The Demon King (29 page)

No one had even known the
Demon Realm
existed
before now. The others at the Table of the Thirteen did not
even know. The traitor alone was aware of its existence because
he’d been spying on Steven Lazarus for the Entity. What he’d
learned would have rocked the other kings to their
cores.

However, the Entity had dealt with Dahlia
Kellen before. He was the one who had kidnapped and kept her
prisoner, tortured her and transformed her into a vampire. What
Dahlia didn’t know was that the Entity was not himself a vampire.
He was simply a being who possessed others. At the time that he’d
dealt with Kellen, he’d been inhabiting the form of a vampire.

This particular species of
vampire did not belong to Roman D’Angelo’s ilk; it was no half
warlock, half Akyri. It was also not a member of the ancient
vampires of Azrael, a man who purported himself to be an actual
fallen angel and the “first” vampire in the mortal realm. In fact,
there were more than
five
different species of vampires – more even than
the Kings now guessed there were.

Vampires were as common and as different as
humans, and each species was akin to a separate race of mortal.
Mortals were European, African, Indian, and so forth. Vampires were
the same way. They were different based on eras, leaders, and the
magic that had created them.

Learning this and other lessons of the
paranormal universe was one of the benefits of having worked for
the Entity. The Entity was ancient, and with time came knowledge.
Fortunately for the traitor, the Entity didn’t mind sharing this
knowledge with him. Knowledge was power, after all, and the Entity
didn’t want a weak servant.

Another benefit of sharing knowledge was
that it tended to instill loyalty. And the Entity demanded loyalty.
When Raphael D’Angelo had betrayed him, taking into his own hands
the punishment of Ophelia, another of the Entity’s pawns, the
Entity had finished the vampire off. Ophelia was now with Kamon Re,
living as his mistress. And Raphael D’Angelo was no more. The
traitor wondered if Roman D’Angelo could feel that his brother was
dead. He wondered if he cared. Blood may be thicker than water, but
what was so special about a liquid’s thickness anyway? Water was
precious. Blood was messy.

However, knowledge or not the Entity could
not have known that Dahlia Kellen would become a queen, or he
certainly would have kept her when he had her the first time.
Instead, he allowed her to escape. And now he no doubt wanted her
back.

“
Do you want her?” the
traitor asked. The Entity’s ultimate plan was to awaken Amunet, the
woman he had once inhabited long, long ago. If the Entity were
capable of such a thing as love… then he loved her. Through her,
the Entity had ruled kingdoms and would have brought the world to
its knees, if it had not been for the interference of –

“
No
,” said the Entity, slicing through his thoughts. The
traitor’s brows raised in surprise. “She is hardened to me now and
will be twice as hard to control the second time around,” the
Entity continued. “But there is someone within her proximity who
will suit my needs nicely. Hence, she remains very much a person of
interest.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Dahlia stared at Lazarus. She stared for a
full ten seconds before she finally pulled her gaze away and looked
out over the water. Then she looked back at him. Then back at the
water.

She had no idea what river it was because
she’d never taken the time to memorize what transient bodies of
water moved through Boston or its surrounding areas. But she did
know that it was wide and looked deep. Though it wasn’t moving
terribly fast, there was enough of a current that anything tossed
in would travel before settling to the bottom.

“
Are you serious?” she
asked. That phone was going to be impossible to find, and they’d
already used a lot of magic. They were doing exactly the opposite
of what they’d been told to do.
And it’s
my fault,
she thought.
I did attack him while he was driving... not that he hadn’t
been asking for it.
Regardless, was it
really worth further risk using more magic just to find her
phone?

“
I am,” he said.

She studied the water a bit longer. A wave
of weariness washed over her, her stomach panged, and she suddenly
lost the will to argue. Instead, she rubbed her arms uncertainly.
“Are you sure this is the place?”

“
Yeah,” he said. “I
remember that copse of trees right there blurring past the windows
at an insanely deadly speed right after you attacked
me.”

Dahlia’s head whipped back around and her
gaze narrowed. She was feeling pretty shitty. Her stomach hurt, and
she was afraid the Lifeblood she’d downed wasn’t going to stay down
for long. Her soul felt strange, as if it had been torn a little,
and the jagged edges were frayed and blowing in the wind. She was
fairly sure her eyes, which were burning in her face, must have
looked nice and scary to the Detective, because he suddenly looked
openly apologetic. Plus, the fangs that were now resting fully on
her bottom lip were a marked warning sign.

“
Right,” he said by way of
apology. He looked away, considered the river, and began walking
along the bank. After watching him for a while, studying his tall
and graceful form with what she had to admit was admiration, she
followed him. About twenty paces from their starting point, he
stopped and nodded to himself. Then he took off his vintage black
leather jacket and tossed it onto the ground beside his
feet.

The badge on his belt
gleamed highly in the night’s lights as he again gauged the water.
While he was studying the
water
, Dahlia found herself
studying
him
. The
removal of his jacket revealed the arms she’d kind of been dying to
see. She wasn’t disappointed, but she was
surprised
. She’d known he would be
built, and
oh my gods
he was, but what surprised her was that the detective was
unmarked. Not a single vanity tattoo. There were no tribal ropes,
no Celtic concoctions, no “Hey, check me out!” inkings that drew
attention to his amazing biceps. There was just him and his hard
body and his tanned skin. There was a faint line under the arm of
his tee-shirt that told her he hadn’t gotten that tan in a tanning
bed like a roided-out body building magazine model, but
outside
. Working
hard.

She swallowed, and almost choked on the
dryness that had formed in her throat. She coughed, licked her
lips, and averted her gaze quickly when he turned at the sound. She
pretended to be studying the ground, looking for a place to
sit.

But when that goddamn tee-shirt of his was
the next thing to come off and get tossed onto the ground next to
his jacket, Dahlia’s head snapped back up, and her eyes again
locked on his figure.

Oh holy
fuck
, she thought. Her cheeks and chest
grew warm, her mouth watered, and a strange feeling blossomed in
her gut. For the moment, it distracted her from the sick feeling
the Lifeblood had left her with.

She swallowed again and cleared her throat.
The sound drew Lazarus’s attention. “You alright?” he asked softly,
and damn it all to hell if he didn’t sound genuinely concerned.

She tried to act casually curious. “Do you
honestly plan to go jumping in there?”

“
Yes.” He bent to unlace
his boots, stepping out of them one at a time.

“
I seriously thought you
were going to use magic. If you want, I can even try to find it
myself,” she said. Though that was actually a bluff. In truth, she
was hoping he would get valiant and do it himself. Spells like that
were actually harder than one would think. “Simple” finding spells
were anything but simple. They required a skill that bordered on
time bending, and they weren’t warlock magic either, so they
weren’t part of her training. She hadn’t ever worried much about it
because she knew enough people who
did
know the spells that whenever
she lost something, someone else always had her back. “Not that it
matters,” she added as a thought occurred to her. “The phone will
be useless by the time it’s found. Electronics normally shy away
from baths.”

“
Magic won’t work this
time,” he told her. He pulled his badge off his belt, bent to place
it in his jacket pocket, then began undoing his belt.

Dahlia’s eyes heated further in her face,
and her stomach churned in all sorts of strange ways. Her gums
ached. She touched her forehead gingerly. “Why not?” she asked, her
voice cracking a little.

“
You forget,” he said, and
she looked up. He gave her a gorgeous smile, and Dahlia’s breath
hitched. He dropped his pants. “My magic is warlock magic as well.
You know damn well you can’t find that phone – and neither can I.
One thing I
can
do however, is swim.” He turned away and moved to the edge of
the river, staring down. His ass was a wonder to behold in his
tight black boxer briefs. “I won several competitions in
school.”

“
High school?” she asked.
Her voice now sounded like a teenage boy’s right smack in the
middle of puberty.

“
Junior year at Boston
University,” he corrected. Then he raised his arms, revealing a
master’s grace and technique that made Dahlia dizzy, and dove into
the river like a pro.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

He’s been down there a long
time.
How long could a human hold their
breath?
He’s not human, remember?
She thought about what Steven Lazarus was: Part
human, part Akyri? Part human, part demon? He was like a
supernatural mutt.

So am I.

That was true. Tuath fae
warlock vampire, and now…
what?
she wondered.
Will I be
a demon now?
She thought about that as she
stared at the surface of the water.

At that very moment, the reality of her
situation hit fully home. She’d been chosen as a queen. An honest
to goodness queen. She knew she should feel fortunate.

I feel like I’m changing.

It was a thought that cut
like a knife through her mental turmoil. She blinked and touched
her forehead again. Her fingers came away wet.
I’m sweating?
Since she’d become a
vampire, she hadn’t perspired at all. She had guessed it was simply
something vampires didn’t do.

Her stomach churned, her
eyes shut tight, and this time, she couldn’t stop the rise of
sickness that took her over. She leaned to the left, got on her
hands and knees, and retched into the grass. The act was
surprisingly violent and wholly unpleasant. She had never vomited
before. Not once in her whole life. Tuath fae didn’t get sick like
that. She’d always wondered why humans hated it so much.
Now I know
, she thought
miserably as she tasted the sour tinge in her mouth and it made her
want to throw up again.

Somehow, she moved past the initial instinct
to let loose once more, and swallowed a hundred times. When she
opened her eyes, she saw that what she’d vomited was purple and
slightly sparkling. Every ounce of it was Lifeblood.

What the hell?
she thought. What was happening to her?
I really am changing. I woke up during the day. I
threw up the Lifeblood. I don’t even… I don’t even feel hungry any
more.

Am I no longer a vampire?

That couldn’t be it. Surely there was an
explanation. She must have woken up during the day in the Demon
Realm because their time was off from hers. And she was probably
not hungry because she’d just vomited. And she’d most likely done
so because the batch was bad. Maybe the demons had tried to make it
themselves, and it was a very delicate process. And Lalura… Lalura
wasn’t there to make it any longer.

Dahlia sat back on her
knees and put her face in her hands. She felt a stinging in her
eyes and a pressure to the front of her head, and she knew what was
threatening to happen. So she squelched it. She was
not
going to
cry.

She remembered with crystal
clarity what she’d done just after her house had burned down when
she was a child. They’d stood on a cliff side, Dahlia in her least
favorite outfit, watching the smoke in the distance. And Violet had
looked over at her. Her sister was wide-eyed and pale, silent and
still, shaken to her core by the same loss Dahlia was feeling. But
Dahlia knew Violet was thinking her sister had gone insane. And
maybe she
had
gone insane. Because rather than cry or wail or moan, Dahlia
was giggling.

The thing was, she’d felt there was nothing
else for it. Sometimes, you just had to laugh. Sometimes life was
so ridiculous, so confusing, so horrible, crying would only give it
the satisfaction of beating you. So you had to laugh instead.

Dahlia remembered that
after a few baffled moments, Violet had begun laughing as well.
Things were a mess. It would take centuries for their family to
restore their estate, and life would always be slightly different.
In the cosmic scheme of things, she guessed it
was
kind of funny that her doll
house, her drawings and paintings, her books and plush animals and
all of her favorite outfits could just go up like that in a puff of
smoke. It
was
kind of funny. Her wearing terrible clothes and
all.