Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
SILVANUS
With their great speed designed to match mine, they followed me into the corridors, every single executioner falling for my trap.
I couldn’t ask for a better result.
Ordering my guards to leave me be and fight the rest of the enemy, I moved deeper, stopping at the end of the corridor and listened to the heavy boots of my pursuers on the floor, my lips spread into triumphant grin.
“Dead end, fuckface!” a woman bellowed.
I turned to face them.
They slowed down, the werewolf in the lead.
“What’s he smiling for?” a merman asked, his copper scales glinting like metal under the lights.
The werewolf pointed her stakeblade at me. “You won’t be smiling when we’re done.”
Considering their elite training, they weren’t the brightest stars in the sky. “These past years as exiles have made you soft.”
They all laughed, scorn emanating from their bodies.
“The veritable moths to the flames,” I added.
There was no more laughing as the werewolf came at me for the kill.
I sped through a door on my left. It sealed behind me, trapping her and the others in the corridors. And that’s where they’d remain until they starved to death.
The palace’s best defense was its maze-like nature.
Without the proper clearance, those who breached its walls were doomed to be lost forever.
These executioners would never be free, and I couldn’t wait to listen to their pleas, their fear, and every sound their mortal bodies made as they died horrible deaths.
Like that Glenda Green. A legendary executioner whose skeleton I’d thrown into the ocean.
“I’ll destroy you all,” I muttered, returning to the ballroom.
Medusa appeared halfway into my journey.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
She rubbed at her face, terror etched across every cell. “The warchoppers…” She winced, baring her teeth.
I didn’t like the crackle of unease in the air. “Is Paris with you?”
She shook her head, her forehead creasing. “He wouldn’t move.”
“I see. Was he afraid?”
“I don’t know.”
Something gnawed at the back of my head. “We don’t have time for this. Wait here. I’ll—”
“I’m waiting nowhere.” Her body rippled, emerald scales engulfing her flesh as she changed shape. Elongating, becoming serpentine.
Her forked tongue flickered at me, then she slithered away.
Tenacious serpent.
I followed, passing her, throwing open a hidden door into the ballroom and immediately jumping back into the fray, tearing through mortals with fury taking my reins. Blood sprayed my face, reaching my tongue and galvanizing my bloodthirst, driving me onward.
Guns fired as the warchoppers closed in. My eyes darted between their weapons.
This ends now.
I ran outside, leaping into the air and flew directly at the closest warchopper, weaving left and right while the gun turrets attempted to get a lock on me.
Destroy them all! My inner voice thundered the war cry.
I slammed into the warchopper, grabbing the first body.
“No!” he roared.
I tossed him out of the helicopter as his colleague fired his gun into my face. He blew out my right eye, and I snapped his neck.
I heard elevated voices, followed by the co-pilot climbing out of the cockpit. My fury was boiling, a volcanic rage with nothing to cool it down.
I drove my first through his face, brain matter and blood spraying the windscreen.
The pilot veered left then right, overcome with terror.
I grabbed him by the head, slamming his skull into the side window. Strike one knocked him out, strike three popped his head like a melon.
An alarm sounded as the helicopter fell in a rapid descent toward the waves.
I made my exit, flying for the next one, the air thick with human terror. Good. They were scrambled and panicked and ripe for the killing.
By the time the final chopper fell into the water, my right eye had regenerated.
I rolled my neck. “Much better.”
A streak of glowing, glacial blue light slithered through the waves, encircling the final chopper.
It was the wandering waterborne frostbrood, the creature constantly swimming close to Hurlock Island. A potential threat to my palace, though it’d never attacked. If it did, it would die as any other invading filth.
For now, the frostbrood was drawn to the bodies below. Let it have them. I had more death to deliver.
I returned to the palace, the ballroom littered with many mortal corpses. But the fighting wasn’t over yet.
I killed a human before spinning to meet movement behind me.
Hal attacked me with a dagger, the metal clanging uselessly against my chest.
“You’re dying tonight!” he bellowed in my face.
A kernel of unwanted jealousy flared. This creature had touched Paris Raine. How much? Where had his lips and fingers wandered on that exquisite flesh?
I growled, shoving him back so hard he landed on his ass, sliding across the floor.
He got to his feet as the orange light of magic danced between his fingers.
“I will for protection,” he mumbled. “Hear my intent.”
Mage magic depended on the intent and the will of the caster, usually with the aid of words and other instruments for certain spells.
Hal snapped his fingers and ribbons of power curled around his body, almost mummifying him as they used to do in the ancient days of the Werewolf Domain. That had been grim reading one night while studying the mechanics of this world.
“That won’t save you,” I warned him.
“No? We’ll see, won’t we?” He sniffed, his face a storm of hate inside his bubble. “Where is he?”
“Not here.”
He balked in surprise. “Of course he’s here.”
“Well, he’s not.”
A vampire and a human rolled past us in a scrap, throwing punches until the vampire clawed the human’s nose off her face.
The scream made me smile.
I saw Hal’s throat bob in a fearful swallow.
“Do you miss him?” I stirred the pot. “Overcome with guilt and regret, are you?”
“Fuck off.”
Medusa slithered into view, an elf caught in her coiled body. She crushed him to death, dumping his body rather than eating him.
She’d devour him later.
The enemy was falling, fast.
“And envy,” I pressed on. “I bet you hate the thought of me—”
“He knew we were coming,” he cut me off.
I froze, every organ inside me on pause.
The mage howled with laughter. “I had a message delivered to him the night of that ball. Danced with a human woman, didn’t he? Chatted away with her mentally, and she assured him he’d be free of you soon.”
Paris knew this was coming and didn’t tell me?
I blinked, my mind sinking into a mire of confusion.
Why would he tell me? What loyalty did he have to me? None. He’d want to be free, to see the palace attacked.
But his kiss….
But our—
Our what? Our nothing. Our differences were unshakable, always lurking on the perimeter. He’d been bred in hate, and I’d slaughtered many of his kind. Whatever shades of gray I believed there to be, things would always be black-and-white when it came down to us.
He knew…
He knew…
He knew…
The swirling thoughts stoked the embers of my rage, every muscle tense, my fangs throbbing with bloodthirst.
“What’s the matter, Silvanus?” Hal taunted. “Sandcat got your tongue?” His laughter was obnoxious. “I love a cliché!”
A feral growl rumbled in my chest. I moved closer, his arrogance taking chunks out of my thin layer of reason.
He didn’t move, confident in his magical protection.
“Majesty.” Vaughn appeared by my side. “They’re all dead.”
I barely heard him, slowly closing in on the mage.
Lord Vaughn took me by the arm. “My King.”
I shook him off, surging forward, my fingers inches away from the sizzling magical light.
Hal cleared his throat, his pride wavering. “You can’t hurt me.”
“And you can’t stay in there forever,” I countered.
He scoffed. “So, what? You’re going to wait this out until I keel over? I won’t.”
His palpable fear was on the verge of making me hard. “No. I’m not that patient.”
I drove my hand into the light, terrific heat blazing up my arm, ribbons of light snapping tightly around me crushing me as hard as Medusa, biting into my skin.
Hal bared his teeth, leaning forward, staring me down.
I smiled even as the magic was tearing my flesh open. My blood sizzled as it spilled from my veins. The pain was incredible, yet my determination to get to him superseded it. Sparked a riot of want nothing could deter.
“You won’t have me!” he roared. “You’ll burn up! You’ll burn up!”
Only, that wasn’t true. Without the sun’s killing caress, I’d recover from this orange fire.
I pushed my arm deeper, the magic reaching the bone. Heat poured into the marrow, filling me with a lava-like burst of repulsive power. It moved through me quickly, attacking every inch, every organ, apart from the Heart of All, circumventing it, unable to penetrate its walls.
How did Aidan kill Lucius? What made my brother vulnerable in his final moments as king?
My skin burned off my hand, then my arm, leaving behind nothing but bone up to my charred elbow. But my fingers still reached for him, about to touch his beard.
I heard Vaughn, I heard Medusa, I heard so many voices calling my name, begging me to stop. But I wouldn’t, not until I got what I wanted.
“Get away from me!” Hal cried, as the tops of my bony digits brushed his beard.
The acrid stench of him pissing himself reached my nostrils.
Yes…
This is what I wanted. To elicit fear, not to be seen as a weak or merciful king. To be a monster. To be aggressive and violent, to stop being the wretched doormat.
I moved deeper, my face about to dive into the magic.
“No!” Hal screamed. “Please!”
There. The crack I’d been looking for. The magic weakened, giving me a clear opening. The light flickering, dimming, cooling.
“Please don’t hurt me!”
There was the coward again, the dreadful man who only cared about his own life.
The light burst into wispy clouds of useless fog, curling up toward the ceiling.
I shot forward, grabbing him by the throat.
He wailed, trying to kick me.
I lifted him off the ground, my head tilting to the side. “You came into my house and harmed my people.”
He attempted another kick, his desperation as rank to me as a sweaty onion. Pulling, hitting, struggling.
“P-please,” he croaked.
“One of yours killed one of mine,” I continued, engulfed by a colder rage, my bloodthirst wickedly vicious. “Murderer. Fool.”
He protested with a series of grunts, rasping something about the losses of the war.
“Life always takes away so much, doesn’t it?” I said, seeing the bone dust of my brother on his throne, Aidan’s laughter bouncing off the walls of the throne room.
I’d been too late. Arriving just in time to see my lover drive the stake of cherry tree wood infused with silver into Lucius’s chest. Which was the same combination of materials used to kill us here in Quintrealm.
I had no idea why these things killed us, only that word seemed to spread between here and Selene Haven in an ironic twist of fate.
Magic appeared in the hands of the mage again, bringing me out of my thinking.
What was his intent this time?
I didn’t give him a chance to attack. With speed to turn his stomach, I brought him to me, plunging my fangs into his neck.
And drank.
I drank his cowardly blood until barely a drop remained. The flavor was bitter with the hint of urine, rancidly oozing down my throat.
Nothing like Paris’s honeyed delight.
Hal wouldn’t die. I wanted him weak, on the cusp of it, to languish in darkness. This was just the beginning of his suffering, until I decided he’d paid enough of a price for his crimes.
Releasing his body, he hit the floor with a sickening thud. I threw my head back, arms outstretched, the mortal’s blood as energizing as it was vulgar. It nourished me, thrusting me into a giddy high.
But only for a moment. Paris soon flooded every part of me. Stiffening my cock, dragging claws down my reason.
He knew…
He knew…
He knew…
“I’ll kill you,” I said.
“Majesty.”
No. I wouldn’t kill him. But I’d reestablish our relationship—the one of vampire and thrall.
As it should be.
As it should be.
As it should be.
A traitorous elf like him must be punished. The filthy killer of my kind, the liar offering up his lips and body with shadows tucked away just out of sight.
I can’t wait to make you mine again…
As I went to leave for the island, Hal rose off the ground like he was being pulled by invisible strings.
Surprise jolted inside me, my breath hitching. “How is this—”
Molten gold swam in his eyes, golden light glowing beneath his skin.
“Hello, you,” the voice of Aidan greeted me.