Black lightning crashed into the ground in more than ten dozen places spanning the space of miles, coming out of nowhere and searing terrible holes into the plane. A vicious gale-force wind raced across the plain, echoing the bellow of the Warlock King’s fury. Portals flashed open and shut again like the multiple eyes of a Lovecraftian monster. The ground split open, cracking in fissures that released steam into the air and crisscrossed the landscape like Frankenstein’s monster.
Jason ignored it all and fell to his knees once more, his gaze locked on the cosmos. The stars yet pulsed – but they pulsed brighter now.
He glared at them, daring them to do their duty and save Chloe. Daring them to listen and see and act.
And as he watched, they also began to pulse faster.
Suddenly, one of them fell, racing toward the plane below like a blazing meteorite. Jason held his breath.
It was joined by another.
Then another.
Jason’s fear ratcheted up from general, miserable despair to life-saving, pulse-pounding terror. The chunks of frozen rock were going to hit him and Chloe. The astral plane was going to punish him for his insolence by pulverizing them.
As the “stars” shot straight for him, he tried with all his might to transport himself and Chloe away from the plane again, but his magic would only go so far. It wrapped around them, vibrated with unused potential, and waited. It would not take them out of the astral plane. Something was forcing it to hesitate, holding it back.
The night grew brighter and brighter as the stars drew closer and closer.
Finally, there was no darkness left, and Jason was blinded. With nothing left for him to do, the warlock sovereign made a desperate sound and pressed himself protectively over Chloe’s limp form.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
They were whispering to her; she could hear them all around her, voices like angels or children. They laughed, and it tinkled like wind chimes and shifting crystals. They knew her name, an old name, a name from a time before this – before all of this. They’d been friends then.
They’d played together as children.
Chloe tried to answer them and let them know she’d heard, but her own voice was trapped within herself like a firefly in a jar. The jar was cold… and it was dying.
But she could hear the joyous voices coming closer. The world brightened through the curtains of her eyelids. The air grew more heated.
And then they enveloped her. Her skin warmed as if she’d been frozen and was now dreamily languishing in a bucket of blankets fresh from the dryer. It tingled as if it had been brittle and cracking but was now healed. She felt herself floating, rising – and the voices were now within her.
Remember, Chloe Septeran, they said. Remember, Chloe of the Twenty-Eight. Remember who you are. Be known by us.
Chloe felt the cold and hard emptiness of her body being brought back to malleable, vibrant life. Little by little, it was infused with a profound energy, with the very substance of the stars. She sensed a flame building inside of her where there had been only an ember of vitality before. It grew and expanded, filling each molecule of her physical form, infusing each space in-between each living cell with the essence of what she had once been, until she was being lovingly consumed by its reconstructive inferno.
I knew it, she thought, laughing on the inside just as the others did. She had always known that coming here would make her better. She knew where she was. This vast, expansive, untouchable plane was composed of the same cosmogonic and unbounded stuff that she was made of.
The astral plane.
If only she’d had the courage to find a way to come here years ago.
You are the only Chloe Septeran, the voices told her. Remember this truth.
And then she was falling. The warmth of her brethren stars, space, and dark matter faded but for the gift they had left within her. She was moving through both time and the infinite voids of space, being pulled from the astral plane and into another one.
She hated to leave.
But she’d been there long enough. She was whole now. She was more than whole. She was different.
She was Chloe Septeran – as she had been thousands of years ago.
*****
Jason gasped and rose up off Chloe’s body as one of the stars shot straight underneath him and into her side to infiltrate her sleeping form. Briefly, she was infused with light. It shone from beneath her eyelids and caused her skin to glow. Then it faded into a shimmering blackness, dark but radiant. Potent.
Dark matter, he realized.
A split moment later, a second star was entering her, shifting from brilliant white to sparkling black. And a third.
Jason could do nothing to stop the procession. He didn’t even know if he wanted to try. He could scarcely believe what he was witnessing. He looked up briefly, his eyes wide, his heart stunned to see them coming from all around him.
The very sky was falling for Chloe.
Stars circled and swirled down from every angle, pixie-dusting their dazzling ways across the night to tumble in magnificence toward Chloe’s body. One after another they shot into her, causing her to be illuminated from within in faster succession.
At length, Chloe’s glowing form rose from the ground. Jason could almost swear he heard voices – music even – as she turned in place, rays of galaxy glimmer radiating out from her in a wondrous display.
This lasted some indeterminate length of time; Jason could not tell how long it had been. He was too fascinated.
He was too much in love.
Chloe Septeran was perhaps the most magnificent creature in the universe. She was unique, no matter what the king clones had thought they’d accomplished. There was no one like this creature here floating before him, her soul infused with the most archaic, most primordial kind of magic.
And she was his.
From the moment their eyes had met on that busy street in New York, he had known they were meant to be together. To rule together. He hadn’t known why then, and he surely didn’t now. He had done nothing so grand as to deserve this woman. He was an outcast, an abandoned one, and a loner. Yet here they were.
It astounded him.
At length, the light inside of Chloe shifted, moving from her floating form to a space just behind it. Jason recognized the shifting, wavering space as an opening portal.
The transportation spell he’d cast moments ago was now taking effect.
Jason acted quickly, grabbing hold of Chloe just as the portal reached out and captured both of their forms to transport them away.
Physics bent around them, warping to allow them passage through its immaterial hallways.
The portal opened up once again, depositing them in the location Jason had previously chosen.
A fire burst to life in the hearth, reacting to the presence of its master and mistress and illuminating the bedchamber in a soft, crackling glow as Jason and Chloe materialized upon the bed in the master bedroom of his secret mansion.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chloe knew where she was now just as she’d understood where she was on the astral plane. For the first time in eons, she was fully awake, fully aware. She could feel the satin sheets beneath her fingertips. She could smell the fire in the hearth and the faint scent of men’s soap. She could even hear and feel Jason beside her, his breathing ragged either from fright or awe or both.
He rose above her and she felt his hand on the side of her face.
“Chloe?” he asked softly.
She didn’t answer him.
Ever since her foray into the rooms of his basement and hidden office, Chloe had been struck with a streak of something wayward. Maybe it was Jason’s magic running through her veins. Or, at least that was what she’d told herself.
In truth, it was more than that. It was who she was on the inside. Now that she’d been completely emptied out of her entire essence and filled to the brim with it once more, she understood that better than ever.
&nb
sp; She understood that darkness was just that: Dark. It was nothing more. Nothing evil, nothing wrong. It was nothing iniquitous or taboo or shameful. It was dark like the night was dark to the day. It was that endless space in which the stars shone the brightest.
It was necessary. And it was especially necessary for her.
For thousands of years, she had played hide and seek with the rest of the world. Only it had been her hiding – and them seeking. She had been out of control. Not once had she ever had jurisdiction over her own existence.
But now she was as she had once been. She was Chloe Septeran of the 28. She was powerful and potent.
She was in control.
And there was something she wanted. There was something she’d wanted even before that first moment in New York. She’d wanted it deep down, far beneath the murky surface of her fears and trepidations.
She wanted the Warlock King.
He’d always fascinated her; he was this beacon of power to her magic-hungry people, like a bright flame to a suicidal moth. And to her, he was the living embodiment of everything she had ever desired but was too afraid to have. He was tall, handsome, capable, strong, and powerful, and now that she’d seen a side of him hidden to the rest of the world, she knew he was so much more.
She wanted it all.
But you have to start somewhere.
With great, unexpected speed, Chloe sat up in the bed, grabbed her king by the neck, and turned with him, taking him completely by surprise. She used strength she’d never before possessed to slam his broad, muscle-heavy form down onto the mattress beneath her.
Jason’s emerald gaze widened. “Chloe –”
Chloe placed her finger to his lips and slowly shook her head. The pupils in Jason’s eyes expanded, eating up the green and giving him a hungry look. Chloe smiled.
She glanced down at his hands where he had grabbed hold of the sheets in his surprise at her sudden movement. She sent out a quick, mischievous thought, using powers she had not possessed in millennia.
At once, his strong arms were yanked above his head, one stretched to each side. Jason made a sound of protest, flexing against her magic – but he failed to break loose.
“That’s okay, your majesty,” she teased, leaning in to whisper her next words against his lips. “I don’t mind if you fight me. I love the way you look when you do.”
And she did. The muscles of his chest and arms bulged against the material of his black dress shirt. She could stare at him forever.
If she weren’t so impatient.
Right now, she needed to do more than look. Thick black silk ropes appeared at each upper bedpost, wrapping quickly and efficiently around his wrists, binding him tight. Jason yanked at each rope, testing them. They held fast, fueled by the strength of her ancient powers.
When he realized he wasn’t going anywhere, he settled down and leveled her with his heated gaze. “What do you think you’re doing, Stardust?”
“I’m sure you don’t have to ask, Jason,” she told him as ropes identical to the ones around his wrists swiftly appeared and bound his ankles to the last two bed posts. They moved so blindingly fast, he had no time to react before they were wrapped several times around each leg and he was spread-eagled and helpless.
“A man with your tastes should have no trouble understanding what is happening here.”
Comprehension dawned on Jason’s handsome features. Something flashed in his gaze; they lit from within momentarily with some unknown emotion. “You went downstairs,” he said softly.
She just smiled.
“While I was unconscious.”
Chloe could see the nervousness in his expression now. There was excitement there too, to be sure. The desire was plain in his eyes. But there was fear there as well. He was afraid of what she would think of him.
If he only knew.
“Yes, I did,” she told him. “I know all of your deep, dark secrets Warlock King. And you know what I think?”
Jason swallowed hard; she could see his throat working. She wanted to kiss it. She wanted to bite it and suck it and leave a mark on it – while he could do nothing but grit his teeth and groan.
But instead, she waited. Finally, he shook his head.
“I think that you’re depraved, immoral, and impure,” she told him, affecting a fake look of absolute seriousness. “And you need to be punished.”
With that, she reached up, grabbed the collar of his dress shirt with both hands, and pulled downward as fast and hard as she could. The sound of material ripping filled the room. The fire in the hearth expanded, shifted into the greens and deep, blood reds, and then settled back down again, crackling madly.
Jason never took his eyes off of her. The thin green rings of his irises glowed as if on fire.
Chloe’s heart hammered madly. She hesitated a moment, almost shocked at what she’d just done.
But it was only a moment. And then her gaze was sliding down the length of his chest, taking in the sheen of his sweat and the way it played against the ridges of his muscles. He was a beautiful prisoner, all trussed up and helpless.
She caught his eyes again – and recognized the other look in them now. It was helplessness. He wasn’t used to that feeling. He’d been helpless once or twice before. He’d trusted others, had no choice but to trust others.
And that trust had been abused. Hence, he tried very hard to make certain that he was never, ever helpless again.
In truth, though, Chloe would be hard pressed to find a less helpless man. She was betting he was terrified of being out of control. And yet he hadn’t used his magic to free himself.
She knew that he could. She knew he could overpower her if he really wanted to. Maybe he didn’t realize he could – or maybe he hadn’t yet tried.
Either way, it worked in her favor.
His pants were going next. She slid down the length of his body, pushing herself along the mattress with hands braced on either side of him. As she did, she watched him writhe, fighting against the unbreakable bonds she had trapped him in. It was a gorgeous, mouth-watering sight.
He knew what she was planning; it was the reason for his increased struggles.
Chloe glanced up along his six-packed midriff to lock eyes with him again. It was hard to stay away for long. His teeth were bared, and his look was almost one of warning.
Gently, carefully, Chloe laid her hand across the taut muscles of his abdomen. His struggles instantly stilled, and Jason closed his eyes. “You’re playing with fire, Stardust.”
Fire, she thought. Fierce, incandescent, all consuming. She closed her eyes and wrapped her fingers around the top button of his slacks. “I hope so,” she breathed.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jason tensed as he felt Chloe’s fingers grip the waistband of his dress pants. He was rock hard underneath; no doubt she could see the bulge. His heart beat a crazy pace against his rib cage. His hands flexed into fists and un-flexed, his muscles pulled taut against her bindings. He was floating in a soup of confused sensations – fear… and pleasure. Longing and desperation.
Behind his closed eyes, he saw Chloe with her softly glowing skin, her blood that pulsed with the force of the stars, and a body so warm and soft to the touch, it drove him mad, and he could not suppress the groan that rose deep in his throat. As if to answer, her fingertips brushed the sensitive skin above his hipbones, threatening.
Promising.
His mind was spinning end over end. It reeled with the after-images of shooting comets and copied kings and near devastation. The night had filled itself with impossibilities to the bursting point, tearing at the seams and sending him tumbling into near oblivion. And here, now, it taunted and tortured, opening a door he’d thought he’d locked.
He balanced on the threshold, captured and helpless – but not. He was the Warlock King. Magic churned and sped through him, a conflagration in his very veins. He had almost every spell in the world at his disposal. Escape was but a thought away. And yet he co
uld not think it.
Or would not.
He’d half expected her to rip them away with her sudden infusion of inhuman strength as she had his shirt, but his breath caught in his throat when instead, Chloe delicately and slowly undid the top button of his slacks. His eyes flew open. Motes of light swam in his vision. Almost every ounce of him now wanted to break loose, grab her, trap her beneath him on the bed and teach her what happened to little girls who misbehaved.
“Nothing underneath,” Chloe purred. “I knew it.”
The open button only exposed his pelvic region; she still had the zipper to go. And the thought of her actually undoing it was undoing him.
He peered down his body to lock eyes with her. Her cheeks had flushed, her slightly glowing sea foam colored eyes were glassy, and her parted lips were full and red.
She held his gaze for a heartbeat. Another.
Then she straightened above him and began her own zipper. It was on the side of her red satin gown. She grasped the top with long, slender fingers and, watching him every moment, she slowly pulled the tab downward.
He yanked at his bindings.
Chloe smiled, clearly pleased to see him fight beneath her.
She was so close… and he couldn’t touch her.
Touch me again, he thought desperately. He would have given anything he possessed in that moment just to have her lean over and place her hand to his chest. But she denied him, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her as that zipper languidly came down to expose inch after delicious inch of her perfect, creamy flesh.
With the come-hither curved lips of a well-trained geisha, Chloe curled her fingers under the single spaghetti strap over her right shoulder. She pulled it to the side.
The dress was loosened by the undone zipper, and it slipped down over the perfect swell of her right breast, catching just slightly on her hardened bud for a second before the creamy white mound was exposed to the open air and Jason’s burning gaze.