The Fallen King: The Bellum Sisters 4 (paranormal erotic romance) (8 page)

The demon knelt beside her and
wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She tried to push away from him but
couldn’t do anything more than raise her hands to his chest and curl them in
his wet shirt.

“You must breathe slow and deep.
Do it now!”

She wanted to slap him for trying
to order her not to have a panic attack, but she couldn’t manage to do that
either. So there she was. Her escape plan had failed and she now sat in the
arms of the man who had threatened to kill her mother and wanted her to murder
someone she didn’t even know. Not that knowing the person might make this any
easier, but still it was the principle of the matter.

He cursed harshly. Or she guessed
that’s what he did because whatever he just said was in Demonish not a language
she understood. Pulling her around like a ragdoll, he settled her back against
his chest then flattened a hand across her collarbone. Sucking in ragged
breaths, she tried to pull away but his hand held her tight.

Then he spoke.
“Iridona
tradeen k’loshka.”
He repeated the strange words and with each passing, her
breathing came easier. Her lungs relaxed, air filled her, and her mind calmed.

Exhausted, she relaxed into his
arms. Her body felt so weak she didn’t even care that she was using his body as
a prop to lean up against. Okay, she cared a bit. After a minute of full normal
breathing, she started to lean up. Just what did she say to him? Thanks for
saving my life? She didn’t know what social protocol dictated in this kind of situation.

His hand stopped her from getting
up. The demon was entirely too strong for his own good.

“What are you doing?” she
whispered, her voice ragged from what she hoped was her panic attack.

He didn’t answer. He just held
her in this strange position with his arm around her. He was close enough he
could choke the life out of her, but he didn’t make any threatening moves, just
kept her back to his chest and his hand flat to her collarbone. His thumb
swiped once across the bare skin of her neck and something warm pulsed inside
her.

“Let me go.” She swallowed over
the lump in her throat.

His hand fell away from her, then
his body was gone. She teetered backwards before she caught the motion.

“How am I supposed to help you?”
she asked.

He gazed out at the land. “Kill
my mother, the queen.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“The seer says you have great
magical power inside of you. You are the key to killing her.”

Abby’s brow flew up at that. “I
haven’t used magic since...well since in the cave, but before that...I mean
it’s been years. A really long time. And what seer?” A seer knew about her. Had
she met the seer before and just didn’t remember it?

“The Great Seer, one of the last
living seers in the nether-realm. He has great wisdom. He told me to find you. He
says only you can kill my mother, for the curse upon me won’t let me.”

Finally, he looked back at her.
She hadn’t realized she wanted him to until he did. His dark eyes were
interesting to look at, especially when they weren’t looking at her like he wanted
to rip her head off. “I will help you to train your skills. You will be
prepared for the fight.”

A thought hit her like a gunshot.
He wanted to train her to use her magic? She didn’t know about this seer or
about her being all-powerful or any such nonsense, but she did have some powers.
If he helped to train her and make her strong then maybe she’d be strong enough
to bind him for much longer or to even knock him out, then she could port home.
She’d heard of witches porting, it could be done from such a great distance. It
would just take a lot of strength.

“All right, I’ll do it.”

His eyes flared. She’d surprised
him.

“Good choice,” he said.

Yeah, except that she was lying.

Chapter Seven

“Try harder!”

Abbigail wiped the sweat from her
brow and glowered. “If I tried any harder I might collapse. I
am
trying.”

Alrik shook his head in
frustration and paced in a tight circle. “Obviously not, witch. This isn’t good
enough. Close your mind off to everything but your power and feel it inside
you. Then push it with your mind out towards me.”

Abby made a gargled noise of
frustration. “I’ve been trying to do that this whole time.”

He stalked to her, anger slashing
his handsome features into a mask. “Obviously not. Obviously not well enough
since you haven’t budged me an inch. Try again.”

“I’m tired and hungry. I need a
break.”

His eyes looked up to the sky and
he laughed. The sound wasn’t pleasant. “We are not stopping now. I told you,
you can eat after you move me with the spell I taught you. Now, try it again.”

Abby wanted to strangle him.
They’d been going at this for hours. Magic always took a physical toll on her
and right now her body screamed at her to lie down and sleep for a few days.
She didn’t know why the spell wasn’t working. Maybe because she’d never tried a
spell that would push a person back or maybe because of the spell she used
yesterday to bind him had just sapped her abilities for a short time. Hell, she
didn’t know but she wished she did. All she knew was that her stomach wouldn’t
stop growling, her eyelids kept drifting shut, and her limbs felt heavy as if
she’d been holding weights all morning.

Alrik, or, she corrected,
King
Alrik as he wanted to be called, grabbed a small branch and stood it up
against a tree. Crossing back to her, he stepped up behind her and her teeth ground
at his proximity. He unsettled her, and boy did she want that feeling to go
fast. Apparently, though her mind didn’t trust him one inkling, her body was
more than happy to feel him press up against her back. The demon was big in
many ways—tall, heavily muscled. He had that whole tall, dark, and handsome
thing going for him in a big way. What that little phrase should include is
tall, dark, handsome, and insane. The demon was not right in the head. However,
she did wonder if it was the curse on him that made him so angry all the time.

Alrik bent low so his voice fell
in her ear. His hands grabbed hers and thrust them forward. “Focus on the
branch, witch. See the branch falling over, flying back,
anything
. Just
make it move.”

His impatience only fueled her
anger. Abby envisioned herself snapping her head backwards and busting his
straight nose open, but she couldn’t do that. If she ever wanted to get out of
this wretched place and back to her life, she’d need to grow strong. And for
that, she needed his help.

She took all that anger, hunger,
and exhaustion inside her and focused it on the thin, gnarled tree branch. She
pictured her magic thrusting it, sending it flying away from the tree. Her
breathing deepened as she narrowed her eyes on it. Nothing happened. She
strained, sweat beading her brow and falling down her face in rivulets. The
muscles in her arms strained, she squeezed his big hands in hers and willed the
stupid branch to move. It didn’t budge. Not even a slight shudder.

“Gah! I can’t do it.” She pulled
her hands out of his and stalked away.

“You can’t keep giving up.” He
sounded disappointed. A small part of her actually felt guilty about this as if
she didn’t want to disappoint him.

She threw her hands up and spun
around to face him. He wasn’t the one hungry. He wasn’t the one tired. He
wasn’t even breaking a sweat. “I’d say working for hours on this and not seeing
a result should win me a break at the very least, dammit.”

His eyes closed and a shuddering
breath escaped him. “I’d watch your tone, witch.”

She snorted. “And what’s wrong
with my tone?” If she didn’t do one thing wrong, she did another in his mind.

His eyes opened, pierced her.
“Your anger fuels me. It’s the nature of the curse.”

Oh, well she didn’t know what to
say to that. Her anger fed his anger? Why? To what purpose? To make him a
bigger jackass? She wanted to ask, but his eyes flittered away from her and she
swore she saw a flash of—uncertainty, vulnerability, or maybe even shame.

That strange look in his eyes
made her gentle her voice. “Listen, just let me eat and rest then I’ll try for
as long as you want.”

He ground his jaw but made his
way to the animal he’d killed earlier. It was a strange looking thing about the
size of a rabbit but feathered like a chicken. He called it a
fruthorc
.
From his tall boot, he pulled out a knife and fileted the animal into
bite-sized pieces. Once upon a time, the sight of a bloodied animal might have
made her disgusted, but she’d seen mutilated bodies. Nothing compared to that.
It took something pretty gruesome to roll her stomach anymore.

He stuck the chunks of meat on a
slender stick and handed one out to her with a watchful look on his face. “You
surprise me again, witch. This dead animal doesn’t faze you?”

She shrugged and took the stick
that looked like a shish kabob. She held it over the little fire he’d built
earlier. “After you’ve seen some of what I have, it doesn’t really bother me
that much.”

He stared into the fire, rolling
his stick slowly so the flames licked each side of the meat. “What do you do if
you’re not a practicing witch?”

Her gaze jerked to his. He wanted
to know something about her? “I’m a medical examiner trainee for the
supernatural department of the police department. The whole division just
started a few years ago. I’m still new, in training, but with a little more
work I’ll have my certification to work without supervision.” He looked over at
her, his brow furrowed and she realized he really was curious. So she went on.
“That means when someone is found dead, I’m sent in to inspect the body and try
to decide how they died whether it was natural, an accident, or a murder.” She
left the part out about how she examines bodies in the lab, cutting them open
in some cases. To do that work alone, she still had another certification
program to go through. In the meantime, she still worked under the steadfast
eye of her supervisor Stan.

“I couldn’t imagine you working
with the dead in such a way. You look so fresh and young.”

Ignoring the flutter in her belly
at his words, she pulled the now cooked meat out of the fire and started
blowing on it to cool it faster. It smelled delicious even without any
seasoning. She nibbled a piece and moaned. The meaty flavor tasted like steak.
She wolfed down the rest of the meat, careful of any splinters that might have
gotten stuck in it.

Belly full, she sighed and laid down
on the grassy ground. No sooner than her tired eyes closed, Alrik stepped up
beside her. “Time to work.”

She groaned. “Let me sleep for a
little while.”

“Work
now
. This isn’t up
for argument.”

Grumbling, she opened her eyes to
glare at him.
Fine.
She slowly stood. “Fine, then tell me what you’re
the king of.”

He stiffened, apprehension
filling his features. “Why do you care to know?” he asked, suspicion clouding
his voice.

“Because I’m bored and you want
me to kill someone I don’t even know. The least I deserve to know is a little
about my kidnapper, right?” And maybe a bit more about this curse and the
queen.

He shook his head and walked back
to their designated spell casting area some twenty feet from the stupid branch
that refused to fall over.

“You don’t need to know anything
about me. Just do what I say, human.”

“My name is Abbigail. If that’s
too hard then call me Abby.”

Again, his eyes met hers and she
felt his look in a warm flutter down to her belly. The demon had a penetrating
stare that never ceased to unnerve her with its intensity.

“I was the king of the
shahoulin
,”
he said at length.

She focused on the branch and put
the conversation on the back burner of her mind. She tried to conjure her magic
and focus on knocking the branch back as he’d shown her he could do so easily.

“That means you’re a
shahoulin
demon then, right?”

“Yes.” Again, he seemed hesitant
to reveal anything about himself. For some reason, that only made her want to
learn more about him.

She was adjusting to the crazy
demon because when he stepped up behind her she didn’t stiffen. Her body warmed
as it did when she used magic, and she thrust her magic out at the tree branch
willing it to move. Nothing happened. She took a deep breath and tried again.
She couldn’t let frustration get the better of her. She never worked well that
way.

“Why aren’t you king anymore?”

He stood just off to the side
behind her so she saw his jaw flex in anger. “Stop asking so many questions,
witch.”

She wanted to growl. “Stop
calling me witch,” she said slowly. The whole ‘witch’ thing got old—fast.

He crossed his arms across his
big chest. “You do not order me, witch.”

Anger flared inside her and she
focused it on that branch. The branch shuddered then toppled over to the
ground. She let out a squeal and commenced her jumping up and down victory
dance. She turned to him, a big smile on her face, and held up her hand for a
high-five.