The Demon King (19 page)

He’d tried so hard. He’d even called in
seers. They’d told him to track down a woman by the name of
Evangeline. When he’d found her, he was greeted with a creature of
such arresting, unbelievable beauty, he could scarcely believe her
capable of killing someone, especially an old woman. But then he’d
entered her circle of power, and he’d realized first impressions
could be deceiving. Extremely so.

He had no idea what
Evangeline was. She didn’t even have a last name. She was a white
haired beauty with lilac highlights, purple eyes –
purple eyes
– and a
magic unlike any he’d ever before felt. Well,
almost
unlike any. The Entity felt
similar, believe it or not.

And that was curious.

If he had more time, he would give it
further thought. Getting to the bottom of the riddle that was
Evangeline felt like a promising venture. But even Evangeline had
failed to destroy Lalura Chantelle, leaving the traitor right back
where he’d started, and a few names higher on the Entity’s shit
list.

In the end, he supposed if
you wanted to do something right, you had to do it yourself.
He
was going to have to
kill Chantelle. “Fine,” he said softly, to himself and to the
silence around him. Then, again, because he needed to hear it one
more time, “
Fine
.”

*****

“
Vi, have you seen Dahlia?”
Poppy asked as she entered the cottage she shared with the other
two members of her little coven as well as with Lalura Chantelle,
their instructor.

But it was Evelynne D’Angelo who answered
her. “I was just telling Lalura that I haven’t seen her since she
left the cave after we had tea three nights ago.”

Poppy stepped into the cozy, warm interior
of the cottage and placed her handbag on the table before beginning
to pull off her jacket. “Evie, it’s good to see you,” she greeted
the Vampire Queen, who was sitting at the table with Violet. Lalura
was close by in a rocking chair. The old witch slowly sipped from a
steaming cup of what smelled like fresh hot tea, and Violet was
just placing a cork into a vial of purple, glittering liquid.

Lifeblood
, thought Poppy. They were
making it for Dahlia.

“
And you,” said Evie with a
toothy smile. “I would ask how things are going in the eighth layer
of hell, but I’m sure I already know the answer.”

Poppy smiled back. The Vampire Queen was an
author fond of reading mythos and philosophical texts, so she often
made references to them. Poppy actually happened to understand this
particular one. The eighth layer of hell was supposed to be a ring
of ice, frozen and desolate.

“
Absolutely wonderful,” she
replied easily, grinning broadly. “How’s things in the
ninth?”

“
Ditto,” Evie replied. Then
her smile slipped. “But I’m worried about Dahlia.”

“
That’s why you’re here?”
Poppy asked, sliding onto a stool across from her.

Lalura set her tea on the coffee stand
beside her, and Poppy got a good look at her. She had never looked
older than she did in that moment. There were shadows beneath her
very blue eyes that weren’t there the last time she’d seen the old
witch. She seemed almost to be hollowing out. As if she were aging
on the inside now and not just the outside.

“
What… what do you think?”
she asked her instructor respectfully.

The old woman looked up, pinning her with
those blue eyes.

“
She thinks we have bigger
fish to fry,” supplied Evie, her tone a touch irritated. Lalura’s
eyes shot to her, and though her expression didn’t change, Poppy
could almost hear what she was thinking. Evie shrugged as if to
say, “What?” and gave her a sheepish look.

Lalura finally parted her ancient lips and
sighed. The sound rattled a little. It had never done that before
either. “Dahlia’s business is not ours at the moment. We must
prepare.”

“
For what?” Poppy
asked.

“
For the traitor,” said
Lalura softly.

“
What, him? We can take
him,” said Violet, as she poured a few ingredients into a bowl in
front of her. “He’s already tried to kill you a gazillion times.
He’s obviously not someone to worry about.”

“
Actually…” said Evie
thoughtfully, “he himself hasn’t tried to kill her even
once.”

Lalura’s eyes skirted to her again, but this
time, the old woman smiled subtly, as if she were proud. “No,” she
said in her weathered words. “He hasn’t.”

“
So are you saying that’s
what he’s going to do?” asked Poppy.

“
He will reveal himself
soon,” said Lalura as she leaned over a little and peered into the
bottom of her cup of tea.

Poppy frowned. “Are you… reading tea
leaves?” She’d been doing magic for years and she’d never come
across any mage doing such a thing. She’d always thought it was an
old wives’ tale sort of spiel that belonged more on the Hollywood
screen than in real life.

“
No,” said Lalura. “I’m
waiting for one of you girls to refill my cup.” She looked up
reproachfully, and didn’t move a muscle.

At once, all three of the others in the room
jumped from their seats and scrambled for the teapot. But none of
them reached it before the top of the cottage was literally ripped
from its hinges and tossed far into the air. Like a black gas,
darkness poured into the cottage. Poppy backpedalled, her heart
racing, the sound of a tornado like a helicopter in her
eardrums.

Chapter Twenty-Three

It looked like smoke, smelled like nothing,
and Lalura knew it would sting like a thousand jellyfish tentacles
once it touched the skin. It was a nasty spell, but nothing
unheard-of. Most warlocks were taught the spell in their first
month of training because it was non-lethal. Comparatively
speaking, it was like pepper spray rather than a gun.

What made the difference
this time was the wind that was blowing around it. The smoke was
untouched by the wind, which whipped through the cabin like an F-3
and was building into something bigger. There was a scent on that
wind that hinted of very old magic and fairly new secrets. It was
also unique. She recognized it, having scented it
just once
before.

The smoke was meant as a disguise. He would
use it to make his way into the cabin. The inhabitants would be too
busy trying not to die in the sudden, localized tornado to worry
about what was moving through the black cloud.

Lalura heard their voices, Evelynne
D’Angelo’s, Poppy’s, and Violet’s. Evie was calling out from
further away and up above, no doubt floating or flying or having
moved as mist to some safer place outside the cabin. The other two
were against the walls of the cabin, and lower down. They were
crouching, probably attempting to protect themselves from flying
debris. She knew they were trying to find one another, trying to
counteract the spell – and trying to find her.

But they wouldn’t find her, not on time.

Lalura couldn’t exactly say she was
surprised by this development. No more surprised than she’d been by
any of the last attempts on her life, and certainly no more
surprised than she’d been to find herself face to face with
Evangeline. If anything was surprising at all, it was that she had
not been able to keep the cabin’s location secret from the traitor.
She’d certainly placed a lot of power into that shield.

But -
ah
… she thought.
But perhaps that’s it
. Maybe the
traitor had finally figured out how to stop looking for the hidden
things and start looking for what kept them hidden in the first
place. If that was the case, no one in the thirteen realms was safe
from him.

Least surprising of all, however, was who
the traitor turned out to be. As she slowly stood from her rocking
chair, a stable figure of unnatural calm amidst a whirling chaos of
wind and wreckage, her thick gray hair broke loose in tendrils from
her bun and blew in wisps around her weathered face. But her eyes
were unmoving and steady, focused on the man across the room. Over
the tumult of a building storm that grew in the middle of the
living room, their gazes held.

She could only smile. “Of course,” she said
softly.

The man had the audacity to smile back,
flashing beautiful teeth. All of the kings’ teeth were beautiful.
They were all very lovely men in Lalura’s old but not dead opinion.
And most were lovely on the inside as well, if a little stiff and
unyielding. They all had good, solid souls, in any case. A spirit
of caring and empathy.

All of them but this one.

“
You knew it was me, didn’t
you, old bag?” he asked, his voice no more than a whisper but
amplified and personal and clearly audible even amidst the
chaos.

“
I had my suspicions,” she
replied.

“
Oh?”

“
Your beliefs are… old
fashioned.”

The traitor took a step forward. He seemed
impervious to the baiting. Instead of counter the accusation, he
said, “I’m an old fashioned kind of guy.”

“
Before you kill me, I want
you to know,” said Lalura, “in the end, the Thirteen will
win.”

“
You mean
twelve.”

“
I do not,” said Lalura. “I
mean Thirteen. A
victorious
Thirteen.”

The traitor’s gaze narrowed, and green eyes
sparked with fire. The table they had been brewing potions upon was
picked up by the wind and thrown into oblivion. Neither Lalura nor
the traitor flinched.

“
What makes you so sure?”
the traitor asked.

“
The queen is the most
powerful player on the board.”

“
What if the Entity has a
queen too?”

“
He may,” sighed Lalura.
“In the end. But what is one queen against more than a
dozen?”

Something like chunks of brick and mortar
went sailing between the two, more victims of the whirlwind that
was destroying the cabin. Yet, over the wail of the wind and the
roar of destruction, the traitor’s voice was clean and clear. “If
you are so certain of the future, Chantelle, then surely you knew
of your impending death.” He smiled a beautiful smile. “And yet you
failed to avoid it.”

“
At this point my troubled
young man, I welcome it.”

The traitor again paused, and more fire
leapt to life in his starkly colored eyes. “I am anything but
young.”

“
Compared to me, you’re a
baby.”

“
Well then,” he said with
finality. “Let’s fix that.”

The traitor attacked, but
he didn’t attack
her
, and once again, Lalura was not surprised. But she
was
old. In the circle
of existence, a human being could go out one of three ways. He or
she could die young. He or she could reach a middle-age, begin to
absorb the wisdom that comes with time, and then die before it was
used. Or he or she could grow old. In the latter case, there was an
eventual moment of ultimate culmination in which the human body
reached a pivotal point where it became as much a traitor as the
man standing in that cabin. It became an object of betrayal, a
less-than-capable cage for a spirit still dancing and a mind still
spinning. It was a bag, a burden, a shackle of pain and weariness,
and it moved slow. Always, it moved slow.

That was the shackled
burden Lalura
at last
bore in the wake of her enemy’s attack.
Wouldn’t you just know it
, she
thought. It would have to happen now.

He went after the girls, of course. Not her.
He’d set the stage, spread the smog, and created a wind that would
carry his magical poison to them instantaneously. Now, he used it.
He redirected his magic, sending the poison after their huddled
forms like black spears of death.

Lalura had time to make only one move. She
had to make a choice. She could either attack him outright; the
best defense is a good offense. Or she could attempt to protect the
two warlocks in her charge. Evie would be okay. As a vampire, and
as one who was out of the way anyway, she would most likely
survive. But Poppy was partly human, and humans were weak to nearly
everything paranormal. Even worse, Violet was a fae. The fae were
particularly vulnerable to this man’s poison, as there was iron in
it.

Only the traitor could use
the attack he was using. It was unique to him and because it was,
it was impossible to defend against perfectly. Defensive magic took
practice. It was like matching an antidote to a poison. In this
particular case, it was
exactly
like that. It was going to take everything Lalura
had.
Everything
.

Lalura was aware that the traitor had known
she would make this choice. It was why he’d gone after the girls
rather than her. It was the only way he could beat her.

So be it.

All at once, Lalura’s magic rushed out of
her fragile form as if her soul were vomiting. It compressed
together, stronger than it had ever been, and emptied her out. It
was painful. It was fast. It was too much for her, and she knew it,
but there were no other options.

As her power evacuated her body in a mighty
exodus, she closed her eyes. Her weathered form could not keep up
with the speed she needed – so she left it behind.