen. He then fisted his hand in her hair, and once again allowed his form to dissolve into mist. But this mist had fangs. And those fangs, he then drove into the side of her neck without mercy.
It hurt him to hurt her. It was the hardest thing he had ever done. But he didn’t hold back.
Violet closed her eyes and screamed, her lithe back arching, her hands attempting to claw him off of her. But it wasn’t the pain of the bite that delivered such agony; it was the fact that the Entity was no longer the only one trying to take control of her body.
Keeran was possessing her as well.
Pan Shadows might hunt forever for the perfect mortal form that would make them once more whole. Keeran had stopped looking for his long, long ago, and had instead turned his attention to ruling a nation filled with other lost men and women searching for completion. But when he had encountered Violet Kellen in the shadows of a long forgotten city the night she’d tried to enter his realm, he knew deep in his heart what it was he’d truly found.
She had that darkness to her that no one else had. She was an open mind, an accepting soul, a brilliant acorn in a twisted forest, and yet she loved the darkness around her. She understood it. She was different. She was different because there was a part of her still waiting to be completed. She was not a whole person either.
At first she’d taken Lovelace’s magic into herself, welcomed it when no other warlock dared try. That was his first clue. He’d been a fool not to fully accept it and confr
ont her with the truth then. But he knew now. Oh, how he knew now, as he held her down and pulled her sweet, sweet blood from her veins. She needed to welcome a deeper darkness, a better darkness, in order to be whole as much as he did. She’d not only been made for him; he’d been made for her.
She was as unique as he was.
It was that uniqueness that he reached for now. He yearned for it, craved it, and called it out of hiding. The wolf in him weakened her body even as the shadow in him planned to make their spirits stronger. It was their only hope.
Come to me, Violet. Let me in. Let us be one.
There was a faint cry in his heart. He knew she was in there somewhere, fighting, struggling. The Entity tainted everything around them. It was like swimming through sludge to get to the precious, wide open sea. But he kept swimming, and he prayed Violet would too.
I’m here, Violet. Hear me. Come to me. Fight!
A far away voice returned.
Fight….
Violet! It was her spirit; he could feel it, stubborn as hell as usual. That’s it, acorn! Come to me!
At last, her voice sounded loud and clear. Keep. Fucking. Fighting.
Like a sudden burst of fresh, clean water, he was awash with her. She was there, with him, beside him, inside him, and he was inside her.
The Entity recoiled, losing control. It ripped from her spirit like a well-stuck Band-Aid, ringing another cry of pain from Violet’s throat as it was at last torn free. Keeran gave him the final push by pulling a painful amount of Violet’s blood out of her body, making the Entity’s vessel too uncomfortable to remain in any longer. At the same time, he cemented his connection with his queen in spirit, forming an unbreakable bond – one only a mortal and its shadow could ever know.