A split second passed before the entire club leapt into motion as if it had never stopped. Music erupted from the speakers – Rob Zombie and something about “burning through the witches.” Lights flashed and strobed and bounced off the mirrored walls. The floor moved in fiber optic time with the beat, and the humans in the club swayed and shouted and danced, their arms in the air, their eyes shut in ecstasy. The rhythm was hypnotic, at once awakening a euphoric sensation in Dahlia’s head. It was like a dizziness, but pleasant.
No one was looking at the two of them any longer. They were caught in a spell, and Dahlia had a feeling there was a lot more magic in it than any of them would have guessed.
“There,” Lazaroth said softly and with finality, leaning forward again to place his arms once more on the table and lace his fingers together. “Now it’s just the two of us.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Apollyon screamed a bellow of rage that echoed on the make-shift portal walls around him, making them ripple with electric charges and power disruption. He drew back his arm, hurling a ball of angry magic at nothing in particular. It exploded against the same disturbed walls, sending black, inky magic flying in every direction. What ricocheted in his direction went around him, crackling on the shield he naturally wore toward his own magic.
These portals were not the way his kind normally moved from point A to point B, but he was transporting so fast now, his general surroundings had blurred into nothing short of the same kind of portal, complete with walls of swirling colors and power, a hole in time and space that physicists would have aneurisms trying to figure out.
He scowled, his blue eyes going red as if blood were leaking into them from his brain. He paced back and forth like a human storm as his transport magic took him from one failed location to another. All the while, he felt the already faint trace he had on Dahlia Kellen’s signature fade into nothingness.
His body was filled with hatred and pain. What Lazaroth had done to him was impressive. The second blast had broken no fewer than half a dozen bones and caused internal bleeding. That bleeding burned. A demon’s blood was like lava in his veins. Only there in those tunnels of connective tissue, did that lava not burn. Once it was released, it sizzled and smoked and brought agony to all it touched. Apollyon’s body was a map of open wounds and tributaries of smoking blood.
Of course if he hadn’t been a demon with a demon’s natural ability to heal from such wounds, even the first of Lazaroth’s attacks would have killed him. As it was, it was going to take much longer for Apollyon to heal than he had time for, and where his blood coursed over his skin, there would be marks. They would scar. And those scars may never fade entirely.
Another sound of rage escaped Apollyon. How had Lazaroth done it? The man hadn’t even fully made the change into his demon form and he’d already hacked into his store of demonic power. Apollyon shuddered to think what the heir to the kingdom would be capable of once that change was complete.
Hell, by now, it probably was complete. It felt like Apollyon had fucking been trying to find Dahlia Kellen forever!
Fury moved through him.
He needed to kill something.
He brought his transport to a sudden stop, ripping through the physics of the multiverse as if they were tissue paper, and moved out into the street of a city at night. A chaos of neon, flashing lights blurred around him as he turned in place, rage turning everything into shades of red.
The sound of tires screeching and horns blaring brought him spinning around to face oncoming traffic. A plethora of headlights greeted him, and he smiled, baring his fangs. He raised his arms, erecting an invisible wall of force in front of him that stretched across the street from sidewalk to sidewalk.
The vehicles closest to him slammed into the wall, crunching like metal accordions. Cars behind them slammed into those, and like a domino apocalypse, the street was filled with the metal wreckage of crash after crash.
Apollyon let his senses expand, allowing the demon in him to take over. It smelled blood, and like a shark through a darkened sea, he followed the scent, weaving through steaming, smoking vehicles until he found his prey.
She was dressed in a sequined body hugging dress with spaghetti straps. It had been hiked up over her hips during the accident, exposing her skimpy lace underwear. She wore no shoes; she’d lost those in the accident too. Her toes were painted blood red. It matched the red blossoming across her hip and seeping through the material of her sequined dress across her chest.
But she was wide awake when he bent over her. Her eyes were enormous in her terrified face. She was in shock, unable to speak. Small noises escaped her wide-open mouth. They were unintelligible but for the probability that anyone witnessing them would recognize them as the sounds of terror.
“Sorry sweetness,” Apollyon said derisively. “You’re going to be late to the party tonight. Very, very late.” He then reached down, wrapped a hand around her throat, and lifted her from the ground like a ragdoll. Chunks of destroyed car fell away from her mangled body. She put up no fight whatsoever when he jerked her ragged body to him so fast, her head fell back. He struck fast, sinking his fangs deep into the side of her pale throat.
She didn’t even make a sound. No doubt she thought he was a vampire. But it would have been a passing thought, a thought that was to mental contemplation what a sigh was to spoken words. It would have been a dying thought, and it would have made perfect sense to her, and no sense at all, as she lost all senses for good and let life slip through her fingers.
He wasn’t a vampire. Demons used their fangs for something entirely different. A demon’s fangs connected a demon to his victim in a way that was so much closer, so much more personal, and unfortunately so much more painful than any other nature provided. There, in that inescapable connection, the demon did indeed drink. But not blood. He drank life.
During sex, it joined male demons to female demons in an exchange of life that brought as much pleasure as orgasms did for mortals. The act was known among demons as the harrowing. When a demon mated with a mortal, however, the harrowing was forbidden. For when a demon’s partner was mortal, the experience was not quite so pleasant. It was in fact deadly. In the demon realm, it was called the harrowing’s death.
Apollyon took his human victim’s life force into himself and used it to mend the rest of the wounds Lazaroth had inflicted. It moved through him, replacing the vitality he’d lost until he was no longer bleeding, and his blood no longer burned the flesh it touched.
He drained the young vessel of every ounce of life it had once possessed. He drank until his bones were mended, until his connective tissues were once more sewn into place, and his skin sealed up. He drank until the pink scars formed by demon blood began to fade, and with it the burning ache of a battle lost.
And that was how the young girl who had died with her dress hiked around her waist and her shoes across the street provided sweet respite from Apollyon’s pain.
“I don’t know why you bother.”
Apollyon’s eyes snapped open. He recognized the voice at once, and dropped his victim unceremoniously, pulling his fangs from her throat to whirl around and face the demon behind him.
Astaroth shook his head, glanced at the dead girl, then cocked his head to one side. “My son must have done a number on you. You really drained her dry. But your relief won’t last.” Astaroth grinned, revealing fangs even longer and sharper than Apollyon’s. “You and I both know it.”
Apollyon glared at the former Demon King, but he smiled too, and that smile was just as terrible. “You’re just jealous, old man. It’s been so long since you’ve tasted the harrowing’s death. I imagine you lay in bed dreaming of how good it would feel.”
He narrowed his gaze on Astaroth. “Those wounds on your back,” he said as he paced away from the fallen body and the wreckage around it. “Those would go away. Think of it – no more pain.” He shook his head and chuckled. “It could all be over so easily. But the Curse wo
n’t let you. All because you just had to reproduce.” He stopped and turned to fully face Astaroth. “What a shame that you chose fatherhood over common sense. You’ll pay forever for that mistake.”
When Lord Astaroth, king of the demon realm, had fallen in love with a mortal, he had done the previously thought impossible and won her love in return. She’d given him a child. But as all demons knew: It had to hurt to work. She would not conceive unless there was suffering involved. And for the demon, the suffering had to be permanent.
Idiot, Apollyon thought. “What manner of man condemns himself to eternal pain just to have a brat?”
But Astaroth smiled slowly and enigmatically. “I think if you asked around, you would find that fatherhood carries with it a rather uniform suffering,” he said softly. Then he laughed, and it was not a derisive laugh, but one of quiet wisdom. It managed to infuriate Apollyon even more than out-and-out disdain would have. “These scars,” Astaroth said indicating his back with a casual shrug and a shake of his handsome head, “they’re nothing in comparison. Parenthood’s truest agonies are those that can not be seen.”
“Such as the agony of losing a son?” Apollyon asked.
The world grew still. All around them, the entropic discord of wreckage and shock slowed on the cogs and gears of time’s clock, and their noise in turn faded. What Apollyon had said was unmistakable. He’d meant it as a threat. A warning. And a promise.
And that was how Astaroth took it.
The former king straightened, his dark, dark eyes flickering with the faintest hint of red.
“You can’t touch me, Astaroth. Don’t embarrass yourself by trying.” Apollyon knew the rules. He held to them like a life line. The moment Astaroth had given up his throne, the former king had become benign to those of royal blood. Members of the royal family, no matter how distant, were harmless to one another, as laid down by the Curse long ago. Only the current king could kill others who carried royal blood. And from the moment of Lazaroth’s birth, he had been that king.
The little fucker, Apollyon thought. But he had nothing to fear from Astaroth.
“In all honesty, I wouldn’t deny my son that pleasure anyway,” said Astaroth. “But I have to tell you,” he said as he put his hands in his pockets, looked around at the mess, and shook his head. “You sealed your coffin when you set sights on his queen.” He smiled as if Apollyon had just been caught making the biggest mistake of his life. “I don’t think you can count on a swift death now. But look on the bright side. At least you’ll live that much longer.”
With that, the former king of the demon realm vanished, leaving Apollyon standing with a spinning head and a cold heart amidst the bloody, twisted, and crushed remnants of his latest temper tantrum.
Chapter Forty-Eight
She hadn’t seen the drink appear. She’d been lost in the red rings of Lazaroth’s irises, wondering if they were hurting him. Suddenly she’d noticed that the space in front of her on the table was no longer empty. She looked down at the glass and her mouth fell open in wonder.
“What… is it?” she asked. The drink had been served in a wide wine glass, the top like a crystal bowl. The liquid itself, however, didn’t look anything like wine. Instead it looked like a rainbow, divided into layers of color that covered the entire spectrum. She was a little afraid to touch the glass; she didn’t want to mess up the layers.
“It’s a Black Dahlia,” he said softly. She looked up at him as the song changed, and Daft Punk lasered the audience. She realized suddenly that every time he’d spoken, she’d been able to hear him over the din of the music and revelry. But then again, he was magic. She looked back down at the glass, and then back up again, frowning. The name made no sense.
He grinned. “A toast,” he said, lifting his own glass. His was a tumbler containing what literally looked like water. She had no idea what he was drinking.
Dahlia took a deep breath and gently wrapped her fingers around the bowl of the wine glass. At once, the layers of color disappeared. She gasped, disappointment warring with surprise as she raised it higher to get a closer look. As the colors vanished, they melted into one another, becoming a shade so dark red, it was nearly black.
So red it’s nearly black, she thought. Just like the Black Dahlia. There was no such thing as a pure black Dahlia. Horticulturists had been trying to create one for more than a hundred years. Deep, dark red roughly the same shade as a blackberry was as close as they had come. This blossom of very dark red was known as the Black Dahlia.
Dahlia ducked her head, peering closely into the glass of red darkness. She turned it slowly between her fingers. When she did, a multitude of sparkling dots reflected the light within that darkness as if she were staring at a night sky. It shimmered back at her, winking with the secrets of existence and eternity.
“It looks like the Cosmos,” she whispered.
“Indeed it does,” agreed Lazaroth softly. She glanced up at him. But he was staring into her glass just like she had been. “I believe my birth mother, Lenore, would have appreciated this particular drink.”
Dahlia gazed steadily at him, taking everything in. It was much easier to do when he wasn’t staring back. Right now, his expression was softer. His eyes seemed softer too. It was like a piece of the Steven Lazarus she’d come to know was managing to pierce through the shroud of darkness that was Lazaroth. She was seeing the man and not the monster.
Take it, she thought. Take this and hold on to it.
She looked back at her glass. “Tell me about her,” she coaxed, hoping against hope that he would take the bait. She watched the stars in her glass swirl, nearly mesmerized by their beauty. But a sudden silence from him drew her attention.
He was watching her very intently, and his eyes were again that dichotomy of chilling cold and dangerous fire. “Another time perhaps,” he answered easily and once more lifted his glass. “Now, that toast.”
Dahlia felt the heaviness of fear settle in her gut. I don’t stand a chance against him, she thought helplessly. But she lifted her glass to his.
“To new beginnings,” he said, repeating the toast he’d given earlier. However, this time when he said it, there was a cruel bend to his lips and a double meaning in his eyes.
New beginnings indeed, her thoughts echoed. She put the glass to her lips and inhaled, taking in the sweet, clean scent that reminded her of blush wine and champagne and cherry 7-Up. And something else… magic, she thought. Liquid magic.
She closed her eyes, instinctively wanting to shut out the rest of the world as her sense of taste took over. She tilted the glass, and the magic of the Black Dahlia poured cold and crisp across her tongue. At once she was deliciously assaulted by the refreshing nature of the drink; it quenched every thirst she’d ever hand and tingled like pop rocks as she swallowed. It tasted like raspberries and grape juice and the vast expanse of a starry sky.
She couldn’t stop at one sip. It was too good. It felt like she’d been thirsty forever, a dying man in the desert offered sparkling salvation in a cup. She pulled and swallowed, and the music in the club changed again. A deep, throbbing beat moved through her, mesmerizing and compelling. She continued to drink.
So good….
At last, the glass was empty, and when she lowered it, she licked her lips and sank further into euphoria. Oh gods, she thought as pleasure and numbness mixed recklessly. What have I done? Not that she particularly cared. Not just then, anyway.
“Would you care to dance?” Lazaroth asked.
Dahlia opened her eyes – but slowly. She felt drugged. Hell, she was drugged. It was like being given all the responsibility in the world and then having someone else come along and say, “You know what? I got this. You just take it easy.” It was the most delicious feeling she’d experienced in far too long. She felt out of control and she really, really liked it.
Lazaroth was smiling knowingly at her, and she couldn’t help but smile back.
“Gods, you have a beautiful smile,” he said.
She blinked to find that his expression had again changed. Gone was the hardness once more, and back was that little bit of him that was Steven – more empathy and instinct and kindness – more man than monster. An idea blossomed within her. Not unlike the Black Dahlia, it was dark and different. But it was one she felt with such strong instinct, she held on to it, even in her current state.
“Dancing sounds good,” she admitted. Then she looked down at her long legs, wanting to make certain her red velvet number of a dress didn’t hike up around her bottom when she slid out of the booth. She scooted and turned.
Rave music poured from the speakers and infiltrated each and every far corner of the dance club. The tempo pulsed like audio morphine. Dahlia felt a shadow fall over her. She glanced up to find that Lazaroth was now standing at the end of her booth, tall and ridiculously strong. Waves of enormous power pulsed dangerously around him.
She looked into his eyes. They sparkled like a million dark promises.
She placed her hand carefully in his and watched in fascination as his long, graceful fingers curled possessively over hers. His hand was warm, almost too warm. There was a heat pulsing from him as surely as his power.
He pulled her to her feet, and she found herself standing so close to him that they were nearly touching. She looked up, holding her breath. He caught her gaze and kept it as if he’d just caught something precious. “Despite my spell, there are six men in this club watching you right now,” he told her softly, quietly. “They want you.” His tone was gentle and warm, familiar and personal. His words, however, were edged and sharp and left her cold.
They were a threat that hedged on a promise.
Her fear was back, but this time it was a fear for the welfare of others. “I’m a Tuath,” she said. It was hard for her to concentrate. The drink he’d given her warred with her consciousness for control of her body, including her tongue. But she won the battle of wills, at least for now, and said, “And I’ve been giftwrapped. So it isn’t exactly their fault.”