The Fallen King: The Bellum Sisters 4 (paranormal erotic romance) (27 page)

She just wanted it to stop.

She didn’t know who threw the
first punch. The men were a blur of movement, but one of them struck first. All
she saw, or,
heard
rather, was the sound of flesh being pummeled. She
winced stumbling backwards as her stomach convulsed trying to make the contents
in her stomach come back up.

“Stop it.” Her voice was too
quiet.

“Please, stop it,” she tried
again, a little louder.

Still, the men launched at each
other, grunts and cracks, and those horrible sounds of flesh hitting flesh
assaulting her senses as they did each other.

Her senses went on overload. She
couldn’t contain it anymore. She had to unleash the burning, fiery energy
boiling up inside her. It had to be released—must go somewhere. The spinning of
her mind had to stop. The pain in her heart and in her belly had to stop.

With a shout that could cause an avalanche,
she screamed. “STOP IT!”

With her scream, something else happened.
Something she didn’t expect.

The men were thrown back as if
struck by a wrecking ball. They flew high into the air and backwards. They had
to have gone nearly half a mile. Abby shook, her knees knocking together, and her
arms trembling with the force of what she’d just done. She’d never done
anything like that.

She could hear the demons waking
up behind her, asking questions, and moving around. There was no time to waste;
with one final glance at Alrik she watched his body slam into the trunk of a
tree. It was too far away to be certain, but she thought she heard a
bone-snapping crunch. The tree shuddered and limbs broke and crashed around
him.

She took a step toward him then
caught herself. He’d be fine, she knew that. Besides, she needed to get away
from him now, not run over there and try to nurse him back to health.

She just hoped he was hit hard
enough to give her some time to run. With her heart breaking, she took off down
the length of the fissure.

It took her a moment before she
realized it.

That she was a blur of speed.

All that energy inside her still
hadn’t burned up. Her high emotions drove the magic in her blood.

The fire was still there, even as
she trembled from the power of it, and she ran fast as light away from the one
who broke her heart.

She had at least one thing to
thank Alrik for ; he had helped to make her stronger. Now she could get away
from him.

Chapter Eighteen

Alrik was dreaming, or not
really. He drifted between two worlds of consciousness, one he is aware that he
was waking up, and the other still lingering in the dream world.

As a young man he used to dream
in vibrant colors of scenes that always seemed cut short and never made any
real sense. All they served to do was make him feel good or bad when he woke
up. In that way, his dreams used to set the tone for the day. But, he hadn’t
dreamt in a long time. Not since… His body jerked, fighting the thought but it
came anyway, always unrelenting.

The last dream he’d had happened
before Arianna’s death—before his brother took back his kingdom.

Then he had dreamed of a fantasy
for what happened could never be true. He had looked like his real self,
golden-skinned like his brother Telal. They stood next to each other on the
dais in the kingdom’s hall. All the
haute
and
prolitare
stood in
the crowd, most but not all with smiles upon their colored faces.

A somewhat familiar face was
there. The succubus woman, Lily Bellum. She meant something special to his
brother. That was evident from the way his brother’s eyes watched her with reverence
and in the way he kept her hand tucked in his.

As his mind started to drift out
of the dream, a different memory took him. The bitter sounds of Telal weeping
at her death. Alrik had felt the same way seeing his Arianna die in front of
him. He’d been unable to heal her. Except while there’d been two deaths that
night his Arianna couldn’t be resuscitated. At least Telal got
his
woman
back.

More strange thoughts came
seemingly out of nowhere as his body drifted in the ether of sleep lightweight
and floating in air.

Once upon a time, he could heal
death from a person’s soul. It would only work on a fresh corpse, but that kind
of mighty power ran through his veins. Using that kind of power would zap him,
incapacitate him for days maybe even longer, but once in his hands he held the
power to heal. No longer did he have that.

It’d died with his heart many
years ago.

That didn’t mean he didn’t try
when Arianna fell before him, her white gown pooling around her body, and blood
spilling from her lips.

He’d leaned over her graceful
body and her last words had ringed in his red-hazed, raging mind for a long
time to come: “Be good, Alrik”.

He’d gone mad. He’d summoned all
the magic inside him to heal her, to bring her back, but nothing happened. Not
a lick of warmth had stirred inside him that accompanied a healing spell.
Nothing but iciness encased him. Her breath never stuttered once, her heart
didn’t beat again, not even a single palpitation.

She was dead, and it was his
fault.

Not that he quite saw it that way
at the time. At the time, it was Telal who’d killed her, Telal who had stormed into
his life only to ruin it again. Only later, after he’d been cast out banished
from the kingdom by Telal, did he think. When one had nothing but his own
thoughts as he wandered an endless land, his thoughts became him.

Oh, he’d thought over that
terrible night again and again and again.

The more he walked the more he
realized. His brother might have cast the final blow but if not for all of
his
own
deeds, Arianna would still be alive and breathing.

He didn’t come to such a
discovery easily. Oh no, it’d taken months and months of trekking through the
rift, searching for his mother, and cutting of
idummi
heads to realize
it.

He got her killed. His actions,
his deeds led her to that place to begin with. He was the reason she was dead.
And, he was the reason he couldn’t save her.

Yet even that wasn’t the whole
story. For it was the curse that bound him to think dark thoughts, to be dark
inside that made him unable to heal with spellcasting. His mother’s curse held
the real blame. It was her fault ultimately, and he’d see her pay before he
died.

His thoughts drifted as his numb
body floated between sleep and aware. He drifted below the line of conscious
once more allowing thoughts and colored pictures of the past to come over him.

It went back to the dream on the
dais where he stood with his brother and his mate.

He was smiling at Telal.

Seeing that, even in a dream
stunned him. It was as if he saw himself from another person’s body. He watched
his smiling, golden face with violet eyes and auburn hair shining with the
glint of red in the light—colors he hadn’t witnessed on himself in ages—as if
he watched a stranger. For that’s what he’d become to himself.

His gaze wandered to the woman standing
next to him. She stood with her face hidden in the shadows. Unease flittered
through him and he tried tugging on her hand to bring her into the light with
him.

Telal made a joke and Alrik
laughed. Their voices were muffled, faraway sounding to his dreaming mind. He
couldn’t make out the words, but he could feel the emotion of it. His chest
warmed and his body felt as if he was floating as the laugh went through him.

His gaze moved back to the woman
standing with him covered in shadows. A frown tugged his lips, and he tugged on
the small, delicate hand trying to pull her into the light but she resisted. He
wanted to see her.
Needed
to see her face.

No words left her lips but he sensed
a hesitation, the “no” on her lips, though she never spoke. She started pulling
away from him and sorrow clouded his heart, made him slow to grab for her when
she pulled back. Then, she slipped into the shadows and was gone.

That dream had happened within a
month of Arianna’s death, and now he’d just had it again.

What did it mean?

Had it hinted at Arianna’s
impending death? He didn’t know, but then why was he having the dream now? Did
it have anything to do with Arianna at all? Maybe the dream had everything to
do with Abbigail? If it did have to do with Arianna then that didn’t make
sense. Why did he look like his old self? Maybe the dream had just been a sign
that she was the hope he’d been looking for because t she could have found a
way to cure his curse. Then they would be standing hand in hand, mated, across
from his brother and mate.

Too many questions and not enough
answers.

He cursed himself, wishing he’d
asked the seer. The seer would have the answer. He needed to know.

Some niggling thought kept coming
up. Was it Abbigail and not Arianna pulling away from him this time? Even in
sleep, his gut churned at the idea. If so, why would she? The very thought
brought a sharp, tight pain into his chest and throat as if he was stuffed to
full.

Yet the thought didn’t sit right
with him.

Alrik sighed. That dream had
happened more than a year ago, before his life was completely ruined. He never
had a repeat dream until that one. Why
that
dream? Why now? Those dreams
didn’t bare repeating since he could never forget it.

Damn if the dream didn’t make him
feel things he hadn’t in so long. It made him want to share the mirth he’d
found so briefly in his dream. He wanted to find it and share it with
her.
Not
Arianna. He could see now that it wasn’t meant to be. Even with her death
staining his hands, he could see it. He did love her. He’d loved her for a very
long time, but they’d had such a short time to grow together. In fact, Alrik
wasn’t so sure they did at all. Maybe if they’d had more time together.

Maybe...

But if he did love her then that
couldn’t explain what he felt for Abbigail Krenshaw. For that woman, that
human
,
made him feel things so wildly different, so tremendous that he didn’t know if
he could always keep it contained.

Alrik started to rise back to
consciousness, his dream and painful thoughts fading. But then, something
pulled him back under and he dreamt once more.

This time he dreamt of something
new. Something he’d never dreamt of before and it set forth a new drive in his
heart.

Abbigail and he were at a strange
place where the sky shined so bright he had to squint to see. White soft sand
rested beneath their warm bodies, the substance finer than sugar. The heat made
him so warm like he could never remember being, almost as if the beautiful
light was baking him.

Abbigail looked stunning. Nude,
her skin glistened in the bright light with splotches of sand on her legs and
arms. She looked up at him with that brilliant smile on her face, and he couldn’t
stop smiling back and sharing in the moment with her. He reached over, his hand
cupping her cheek as he leaned in to kiss her. In that moment he realized his
skin was golden. Her beautiful eyes slowly closed and her lips curled with a
smile that parted for him.

But his dream warm fuzzing
feeling in his chest ended with a mighty blow.

Alrik came crashing back into
reality as a mighty kick landed against his ribs. His eyes shot open, and
before he thought twice, magic thrust from his fingertips. With a grunt the perpetrator
slammed into a tree sending flakes of woodchips around him.

Alrik stood slowly, cradling his
side with one hand. He surveyed the man he had pinned to the tree with
invisible binds. Of course, he should have expected it. The vampire would not give
up so easily.

“Trying to kill a man when he’s
down? I thought you were above such sleazy tactics, Aidan.” Not thinking about
why he did it, he released his magical hold on Aidan.

The vampire smiled, a flash of
fang showed and then disappeared. “Just giving you a good old wake up call,
king
.
Your woman has fled. I would have sought her out...but she made her choice. It
isn’t me she wants. Apparently it isn’t you either.”

Alrik saw Aidan’s sickeningly
happy smile and wanted to run his fist through it.

Memories surged back at once.
Fucking
hell.

Alrik jerked his gaze in the
direction from where it all happened, where Abbigail had unleashed such power
that it’d stunned him with its strength. She’d tossed him and the vampire as if
they were mere pebbles not large, fully-grown supernatural men. And she’d done
it over a long distance.

So, what the seer said was true.
She really was powerful. For the first time he really believed she could do
this. He’d seen her perform magic at the castle, then with the
jaheera
,
and now this. In such a short time together, that only meant she was growing
stronger and recovering faster. Soon, she’d be able to cast powerful magic more
than once a day and not be spent.