The Fallen King: The Bellum Sisters 4 (paranormal erotic romance) (31 page)

“No, I’m not. I’m just feeling
something I haven’t ever felt before,” he said.

His words shut her up and got her
thinking. While this whole situation might be one big mess, she’d at least
gotten one good thing out of it.

Abby pressed a kiss to Alrik’s
lips and he returned it.

Yeah, that was worth it.

Chapter Twenty

The soft, feminine voice hissed
at him.

“
Alllriiiik
. Awaken,
Allllrik
.”

He twitched, fighting the lulling
sound. There was something about it he recognized but couldn’t quite place.
What made his hairs stand on end was the magic encompassing the words. The
woman wasn’t asking, she was commanding it with vast power behind her words.

As if in a daze, Alrik woke and
stood. Abby turned on her side but he had no care for her.

“Come to me.
Coooooome
.”

He started walking. The voice
seemed to come from nowhere yet must have a distinct location. No matter, the
spell slowly wrapped around his mind and body knew where to take him. He walked
across the base of the mountain towards the south where the flickering of fire
in distance looked so much closer.

As soon as he saw the fire, he
knew that this wasn’t a dream. He was being summoned. And his mother was waiting
for him. It was her sick magic being forced into his body to answer to her
will. He tried to fight it, but no amount of spells he tried to cast overcame
her power.

Each step he took he tried to
still it. Nothing worked. His body just kept moving. He dug his heels into the
ground and desperately tried to turn away from the fire in the distance. He had
to get back to Abby. She was alone and unprotected. His heart started hammering
in his chest. Sweat beaded his temples and slicked down his face.

The path he walked ended on a
ledge just past the mountain. He couldn’t see down it yet but he knew it wasn’t
a cliff because he could just make out the other half of the valley sunken into
the ground. The area felt warmer here. Sweat pooled and slid down his back and
chest. Humid air suffocated him as he neared the ledge like a walking zombie.

Without even a moment to
determine the drop off, he was sent rolling down the hill. He rolled like a log
falling down and down. The grass was wet, mossy. The valley had a distinct moist
smell. The trees were wide and not as tall as the other rift trees. They were
bulkier and shorter. Their long branches hung like old arms out toward the
ground with thousands of dark green leaves coloring them.

A fire roared nearby. He could
hear its mighty crackling flame, and smell its woodsy stench. Except it didn’t
just smell of woods. Something was burning in that fire. Something that smelled
so repulsive his stomach clenched to keep from heaving.

Wherever that fire was and who
tended it was behind him, but he couldn’t even turn his bloody head to look.

Like a robot, the spell commanded
him to stand and come forward. Then he saw her. And her army.

Fuck
!

Things were so much worse than he
expected. She didn’t have a small army of maybe a few dozen
idummi
under
her control. She had more than a few hundred.

The
idummi
stood as his
body waded through the crowd. They parted for him sneering and chomping their
teeth at him. Rage boiled in his blood. He fought even harder against the magic
binding him. He’d tear off every single one of the demon’s heads and toss them
into the fire pit right after he slaughtered his mother.

And there she was—his mother—in
all her crowning horror.

She stood on a stone dais. It
looked recently built, not aged as some of the temples and old buildings he’d
seen along the rift. The corners were sharp and not worn down. The rock still
shined as they had just been dug up. A set of six stairs were carved into
either side of the dais. The whole thing looked so out of place in this marsh
that he would have laughed if he could. Only his mother would require elegance
and royalty while banished from home. She hadn’t learned to hunt her own food
or to live humbly as he had. No, she just weaved her spells until she had an army
do it for her. Smart, really.

The fire roared off to his left.
Massive stones formed a circle around the base and a mighty black cauldron was
held above it by tall metal stakes coming from the ground.
Idummi
worked
around it with their bony legs bent out at sharp angles. Their green skin
shined sickly in the fire light. They tossed things into the black cauldron. A
ladder stood up against one of the stakes and one
idummi
held a mighty
pole that he used to stir the hellish concoction inside.

She had her minions create her
favorite part of the castle—the throne. She even had a lavish chair on top of
it. The frame looked elegant and intricate, worthy of royalty even in his eye.
The wooden frame curled into spirals at the bottom of the four posts, and at
the top two curled back. A rich green cushion decorated the wooden frame and
she sat upon the edge of it, her bony, golden shoulders thrust back, and her
body facing him with a mad gleam in her eye.

She stood as he neared.

“I see nothing has changed,” said
Alrik.

Even out here in the middle of
nowhere in a damn marsh she wore a vibrant splash of color on her face. Her
eyes were darkly lined in black to better show her violet eyes. The reminder of
what his real eye color looked like didn’t sit well with him. The fact that he
had anything in common with her made him want to jump into the fire until he
burned to a crisp.

Her long raven black hair sat in
two heavy braids on each of her shoulders. Gold, silver, and red thread was
weaved through the braids, and atop her head was a golden crown. It wasn’t her
royal crown. No way would they have let her leave with it when he banished her
from the kingdom.

No, she’d forged her own. Two
crescents of shimmery gold stood apart from each other. Small jagged points
stood facing each other from opposite sides of her head. A middle piece with luminous
diamonds and rubies flashed from the fire light, and atop the crescents and
middle connector were two sheer points like horns of an animal. They arched up
into the air.

Her red gown had gold flowers
etched into the tight bodice and white fur lining the long, elegant sleeves and
the bottom of the dress swept the ground as she stood.

“What do you want from me?”

He looked upon her cold beauty
and golden skin with uncontained disgust.

A small smile played at the
corner of her mouth. “Is that any kind of greeting to give your mother?”

“No. The better one would be to
cut your fucking head off.”

Her eyebrows rose. Good he surprised
her. That made him feel better.

The smile died from her face.
Even the life in her eyes seemed to die. She raised a hand and flexed her
fingers in the air.

Alrik choked. An invisible forced
grabbed at his throat and squeezed. He struggled, but couldn’t move his legs or
even his arms under her magic. His eyes squeezed shut as his muscles flexed
hard against the choking, his bones grating, and throat bruising.

“Look at me!” his mother hissed
like a serpent.

He took his time and slowly
opened his eyes while inhaling air through his nostrils. Once they made eye contact,
she held the spell for a moment longer then released him. She released all of
him because he once again had control over his body. He rubbed at his throat
still feeling the lingering invisible hands.

“You have been busy son. Visiting
the last and most powerful seer. Seeking to murder me, your own mother,” she
said in a soft, mocking voice. She walked down the dais as if she was in the
ballroom back home making a grand entrance.
Idummi
parted for her as she
knelt and picked something up and then she tossed it at him.

Alrik felt his body jolt.

The seer’s head landed near his
feet—a bloody hunk of meat. His dark face was frozen in a look of terror, his
eyes rolled up.

He couldn’t say anything as rage
boiled inside him.

Then with the seer’s blood on her
hands, she held her hand up as if awaiting a man to take and place a kiss upon
it. Her other hand grabbed the long length of her gown and lifted it as she
came near him.

“You’ve been very bad…I mean
really, son, trying to kill your own mother?”

With a vicious snarl, he ran for
her. The seer’s words didn’t matter. She was so close he could almost feel her
blood coating his fingers.

Her trickling laughter taunted
him as if she found him entertaining. He didn’t even come close to reaching her
before she tossed up her hand as if waving and he was blocked by an invisible
wall. He knew spells and magic. He could fight back but as he thrust his own
magic out to dispel the wall, nothing happened. More of her feminine laughter
assaulted him.

Maybe, just maybe if he could get
his hands on her then he could end her life the old fashioned way—by cutting
her damned head off.

An
idummi
crept up between
them. He bowed before his mother like a servant and spoke in a garbled, demonic
voice. The
idummi
had their own demonic language and trying to speak in
the
shahoulin
tongue of Alrik’s people was hard for the creature.

“Master Demuzi, it is done.”

His mother clapped, her wild eyes
gleaming with madness. “Fantastic and here I thought things were starting to
get boring. Bring it here.”

The demon slinked off back toward
the fire pit.

Alrik tensed. He’d thought things
were bad enough before, but now a sinking feeling came over him.

His mother saw his look and
smiled.

“What are you going to do?” Just
asking the words was like trying to pull his teeth out one at a time.

She made a tsking sound and shook
her head. “You’ll just have to wait and see now won’t you? Besides, you mustn’t
think I brought you all this way for nothing?”

“Salindra, what have you done?”
he shouted. His body lunged toward her but the barrier spell kept him from
doing more than leaning towards her. His palms twitched and fingers itched to
scrape his fingers over her colored face until he saw blood.

Suddenly, the demons swarmed
around him.

They bounced on their bony, lithe
feet and stared at him with excited eyes. Alrik spun around finding more and
more of them around him. The creatures didn’t look as if a spell kept them here
which only meant that his mother had actually gained their support without
magical means. Just what could she offer these ruthless, cannibalistic demons
to keep them loyal? He was afraid to find out.

Once again, he spun and faced his
mother.

“Why?” he gritted out.

“Your father was strong. He kept
our people in line, and well, he kept me from causing too much trouble. Of
course, if I would have dared any of my games while he was king he would have
had me imprisoned. But you, my son, were so new to the throne. Telal, my
eldest, was supposed to take it, but he betrayed all of us to those vampires.
Well, he’ll get his as you will yours. You were so eager to please.” She
twirled in a circle with her arms spread out from her like a little girl
dancing. “Eager to please me, the court members, and the commoners. It was
sickening really watching you bow down to them like that.”

“I wasn’t bowing to them. I was
helping them repair the damage from the war!” Alrik fought against the barrier
spell separating them. He dug his body into it just hoping it would break. All
he would need was one second and she’d be dead.

She rolled her eyes and made her
face into a mocking sad expression. “Aw, poor Alrik. Where did my tough son go?
Where did his
kingliness
go? Well, you were no fun so I fixed it. I
fixed all of that. You were so regal and fun after I fixed you.” She laughed a
cruel sound. “And the best part was that you didn’t even see it happening. I
took your hair and bound it into a totem where I cursed you once a week for
nearly a thousand years. I fooled you for a
thousand years!
When things
started to get boring, I would give you my special “stress-relief concoction”.
Sure you would feel dazed and relaxed for a minute, but the rage would grow in
your heart.” She sighed in pleasure.

“I wonder how many innocent
prisoners you sentenced to die or to become a slave because of that little
potion. Fifty? Maybe more?” She laughed delightedly.

“It wasn’t me. It was you and
your black magic. Let this barrier go and fight me.” Still, he couldn’t believe
that.
He’d
done those things. Every last horrible one of them.

Her shoulders shook she laughed
so hard. “As if I don’t know what you’re thinking. As if I don’t know that
you’d sooner kill me than save that precious human of yours.”

The change in topics sent him
spiraling. “What? What are you talking about?” A part of him knew that she knew
about Abbigail. Of course she would, but still to know what she was capable of
and to know that Abby was alone not far from here sent fear unlike he’d ever
known through him. It froze him to the bone.