She’d put the puzzle together, and found an image of a man more supremely dimensional than anyone had ever bothered to imagine.
Chapter Twenty-One
Not anyone, Chloe Septeran, thought Lalura. Not quite.
She opened her eyes, smiling as she left the vision. She had taken a spiritual jaunt, journeying into the ether to check up on the young Akyri. It was rare for her to have such an urge. She normally relied upon the visions that came to her of their own accord. But a good occasional walk did the soul as much good as it did the body.
Lalura had often wondered what Jason had done with some of the things she’d given him over the years – the books, the model rocket they’d built together, the crystal pen she’d gifted him when he started wanting to write his own spells….
Now she knew.
And so did Chloe Septeran, the future Warlock Queen.
Lalura nodded to herself, just once, and pushed away from the table. Her tea had grown cold anyway. She waved it away and reached instead for her cane. Then she made her way across the small, cozy, fire lit room of her English cottage, magically opening the front door on the way.
She had a meeting to get to.
*****
There was an eerie quality to the night in the Phantom King’s realm. The road through its endless desert was a dirt track a million miles long that sliced silently across a vastness nearly unmarred.
Siobhan held tightly to the man in front of her on the bike. His speed and skill forced her to move in close. Her fingers curled through the material of his t-shirt and pressed against the taut ridges of his midsection. Siobhan peeked over his broad shoulder to see his fingers manipulate the clutch, his other hand twisting back where it was wrapped solidly around the handlebar of his bike. The scent of leather and soap wafted over her, as did the dust and heat kicked up by the relentless drive of the motorcycle’s tires.
Siobhan looked back out over the dark horizon. It was a line of black against a backdrop of purple-blue that was speckled with the diamonds of distant stars. Up ahead, two shadows loomed on the right. She watched them with a detached interest. They were a fixture of the land, ever changing and always slightly different.
As they drew nearer, the shapes became recognizable: A Cadillac from the sixties, its front right tire flat, and beside it – a guillotine.
Siobhan’s grip tightened around the driver’s waist.
As if he knew she needed the extra touch, he removed his left hand from the handlebar of the bike and placed it over hers.
Every few minutes, the two riders would pass by some relic on the road. It was inevitably dust-covered, sun-bleached, bent and faded, used and forgotten. It might be a car from 1952, or a soda-dispensing machine from the same era. Perhaps it was a tractor from the early forties or a tank from World War I. At times, there were older items. Siobhan had seen everything from a medieval wagon cart to a Renaissance era piano – to a hanging tree, its rope swaying ominously in an unseen breeze.
They were remnants.
They were as much phantoms of what they had once been as were the Anime that inhabited the realm. She and her king would ride by, the roar of their engine almost an echo to the voiceless music of memories, and the objects would remain still where they rested, dots on an otherwise empty canvas.
She would pass them by, watching over her shoulder as they slowly – ever so slowly – faded once more out of sight.
No one had ever claimed the Phantom King’s job was an easy one. He was the greeter and gatekeeper of those who had died unnatural deaths. There was no more solitary and mournful position in existence.
Siobhan was learning that being the queen had its doleful moments as well.
Here in this realm, she had a tie to yesterday that few others neither possessed nor could understand. She literally saw the world as if it had been aged in sepia, and the emotion that was attached to this image felt sepiad too. It was a bereft sensation, as if she’d been left on a Scottish moor in the midst of a mournful tune and a cold wind.
Everything was echoes. They were so silent, they screamed.
It would have driven an ordinary person mad. Hell, some days she thought it might have driven her mad too – if it hadn’t been for Thanatos.
From where he controlled the bike in front of her, Thane gave her hand a gentle squeeze, drawing her attention back to the road ahead. On the left loomed another shadowy outline. This one looked promising.
Thane slowed the bike, allowing her a closer look as they drew nearer. She smiled. Perfect, she thought.
She gave him the hand signal to stop the bike, and Thane slowed to a halt directly in front of a faded once-black 1968 Shelby GT500KR Fastback.
She had a thing for Fastbacks, and in that year it was more rare to have the fastback rather than the convertible roof. The four-speed car was a gem. “It’s perfect,” she repeated, this time aloud. She slid her arm around her Thane’s chest, using his body as a brace while she gracefully dismounted the back of the bike. Any excuse to hold him.
He dismounted next, a secret smile on his unshaven, strong-jawed face. She saw a flash of silver, his eyes reflected in the moonlight. Something shimmered for a moment on his left bicep, the shape of a dragon perhaps, slithering for a fraction of a second before it settled in as a tattoo once more.
Thane kicked down the motorcycle’s stand and turned to face her.
“Think you can fix it up?” Siobhan asked, knowing that the question was rhetorical at best. Thane could fix anything. But she wanted to hear him say it. The car was too good. It was a Shelby, and such vehicles rarely came along in the Phantom King’s realm. They would have had to die “unnatural deaths,” and for a car, that meant an accident.
A Shelby was rarely treated with such a lack of care. It was too loved by its owner and too expensive to be purchased by twenty-year-old speed demons suffering from hormonal overfeed and a tragic lack of common sense.
But here was one now.
Thane didn’t bother answering her question. Instead, he smiled a beautiful, fanged smile and shook his head as if in wonder. “She really is perfect for you.”
Siobhan felt a blush creep up and was a little bewildered by it.
“He,” she corrected, matching his smile even as her eyes yearned to stray down the length of his chest. She somehow managed to appear nonchalant. “He really is perfect.” She willfully turned away from the king to look over the remains of the car in front of her. “And I couldn’t agree more.”
The car had a crunched right front fender, four flat tires, a dented hood, and every window was shattered. It was aged a good fifty years, its paint worn through and rusted, its base metals shining through dings and scratches. And it was still gorgeous. She eyed it from front to back and saw it in her mind as it had once been. She imagined the roar of its engine, the gleam of its gloss beneath a streetlight, and the dust that she would leave behind when she floored the pedal.
She’d always wanted a Shelby.
Carefully, she leaned close to the vehicle and peered through the window. It was a red and black interior, covered in dust and the scrapes of age. Nine thousand miles were all that had been racked up on the speedometer. Wow. “Perfect,” she whispered again.
“I couldn’t agree more,” Thane said, speaking so close to her right ear that his breath caressed the curve of her neck.
Siobhan looked back to see his eyes roving over her neck and décolletage. She straightened, bumping into the brick wall of him as she did so. She turned, but was caged between his strong arms as he leaned in, bracing one hand on either side of her.
The metal curves of the car angled hard into her back as she pretended to shrink away. Thane’s predatory grin broadened, flashing his sharp, white fangs again. She was trapped.
He bent in close, and Siobhan could see the quicksilver alight in his eyes. “What is she worth to you, little warlock?” he asked, his words whispering across her lips and scaring up a swirl of rampaging butterflies in her stomach.
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“He,” she whispered back. Her voice shook just a little. Her legs felt weak. “What… is he worth?” she corrected.
Thane chuckled, the sound a delicious rumble that was a promise more than anything else.
Siobhan began to anticipate all sorts of delicious, dangerous scenarios – when a portal suddenly opened up behind Thane’s shoulder.
Thanatos blinked. Siobhan frowned. Damn, she thought.
The two straightened, Thane dropping his arms and turning, Siobhan stepping around him as the portal widened enough for a tall, handsome blonde man to step through.
“Steven?” Siobhan asked. Steven Lazarus was the Akyri King. He’d once been a detective for the Boston Police Department. He’d also been her boyfriend and lover, but that had been another day – and a lot had happened since then.
“Lazarus,” Thane greeted respectfully, as one king would another. But his expression was one of strained calm, and Siobhan knew why. The kings had been forced to draw together much more regularly than any of them would have preferred lately. The realms of the supernatural were being turned on their ears.
Siobhan prepared for the inevitable. She took a deep breath and focused on the spinning doorway behind her ex-boyfriend. Very few people could open a portal into Purgatory as Lazarus just had, and the only reason he could was because he’d once been dead himself. He’d been here before.
“I’m sorry, Thane,” Lazarus sighed as the portal swirled, waiting behind him. The look on his face said everything.
“Another meeting,” Thane supplied, obviously having figured it out as well. Siobhan gently placed her hand on his bicep. The tattoos beneath her fingers shifted once more, a mirror to the king’s inner emotions.
“Yes,” said Lazarus. “Only this time, you’re to bring Siobhan.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chloe froze as she was lowering the lid to Jason’s secret chest. The air had shifted again, another breeze brushing through the long loose locks of her hair. She glanced over her shoulder, but still found herself to be alone.
The candles in the room flickered once more, this time more violently. A second later, they went out. Chloe’s eyes widened in the new darkness. She dropped the lid noisily. Without ever having cast the spell before, she hastily shouted the few short words to a lighting spell, and the room was instantly awash in new illumination.
The light had an indistinct source, but seemed to move with Chloe as she quickly stood and left the secret office to make her way back across the dungeon toward the winding staircase.
She tried not to glance again at the assortment of objects hanging on the far wall in the dungeon as she passed through – but it was impossible not to. Fortunately, her light would only stretch so far, and most of them remained hidden in the shadows.
The air in the mansion changed around her as she moved, growing more… vibrant. It was as if the molecules were moving more quickly with each climbed step. The closer to the top of the stairs, the more statically charged the air became. There was a real sense of something happening now. It was like lightning about to strike.
The hallway that led to the dungeon’s door was lit by torches that sent shadows dancing along the walls. Night had fallen since Chloe had been downstairs in Jason’s secret room.
Chloe hurried through the hall and the massive sitting room beyond. The tapestries swayed where they hung on thick wooden rods. The flames in the hearth leapt high and crackled loudly, as agitated by the electricity in the air as was Chloe.
She passed the large windows on the right that looked out over the maze garden and the clear glass conservatory ceiling, but now could only see darkness. Lightning split that darkness, startling her enough that she jumped. Thunder followed closely on its heels – very closely.
Chloe recognized the sensation that was gathering. It was like a massive magical tornado, sucking up all of the magic around it. It pulled at the elements, as there were magical properties to the earth, to the air, to water and even fire. It sucked at them, nettling and provoking them until every conflagration around her, both large and small, danced in fury, and the sky spewed electric venom in its rage.
The black hole-like storm was growing stronger, and Chloe knew well where its center would be found.
Jason’s bedroom.
He’s regaining his power, she thought as she turned down the hall that led to his quarters.
She should have known that a warlock the likes of Alberich would not remain weakened for long. There was something about him that had begun understated, unassuming and deceptive in the form of a malnourished, abandoned child with broken bones.
Maybe Lalura had known. She clearly cared for him. She’d always defended him. She saw something in him that others couldn’t see. Maybe she had always known other warlocks would never be able to touch the kind of power he possessed, much less match it. Maybe she knew even more than that.
Chloe couldn’t help but wonder who Jason’s parents had been. Who were the neglectful enigmas who had given birth to a magic prodigy and tossed him away?
She paused in the archway of his bedroom. She’d closed the door behind her when she’d left earlier. Light crackled beneath the door. Wind had picked up on the other side; she could hear it roaring.
Chloe raised her hand, but hesitated above the doorknob.
Suddenly, the noise from beyond the threshold stopped. The light died down. The breeze that had been moving through Chloe’s hair hushed to a whisper and was gone. All was silent and still.
Chloe could hear her breath in the sudden quiet. It was quivering. She felt Jason’s magic pushing on the inside of her like a caged beast, begging to be set free. And she could feel it on the outside of her too – all around her.
So close.
“Chocolate.”
The word was spoken softly into her right ear. Chloe screamed and spun, and something inside of her went snap. She didn’t mean to do it. She had no control over it when a column of some force shot out from her like lightning. It was a deep, swirling purple and sparkling black like the night sky. She cried out as it ripped itself from her, releasing with a sensation so powerful, it nearly knocked her to her knees.
It felt like picking something fragile up and throwing it across the room after a long and trying day. It was like seeing the bastard who’d sped past and flipped you off on the highway pulled over and getting a ticket. It was like satisfaction and retribution… it was like having an orgasm while your bitter enemy suffered. That’s what the magic felt like.
And it struck Jason Alberich with the sum of this galvanized energy, slamming into his broad, black-clad chest and sending him flying down the hall.
Chloe screamed a second time, more alarmed by what she’d done than by his initial sneaking up on her. Jason landed hard and rolled, coming to lay sprawled on his stomach across the entrance to the hall more than a hundred feet away.
Chloe jolted herself from her spell-casting stupor and rushed down the hall to his side. She knelt beside him as he moaned softly and attempted to push himself up onto his elbows.
“I’m so sorry!” Chloe cried. “I don’t know how that happened! I mean, I’m not surprised,” she babbled as she took hold of one of his arms and pulled. “Your magic has been itching to find a way out of me all day, but I had no idea I could do that. Did it hurt? Are you okay?”
Chloe realized what she was saying. Of course it had hurt! Why was she yammering on like this?
“But it really was your fault, you know,” she added, as if in defense of her strange behavior. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that! And what the hell is ‘chocolate’ supposed to mean, anyway?”
Jason had managed to push himself over and now rested back, bracing himself on his arms as he eyed her with what could only be wonder and confusion. “I was trying to say something innocent so I wouldn’t scare you,” he told her, his voice a tad hoarse as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him.
Which he had.
“Well??
? it didn’t work,” she said softly, sitting back a bit to put some space between them. It felt discombobulating to be so close to him, even to be helping him just then. This was the man she’d been running from for three months. This was the Warlock King, the biggest threat to her in the world – or so she’d thought. Jason Alberich, the handsome, infamous, and dangerous….
But she was no longer running or hiding; there was no point. She’d taken his magic. It was done. And she was helping him up off the same floor onto which she’d thrown him because she felt bad for hurting him, because she didn’t want to hurt him.
Because she had serious feelings for him… and always had.
“If you didn’t want to scare me, why did you pop out behind me in the hall?” she asked, looking down at the floor in order to avoid getting pulled into the endless green of his eyes. There was a whole other world in that green – the things it promised were the kind that made devout old ladies sweat in church.
“It happens,” he said. His voice was strained this time as he moved beside her, trying to sit up a little straighter. The clothing across his chest was smoking. “When my power comes back, it comes fast and hard. There’s a whiplash effect.”
“A whiplash effect?” she asked, trying desperately to focus as sudden memory flashes of the dungeon downstairs conjured up pictures in her head.
Jason had propped himself up against the wall, and now he allowed his head to fall back against it. Chloe found her attention straying to the strong line of his chin and the curve of his neck and shoulders.
He closed his eyes and nodded. “Random magic. I channel it into transportation because it’s less painful than getting caught up in other spells.” He opened his eyes, green slashes that were more than slightly accusatory. He glanced down at his smoking chest. “Usually.”
“Well….” Chloe slowly stood.
She felt bewildered. She had no idea what to do next. A cocktail of emotions and images swam through her mind. She glanced at Jason’s smoking chest and could only imagine the muscles underneath his scorched clothing.