The Goblin King (The Kings)

  It had already drawn blood once this night. He’d had to use force against the Duqar and their trouble making. He’d had no choice.

  But it was the last thing he’d wanted to do. How could he be a good king if he was always killing off his own subjects? At that thought, he released a bitter laugh. I don’t know why you care, his mind told him. It isn’t as if you asked for this job.

  The night was quiet around him. The sound of his leather boots against the damp pavement was like a hollow warning. A street light buzzed overhead. In the distance, sirens wailed and traffic hummed.

  He’d been just finishing with the Duqar – just wiping the unfortunately spilled blood from his blade and issuing the last of his orders – when he’d felt the need to come here.

  Over the course of the last few months, he’d talked about this kind of sudden feeling with Jason Alberich, the Warlock King. The two kings shared something in common. They both ruled over a magically unruly bunch. Warlocks and goblins were not all that different in many respects. Both were terribly powerful, and both tended to become warped by the influences of that power.

  Amongst the similarities he and Alberich shared was the innate knowledge of the current location of any of their subjects who might be in trouble. It allowed Alberich to prevent his warlocks from casting damaging spells on stupid and often deserving mortals. And it allowed Damon to save those same mortals from certain death at the hands of a monster none of them could truly fathom.

  No sovereign sitting at the table of the 13 Kings wanted their realm to be responsible for a human blood bath. More importantly, none wanted to face the repercussions of a mortal world that had become all too aware of their immortal counterparts. Mortals did not understand such things, and they feared what they did not understand.

  And a scared human being was perhaps the deadliest monster of them all. There were cobweb-imbued torture chambers all around the world full of the grisly echoes of victims that could attest to that.

  Which was why Damon was here now, in this relatively quiet suburban neighborhood, walking a relatively quiet street. He was here to prevent another disaster. His senses told him as much.

  The quiet was a ruse, he knew. It always was. It was like the brief, heart-pounding silence before the bad guy jumped out of the closet with a knife in a horror flick. Or the silence of a dark, dark bedroom upon waking from an even darker nightmare. That silence was full of secrets and promises, and neither the secret nor the promise was entirely pleasant.

  Come on, he thought restlessly. Where are you?

  He wanted to go home. Granted, home was a massive stone castle atop a craggy precipice overlooking a vast and beautiful but dimensionally confused land where it never stopped raining. But he’d made it as cozy as possible. He had a routine.

  Right now, he could be in his study, sitting back in his biggest, overstuffed chair with his boots kicked up on the coffee table.

  Watching My Little Pony.

  There was something in the cartoon that could appeal to anyone manly enough to admit it. Rarity was the talented pony with taste and decorum but a heart generous enough that she shared everything she had. Rainbow Dash was fast, furious, and competitive. What guy wouldn’t like that? Pinkie Pie was the pony who was always happy and ready with a joke. There wasn’t a soul in any realm who couldn’t use another reason to laugh. Apple Jack was a hard worker and levelheaded, but not so grounded that she had her head stuck in it. Twilight Sparkle was the magic user of the bunch, her nose glued to books that both allowed her to solve the problems of life – and also allowed life to sometimes pass her by.

  His least favorite pony was probably Fluttershy. She was a druid-like filly with the ability to speak with animals, and who cared for nothing more in the world than helping them. Damon shook his head when she came on the screen. He couldn’t help thinking that if she’d had to deal with the animals of his realm instead of those in hers, she might be singing a different tune. But he couldn’t deny that her heart was perhaps the most selfless of them all.

  They all had a lesson to teach. So he watched and willingly learned – a self-professed Brony. His interest in the cartoon had in fact become a bit of a joke amongst his co-sovereigns. The Shadow King had actually given him a Rainbow Dash hoodie – extra, extra large – last year during one of their meetings. And everyone thought the enigmatic man in black didn’t have a sense of humor.

  He could also watch Highlander, he supposed. It was a comfortable go-to. He’d seen it 362 times. There was a lot in that movie that a member of the fae could identify with. Especially one as lonely as he was.

  The thing about being the Goblin King was that he’d not only been banished from the other fae kingdoms, he’d been given a job that took up so much energy and so much of his time, he rarely… well – got out.

  Damon Chroi was not what you’d call a social butterfly. He spent so much time alone in his castle, he was addicted to Netflix and wireless internet, which he “magicked” in. He knew more people through his Facebook page – www.facebook.com/damonchroi – than he’d met actually face to face in all of his years of existence combined. To that end, he had to admit that he loved technology these days. It had modernized him. Without it, he’d still be speaking in thee’s and thou’s.

  Damon sighed quietly and ran a hand through his raven black hair. He stopped on the damp street and turned, searching the shadows for any sign of what it was that had brought him here. He was getting antsy.

  And then he heard it.

  It wasn’t a scream or a growl or the commotion of an obvious struggle. It was the sound of shoes on pavement. They were leather-soled boots, much like his own, but the pace was shorter and quicker.

  A woman.

  A half beat later came a second sound. This was a scraping and shuffling, closing in on the women’s footsteps from Damon’s side.

  Damon recognized the sound. It wasn’t good.

  He didn’t hesitate. With practiced precision, he reached back, took the Atrox Ferrum by its hilt, and eased it out of its sheath. It hissed like it was coming to life as it left its metal casing to gleam under the lamp and moonlight.

  Moving like a cat through the shadows, Damon followed the sounds of the footsteps, zeroing in on them as they drew closer to crossing, like targets meeting at an intersection. He felt his eyes heat up as magic stirred to life beneath his skin, and his grip on the sword tightened.

  Up ahead, around a darkened corner, the woman’s footsteps came to a halt.

  The Goblin King’s gaze narrowed. He quickened his step, a sense of urgency spurring him on.

  A few seconds later, he was rounding a final corner to close in on his quarry. Goblins were all large and frightening in general, but just as humans came in different races and sizes, so did the more monstrous of the fae. This particular goblin was a xenobe goblin, an eight-foot tall beast with claws so long they scraped along the ground and a mouth full of so many teeth, he had a hard time shutting it.

  The beast was standing directly across from….

  Damon blinked.

  He froze. His head began to fill with the roar of rushing blood. The world receded. The burning rings of his irises shrank outward as his hungry, dark pupils expanded like mad.

  She looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties. She stood tall and strong, every inch of her honed with what must have been endless practice and toned with what he imagined to be incredible skill. He imagined what it would be like to fight with a woman like that – the heat and speed she would produce, the sounds of her exertion… the sweat. She was lean and hard, something straight out of a superhero comic book.

  But her lips looked soft. They were red, as if she’d just bitten them.

  A very slight smattering of peach brown freckles decorated her nose and cheeks. Strawberry golden locks cascaded over her shoulders to her mid back and curled around her face in the humidity left behind by the last rainstorm. A line of collarbone caught the moonlight, making her appear suddenly delic
ate even as it opposed everything else about her.

  But most stunning of all to Damon were her eyes. They were the dark gray of a thunderhead, both threatening and promising. Beautiful, and deadly.

  Damon found himself transfixed, unwittingly absorbing every detail as if he had all the time in the world. He couldn’t help it.

  She wore jeans that had been broken in and fit like a glove, and a simple white tee under a soft, thin gray cardigan. Her black leather boots were planted shoulder-width apart and her knees were slightly bent. A gray female cat with ice blue eyes stood beside her left boot, its tail and arched back spiked with hair that stood on end. The small animal bared its fangs and hissed at the goblin.

  Damon recognized the woman’s stance. And as the goblin in turn smiled hungrily and bared its own rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth, Damon realized that the woman was prepared for a fight.

  Because she could see the goblin.

  She could see him!

  Such a thing was supposed to be impossible. Humans were not supposed to be able to see a goblin for anything other than what its glamour projected it to be. In this case, because the goblin was of the xenobe variety and far too dangerous to fraternize with mortals, he should have appeared as a rabid dog or diseased rat.

  Other, more reasonable races of goblins, were allowed to take on human glamours. These glamours were what allowed goblins to get acquainted with certain humans and eventually decide they wanted to mate. Only then, and only under the direct spoken permission of the human, the glamour was dropped.

  A few humans didn’t even run away.

  But that was another story, a different situation, and nothing like what was happening in front of Damon at that very moment.

  The woman could see the xenobe as he really was. Her eyes were locked on its nightmarish visage, and as he watched, little by little, the blood drained from her beautiful face.

  How? Damon distractedly wondered. How can this be?

  But even as he asked himself the question, he knew its answer.

  She could see through the fae glamour because she was his queen.

  Chapter Eight

  It was hard for Evie to process what she was seeing. She was in the middle of nowhere, underground, and Rafael’s labyrinthine caverns were more guarded than anything she’d ever encountered. The wards were so strong, the walls were heated with them. How Roman could be standing there in front of her, and not alone but surrounded by the members of his court, she had no idea.

  David Cade stood behind Roman and directly to his right. He was Roman’s closest friend other than Thanatos, the Phantom King – and Lalura Chantelle. He was a member of the vampire court due to his ability to lend his power to another in a fight.

  Philip Diego stood to the other side of Roman. He was a dark-haired and dark-skinned man with eyes like a werewolf’s, amber and glowing. Diego’s court-worthy ability was to zero in on a person anywhere in the world and transport them from their location to his. He only had to know exactly where they were.

  Lizbeth Knight stood behind David Cade. She was very close to Roman; almost like a sister. She was, to Evie’s knowledge, the very first honest-to-goodness druid in existence. Lizbeth’s long black hair moved as if caught on a phantom wind, and her green eyes shone like streetlights and shimmered like emeralds. Thorny vines had wrapped themselves around her hands where they rested at her sides.

  On the other side of Roman stood the mighty blonde court vampire that Evie knew only as “Saxon.” Saxon was the weapons master, in every sense of the word. Not only was he capable of expertly using every hand weapon known to man, he was immune to the same. Swords, axes, arrows and the like bounced off him as if his skin were made of metal. Most importantly, much like an Akyri could do all the time, Saxon was a vampire with the ability to absorb another’s magic and turn it back on them. It was limited and wouldn’t last very long, but usually long enough.

  The two members of court bringing up the rear were the youngest vampire in Roman’s service, Samantha Chance – and the “merger,” Adam Quinn.

  Sam Chance was the techie of the group, capable of getting into just about any electronic system anywhere with sheer know-how and supplementing what she couldn’t mentally figure out with her own special brand of magic.

  Quinn was nicknamed the “merger” because of his ability to physically merge with another being – any being. The subject could be as small as a rat or as large as a whale. The two beings became one. On the outside, Quinn would appear to be the animal or person he had merged with. On the inside, he would be in charge, and any magical abilities his subject possessed were only added-to and amplified by Quinn’s.

  Evie had no idea why or how they were all there. But she almost didn’t care. She was so grateful, she could actually see the lucky stars that she wanted to thank as they swam around in her hyperventilated vision. She felt close to fainting, but it was the last thing she wanted to do in that moment.

  Breathe, she told herself.

  She looked at her husband’s eyes, burning a hellish red, and his fangs where they sat long and deadly against his lips, and she realized that Roman was not himself just then. The energy she sensed, even from across the room and behind Rafael, was almost foreign to her. She’d never seen Roman like this.

  That red burning gaze slipped from Rafael to Evie and locked on. Are you all right? he asked, his voice caressing her from the inside out.

  She nodded, afraid to say anything in return, even mentally.

  “I was wondering when you would show up,” said Rafael.

  Evie frowned, confused.

  Roman said nothing, but lightning erupted from the torches and danced along the walls, moving from one stick of flame to another like flickering waves of electricity.

  Rafael moved away from Evie, and turned to glance at her. He was smiling… as if he knew something she didn’t.

  A sinking feeling began to take hold of Evie, settling in on top of her stomach like a lead weight pressing toward the earth.

  “Thank you,” Rafael said, turning his attention once more to Roman and sounding as though he honestly meant it. “For not only coming yourself, but for bringing along your little friends.” His smile turned positively nasty. “Things could only have gone more according to plan had I destroyed your wife before your arrival.”

  Everything happened very, very fast after that. Evie would later think back on this and realize that her entire life had been thrown into fast-forward of late. She would realize that at any given moment, without warning, she would be hurtled through time like a speck of dust caught on a hurricane wind – in blinding speed and completely out of control.

  Rafael turned back toward her, his expression making it clear he meant to deal a final blow then and there.

  But the shadows in the room grew longer. Within milliseconds, the torches extinguished, their fire leaving their ends to race up the walls as if by demonic influence. It made blazing trails that instantly became symbols, which choked out horrible smoke, filling the room with indistinct blackness. Again, within split seconds.

  The lightning that had been racing along the walls rushed upward as well, pooling together at the apex of the cave’s ceiling. From there, it shot downward, striking Rafael D’Angelo square in the chest and sending him flying back into the wall to slam against it with such force, rocks broke loose around him and tumbled to the ground.

  At the same time, Evie was wrapped in some kind of envelope of magic. Its blue incandescence looked and felt like a blue moon cocoon around her. She held her breath, wanting to scream. Was this a good spell or bad?

  There was no time to even consider what it might do before everything began to waver. She recognized the warping of time and space, felt the pull on her body and mind, saw the blending of colors and shapes. She closed her eyes, disoriented. She was being transported. She wondered where she would end up and just who was transporting her.

  Quite suddenly, she was stumbling forward, arms out, trying to
catch her balance. The transport spell was over.

  She felt speckles of sunlight on her arms and a few beams lightened the color of her eyelids. Panic stirred within her. She’d been underground in Rafael’s caverns so long, she hadn’t cast a spell on herself to protect her body from the sun.

  Her heart hammered. The words of the spell were on her lips, and then she was being wrapped in hard, strong arms and pulled against an equally strong and hard chest.

  “No need,” his deep voice reassured her. Her husband’s scent immediately enveloped her: aftershave and soap and the smell of expensive material – always cut to precise measurements.

  She felt a protective spell already around her, shielding her Offspring body from the deadly rays of day. Evie opened her eyes, pressing her hands to Roman’s chest. The light hurt at first; she’d been in the dark for a while and that would sting even human eyes. But before long, she could make everything out clearly.

  She was in a clearing in the redwood forest she’d come to feel was her home. Dark brown soil compressed beneath her heels. Ferns and other healthy, large plants sprouted up here and there. Massive trunks pierced the earth and rose to the sky like pillars of heaven.

  A gentle breeze brushed through branches far, far overhead. The noonday sun glimmered through breaks in those branches, cascading down around dust motes and fallen leaves like pixie magic.

  It was quiet, but they were not alone. The six members of Roman’s vampire court stood around the two of them, their expressions relieved and friendly, but their stances proving they were ready for any fight that might come hot on Evie’s tail. Evie and Roman’s butler Jaxon was also there, as were Lily and Daniel Kane, Dannai Caige, and Lalura Chantelle.

  “I don’t understand,” Evie whispered. “How?”

  “Lily found you and I pulled you out,” said Philip Diego, the member of the court capable of transporting a body from anywhere in the world to his location. “With help, that is. Rafael’s anchoring spells on you were quite strong, but they were nothing to stand up to the will of his older brother.”