The Demon King (18 page)

But that
had
been the plan. Now
he knew who she was, knew what she was all about, and everything in
his world was changing at light speed. His plans had sprouted wings
and flown right out the window. Fortunately, as far as a
destination was concerned, he’d ended up in a location he
instinctively felt was even safer than the Akyri castle.

The Demon Realm palace.

Granted, the dungeon was not his first
choice of where he would have taken the woman in his arms. But Bael
was right; it was safe from sunlight. And he was beginning to fully
appreciate just how powerful demon magic was as he stood there and
watched Bael’s friends perform some of the most miraculous
conversion magic on the lowest, most desolate and formerly ugliest
part of the castle.

Inch by inch, foot by foot,
the space transformed. Laz was reminded of a scene at the end of
the Disney animated film, “Beauty and the Beast,” in which the
curse is broken, and the decrepit state of the Beast’s formerly
doomed castle is magically lifted to reveal the palace as it had
been before the enchantress’s spell lay it to ruins. Laz felt like
he was watching that scene again, but this time played out in live
action and even more impressive, given the transformation was
taking place in a
dungeon
– a hollowed out hole in the ground where people
went to be imprisoned, possibly tortured, and ultimately
killed.

The ground beneath his feet shifted
slightly, like sand moving on a beach. He turned his head a little
and looked down, his grip ever tight on the woman sleeping in his
arms. The gray cut stone shimmered as a wave of sparkling magic
swept over it. In its wake, the stone had been turned to gold.

Gold
. “Is that gold?” he muttered softly, utterly
bewildered.

“
It is, sir. I thought it
to be the only material fitting.”

Laz looked up at Bael, who splayed his hands
in obvious hope Laz would agree with the choice. Laz was still too
shocked to say anything, however. He looked away, watching the
magic wave make its transformative way through the once dingy
oubliette. Little by little, each brick, every millimeter of
mortar, and every scorch mark, every dingy shadow, every last
vestige of somber existence was altered inside and out.

When it was finished, Lazarus stood in the
center of a palatial, sparkling sanctuary replete with canopied
king sized bed against one wall, satin sheets, and velvet and
leather furniture splayed throughout. The walls were gold. The
floor was gold. The ceiling….

Laz looked up, and his jaw felt loose.
“Skylights?” he asked numbly.

“
Yes my lord, but needn’t
you worry. Those skylights reveal the night over Dorian 13, a thus
far undiscovered planet in the Andromeda galaxy that never sees the
sun of its solar system. Undiscovered by mortals, that
is.”

Up above, stars glimmered in constellations
he’d never seen before, three moons hovered in the blanket of black
at different sizes and colors, and a meteor shower was taking
place; shooting stars cascaded across the sky at nearly regular
intervals.

Laz looked back down at the luxury around
him. Even the dark, foreboding feeling that should exist in a
dungeon was gone. It was a space fitting of a queen.

So… was he a
king
fitting of
one?

Laz frowned. The thought had come unbidden,
and it was also unwelcome. His jaw set and he focused. He was good
at that. Without a word, he moved through the room to the bed, and
gently laid Dahlia on top of it. Then he pulled the comforter from
one side and folded it over her, tucking it in around her to make
sure everything but her head was warm. Once he’d finished, he
straightened and found himself staring down at her.

In sleep, her fury was smoothed out into
tranquility. Her beautiful green eyes were shut, and he missed
them. But her plump lips hid her fangs, and her long, thick lashes
brushed the tops of her cheeks.

Those cheeks were rather pale.

“
This is Dahlia Kellen, the
once traitor who sacrificed herself to help the Unseelie Realm?”
asked Bael, who had come to stand beside Laz. Laz turned to regard
him, and that’s when he noticed the dog at Bael’s side. The animal
looked a little different than it had the last time he’d looked at
it. It looked… cleaner.

“
Did you give the dog a
bath?” Laz asked incredulously.

“
She needed one, my
lord.”

Laz suddenly found himself wanting to smile.
But he also had the beginnings of a headache. He pinched the bridge
of his nose and closed his eyes. “Bael, you gotta stop calling me
‘my lord.’ No more ‘sir’ either. Just Laz will do.”

“
Yes, my lo-,” He stopped
mid-sentence and tried again. “Yes, sir –” He realized his mistake
and looked flustered and a little desperate.

“
Never mind,” said Laz with
a head shake. “Call me whatever makes you comfortable.”

Bael sighed with relief. “Thank you, my
lord.” He cleared his throat and went on, “As I was saying, if this
is –”

“
It is,” Laz told him.
“What of it?”

“
Well, sir, she’ll need to
feed. Shall I have one of my men retrieve a vial or two of
Lifeblood for the queen?”

Laz blinked. He stared at
Bael – who stared back, waiting patiently and expectantly. Laz
blinked again.
He knows
everything
. It was impossible to get help
like that these days. Laz was beginning to realize just how
powerful a position Demon King was.

In answer to Bael’s question, he nodded.

The dog left Bael’s side and made its way to
the bed, where it agilely jumped up on to the foot of the mattress,
turned three times in place, and then laid down. It was wearing a
collar; Lazarus only now noticed it. Had the dog been wearing one
before? He was almost positive it hadn’t.

He gently lifted the tag dangling from the
collar, which was woven out of soft suede. The nametag, a flattened
circle of gold, was empty. “I think his name is Bowie.”

The moment he made the statement, a
scrolling script began to appear on the tag. B..o..w..i..e.

“
Of course, my lord. But I
do believe the dog is female.”

Laz dropped the tag and stepped back,
looking. Bael was right. “Some detective,” he mocked himself
softly. Then he ran a hand through his hair and faced his
assistant. Or whatever Bael was supposed to be. “I have to run a
few errands,” he said. He wasn’t sure how to tell Bael that he
wanted protection for Dahlia. It wasn’t like he wanted someone to
come and look in on her every once in a while. It was more like he
wanted an army stationed inside her room. And another just outside
the door. And another outside the castle – just to be on the safe
side.

“
She will be well
protected, my lord.” Bael moved forward and placed his hand to his
chest, and something in his eyes shifted, taking on a solemn cast.
“I assure you.”

Steven Lazarus had always lived by his
instinct. His gut knew, even when his head and heart didn’t. And
right now, his gut was telling him that for the time being, Dahlia
was safe. “Okay,” he said simply.

He glanced once more over
his shoulder at Dahlia’s resting form. Sleeping made her look
harmless, innocent even. Peaceful. But he knew better. There was
little peace in the heart of that woman. She was all fire –
purple
fire.
Wild fire.
Even at that
very moment, her unseen power wrapped around her as surely as did
the comforter. It rested, ready and pulsing, a cocoon of
protection.

He smiled. “Tell me about this enemy of my
father’s,” he said, and when he turned back to fix Bael with a hard
look, his smile slipped away.

Bael’s chin lifted. “I know little. His name
is Apollyon. He is the son of your father’s brother. He is
powerful. He wants your father’s crown. Lord Astaroth has been in
hiding to protect you and your mother. But he’s somehow learned of
you anyway. That is all I know. His father was banished to a
distant land before I came into Lord Astaroth’s service. However,
the address I gave you….”

“
It belongs to my birth
mother.”

Bael nodded. “Yes. She can tell you more.
She knows.”

“
If I can visit her, it
doesn’t seem to me she’s very well protected.”

Bael smiled then, though,
and his smile was huge. “My lord, you are the
only
one who can visit her. Lord
Astaroth made certain of that long, long ago.”

Laz frowned.
“
How
long
ago?”

“
Decades.”

“
You mean to tell me that
my mother hasn’t had any visitors in decades?”

“
No, that isn’t –” Bael cut
himself off and straightened into a better posture, adjusting his
tone. “I promise my prince, it is best if she explains
it.”

Laz took a deep breath and sighed. “Would be
great if I could transport the way you do,” he muttered, preparing
to pull up a transport.

But just like that, the world blinked away
around him, only to reappear an instant later, solid and real and
different, leaving him standing stunned and alone in front of that
two-story brick house in Boston for the second time.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Some people were hard to kill. He’d heard of
ninety-seven year old men who’d existed on bacon and cigarettes
pretty much every day of their lives but didn’t die of anything
except good old fashioned old age, in their sleep, peacefully as a
goddamn rock. But he was willing to bet that even those men would
go down if you put a bullet in their brain.

The same wasn’t so for Lalura Chantelle. The
bitch Would. Not. Die.

And now Steven Lazarus was becoming a pain
in his backside too. A portal trap isn’t easy to design, much less
cast. It had cost him a pretty penny and a lot of sleepless effort.
Only to have the man and his queen fucking vanish from the portal
as if they’d slipped sideways into the Twilight Zone.

He was ready to throw in the towel. When had
it come to this? When had he gone from being one of the most
powerful kings at the Table to being the errand boy for some
sinister force?

He guessed it was that day the Entity had
made his offer. He’d come to him and told him he could see into his
future and he would never have his queen, and that there was
something better to be had. The traitor hadn’t believed him the
first time. Queens seemed to be popping up everywhere like
dandelions. But four queens later, he realized the Entity was
probably right. For whatever reason, fate had decided to screw him
over.

No matter. What did a queen mean anyway? An
end to one-night stands. That’s what they meant. Who the hell cared
if he never got a queen? And the offer the Entity had made was too
good to pass up.

But now… he was beginning
to have his doubts. Not that he would make that fact known. He
just
felt
it.
He’d turned against the men who’d stood by him for hundreds of
years. Well, most of them had. Steven Lazarus was brand new. So was
the Nightmare King. Brand new to the Table, anyway. One of the
kings he’d called a friend was dead. When he stopped to think about
it, the Table had been seriously rearranged of late. And now there
were women at it. That bothered him too. He didn’t care what any
Birkenstock wearing feminist lesbians had to say about it, women
didn’t belong at a king’s table. What were they going to do next?
Declare a multi-dimensional spa day? Send all the kings out for
manicures? Adopt a bunch of puppies and teach all the men how to do
laundry?

Fuck
this
, he thought as he stood from the
leather armchair he’d been resting in and approached the window
across the room. The window was stained glass with a circle of
clear glass at its center, and it was the highest window in his
land, affording him a view of the entire realm. None of the kings
who sat at the Table of the Thirteen had ever been to this
particular realm – none but him. His people were especially
xenophobic, and with every right. His kind had been hunted nearly
out of extinction at one point. They’d had to hide for more than a
thousand years to get their numbers back up.

Now they never even copulated outside their
species, much less married outside of it. Not that they didn’t
copulate. His people were known to keep their beds plenty warm. It
was simply done amongst their own kind. Fortunately, their
bloodlines were diverse enough that wasn’t a problem. Regardless,
none were let in. None were let out. It protected them and kept the
bloodlines and magic pure, which maintained their kind at their
most potent.

There were no doubt some
humans who would call his realm a dictatorship. After all, there
were even those
within
the realm who weren’t crazy about the way things were run.
They felt it old-fashioned, behind the times, and increasingly
sexist. Not that it mattered. As long as he was king, nothing would
change. He would die before it did.

And then it wouldn’t matter either. Because
he’d be dead. He laughed now, his deep throated chuckle laced with
the animalistic magic that declared to the world who and what he
was. But as soon as he remembered why he was sitting in that room
alone, contemplating things, his laughter slid away and his
expression turned dour once more.

The fucking witch. If he didn’t find a way
to end her soon, the importance of his own life would no doubt come
into question. That was the price you paid for doing business with
the devil.