The Warlock King (The Kings) (16 page)

“I could have told you it was closed,” Lily said, smiling wryly.

Imani shot her a look.

Lily shrugged. “I saw the closings list when I downloaded the park map for everyone.”

Despite herself, Imani smiled. But it was fleeting. “Fair enough. Where are Ch
loe and Jason?” she asked.

“
Which
Jason?” Jesse asked as he recalled the second Alberich on the train and felt concern etch his features. It was probably time to meet with the Vampire King again and talk to him about a few things, not the least of which was the fact that some rogue vampire master had Offspring attacking the good guys.

“What do you mean ‘which Jason’?” Daniel Kane asked, his cop instincts probably firing to life.

“It’s a long story,” said Jesse. “But I’m not telling it here.” He took in their blood soaked clothing and weary expressions. “Let’s get back to town. We’ll re-convene tonight.”

Chapter
Eighteen

Ophelia stood still and unsteady in the empty, dark hallway. Up ahead was the door to her master’s chamber. The flicker of candlelight lent the stone hall a soft glow where it emanated from the archway leading to the massive room beyond.

He was waiting for her.

She closed her eyes and took a shaking breath, trying for all the world to steady her nerves. But the clothes she’d been forced to wear abraded against the fresh wounds she bore beneath. She looked down at the front of her blue outfit. A
nametag that read “Lia,” mimicked the last part of her real name. It was an Amtrak uniform, tight and scratchy enough on normal, undamaged skin, but horrible on her own. She felt raw and sore and miserable – and she knew that was the point.

The wounds
he’d inflicted on her would never heal entirely. Fire was like that anyway. For mortals it left terrible scars. For a vampire, it was so much worse. A brand of fire would remain open and bleeding at first, and then gaping and seeping for weeks. The scar would never fade.

And that’s what she w
ore now – brands. Two of them; one for each trespass she’d committed against her master’s wishes.

It wasn’t only the wounds themselves that ached and throbbed for Ophelia. It was where he’d chosen to give them to her. The location was symbolic – and exceedingly cruel. They would change the way she was forced to dress for the rest of eternity. They were a lesson hard learned.

They were also a lesson she never should have been forced to endure.

It was
his
fault she was who and what she was.
He
was the one who’d chosen to turn her.

At the time, it had been forbidden for an Offspring to create another Off
spring. And yet, he’d done it without a hint of remorse or regret… or even gentleness. Ophelia had never been given a choice. He’d taken her from an engagement to someone she cared for more than she’d ever cared for anyone in her life, and he’d changed her. He’d made her a vampire.

Her
fiancé had gone on to other things, mourning her “death”… and then forgetting her. He’d found someone else eventually, a young American popper with no class, no lineage, and no upbringing. He’d fallen in love with her of all people, and made her his queen.

Meanwhile a handsome, wealthy, charismatic, and completely evil vampire lord had ruined her.

She winced as a fresh throb of reminding pain arced up from her wounds.

And now he’s ruined me again
, she thought.

Why me?
she wondered for the thousandth time in the last two hundred years. He didn’t care for her. He cared less for her wellbeing than he did the rugs on which she was forced to kneel before him.

Pouting, sweet
?

His voice
suddenly cut through her ungracious thoughts, both sharp and beautiful. Her heart skipped a beat.

Do you t
hink to repay me for your punishment by making me wait for you?

The question hung in the air, absolutely unanswerable.

Is that wise?
he asked next.

Dread coursed through Ophelia. She forced her feet to move, and moments later
she found herself standing once more before the vampire who had made her.

He watched her in silence, his angelic face that reminded her of Lucifer was cold, his dark eyes unyielding. After a few seconds, he raised a brow.

Ophelia immediately fell to her knees and bowed her head. This time there was no rug to cushion the position. Her legs bruised, but she held still… and waited.

As she waited, she heard him retake his throne, most likely as graceful as usual, as perfectly, horribly beautiful as he’d always been.

“Now then,” he said nonchalantly. “What have you for me, pet?”

Ophelia had thought carefully about how she would phrase the information she had learned for him. She’d been sent out to get close to the young Chloe Septeran. She’d b
een instructed to watch her, listen to her, and study her from a safe distance. Her master wanted to know as much about her as possible because Chloe was destined to become one of the 13 Queens.

And her
master’s
master wanted to know as much about
them
as he could.

Ophelia had tracked the soon-to-be queen through Disneyland’s park, watching her board one ride after another for apparently no reason, and as she did, Ophelia’d made note of every nuance of Septeran’s character.

Ophelia had also stayed in a hotel room across the hall from Septeran’s – and had even boarded the train just shortly before the Akyri did.

In order to disguise her Offspring nature from the incredibly insightful and sensitiv
e young Septeran and anyone else who might smell the tainted magic upon her, Ophelia’s vampirism had been temporarily stripped from her. It was a rare punishment, and one not easily performed. It was also forbidden under Roman D’Angelo’s rule… because it hurt.

But Ophelia supposed that was part of the reason her creator had chosen to put her through it. It was to be another lesson. The fact that it aided him in his plan was only an added bonus.
There was an emptiness inside of Ophelia now that felt nearly as wrong on the inside as the swollen, bloody brand marks felt on the outside.

Ophelia was transported off the train once
Septeran returned to her quarters after finishing her midday meal. Ophelia’d had a few hours to herself then. And now was the questioning she had been dreading.

Somehow, with a strength she hadn’t known she possessed, Ophelia
once more squelched her desire to rise from the ground and die trying to kill the man who had transformed her into a blood-drinking monster. It was an urge she suppressed time and again.

Instead, she licked her lips. Slowly and carefully, she told him what she knew.

She’d noticed a few things during her assignment that might come in handy in acquiring not only Septeran, but also the other twelve queens. For example, they all seemed to be inordinately sensitive. OCD tendencies, panic attacks, anxiety,
vegetarianism
– they seemed to run rampant through the emerging string of female sovereigns.

They possessed a sort of profile, and this was one of the things she spoke of now as her master listened intently, quietly absorbing every word she muttered.

She kept nothing from him. Not only would it have been pointless, as he could have just ripped the information quickly from her mind if he’d chosen to, but the longer she talked, the longer he refrained from hurting her.

She only had so much information to share. Her knees were cold and sore, her skin was on fire, and her spirit ached. She began to tremble where she knelt. It was going to be a long night.

“For you, yes,” her master suddenly said, slicing once more into her runaway thoughts. She’d been talking about one thing and thinking about another. And as usual, he’d known.

Ophelia closed her eyes and swallowed hard past the lump that was forming in her throat. She wanted to die. And again, she wondered why he’d chosen to torture her, of all the women in the world.

“Because, my dear, you were Roman’s love.”

Ophelia opened her eyes and looked up. She could feel wetness on her cheeks, but she knew he wouldn’t care. Tears had no effect on him. At least hers didn’t, anyway.

Blurriness greeted her, but she refrained from blinking as it would only serve to clear her vision, and the beautiful visage of her brutal and pitiless master was one she did not wish to look upon.

“You were the one he wanted,” he continued, shedding both light and confusion on a mystery that had puzzled her for two centuries. “And I would do anything to hurt Roman D’Angelo,” he said, leaning forward in his massive throne-like chair. “Anything at all.”

Chapter Nineteen

She was right. The mansion
was
vast.

She did it more to keep moving than anything else; the magic she had inside of her after all of these years felt a little like a homeless man winning the lottery. She desperately wanted to spend it, and it had already been proven that she didn’t quite yet know how. So instead, she moved through the mansion, going from room to room and trying her best to
distract herself.

Thus far, she’d gone thr
ough six lavishly appointed quarters she could only assume were guest rooms, two posh sitting rooms, a study, a palatial tri-level library that she could have lived in, and of course Jason’s own opulent bed chamber. Through windows, she’d been able to determine that there was a glass-domed conservatory and a maze garden, though she hadn’t yet found the entrances to those, and the land beyond them was shrouded in a soup-like fog. There was sure to also be a kitchen somewhere, as well as an attic of some sort, but she’d yet to locate them.

At the moment, she stood at the end of her fourth or fifth hallway.  She’d just opened a thick metal reinforced wooden door to reveal a descending spiral stone staircase and darkness.

A scent wafted up the stairs toward Chloe, subtle enough to hint at the passage of time. It smelled like wax or matches. There was also the faintest touch of spice, perhaps, like sandalwood.

And leather. There was that too.

Chloe’s heart rate kicked up a notch.
I know what this is
.

Sh
e felt along the wall for the power switch, found it, and flicked it on. Light illuminated the stairs, barely reaching the top step where she stood. Because the stairwell was winding, there was still no way to see what waited at the bottom.

She
slowly descended the stairs. Her leather-soled boots echoed loudly upon each carved stone landing.

As she touched down on the main floor, the
fireplace across the room burst to life, at once emitting a warm and crackling glow. By now, she was used to this. It had happened in every room she’d entered.

But the
leaping, dancing flames cast an added gleaming, ominous light upon the objects in the room, both large and small. For a very long moment, all Chloe did was stand at the base of the stairs and stare.

She’d heard about this. She’d known for a long time that the Warlock King had…
darker
tastes when it came to intimate relations. In truth, there was nothing particularly surprising about the tables with their leather straps, the metal bars bearing strong, padded restraints, the cruel wooden “pony” along one wall, or the various whips, paddles and other, more exacting and devious devices that were so brazenly displayed along another.

It wasn’t the wax candles that had been burned and dripped, no doubt on
quivering, helpless flesh, or the chest of shut drawers with their hidden contents that brought Chloe up short. This was no surprise to her at all.

Having been the unwilling receptacle of real human emotion for countless generations, Chloe had long ago come to realize that this
, or some
degree
of this sort of thing was not actually the exception when it came to human sex, but the
rule
– no matter what a man or woman would otherwise have you believe.

The skeleton residing in most mortals’ closet
s bore a much more striking resemblance to handcuffs than a skeleton at all. For some odd reason, it just wasn’t yet considered “okay” to be honest about needing to relinquish control to someone you trusted in order to enjoy sex. The old brain need for dominance or submission hadn’t yet shrugged off its taboo label. Humans worked so very slowly through their innumerable issues. It took forever sometimes. Sometimes it never happened at all.

So it wasn’t the room and its tools that stopped Chloe in her tracks and sent her blood speeding heatedly through her body.

It was something else.

It was that as she stood there, her
sea foam eyes roving over the room’s dark, delicious promises, she couldn’t help but imagine
herself
held firmly beneath the Warlock King’s various straps and restraints, Jason standing over her… his will automatically and irrevocably her own.