The Demon King (12 page)

If this was a shipping company, as it
appeared to be, then that something was other people’s belongings.
Worth stealing, certainly, but that wouldn’t explain the dreadful
sounds coming from inside.

A small sound drew her attention to the dog.
Big eyes gazed up at her, one blue, one brown. A sudden flash of
the dog unconscious and crushed beneath something awful caused
Dahlia’s chest to tighten. She really didn’t want the animal
getting hurt because she followed Dahlia into something dangerous.
“Stay here, okay?” she said, lending a little force to the word
“stay.”

The dog whined softly, but sat down as if
she were well trained and had been with Dahlia for years. Dahlia
nodded. “Good girl.”

Slowly she turned back to the building and
began creeping toward it. As she moved, she wrapped herself in
protective magic, adding layers with each step. First was a shroud
of silence so whoever was in the building wouldn’t hear her coming.
Next was a scent blocker, so that if they were something akin to
shifters or even other vampires, they wouldn’t smell her. She
placed a shield around herself as best she could, one that would
protect her from the brunt of most magic, but shields were power
sapping, so she left it minimal and moved on. The final thing she
did was wrap herself in darkness. This time, the word was fitting,
because it was actual darkness plain and simple that she used – to
help hide her from sight.

Approximately ten feet from the single door
of the building, another cry rang out, splitting the night and
halting her in her tracks. Dahlia took a deep breath, swallowing
with a dry throat past a lump of sudden hesitation. That cry wasn’t
human. She could hear the difference in it now. There was a
vibration to it that was not only inhuman, but unnatural. It was
the kind of sound difference that only something magical could
make.

With that in mind, she decided on a new
approach, and ducking inside a spell that allowed her body to
dematerialize for just a moment, she passed through the stone outer
wall of the building, and into the space on the other side.

Chapter Thirteen

What she found when she
came out on the other side of the warehouse wall was not at all
what she’d been expecting. Some kind of human gang fight or a
terrible form of initiation to a twisted fraternity or maybe even a
gang rape in progress – that was what she’d braced herself for.
She
hadn’t
braced
herself for what was clearly the attempted summoning and capture of
an otherworldly being. She’d seen this kind of thing before, in the
drawings of a few of the texts she’d gone over while studying under
Lalura. This kind of magic was forbidden. It wasn’t black magic or
dark magic – it was
wrong
magic. Slavers used it. No one and nothing wanted
to be a slave.

The complicated symbols drawn into the
cement floor of the warehouse surrounded a wide circle
approximately ten by ten feet. The circle and the symbols were
glowing. A band of hooded figures standing around the amalgamation
of drawings held out hands that were also glowing. The entire
warehouse was lit with the reddish light emitted by the goings-on
within it, but what burned the brightest was the thing trapped
inside the circle itself.

This is where the screaming
is coming from
, she thought. And
piggy-backing on that verification was the knowledge that everyone
in the room was almost instantly aware of her arrival. Her shields
and protective spells had dropped the moment she entered the room,
perhaps canceled by some negating wards.

Her sudden and unexpected meld through the
wall halted a wail of pain or anger – she couldn’t tell which – and
brought the creature in the circle spinning around to face her.
Eyes that burned locked on hers mere moments before every other set
of eyes in the warehouse followed, and she was embraced by the
glares of half a dozen magic users.

A number of things happened
inside a person’s mind and body when they found themselves in real,
and possibly mortal, danger. The five senses of the body were
triggered to instantly perceive the body’s immediate environment.
This information was then sent to the brain. The brain began to
work faster on the information than one can truly imagine,
processing it at light speed, and sending the results into a body’s
various systems. Adrenaline and endorphins were released into the
bloodstream. The heart began pumping faster and harder, carrying
those crucial chemicals to the body’s muscles. And a hard, numbing
cold settled in the gut. Why it was there and what purpose it
served exactly, Dahlia was uncertain. It was simply an
accompaniment, like low ominous music, to the fleeting and nearly
imperceptible thought that floated through a person’s shadowy old
brain in situations like this:
I might die
right here and right now
.

Dahlia had lived a long time. But even she
would never get used to this feeling.

Thank goodness for the rare mercy of nature
in moments like these, and for the rather blurred form of
consciousness it afforded people when they had no choice but to
fight. What never once struck her as strange was the fact that she
knew it was the hooded figures and not the monster they’d summoned
that she would be fighting.

Magic flooded her arms,
pooling in her palms like a crackling, swirling heat. She felt her
eyes heat up and saw her vision shift from the already altered
shades of her vampirism into the hyper contrasts of magical battle.
She had barely decided upon her first offensive spell when she was
hurling it out in front of her in
defense
because the hooded figures
had managed to attack first.

They’d simply pulled up their red, caging
power and tossed it at her in a knee-jerk reaction to her sudden
appearance. Her equally fast spell was a burning, fizzing ball of
electricity that was one of the most basic and therefore easily
obtainable offensive attacks for her. It hurt more than usual to
use the magic; sizzling along her skin with needle-like pain where
it used to only tickle. But she ignored the pain. The ball of
electricity slammed into the pulsing red of their magic and
exploded.

Dahlia shielded her eyes for a second to
protect them from the blast. They were naturally sensitive to light
since she’d become a vampire, and it would seem that was even the
case for electric, magical light.

She gritted her teeth and lowered her arm in
time to see the hooded group of figures hastily dispersing,
spreading out in order to circle her rather than the creature
they’d summoned. The monster, a massive amalgamation of befanged
muscle and black fur at least eight feet tall, seemed to be
silently watching the unexpected goings-on. She had no idea what
kinds of thoughts could be going through its enormous mind. Not
that she had time to contemplate it at this juncture.

In the space of time that
exists during a life or death struggle, moments don’t lay flat for
you and let you fill them up with reasonable thinking. Instead,
seconds fly by or stand frozen before you, and coherent thought
moves aside for the subconscious babble of self preservation. That
babble usually sounds something like, “Oh shit – do
this
, wait, do
this
! Holy fuck,
they’re
everywhere
, cast something! Move! dive! hide! RUN!”

She followed the life or
death instructions her fevered mind belted out, ducking low beneath
a hurled bolt of magic that looked like a thrown ribbon of black
silk. She recognized it as an
ink
rope
, called such because it was darkness
that would harden when it made contact with its victim, and coil
around them like a rope.

Dahlia dropped to the ground and rolled as
her hands once more filled with her own potent power. She came
agilely to her feet again in order to spin away from a third spell
directed at her and retaliate with her own blast of magic.

This time, she managed to include more than
one enemy in her efforts, using a spell she knew would span over a
wider space. A gust of wind raced through the warehouse with the
power of a bansidhe’s wail. Four of the six hooded figures were
knocked off their feet and sent flying. The beast inside the
summoning circle was unaffected by the spell, protected as he was
by the circle’s invisible wall.

Dahlia attempted to slide directly into
preparations for a third spell when she was side-swiped by the
offensive magic of one of the two remaining hooded figures. She
felt something cold brush along her left arm, like coming up
against a sheer block of ice in nothing but your swim suit on a
summer’s day. She inhaled sharply and stiffened, instinctively
trying to move away from the shocking sensation. But the feeling
not only froze her in her tracks, it spread through her at an
unnatural pace, sinking into her skin, then the muscle underneath,
and finally chilling her bone as if she were dipping it into liquid
hydrogen.

She felt herself going down, the pain of
being instantly frozen too much to contend with. Her knees buckled,
and she hugged herself in vain, fully expecting the pain to dip
lower and grasp hold of her heart, stopping it instantly.

However, the moment she stopped attempting
to cast her own magic, the pain ebbed, her bones and muscles began
to warm back up again, and she started shaking. When she exhaled,
the air condensed before her lips. She heard shuffling and
scuffling sounds, and a few groans of pain. It was the men picking
themselves up off the floor where they’d landed when she’d hurled
them across the room. It was too bad she hadn’t managed to kill any
of them.

“
Grab her while she’s
down,” she heard someone command. It was a man’s voice, one
hardened by years of giving orders.

Dahlia had once read, in a romance novel
about motorcycle-riding assassins and down-to-earth heroines, that
there was no greater pleasure than the cessation of pain. She was a
firm believer in the validity of that statement, and the sensations
moving through her just then were further proof that it was true.
The spell’s cold had been so harsh, and the end to that hard freeze
felt so good, she was momentarily stunned by the recession of the
spell’s pain. Stunned enough that it took a moment for her to
process what she’d just heard.

But the second she recognized footfalls
coming her way, she fully realized what it was the man had just
said. And there was no way in hell she was going to become these
slavers’ next victim.

She quickly pushed herself up. At once, the
pain was back. She winced and again inhaled sharply, hissing hard
through clenched teeth. Clearly, the spell meant to punish
resistance. With each passing second, Dahlia was more convinced
that attacking the hooded figures had been the right thing to
do.

She didn’t let up now,
despite the pain. Countless years of being forced into a kind of
servitude to her Tuathan bloodline had taught her well that she was
simply not born to be obligated or beholden to anyone.
Ever
. There was little
more precious to Dahlia Kellen than her freedom. She had learned
that lesson well.

“
Watch it, back off!” It
was the same man who’d spoken earlier, warning those who had drawn
near to her.

Dahlia’s vision once more shifted, contrasts
sharpened, and her hands flooded with power. She cried out as the
spell that had been cast on her threatened to crack her bones in
half and the cold continued to spread. She glanced down at her
body, viewing it through battle-tones. She expected find her arm
blue and covered with rime. But it looked no different than
usual.

No damage,
then
, she thought.
Only pain
.

The spell was designed to
hurt, not harm. For some reason, that made her even more furious.
The fire building in her palms leapt with height and took on a
purple cast. It had never done that before. She could feel it
draining an inordinate amount of strength from her form, but at the
same time, the darkening of her magic’s flames eased the strain up
on her eyes a bit, allowing her to better see her targets. It
also
felt
better.
At first, why it felt better was hard to put her finger on. But as
the magic continued to build, Dahlia realized it was deadening the
pain from the cold spell that had been cast on her. It was negating
it, warming her from the inside out like a hot drink of coffee in a
snow storm.

She smiled, allowing her fangs to show. She
didn’t even care that she was being drained by this new dark fire.
It was worth it.

Across the warehouse from
her, a single hooded figure slowly pushed back his hood. Piercing
blue eyes glowed with a different menacing fire, locking onto her
with their own kind of darkness.
No
, Dahlia thought.
Not darkness.
Wrongness
.

She would know it anywhere.

Chapter Fourteen

Realizing she could afford to wait no
longer, Dahlia cast her spell. The entire process of spell building
had taken only seconds, no more than one or two. But time seemed to
slow as her enemy locked gazes with her, and the way her magic was
draining her further stretched the moment out.

Throwing it like a rock she was casting over
her head, she hurled her dark force at the group of hooded figures,
who now stood near their leader in a loose-knit group. They had no
time to protect themselves or retaliate, having been intent on
apprehending her only a moments earlier. The full force of the dark
spell slammed into them in a tidal wave of deep purple, a crackling
blaze that cut their sudden cries of surprise and pain in half.