The Demon King (43 page)

So she called to that too.
It was as much a part of the Stale Fire as a breath is a part of an
animal. She reached further, encompassing all of the city and its
overhead night in her next command.
Hush
, she told the purple
fire.
Sleep
.

Fall
.

All around her, whispers began. She heard
them talking, and recognized the rising chatter of amazement. It
spread as the smoke, too, began to die. As if it were a film being
played backward, the black clouds rising through the atmosphere
simply reversed their progress – billowing back down to the ground.
There, it coalesced like deep, dark pond water.

Within seconds, the fire had been condensed
to a handful of houses. By the time a full minute had passed, that
blaze had been further reduced to the equivalent of a hearth’s
fire.

Dahlia watched the small remaining fire
crackle in the path in front of her. It was all that was left of
the devouring monster that was the Stale Fire. She moved down the
path to stand before it, then knelt. It shrunk as she did so, until
all that remained was a single candle’s flame.

This, Dahlia reached down and lifted with
her hand. It danced in her palm, seemingly innocent and spritely.
So many lives it had claimed or ruined, so much it had destroyed.
This tiny little thing.

Dahlia was struck with the
irony of it in that moment. Her whole life, she’d lacked any real
control over circumstance. At one point, something
nobody
could control
even claimed everything she owned. And now here she was with
control over that very thing, that thing that no one else had any
power over at all. She’d come full circle.

Dahlia smiled at the flame in her hand and
felt its very slight warmth. Then she slowly closed her palm – and
put the fire out.

When she turned to face the rest of the
world behind her, it was with eyes that burned as purple and bright
as the blaze she’d just extinguished. The Demon King was the
closest to her. He stepped away from the crowd, tall and beautiful,
and stopped in front of her.

“
You are amazing,” he told
her softly. He raised his hand and brushed his knuckles gently
against her cheek. “My wild fire. My
Dark
Angel
.”

Chapter Fifty-Seven

One month later.

“
You think
this
is beautiful, you
should see the real thing,” said Dahlia as she slowly turned in a
circle, taking in the virtual reality environment the VIVE headset
provided. Then she pulled it off and held it under one arm. “There
are some places in the Unseelie Realm that would blow your mind. In
fact, we should go there tonight.”

Steven was leaning against the wall that
supported the bar between the kitchen and the living room. He had a
beer in one hand, and the other hand was tucked into the pocket of
his blue jeans. A light blue tee-shirt hugged every millimeter of
his beautiful torso, chest, and arms and reflected the magnificent
blue of his Caribbean eyes. A sinister grin finished off the
gorgeous ensemble. He had never looked as sexy to her as he did in
that moment.

“
I have a better idea,” he
told her as he pulled his hand out of his pocket, and she could see
he had her phone in it. He held the phone out to her, and she moved
forward, taking it to look down at the screen. “Let’s go catch this
Jigglypuff instead.”

Dahlia’s eyes widened. The radar on her
Pokémon Go screen showed a round, pink Jigglypuff somewhere in the
nearby vicinity. This was the Pokémon she had been trying to get
for so long, it was ridiculous. She’d had the worst luck with it;
every single time it had appeared on her screen, something had
occurred to make her lose it.

She looked up at Steven, but he was already
at the door, shrugging on his jacket. It was sprinkling outside,
and the temps had dropped with the oncoming storm. “Come on,
angel,” he said in his smooth, deep voice. “I bet you can’t get it
before I do.”

“
Oh!” she exclaimed, with
wide eyed offense. She put the VIVE headset on the coffee table
next to an open and half-finished box of Krispy Kreme donuts and
looked at Bowie, who had been resting on the couch, but now raised
her head. “You stay here, and we’ll be right back,” she told the
dog. “No touching the donuts, okay?”

The dog laid her head back on her arms,
resigned.

Then Dahlia rushed to join Steven at the
door. “You’re on!” she shouted confidently. But once she had her
own sweater on, she slowed a little, realizing her mistake. “Wait,”
she said as she stepped out onto the second floor landing of the
apartment complex. He was several feet ahead of her, walking
briskly toward the stairwell. “What are we betting for?” she asked
as she hurried to catch up with him.

He stopped and looked at her over his broad
shoulder. His blue eyes flashed with magic and power, and the red
that ringed them so threateningly grew in width, flaring to hot,
lust-filled life.

A thrum of heat moved through Dahlia. She
came to a quick stop and felt her cheeks flush pink. Her mouth went
dry, her throat felt tight, and her legs grew weak.

“
Never make a careless deal
with a demon, angel,” said Steven. Or maybe it was Lazaroth doing
the talking.

He smiled, showing fangs.

Definitely
Lazaroth
, she thought as her heart
hammered and her own wanton need burgeoned to life within her. She
watched him for several long seconds, all sorts of delicious
scenarios playing chaotically through her mind.

And then she burst into action, pushing
violently past him to hurl herself full-throttle down the stairs,
taking them three at a time. Her Tuathan speed and agility afforded
her distance and height as she vaulted over the last set of stairs
to land like Cat Woman on the hood of his shining black 1967
Plymouth Belvedere GTX.

Oh yeah. She knew what the
car was now. It was one of the first things she’d asked him after…
well…
after
.
Apparently, he’d always wanted one of these beauties. And when he
had completed the transformation that saw him become king of the
Demon Realm, the car simply appeared. Every king got the one they
wanted. Steven’s father had gone through many black vehicles during
his time as king, the last being a black 1957 Chevelle.

The cars came with the job. As did a lot of
things. It was a little overwhelming, all in all. The car, the
castle, the servants – the armies. It was lucky for them both that
the Akyri were a race of people who more or less had themselves
figured out. They were autonomous, responsible, and by and large
intelligent people who preferred settling things the non-violent
way. The Demon Realm, on the other hand, was… how had Steven put
it? That job was more hands-on.

So whenever they could, they escaped both
realms and headed back to the human world to Steven’s “humble”
apartment in Boston. It was cozy, clean, well decorated, and it had
a great big bed. That, coupled with Steven’s plethora of
electronics, was enough to keep Dahlia more than happy for quite a
while.

And that’s what she
was
, she realized as she
ran. She laughed out loud, and for once it wasn’t laced with
sarcasm or anger. It was just laughter. She
was
happy. Genuinely so.

In fact, Dahlia took great joy in running
across the hood of Steven’s car just then, especially since she
knew any damage done to it would vanish seconds later. She leapt up
onto the roof, then jumped off the other side, hitting the ground
running.

The radar was still showing the Pokémon in
the same place; it hadn’t appeared on the main screen yet, but it
hadn’t moved any further away either, so she was headed in the
right direction. She smiled to herself, proud of the progress she’d
made. She would just have to make sure she caught the Pokémon
before he did.

A figure stepped out of the darkness up
ahead. Dahlia skidded to a halt, her heart suddenly pounding in
more than excitement. Fear moved through her, unpleasantly heavy in
her gut and sour on her tongue.

“
I was wondering when you
would get here,” said Lazaroth. He moved from the darkness,
stepping into the light of an overhead street lamp. Relief flooded
Dahlia.

The handsome demon grinned and held up his
phone. It showed the bright statistic page of a just-caught
Jigglypuff Pokémon.

He’d beat her to it.

“
Cheater,” she accused, her
gaze narrowing. There was no way in hell he’d made it down here
ahead of her without using some kind of magic.

“
Whatever you have to tell
yourself to make losing easier,” he countered, walking toward her
with definite swagger. He slid his phone into his jacket’s inside
pocket and crossed his arms over his chest. “You’d better catch it
quick,” he told her, “before you miss your chance
again.”

Dahlia made a frustrated scream sort of
sound and looked down at her phone. He was right. Whether he
cheated or not, arguing with him about it right now would only rob
her yet again of her desperately desired pocket monster.

The round, pink, globular
Pokémon appeared on the map to the right of her avatar, and Dahlia
hastily touched her finger to it. The screen changed to what would
have been an augmented reality screen if she’d had that turned on.
However, she preferred to play video games to
escape
the real world, not drag the
fantasy world into it with her, so she’d turned the augmented
reality off long ago. Instead, the image on her screen was one of
green grass and a bordering forest, with Jigglypuff right smack in
the center, waiting to be caught.

She fed it a berry that
would supposedly make it more amiable, then chose a higher level
Pokéball from her Items list. Three ball tosses and some lip biting
later, and she had her first Jigglypuff.
At last.
She exhaled with relief,
and lowered her phone.

Lazaroth was standing over her.

“
Now then,” he said softly,
and his voice wrapped around her like magic. “If I’m not mistaken,
we had a deal.”

She could have argued. She could have even
done so quite logically – and she might have even won. But in
truth? She didn’t want to.

“
Okay,” she said as her
gaze slipped to his teeth, then went back to his steadily burning
eyes. She licked her lips. “What do you want?”

His grin turned dark, and red claimed his
irises. At the outskirts of Dahlia’s vision, she saw the world fall
away. The parking lot’s perimeter faded to black.

He was moving them again, taking the entire
lot with the two of them, all of its cars, the cement, the metal –
everything – into another time and place, another dimension. The
power of it made Dahlia dizzy. She wondered if she would ever get
used to having a husband with so much magic.

Lazaroth glanced down at her clothing. His
expression was one of stark hunger when his eyes reclaimed hers.
“There are a lot of cars in this lot,” he told her softly, but
there was a harsh edge to his tone. One of impatience. One of need.
“I want you on every one of them before the night is through.” He
reached a gentle hand out and brushed a lock of shimmering hair
from her collarbone. “Take off your clothes, Dark Angel. And let’s
get started.”

Stay tuned for book ten in The Kings series,
coming soon!

Heather Killough-Walden
Reading List

The Lost Angels
series:

Always Angel (eBook-only
introductory novella)

Avenger's Angel

Messenger's
Angel

Death's Angel

Warrior's Angel

Samael

The October
Trilogy:

Sam I Am

Secretly Sam

Suddenly Sam

Neverland
Series:

Forever
Neverland

Beyond
Neverland

The Big Bad Wolf
series:

The Heat

The Strip

The Spell

The Hunt

The Big Bad Wolf Romance
Compilation (all four books together, in proper chronological
order)

The Kings - A Big Bad Wolf
spinoff series:

(in their proper order so
far)

The Vampire
King

The Phantom
King

The Warlock
King

The Goblin King

The Seelie King

The Unseelie
King

The Shadow King

The Winter King

The Demon King

(future The Kings books
TBA; 13 total)

The Chosen Soul
Trilogy:

The Chosen Soul

Drake of Tanith

Queen of
Abaddon

Redeemer
 (stand-alone)

Hell
Bent 
(stand-alone)

Vampire,
Vampire
 (stand-alone)

A Sinister
Game
 (stand-alone)

The Third Kiss: Dorian's
Dream
(stand-alone)