The Fallen King: The Bellum Sisters 4 (paranormal erotic romance) (35 page)

Never would she have thought that
hearing him yell her name could make her smile.

She looked to the side and saw
such a beautiful sight she lost sight of what she was doing.

Alrik came rapidly down the slope,
Aidan and the rogue demons following behind him. He looked battle worn, but so
strong and stunning.

I love you
, she thought.

She made a mistake. One she
didn’t realize for all of the three seconds it’d taken her to turn her head and
look up at him. That’s okay it was worth it.

A blade slid into her chest so
near to her heart. Her eyes, still locked on Alrik’s face, flared in surprise.
His dark eyes flashed then he roared and charged forward.

Abby looked down to see a knife
sticking out from her chest. Blood oozed from the wound. Why was she so slow to
act? She should be moving, acting now. Doing something. But what?

The queen’s distorted face smiled
up at her. “I win,” she hissed.

Abby jerked at her words. Pain started
numbing her like icy water filling her veins. “No you don’t.”

Abby pulled the blade from her
own chest. It took her two tries for her strength was fading fast, and the skin
of her chest caught the blade as if it didn’t want to let it go. Finally, it
came free. She palmed it in two blood-covered hands and stared into the evil
eyes of the person who’d started this all.

“He wins,” Abby said.

Then she slammed the blade into
the queen’s neck. The amount of blood that spurted from the wound almost seemed
fake like something you’d seen in a horror movie. But this wasn’t a movie and
she’d really just shoved a dagger into another person’s neck. Well, she’d also
nearly burned the demon bitch too, so. Whatever.

Abby fell off the queen. She
hadn’t meant to but she had no control over her body. With each breath she
took, more blood seemed to gurgle from her chest with a wet plopping sound.

Alrik’s face swam before her. She
smiled and reached for him. He grabbed her bloodied hand and ran a calming hand
over her hair. A sigh escaped her it felt so nice. Whatever spell the queen had
made him drink was gone. He had returned to his normal self.

“What have you done?” he asked in
a hoarse voice.

She started to speak but was
surprised to find she had to swallow a few times first. Her tongue felt heavy
and dry. She needed some water. “I beat her. I killed her. Right?” God, she’d
better be dead. Abby didn’t know how many more times she could kill her.

Alrik leaned over her. It wasn’t
until that moment that she realized how cold she was. A shiver passed over her.
His cheek pressed against hers, and then he kissed her. Even his cheek felt
burning hot. She tried to purse her lips to kiss him back but couldn’t.

“Yes, you killed her.” Why did he
sound so funny?

“What’s...wrong?” She had to
swallow again. Damn, her throat really hurt. After she felt better, she was
going to really live in to him for choking her.

Her head rolled to the side but
she didn’t remember doing so.

Something was wrong.

It didn’t dawn on her until then.

It really hadn’t. She’d been so
overjoyed to see him again—alive and strong.

So what the seer said was true.
She would die. She actually was going to die now. Tears filled her eyes and
spilled down her temples.

I don’t want to die
.

A sob climbed up her throat but
she held it back.

Both of his hands covered her
cheeks as he kissed her again. “I love you so much,” he said, his eyes closed
and his voice breaking.

He repositioned her so she lay in
his lap. She sighed. This new position felt nice—much warmer and she got to be
closer to him. His hand slid over her wound and she winced. Yeah, it hurt. He
pressed hard to it.

“Why did you do it?” he croaked.

She hadn’t been sure the first
time she heard it, but yes, they were both crying. Abby tilted her face so she
could see his eyes. She had to smile even though she could see his heart
breaking in his eyes, could see the tears sliding down his face. She’d done
that. She’d inadvertently hurt him when all she wanted to do was save him.

“Because,” she gulped, her air
supply growing shorter and the heavy feeling growing in her limbs getting worse,
“I love you so much.”

He pressed his forehead against
hers. “You shouldn’t have done it. You shouldn’t have.” He kept saying it over
and over again.

It was the last thing she ever
heard.

Chapter Twenty-three

He felt the life leave her body.

He could actually feel it as if
her soul just walked out.

“Abbigail.”

He shook her. Her eyes stared
somewhere off the point of his shoulder.

“Sweetheart wake up.” His voice
broke. “Wake up, dammit!”

She didn’t blink. Her chest
refused to rise and fall again.

No, no, no. This couldn’t be
happening again. This couldn’t happen again.
NO!

“Somebody help me!” he shouted.

He set her body on the grass. His
eyes caught sight of the dead carcass of his mother, and he shoved out his arm to
push her away from his beloved.

He covered her wound with his
hand and searched his memory for something. This couldn’t be the end. There had
to be a way.

Footsteps neared.

It was Aidan and his men. They
looked solemn, their eyes heavy with sorrow. “Where’s your healer?” demanded
Alrik.

A man came forward to kneel
beside her. He checked the wound and pressed his fingers to her neck but said
as he’d expected.

“She’s already passed on, my
king.”

The last of the words he ignored.
He didn’t give a shit if they respected him now. “You have to do something.
Anything
.
Any spell any amount of power, name it and I’ll do it.”

He kept hold of her hand, kept
squeezing it, but she wouldn’t squeeze it back. His chest squeezed so hard it
was a wonder his heart didn’t start bleeding from the pressure. Tears kept
coming. Why did she have to look so pale?

“My king, there is nothing you
can do. She has gone from us. Let us bury her.”

“NO!” he shouted. He wouldn’t
give up. He would figure out a way. His eyes swept over her face. “Give me a
wet rag someone. Now!”

Within a few seconds, a demon
pushed one at his face. He grabbed it started cleaning her face. She was so
beautiful even in death, but blood marred her skin. He cleaned every spec of
dirt and filth from her face and then started on her neck as his mind worked
slowly, numbly. He couldn’t contain his flinch at the horrible bruises covering
her neck.
From him!

Aidan stepped forward as he set
to cleaning her hands. Dirt and blood had caked under her nails. That pain in
his chest intensified. He’d done this to her. He’d taken her from her home and
gotten her killed. And for what? His mother wasn’t worth her life. She wasn’t
even worth a single hair off Abbigail’s head.

“What have I done?” he whispered,
squeezing her hand. He pressed it to his lips and kissed them as his eyes
clamped shut. “Oh God, what have I done?”

Aidan stepped near him but didn’t
touch him. A good thing, he didn’t know what he might do if someone laid a hand
on him right now. Alrik kissed the palm of her hand and started cleaning the
other.

“None of us have any spells to
fix her. There are no herbs to push away death. Very few have such a white
power to bring back the dead,” Aidan said. He was speaking slowly. He’d cared
for his Abbigail even in the short amount of time he’d spent with her. Alrik
couldn’t even blame him; she had that effect on people. He’d learned that first
hand. “I’ve known very few who had that power... One is dead at my feet.” He
kicked the dead queen. “The other is alive before me.”

Alrik nearly stopped breathing.

“But I can’t heal anymore. The
curse took that away from me before.” Besides, he’d never actually done it. He
knew it could be done in his bloodline. He knew his brother could do it, had
even seen him do it. His mother and even seen his father had the healing powers
in their blood. But the curse had taken his white magic from him. “Look at me.
I can’t. Don’t you think I’d save her if I could?”

A small smile lifted the corner
of Aidan’s mouth. “I think you need to look at yourself one last time. You
might just be surprised.”

A low tremble started in his gut
then worked its way out. He knew what his words meant, but could it really be
possible?

“Bring him a mirror,” said Aidan.

The men talked amongst themselves
and realized they didn’t have one. So, someone brought forth his double-bladed
axe. The steel was sharp and the fire reflected off it.

“Are you ready?” the demon asked.

No, he wasn’t. He couldn’t nod, couldn’t
even shake his head. He just sat there holding Abbigail’s steadily cooling
hand.

The demon shrugged then lifted
his axe to face Alrik.

Alrik looked at his oblong
reflection marked with specs of drying blood and at a face he hadn’t seen in a
thousand years.

Gold skin covered his face and
neck. Bright violet eyes stared back at him as if he was looking into the face
of a stranger. Brown hair with a good dose of red fell around his face in a
wild array.

He kept hold of her hand but used
his free on to touch his cheeks as if to make sure the reflection he saw
matched up with him.

“It’s real,” he breathed.

“Yes, it is. You are cured,”
Aidan said.

He looked away. He was cured, but
what for? What did it matter now? He’d lost the love of his life. He had no one
to share this with. A hollow shell sat inside him as if he’d been carved out
into a shell. He was nothing without her.

“Just because I look as I did
before doesn’t mean I’ll have the powers as I did before.”

Before...before he’d changed.
When his powers hadn’t been of rage and ice but of good things too.

“True,” Aidan agreed. “But you
could still try.”

Yes, yes he would. Of course he
would because if she died then he’d die with her.

Alrik tried to remember how to
call forth healing magic.

He set his hands over her chest
and closed his eyes.

He thought of closing her wound,
of seeing her eyes blink, and hearing her heart beat. He let the thoughts
course through him like blood until it was all he thought or felt. His hands
started to warm and he focused harder and put all of his energy into it.

Hope sprung. He could do this.

Breathing ragged, sweat poured
from his brow and still nothing happened. He sat back and wiped the sweat away.
The demons and vampire watched him with a various mixture of grimaces on their
faces.

“What?” Alrik asked at their
strange looks.

Aidan looked uncomfortable. “It’s
been nearly half an hour and nothing’s happened, Alrik. Why don’t we just bury
her and let us mourn?”

Thirty minutes? Impossible. It
hadn’t felt that long at all. Yet his muscles felt strained and tired in a way
they hadn’t before.

His gaze swept over Abbigail’s
cooling body and something fierce and raw came over him—a steely resolve.

“No, I’m going to do this. I
can
do this.” Alrik leaned back over her as he placed his hands on her chest. He
winced as he spotted the deep bruising on her neck. Disgust filled him. He
didn’t deserve her, but if she forgave him after he brought her back, then he’d
grovel to her for the rest of his life.

Closing his eyes, he concentrated.
He focused on the healing powers that existed in his blood. He called it forth
as if beckoning a small hurt animal. His skin warmed. His mind rested in a
place where time didn’t exist. All that existed, all that mattered was
Abbigail’s bloody wound beneath his hands.

The heat grew. His muscles flexed
and twitched as he physically forced the healing magic up and out of him.
Ragged breaths tore from his burning throat. His arms shook as if he was
holding up a building to keep it from collapsing. Even his head felt about to
burst as if too much air filled it.

I’ll bring her back. I’ll bring
her back
, he
chanted.

His blood started to boil. So
much heat filled him he swore he breathed steam.

Then a blinding light covered him
like rays of sunlight on bare skin. It was so hot it hurt him from its burn but
he gritted his teeth and pushed through it.

I will bring her back. I will
bring her back!

The light shifted its beacon to
shine on Abbigail. In his magical eye, he could see the beautiful white light
encase her body. At the center of her chest where his hands were he saw a
glowing orange light emit from his hands as if they were on fire.