Kissed by a Dark Prince (Volume 1) (35 page)

Loren held his head high, completely unaffected by the expenditure of psychic power it had taken to toss Vail that far.

Vail wrapped one arm around his middle and spat blood out onto the grass. He looked back at Loren and Loren swore that he smiled before he came blazing towards him. Vail flipped his two swords in his hands so they pointed downwards from his grip and growled as he attacked.

Loren matched him blow for blow, easily predicting his brother’s attacks. Vail was holding back. Why?

Was his brother toying with him?

Did he want to give him hope of saving Olivia only to take it away, increasing his suffering?

Loren shoved his questions away and focused on the fight, not giving Vail a chance to best him. He could keep up with him now that he was back at full strength, his bond with Olivia completed. Vail flipped his blades again and attacked with both, forcing Loren to defend.

Bleu came out of nowhere and thrust forwards with his spear, catching Vail in his side and cutting through his armour but only nicking his flesh, barely drawing blood. His aim had been off. Not good, but not a disaster.

Only a weapon made of the same material as the armour could cut through it, negating its effect. Vail could heal his armour but that meant sending it back into the bands around his wrists, leaving himself vulnerable.

Or more vulnerable than he already was anyway.

Vail turned on Bleu and hissed.

Loren seized his chance and swung at Vail. Vail desperately lashed out with a blast of power, forcing Loren to teleport to avoid it. He landed a short distance behind Vail and continued his attack, aiming for his brother’s back.

Vail swung one sword over his back, blocking Loren’s blade, and deflected Bleu’s spear with his other blade.

He couldn’t defend against three blades though.

Thorne’s aim was impeccable. He drove his sword through the slash in Vail’s armour and deep into his flesh.

Vail bellowed, dropped his blades and grabbed Thorne’s broadsword. He yanked it from him and staggered backwards, towards Loren. Blood pumped from the wound in Vail’s side, the scales of his black armour glistening with it as it ran down to his thigh.

Loren stared at his brother, hesitating when he should have struck a vicious blow, injuring him further.

He couldn’t move.

All he could do was breathe hard, battling the debilitating pain that seared every inch of him and blazed in his heart like an inferno, threatening to burn it to ashes in his chest.

Vail.

The link between them was wide open for the first time in forty-two centuries and all that flowed through it was crippling pain, dark and devastating, born not of his injury but of something else.

A red and black vortex appeared behind Vail and pulled him into it.

Loren collapsed to his knees and Bleu raced to him, coming to a crouch beside him.

“My prince, are you injured?” Bleu’s concerned expression turned to one of relief when Loren shook his head.

Loren grasped his knees, his hands shaking. Vail’s pain faded, the connection between them severing again, but it left him weakened.

A different feeling surfaced in his heart and he closed his eyes and pressed his hands to his chest, focusing on the faint link, nurturing it. Olivia. He could feel her and she was hurting. He had to find her before Kordula and Vail could have their revenge on him.

Loren lifted his head and looked up at Thorne. The immense male stood before him, his eyes shining bright like coals in the near-darkness. Bleu helped Loren to his feet and Sable joined them, flipping one of her knives, a black look on her face.

Thorne raised his broadsword with one hand and rested the blade on his free palm. He closed his eyes, licked the blood from the end that had punctured Vail’s side and swallowed it.

Loren’s heart pounded. This had to work.

“Well?” he said, his patience leaving him as fierce need to find Olivia claimed his heart. “Can you track him?”

Thorne opened his red eyes and they met Loren’s. “I have him.”

Relief beat swift and fierce through Loren. Only a few demon species could track someone via their blood and he was thankful that Thorne was the king of one of them.

He would be with Olivia again soon enough.

All they had to do was follow Thorne’s senses and Loren would see her again, and he would stop at nothing to save her from his brother’s grasp. He couldn’t save both of them, no matter how much he desired it deep in his heart. He had to sacrifice one dream to achieve another.

“Take us to them,” Loren said to Thorne and the demon king nodded, turned on his heel and stalked towards the Archangel building at the other end of the park, his bare muscular back shifting with each heavy step that pounded the earth.

Sable started after him, muttering dark things to herself about taking Vail apart when she next saw him. Loren took a deep breath.

He had felt Vail’s pain.

What had happened to his brother to make him hurt that much? There had been so much darkness in the link between them, when once there had always been light. Vail had always had a zest for life, had been outgoing and compassionate, forever in search of fun. That part of his brother was gone now and Loren was no longer sure that it was his bond to Kordula that had turned him mad and crushed his spirit.

“Is something wrong?” Bleu said in their language and Loren stared ahead at Sable and Thorne, and the Archangel building beyond.

He shook his head, shaking away his thoughts at the same time. It was too late now to consider what had happened to his brother. It was too late to save him. His brother had taken Olivia. His brother had brought death down upon his people. He had made thousands suffer and he would pay for it.

Vail was no longer his brother.

He was just another enemy to kill.

Loren moved off and Bleu fell into step beside him, his spear held down at his side, his gaze fixed ahead on Sable. Loren lost himself in thought as they followed Thorne, unable to completely shut out Vail and his suffering, torn between wondering what had happened to him and focusing on Olivia to keep the hazy connection between them alive.

Thorne left the park, crossed the road to the wrecked Archangel building, and turned around to face him.

“Have you lost him?” Loren feared that the demon had and he would fail to save Olivia.

Thorne shook his head and spoke in his demon tongue. “Still tracking. It was strange. He moved closer. I wondered if he was coming back, but he has returned to where the portal took him now.”

Erratic behaviour, but Loren didn’t have time to ponder why his brother had been returning to them before he had gone back to wherever they were holding Olivia.

“Thorne.” Loren looked at Sable and Bleu, and then at the large male demon. “How powerful are your portals?”

Thorne squared his broad thickly muscled shoulders. “More powerful than elf ones.”

“Can you teleport three with you?” Loren could manage to teleport one other beside himself and that often took a lot of focus and could weaken him depending on the situation. He didn’t feel weakened when he teleported Olivia or Sable, but he had teleported elves before and the drain on his powers was intense then. The theory went that the more powerful the creature you wanted to transport with you, the more power you needed to make it happen.

He was asking Thorne to teleport two powerful elves and a human.

The Third King lifted one shoulder in an easy shrug. “It would not be a problem.”

He had his arm slung around Sable before she could move, pulling the slender female against his broad frame. Sable squeaked and tried to break free, but the demon’s large hand settling on her hip made her still and a fierce blush stained her cheeks.

Bleu frowned and tightened his grip on his spear.

“You want me to stab you?” Sable said and the demon looked down at her.

“No.” His rough gravelly voice held a confused note. “Why would I desire that?”

“Because it’s what’s going to happen if you don’t stop manhandling me.” She pushed again and the demon reluctantly loosened his grip on her, allowing her to break free.

Sable smoothed her black t-shirt down, neatly arranging the hem along the belt of her combat trousers.

Thorne still looked confused. Loren didn’t have time for this.

He grabbed Thorne’s arm and then grabbed Bleu with his other hand. “Sable.”

She looked up, a hint of colour lingering on her cheeks, and stared at all three of them before she stepped forwards and took hold of Bleu and Thorne’s hands. Both males shot deadly glares at each other and then Thorne’s eyes burned red and a vast black hole opened beneath them.

“Hold on,” Thorne growled and Loren hoped to the gods that Sable did as he said because a portal was no place to get lost. If she let go, she could end up anywhere, in this world or the demon one.

Darkness swirled around them and then lifted to reveal a decrepit manor house illuminated by floodlights. The hum of a nearby generator filled the silence, obliterating the softer sounds of the nature all around them. Shadowy silhouettes of trees speared the sky, swaying in the cool night breeze.

Scaffolding covered the sandstone three storey façade of the manor house and there were no lights on inside. Several of the windows had been boarded up.

Loren ran a calculating gaze over the building and released Thorne and Bleu. It was falling apart and looked as though it hadn’t been lived in for at least fifty years. Vail could have been hiding here with Kordula for all that time, or possibly longer.

How long had Vail and Kordula been in the human world?

Sable broke away from them and flipped open her small crossbow. She loaded a bolt and looked over her slender shoulder at Thorne. “So, Demon, where’s the bastard who took my friend?”

Thorne arched a dark slash of an eyebrow at her biting tone and pointed towards the house. “I thought it was rather evident, little female. He awaits yonder.”

“Yonder? Who the hell says yonder anymore?” Sable hooked her crossbow on her belt and turned away, missing the black scowl Thorne directed at her back.

Loren thought yonder was a perfectly good word.

Bleu called his helmet, the black scales forming it over his cheeks and his forehead, and then flaring back into twin curved horns.

Loren followed suit, mentally commanding his black spiked crown and helmet to form but leaving his face mask. He needed to be able to speak with the others without it hindering him.

Sable stalked off. Bleu followed with Thorne.

Loren focused on the building, his senses mapping every floor. He could hear three heartbeats. One far slower than the other two. Olivia. She wasn’t inside the building. She was outside somewhere. The link between them was as hazy as ever, but it was dull and calm too. Combined with her slower heart rate, it left him in no doubt that she was unconscious.

He closed his eyes as he walked towards the rundown manor, focusing all of his power on enhancing his senses so he could pinpoint the locations of the owners of the three heartbeats.

“They are outside.” Loren frowned and felt Bleu, Sable and Thorne halt and turn their gazes on him. “Olivia is unconscious. Higher than the other two. Vail is bleeding. I can smell his blood. He is weakening. Kordula is...”

“Here.”

Loren’s eyes shot wide and he quickly shifted his sword, gripping it in both hands before him.

Kordula threw her hand towards him and black ribbons shot at him like spears. Loren ducked and rolled, came to his feet and growled as he brought his sword down in a swift arc aimed straight for her chest. She fanned her fingers out and more thick black bands blocked his sword. They curled around it and Loren quickly withdrew it and distanced himself. He didn’t have time to dance with Kordula. He had to get to Vail and end him before his brother could harm Olivia.

He looked to Bleu and Thorne.

Both males nodded and readied their weapons.

Loren called a portal as Bleu and Thorne attacked Kordula in unison, drawing her attention away from him. The purple and blue light flashed over his body and he leaped forwards and appeared right beside Sable. She gasped and attacked with her long knife, and he blocked with his left forearm. The blade struck harmlessly against his armour and Loren grabbed her and called another portal.

He came out on the other side of the manor, close to the scaffolding that covered it too, and growled when he saw Vail and then froze when he spotted Olivia. She hung from chains near the top of the scaffold, suspended with her arms out beside her and a loop of chain around her neck. The chains were precariously loose and if her hands slipped free of them, the one around her neck would strangle her.

Or worse.

His heart stopped when he realised a chain wasn’t the only thing around her neck. A fine filament caught the glow of the floodlights illuminating the gravel drive and the lower floor of the house.

If Olivia fell, it would decapitate her.

Loren snarled at Vail where he stood several metres away in the large clearing between three floodlights, clutching his side. Blood glistened on his hand and down his leg, and Loren could see the pain written across his pale face and in his dark eyes.

Sable cursed viciously, reached under her arm and sent three throwing knives flying at Vail. Vail easily deflected them with a wave of his hand, sending the blades firing back at them. Loren pulled Sable behind him and blocked each knife with his black sword, knocking them to the ground.

“Get her down,” Loren tossed the words at Sable before he released her, readied his sword in both hands and rushed his brother.

He had to be careful. It would only take a few blasts of telekinetic power to shake the scaffolding and cause Olivia’s death.

Kordula appeared off to Loren’s right as he clashed with Vail, bringing his sword down hard to strike Vail’s twin blades. Thorne appeared swinging his broadsword at her and the tip sliced across her upper left arm. Blood streamed down it and she shrieked at the demon king, who merely grinned at her.

Bleu appeared behind Vail and thrust forwards with his black double-ended spear. Vail disappeared and Loren had to dodge Bleu’s blow, shifting his hips to the right and clumsily knocking the spear away with his black blade. Bleu’s horrified expression was apology enough but the prickle of hairs across the back of Loren’s neck and the way his senses screamed in high alert said it hadn’t been meant as an apology.