The Warlock King (The Kings) (15 page)

I can do anything.

Hell, she could even raise the dead.
I should help that witch
, she thought suddenly. She could go back and help the witch she’d left on the train. The gods only knew what was happening to the woman now. Was she even alive?

It
was within a warlock’s abilities to resurrect the fallen, and Chloe could feel that magic inside of her now.
I have to go back
, she told herself, despite the danger she knew she would be heading straight into.

If she’d been the one left behind, she would hope against hopes that s
omeone with the ability to save her would come back for
her
. It was the golden rule for a reason.

But as Chloe made up her mind and willed herself to transport back to the train, she realized her mistake. Jason was unconscious, and without him to focus the spell, his magic was as wild and chaotic as entropy
itself.

A tendril of Jason’s stolen power whipped out from her like an aura whiplash and slammed into the nearest object. The obsidian statue
of the curvaceous woman burst like a bomb, millions of tiny black slivers of stone sailing outward in a shimmering star of razor sharp danger.

Chloe squealed, turned away from the mess, and felt some of the shards bump into the backs of her legs and arms. The tinkling sound of the statue’s shattering lessened and finally stopped. Chloe’s heart sank.

With guilty tentativeness, she turned back around and surveyed what she knew was going to be a terrible mess. “
Crap
.”

But as her gaze slid across the destroyed remains of what had been a beautiful work of art, a few of the broken pieces began to wiggle where they lay on the floor. Chloe frowned. The shards of obsidian trembled. Then, one by one, they started to scrape back across the ground they’d skittered over.

Chloe’s eyes widened.

Suddenly the shards leapt into the air, circled around each other in a shimmering mini-tornado, and pulled together with a popping sound.

A second later, the statue stood once more whole and unharmed where it had rested before her failed attempt at spell casting.

“Niiiiice,” Chloe whispered, realizing that the house must have some kind of
self-repairing charm on it.

“So then
… where
am
I, exactly?” she asked the space around her. She had a feeling she already knew the answer. If the décor of this room alone was anything like its master….

With one last long look at the unconscious Warlock King, Chloe made her way across the room to the tall arch
ed doorway and out into the hall beyond.

A few
full minutes later, a very impressed Chloe Septeran stepped out into the main sitting room of the mansion.

It was opulently furnished. Tapestries adorned the walls, and a massive marble hearth against the far wall leapt to fiery life as she entered. She jumped a little,
quickly remembered that the fireplace in Jason’s room had done the same, and then continued into the room.

Leather couches and love seats waited here and there, plush throws tossed carelessly over their arms and backs inviting cold bodies to wrap up and be warm. Thick rugs covered the marble floors. Several hallways led off the room into the unknown.

If the size of the main sitting room and Jason’s private chamber were any indication, the rest of the house that stretched beyond it must have been vast. Great wealth was clearly evident in every object carefully displayed. Everything possessed a kind of harshness to it, a stark and severe simplicity that clearly delineated the man who lived here.

She’d heard that the Warlock King resided in a mansion hidden from the rest of the world. That she knew of, no one had ever been capable of locating it
. It had remained successfully shielded for years.

The tapestries on the wall drew Chloe’s attention.
She made her way to the first of the series of thick, intricately woven works of art and studied it closely. As she did, comprehension dawned on her.

She moved to the next, looked it over, and that comprehension deepened. By the time she stood before the final tapestry, she was feeling a dichotomy of thrumming excitement and bone-numbing dread. The threads wove themselves together as she watched, magically forming an image that became clearer with each passing, breathless moment.

The spell slowed and stopped with the edges yet incomplete and the finishing touches remaining to be sewn, but there was enough of the image for Chloe to decipher with finality.

The last tapestry depicted
her
… in a gorgeous flowing gown….

With a black diamond crown on her head.

Chapter Seventeen

Jesse impatiently wiped the blood from his forehead before it could slip into his eye
. Then he used his shoulder to crash through the only remaining barrier between himself and the parlor car he and the other werewolves had brawled in earlier.

He could hear her heartbeat, faint and fluttery. He could smell her blood.

He could also smell magic – boatloads of it. When he hurdled himself into the car to the sound of splintering plastic and rending metal, along with the smell of burning fuel, he saw why.

Before him swirled a mass of sparkling energy. It pulsed with chaotic power, a chasm of potential danger and destruction. At the center of this whirlwind of dark magic stood Chloe Septeran. On the ground beside her knelt Jason Alberich, his head bent, his back bowed in physical defeat.

On the other side of them stood a second Jason Alberich, identical to the first Warlock King in every respect but for the fact that he still stood.

Jesse’s heart hammered,
his eyes glowed hot, and his fangs dripped with the blood of slaughtered vampire. He could make no sense of what he was witnessing. Two Warlock Kings? The Septeran girl swirling with magic that made her hair stand on end? She looked like the girl on the cover of the Heavy Metal album!

A half-second later, there was a warped flash and Septeran and the kneeling Jason were transported away.

Jesse had no idea what exactly had just transpired or what the hell it meant, but none of it mattered. Not to him – not just then.

All that mattered was that on the othe
r end of the doomed car lay the unconscious form of Imani Zareb, her pulse weakening further with each passing second.

The trai
n was going to go any moment now. It had derailed several cars ahead. The engine had combusted. Imani’s coven had managed to transport every mortal off the locomotive to a safe location, where they were being held in a sleeping stasis until their memories could be altered. But Imani herself had been trapped here on the train, as had Jesse, with the task of destroying the final vampires who had been sent for Chloe Septeran.

Jesse gauged the distanc
e between himself and the witch. He judged how long it would take him to make his way through the Jason Alberich still standing there, who smelled just a bit worse on the evil meter than did the original Jason Alberich. He considered what he was going to do to get himself and Imani off the train once he got to her.

Just as he was beginning to realize it might be impossible and was preparing to try it anyway, his body began to shimmer. It was the oddest sensation – like he imagined it would feel to be “beamed up” by someone on the Enterprise. He was the Werewolf Council Overseer and he was dating the herald of a witch’s coven, so of course he’d experienced the sensation before. It was par for the
course for him. Nevertheless, being transported was something he would never get used to.

He was helpless to stop it. Most werewolves were. They were not as steeped in magic as were vampires or Akyri, warlocks or witches, dragons or fae. Jesse felt the
initial struggle of ambiguity as the survivor in him automatically felt grateful for a way off of the derailed train – but the wolf in him yearned to save his mate against all odds.

However,
that quickly passed when he realized that Imani’s body was shimmering as well. She was being transported off the train along with him – leaving only the Jason Alberich copy behind.

As Jesse’s vision began to fade, becoming particulated and disoriented, he caught the sudden, desperate dash of the second warlock. Alberich bolted across the last half of the train, leaping for Jesse’s fading form. Jesse felt the swipe of the man’s arm as it sliced through the sparkling, dissipating substance of his disappearing body, but the attempted interference had no effect. This was Dannai Caige’s spell; Jesse could feel the magical signature of the witch because she was also a wolf. He
r magic was never sloppy.

A ro
ar of rage followed Jesse into oblivion as Alberich’s double realized he’d acted too late. A trace of dark magic whipped out as well, perhaps the reaching fingertips of a spell cast in the last moments of desperation.

But these faded, trickl
ing away in uselessness as Jesse completely disappeared – to reappear in the clearing of a forest somewhere not too far away. The smells of the forest mixed here with the lingering scents of battle.

Jesse quickly scanned the clearing’s inhabitants. There were ten others with him, most of them covered in the bloody evidence and torn clothing of their recent fighting: Daniel and Lily Kane, Charlie St. James, Malcolm Cole, Dannai and Lucas Caige, Katheryn Dare and Byron Caige – and Imani Zareb.

Dannai was already kneeling beside the fallen figure of her best friend. “Ima!” she cried, reaching a healing hand toward the unconscious witch’s chest. Jesse joined her there. There was no need for either of them to take a pulse. They were wolves and could hear Imani’s heartbeat, as weak and unsteady as it was.

“Someone cast a rending spell on her,” Dannai said. Her voice was tight with emotion that Jesse imagined she was barely keeping in check. “Severe concussion, more than a dozen broken bones,” s
he swallowed hard. “She’s bleeding heavily internally.”

No one spoke. No one asked her if she’d be able to heal her friend. Either she could – and she would – or she couldn’t, and no one would force her to admit as much.

Dannai was tired. Jesse could see the weariness in the darkness beneath her multi-colored eyes. She had been healing passengers and werewolves as she’d pulled them to safety from the battle on the train. The Healer was nearly spent. And now that she had used up so much magic on everyone else, she was faced with the task of healing one who meant more to her than most of them put together.

Jesse held his breath.
Have enough left
, he thought
. Just for one more.

If Imani had been awake enough to swallow, he could have given her his blood. But he was useless to her now. It was up to Dannai.

The Healer closed her eyes.

A second ticked by.
Her hand began to glow a soft, warm yellow.

Somewhere in the not too far distance, something exploded. The ground beneath their feet rumbled as if struck with an
earthquake. The train had finally slipped its last track and tumbled loose down the mountainside.

No one responded. The clearing was unnaturally silent.

Another second ticked by.

Jesse’s chest felt tight. His eyes burned hellishly in his face. Fury was building in his veins. He willed Imani’s lips to move, her chest to rise, her heart to pound. He willed Dannai to save her.

Two more seconds. Three.

A stray wind gently blew through the clearing, brushing through branches and sending tendrils of Dannai’s hair
against her cheek.

And then, like the breath of air for a drowning man,
the light from Dannai’s hand spread. Beneath the caramel creaminess of her perfect skin, Imani’s veins took on an unnatural but beautiful luminosity. Jesse watched as it infused her pores, glowed behind her closed lids, and lit her from within.

A moment later, her lips parted and she sucked in a breath of air. The clearing erupted in
loud exhalations and cries of joy.

Dannai slumped forward, the glow having gone from her hand. Imani’s long lashes fluttered as her eyes opened.
A few seconds later, she parted her lips. “Ouch,” she whispered.

Jesse gently cupped her face. Then he turned and pulled Dannai into a strong bear hug. “Thank you,” he told her.

She nodded, still speechless with exhaustion, and he released her into the arms of her husband, who now knelt next to her as well.

Jesse turned back to Imani. “You owe me brownie points,” he told her as she slowly lifted herself onto her elbow. Jesse took her arms to ease her into a sitting position.

“Bullshit,” she told him softly. “The Haunted Mansion was closed.”

Jesse laughed. He couldn’t help it.

“Haunted Mansion?” Charlie asked from where she stood beside Cole, Daniel, and Lily.

Jesse nodded. “
Disneyland. And she’s been in a foul mood ever since.”

“That would explain the way you cut into those first two Offspring with decapitation spells,” said Cole, his British accent managing to put a civilized spin on something grisly.