The Demon King (36 page)

Pleasure incarnate. A lord of darkness. The
point of no return.

“
Steven
…” she whispered breathlessly.

He locked his blue eyes on her and they were
cold. There was a hardness to them that had not been there before.
Unyielding. Unrelenting. He held her gaze as if with chains and
smiled the same cold and unrelenting smile, flashing sharp white
fangs.

Chapter Forty-Six

Dahlia felt frozen and overheated at the
same time. He held her there to the spot, the power of his gaze as
strong as if he’d cemented her feet in place. With the stares of
every patron in the club on them both, Lazaroth the Demon King
closed the distance between them. The sound of his shoes on the
tiles counted out her doom. Every step was as calculated, cold and
hard as the king himself.

By the time he was standing before her, the
entire world had gone quiet, and she wasn’t breathing.

“
Join me,” he told her. His
voice was a soft and sensual command. It felt like the slide of
cool silk along her skin, but strong as steel in her soul. It was
also enigmatic.
Join me
. What did he mean by that?

But he released her from his gaze long
enough to glance at a concave U-shaped booth against the wall not
far from where they stood. There were people in the booth already,
half a dozen if there were any at all. But the moment he turned his
attention upon them, they jumped into action, gathering up their
drinks, jackets, and purses and scooting their bottoms along the
leather as if they could not get out fast enough.

Their actions seemed to neither surprise nor
affect Lazaroth in any manner. He simply looked back at Dahlia and
gestured to the now empty booth. “Shall we?”

A scent washed over her, clean, masculine
and spellbinding. She felt dizzy again, caught in the grip of
something bigger than her. But somehow she nodded anyway, just
once, and found the will to move. He walked behind her, and she
could feel him at her back, the predator waiting for the prey to
bolt and make a run for it.

But she didn’t. She made it all the way to
the table and even managed to slide into the booth. Given the
circumstances, given Lazaroth’s appearance and the stillness in the
club and the dress she was wearing and the profusion of unnatural
power coming off the Demon King, Dahlia was actually quite proud of
herself. She was still there. That was saying something.

He slid gracefully into the
booth across from her and casually placed his hands on the table to
lace his fingers together. Dahlia noticed his fingernails were
manicured, all the same short length, all neat and perfect.
Everything
about him was
perfect now. His change had created the most beautiful creature she
had ever beheld, and she knew with all her being that it was a
façade for something deadly. It was the grace of a black widow
spider, and the color of a poison dart frog. It was
something
magnificent
– and magnificently fatal.

He watched her in silence as she took in
these details, and when she realized she’d been quietly drinking
him in with her eyes, she felt her cheeks grow warm. She pressed
her hand to her right cheek and forced herself to look away,
dropping her gaze to the tabletop. It was glittering marble,
decorated with candles at its center. Upon close inspection, the
candles were electric. But their clear plastic flames had been so
delicately manufactured, they flickered with intense realism.

Lazaroth reached his arm up, adjusting his
sleeve as he did so. He waved his hand over the faux candles – and
suddenly smoke swirled up from them in black tendrils. Dahlia
leaned in. Like Pinocchio, the candles had become real, as had
their flames.

“
You’re going to set off
the fire alarms,” she whispered.

He chuckled, deep and smooth. In a voice
filled with dark promise he said, “No, my love. It’ll be you who
does that.”

Dahlia’s head snapped up. His blue eyes were
sparkling. But there was something very different about them now.
They were no longer oceans of blue that invited a swim and
threatened a drowning. Now they were ringed with red, and while the
blue was cold, that red burned like the candles on the table. Very,
very hot.

“
I think you should have a
drink,” he said.

Dahlia swallowed hard. The truth was, she
could still feel the tequila she’d had earlier swimming through her
system, not to mention the beer she’d had afterwards. She knew
she’d either made the transition into demon or she was nearly
there; it was an instinct kind of thing. She’d chosen the right
Pokémon team for sure. And it would seem demons were as susceptible
to mortal alcohol as mortals were. Perhaps that was part of their
Curse.

She also hadn’t eaten anything in a while.
There was no longer the vampire hunger gnawing at her gut and
making her gums ache, but she could certainly down a Krispy Kreme
chocolate glazed donut right about now.

Any more alcohol would send her flying.

She chewed on her bottom lip as the king of
demons across from her stared her down. “I don’t think I should,”
she found the will to say.

“
I insist,” he replied
simply. Then he raised his arm and turned slightly in his seat. At
once, he had the attention of every waiter and waitress in the
club. They jostled each other with elbows to get to his table
first, and a brunette with gorgeous curves and enormous boobs won
out, sending the other servers slowly slinking away.

Dahlia sat still in her
seat, brimming with emotion.
So this is
what it means
, she thought. This was what
it meant for Steven to become Lazaroth. He was powerful and he was
beautiful and he was making decisions for her like a cocky son of a
bitch with no respect for a woman’s feelings. And he was so
compelling, she couldn’t bring herself to argue.

What was she supposed to do against him? How
had Astaroth envisioned Dahlia “saving” his son? What miracle was
she supposed to perform?

She glanced down at the
dress the former king had so arrogantly clothed her in, and the
similarities between father and son set her nerves alight. They
were both arrogant bastards.
But you can
save Steven
, she told herself.
He doesn’t have to be like that. Something you do
can bring him back… but what?

She clenched her teeth together and tried to
figure out what she was going to do, so absorbed in her burgeoning
panic, she didn’t even hear what the king ordered. The waitress
smiled, her cheeks flaming with one hell of a blush, and turned
around, flipping her hair over her shoulder like a pro. She
sashayed away, no doubt hoping he would watch her buxom exit.

But Lazaroth, it would seem, had eyes only
for Dahlia. She felt it like a blanket of cold fire draped over her
the moment they settled once more on her form. She let out a shaky
breath. “It’s awfully quiet in here for a dance club” she said,
desperate to get her mind off the man across from her. The music
hadn’t resumed, and people were still staring, so she was making a
valid point.

Lazaroth sat back in his seat, relaxing into
it as if he were not only the king of the Demon Realm but of the
universe. She caught another whiff of some fantastic cologne or
aftershave – or just plain magic – and her throat went dry.

The king raised his manicured hand and
snapped his fingers. The sound of it was quick and rang out loud,
and it echoed in a strange way in Dahlia’s ears.

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
.