The Demon King (4 page)

Fuck
, the detective thought. He was on edge.
I need a drink or something.

His patience was wearing increasingly thin
by the second. So this time, Laz was just about ready to stand up
and ask the Time King what the fuck his problem was, when
D’Angelo’s voice carrying over the Table saved him from the
impulsive act like a graveyard bell.

“
Thank you everyone,” he
said, drawing the meeting to a close. It hadn’t really been a
particularly beneficial drawing-together anyway. Everyone was
afraid to divulge the truly important shit because there was a
snitch in the midst of them. “Feel free to come see me with any
news.”

Laz was one of the first men up from the
Table and would probably have been the first one out of the room,
but D’Angelo caught his gaze shortly after his closing
announcement. The Vampire King gave a slight nod. Laz had been in
charge of a group of men long enough to know what that nod meant.
It meant the other king wanted to talk.

He nodded back.
Fine
. Then he turned
just in time to see the Time King vanish from the room, once more
using magic that no one had thought he possessed.

Chapter Two

“
I really used to like
coffee. Out of the three of us… I was the one who loved it
most.”

Dahlia Kellen sat across
from the one woman in the multiverse who might, maybe, just
maybe
, know how she felt
right then. She was a woman who had been taken from her natural
environment and thrust into the darkness amidst figures both
powerful and dangerous. And now her life was forever changed. And
she was expected to “go on.”

Evelynne D’Angelo hadn’t
always been Evelynne D’Angelo. Once she’d been Evelynne Farrow.
Evie Grace Farrow, in fact, and it was that grace that Dahlia
needed most at that moment.
There, but for
the grace of a friend…

Not long ago a very mortal
Evie’s existence was threatened by a force of evil. It hung in the
vacuum between life and death, where there was nothing else but a
decision to make. She’d chosen to live – in so far as life can be
lived when it is forever and indelibly changed. She’d been turned
into a vampire by the
king
of the vampires, Roman D’Angelo, and that night
she’d become none other than his queen.

Now she lived in the wings of the world, in
those spaces where whispers went to hide.

Just like Dahlia.

“
And now you’ll never drink
it again.” Evie said it with finality. But she also said it with
immeasurable compassion. “I know.”

Dahlia took a sip of her Lifeblood. It
wasn’t actually blood. But it was meant to give her life. Lalura
Chantelle, the ancient witch who taught warlock magic to Dahlia’s
coven triad created the “Lifeblood” as a substitute for the real
thing so that Dahlia wouldn’t be forced to kill for her meals.

What Lalura didn’t know was that the
Lifeblood wasn’t as obligatory these days as it had been at first.
And it wasn’t because Dahlia needed less blood, either.

I wonder if she
knows
, she thought as she looked over the
lip of the mug she drank from at the woman sitting across from her.
But Evie’s expression wasn’t accusatory and it wasn’t judgmental.
There was no harshness in Evie’s lovely face. She was simply a
friend.

Dahlia lowered her mug as something around
Evie’s neck caught her eye. “Is that…?” she asked, leaning forward.
A silver pendant peeked out from beneath Evie’s scoop-neck sweater.
It was large and shimmered, clearly studded with diamonds. But the
most eye catching thing about it by far was the fact that it was a
large spider.

“
A spider, yes,” Evie
smiled. She lifted the pendant out and held it aloft in her hand
for Dahlia to get a closer look. It was blackened white gold or
silver, and she’d been right about the diamond part. Its eyes,
however, were red, and its body was a blue-green shimmering stone
that caught the light like sheets of pressed rainbow. “A reader
sent it to me. She told me that the spider had always reminded her
of story tellers. They weave their webs, spin their yarns so to
speak.” Evie grinned and shrugged. “Like I do.”

Evelynne D’Angelo was a New York Times
bestselling author. The crazy thing was, she wrote books about the
very same kinds of things that she actually lived with in her every
day life. Her readers would never have guessed. On her Facebook
page, for instance, she appeared to lead a very regular life – with
a husband, a house, even a dog. No one was the wiser.

They say you should write what you know.

“
What is that stone?”
Dahlia asked, pointing to the large stone that was the arachnid’s
body.

“
Labradorite. It’s said to
inspire creativity, and back in the day, it was believed especially
so for playwrights. I suppose we’re a modern equivalent of
sorts.”

“
It’s beautiful,” Dahlia
said. She meant it. The piece was a true work of art and must have
cost a small fortune. At least, a small fortune for a mortal,
anyway. It would have been a pittance for a Tuathan fae such as
herself. Especially for a Tuathan fae who was a warlock… and now a
vampire, filled with all
sorts
of interesting magic.

She shook herself a bit. “Did the reader
make it?”

Evie nodded. “She did. That’s why the eyes
are rubies. Believe me, I know about rubies and fae magic. I
wouldn’t have chosen them myself.”

Dahlia grinned, and barely remembered to
tuck her fangs back away from sight. They were seated in a mortal
inhabited area, after all. A coffee shop of all things. Had she
done it just to torture herself? She pushed the thought aside and
shook her head. “You know, not all rubies are rubies because
they’ve absorbed fae magic the way the Unseelie King is so very
fond of telling everyone. Some are natural rubies. Yes, some do
start out as black diamonds, and yes, as they absorb fae magic they
turn red and change their make-up. But some rubies are actually
just natural. In fact, the larger pieces are precious and
sought-after amongst the wealthiest and most influential of the
fae. I dare say they flaunt them when they manage to get ahold of
them.”

Evie’s eyes had widened while Dahlia spoke.
She fingered the ruby eyes on the spider and asked, “Do you think
these are natural?”

“
Most likely. They’re quite
small, and normally it’s the larger rubies that are used to steal
fae power. That’s why my people are so proud when they manage to
acquire a natural ruby of substantial size.”

Evie fell into quiet thought for a moment,
and rubbed her fingers over the spider. “His name is Webster,” she
said distractedly and with a winsome smile. “I thought it was a
perfect name for a writer’s spider.”

Dahlia laughed. It was the first time she’d
done so naturally for quite a while. “It is.”

“
Would you like to leave?”
Evie suddenly asked as she tucked Webster back under her shirt and
looked around the coffee shop. This small coffee bar was owned by
the Winter King’s sister, Neve. The fact that she also liked to
waitress it was beside the point. Neve very much wanted to appear
mortal, and she’d gone to great extents to make that illusion
stick.

Neve wasn’t in the shop at the moment. She’d
been remaining at the Winter Palace since her brother and the new
Winter Queen got “hitched” so to speak. There was a lot to do, a
lot to take in, and a lot to teach, and Neve was a perfect teacher
and companion. Plus, she was very much a fan of the new queen. A
lot of them were. The Winter Queen was, after all, Poppy Nix,
Dahlia’s best friend.

Or at least she used to be….

It isn’t that she’s not
still my best friend
, Dahlia reminded
herself.
It’s just that she can’t possibly
understand-

“
Come on,” said Evie as she
stood, not waiting for Dahlia to answer. “I know the smell of this
coffee must be driving you nuts.” She leaned forward over the table
and lowered her voice. “And I also know you have no real need to
down an entire mug full of Lifeblood. So let’s head someplace where
you can be yourself, and you can tell me what’s really going on
with you.”

She knows.

“
Yeah,” said Evie. “The
funny thing about Roman’s breed of vampire,” she whispered, “is
that we can read minds. And yours happens to be wide open to me
right now, despite all your supernatural badassness. Plus, I can
smell them on you, sweetie. I’d be willing to bet a
lot
of the kinds of
people you and I hang around with will be able to.”

Oh shit.

But of course she’d known there was that
danger. Right? That was why she’d stayed away from all of those
people – the werewolves, the other vampires, the shifters – the
ones who could have scented this secret on her. Dahlia’s heart
hammered; she could hear and feel it in the side of her neck. It
banged against her rib cage like the beat at a rave. Amazing the
damn thing was still working after all she’d put it through.

And then she’d just
had
to invite Evelynne
D’Angelo for coffee.
Coffee
.

Of all things? And
now
?

“
Admit it, Doll. You wanted
me to know. You need to get this off your chest. Now, get your
things and let’s get the hell out of here and go somewhere a lot
more comfortable for us both.”

Chapter Three

The room was empty when D’Angelo left his
place at the end of the Table, circled it a bit, and approached
Lazarus. Laz waited for him like a lighthouse waiting for the
wave.

D’Angelo stopped a few feet away and slipped
his hands into his pockets. “I’ve never been one to beat around the
bush, Lazarus, so I’ll come right to the point. You smell like a
hell of a lot of blood.”

“
Being a cop is sometimes a
dirty job.”

“
Not this dirty.” D’Angelo
shook his head a little, and a touch of a smile hinted at the
corners of his mouth. “Would you like to tell me about
it?”

Laz wasn’t stupid. He knew
good and well that what
that
meant was, “Do you want to tell me, or do you
want me to find out another way and then we’ll have this
conversation again at another time?” Not that he couldn’t put off a
conversation with D’Angelo. It was just that there was no point to
putting it off. They were in this together.

There was a pretty big evil something out
there, and if the lot of them wanted to defeat that evil something,
they needed to work as a team. As much as Laz might not like it,
that meant sticking together and being honest with each other.

For twelve of them that’s what it meant,
anyway. For one of them of course, that meant absolutely nothing,
because he was the traitor.

Laz took a slow, even breath and turned away
from D’Angelo to approach the window. He’d had two showers since
the last time he’d apprehended someone on the streets of Boston.
But he hadn’t so much apprehended him as slaughtered him, and of
course the Vampire King could scent the blood on him anyway.

“
You vampire types sorely
try my patience,” Laz admitted, his voice barely more than a
whisper. It was odd on two levels for him to say such a thing. For
one, his patience didn’t normally feel so tried. And for another,
this wasn’t the way he spoke, not usually. It felt like someone had
suddenly injected his grammar with a dose of blue blood.

Maybe D’Angelo was getting to him. The
Vampire King was older than dirt.

D’Angelo fell silent, as if letting that
settle in, and Laz admittedly felt a little guilty for having said
it. But the guilt passed very quickly. Which was also strange for
Laz.

After a bit, he could hear
D’Angelo take a few quiet steps toward another window. Beyond these
floor-to-ceiling windows of the 52
^nd
floor of the John Hancock
Tower,
technically
known as the Clarendon or
200
Clarendon
, was the city of Boston, the
Charles River, and Cambridge beyond it. It was early morning in
late spring, and fog rolled in off the water to disappear in the
streets and alleys that wrapped around Boston’s metal architectural
monuments.

The other buildings’
windows glittered like diamonds in reflected beams of rising
sunlight. He had a clear view of the
sci
-
fi
architecture of 111 Huntington,
and the Boston Public Library between it and the John Hancock. The
Charles River below split Boston from Cambridge and its Harvard
treasure and offered more glittering diamonds to the view
above.

Laz could see now why the Vampire King had
chosen this particular room, in this building, in this town, and at
this time for their meeting. The windows faced west, and the room
was blocked from the direct rays of the rising sun, while still
allowing in daylight. Not that D’Angelo wasn’t plenty protected
from the sun and its dangers at this point, being the seasoned
warlock he was, but that didn’t mean he was fond of it.

“
Is there something you
aren’t telling me?” the vampire king finally asked.

This time, it was Laz who hesitated before
answering. When he did, he turned to face the vampire and stared
him hard in the eye. D’Angelo blinked. Laz felt a kind of victory,
and had no idea why. “You know how it is, your majesty,” he said,
still speaking softly though his words dripped with a new born
acid. “Being a king is a full time job, and I had one already.” As
if to reinforce what he was saying, he looked down at his watch.
“In fact, I have it still,” he said, lowering his hand to lock eyes
with the vampire again. “I’m late for a precinct meeting.”