The Fallen King: The Bellum Sisters 4 (paranormal erotic romance) (21 page)

“And if I don’t?” she taunted.
Okay, perhaps taunting was a bit childish.

He stalked towards her like a
predator. Her first instinct told her to step back but she kept her ground, her
chin tilting up. What would he do to her? It’s not like he’d hurt her.

She wasn’t afraid of him but that
didn’t mean he didn’t unnerve the hell out of her. He stopped in front of her
but she was ready to hold her own for whatever he dished out—maybe another
tongue lashing or maybe he’d resort back to calling her witch. Only this time
with a ‘b’ at the front.

However, he didn’t do any of
those things. What he did do surprised the hell out of her...and scared her even
more.

Strong hands grabbed her
shoulders, pulling her roughly towards him, and then he leaned down and spoke
in measured, slow tones. But, something was off in his voice. It sounded
distorted. All she could think was that it sounded ‘demonic’. Harsh, slightly
garbled, and dangerous.

“I am very close to losing myself
right now, Abbigail. Control...your...anger.”

Abby’s anger fled in a flash. Something
wasn’t right.

In fact, something was very wrong
with him right now. His eyes started to glow amber. A dark, icy energy emanated
from his body. It reminded her of her own magic but whereas hers was warmth and
good, his felt like the cold hand of death. She’d made him this angry? She
wanted to ask why, but one look at the toll it was taking on him kept her mouth
shut.

Moving slowly, she leaned into
him and wrapped her arms around his waist. His body thrummed with cold energy,
nearly vibrating her with its crackling power. She rested her cheek against his
chest, forcing all the negative energy and thoughts to disappear. Under her ear,
she listened to the thundering beat of his heart—it was too loud, too fast.

The temperature dropped. A shiver
started in her chest and worked its way to her fingers and toes in a matter of
seconds. It truly was the cold of death.

Anger started to stride back up
at the thought of this curse on him, but she shoved it back down ruthlessly. He
needed her right now. And she could do this, she could bring him back down from
whatever precipice he teetered at. She didn’t understand it, didn’t even get
it, but she’d help him because she knew if it was her struggling, he’d help her
in a heartbeat.

“Let it go, Alrik. Just let go of
whatever holds you. Hold me instead.” His heartbeat thudded hard, once, at her
words. As if his heart skipped a beat.

She held her breath, closed her
eyes and simply held him. Puffy white clouds formed at her mouth as she
breathed. Time passed slowly. She couldn’t begin to know just how much, minutes
maybe. An eternity.

What felt hours passed and then
an arm came around her, she could feel it trembling and she hoped it wasn’t
from the effort it took not to hurt her. Happiness burst inside her. She wanted
to cheer for him. She didn’t know what was in this haunted demon’s mind, but
after seeing him like this she’d find out.

His chest stopped pumping so
hard, his heartbeat slowed to a normal
dum, dum, dum
. When his other arm
wrapped around her waist, she sighed and pressed a kiss over his heart.

The cold started to recede. Her
shivering died down, but her nose still felt cold and it surely looked bright
red about now.

Still hesitant, she slowly looked
up. His eyes would show her what she needed to know. That would be the final
tell. But when she looked up, his eyes were pressed closed, a look of intense
pain on his face.

“Alrik...what’s wrong?” she asked
in her softest voice.

The muscles along his forehead
and mouth twitched and jerked as if they were being zapped with electrical
impulses.

“Look at me, baby,” she coaxed.

She clenched her fingers in his
shirt. She wanted to cry. Just seeing the agony written all over his face made
her hurt inside. He was grappling with something but she didn’t know what. It
was all inside him with that black, evil energy clouding around him like
noxious gas. She wanted to wipe it all away with a snap of her fingers.

His throat bobbed as he swallowed
then slowly he opened his eyes. The all black recesses looked darker. How there
were different shades of black she wasn’t sure, but his eyes hadn’t been that
black before. A shiver passed over her.

“Alrik, honey?”

As if finally hearing her voice,
his head slowly turned down to her. The tarry ink of his eyes looked like a
river of oil, no whites, no distinguishing pupil, just darkness. He blinked
once, twice, again. Before her very eyes, she watched the darkness fade—not
completely—but enough to transform the black color back to what she was used to—something
close to a deep shade of blue or the darkest form of gray.

Her stupid heart raced and she
recognized the awful feeling inside her for what it was—fear. For the first
time since being kidnapped by him, Abby saw the control the curse could have
over him. In this instance, he’d been able to control it. What would happen if
he didn’t?

Reaching up, she cupped his
cheek. A wet tear escaped her eye and she quickly stood on tiptoe to press a
kiss to his lips so he wouldn’t see it. Gasping, she jerked back from him.

His skin felt like ice.

A sob threatened to break from
her throat but she held it back. What in the world was going on with him?

Gradually, slowly, he cocked his
head, arms tightening around her, and his head dipped catching her lips. Warmth
grew between them like the heat of the sun touching snow.

He reached, cupped her bottom in
one big hand, and lifted her up against him with a growl. A surprised moan
bubbled out of her. At this level their hips aligned and she could feel his
cock, hard and ready pressing into her. The swift mood change had her
struggling to keep up but she went with the flow, taking his kiss and giving it
back.

His tongue dipped inside her
mouth then retreated slowly, tasting her. As if some thread snapped, he dropped
her to her feet in the next second and stormed away from her. He snatched his
swords off the ground and slid them into the holster on his back. The man
couldn’t even dress without keeping those sheathes on.

His eyes didn’t meet hers. “Let’s
practice. I want you to try making fire now.” His voice sounded normal and not
like the distorted demonic tone from before.

Abby was frozen in place,
confused. So was this how they were going to play? Just act like nothing
completely freaking bizarre had just happened? She didn’t think so.

“Wait, wait, wait, don’t you
think you could explain what the heck just happened here?”

He started gathering up sticks
and breaking them into pieces for a fire.

He didn’t look at her, and didn’t
say a word

“You know, I don’t really take
silent treatment so well.”

Alrik tossed some dried leaves on
top of the pile of sticks and glared at her. “What do you care what happens to
me?”

Her heart softened, eyes rounded.
“I do care.” The admission felt like something so much more powerful that what
she’d actually said.

He shook his head. “I told you
already. It’s the curse.”

Abby sat down on a boulder
sticking out the ground near the water. “I’ll try to start a fire and you are
going to tell me all about it.” She made sure her voice left no room for
argument. Besides, she knew something was off. They’d fought before but he
hadn’t nearly hulked out like that. Well, maybe hulking out wasn’t quite the
best term for it. He hadn’t been close to smashing the ground with his fists so
much as...using dark magic. A nasty shudder passed over her.

Concentrating hard, she stared at
the twigs and broken branches willing fire to spark and engulf it. Her
temperature warmed almost as if she was already sitting near the warm flames.

“My mother cursed me with rage to
control me. I never saw it, never felt the change overcome me. I’d actually,”
he paused and rubbed a hand over the back his neck, “embraced it. It felt
amazing to have that kind of power.”

Inside she stiffened her breath
catching.

“Why would she do that?” she
asked softly. Maybe it helped that she wasn’t looking straight at him and
focused on her task of creating fire, but she wanted to jump up and down cheering
because he was opening up to her.

“I don’t know exactly. She hated
me, maybe. She was always a bitter, unhappy woman. After my father died, I
became king since Telal abandoned us to live above the rift.” He made a
derisive snort that told her just how he felt about his brother.

A burning sensation tingled along
her fingertips like holding your hand too close to fire. Her breaths came
faster and she reached closer to the wood imagining and feeling all the power
inside her thrust up and out to the wood, burning it.

A spark caught—just a small
explosion like a firework popping. Abby let out a happy squeal at her little
victory while Alrik simply nodded once at her.

“Keep trying.”

Well, she supposed it was better
than “that’s not good enough.”

She tried again.

“So you don’t get along with your
brother I take it?” She remembered Telal from news reports. Governments across
the world bought his weapons. He made things from knives to automatic rifles.
Of course, his golden skin and blue hair made him stick out just a little in
the human world.

He made a strangled sound, almost
like a laugh and choke mixing. “No! He betrayed us to the vampires, to that
bastard Tobius en Kulev. They brought war on us and shut us inside this rift
like a bunch of caged animals. He had to create an entire army to do it. They
called themselves the Atal Warriors. It took nearly a hundred years for them to
break us, but they finally did. Nothing’s been the same since... Telal should
have been king. He is the eldest. It was his duty.” His lip curled with
disgust. “But he betrayed us to Tobius, and let his own people get slaughtered.”

Abby had to look at him. A
haunted look shadowed his eyes. “Why would he do that?” she asked gently. She
wanted to know it all, everything about him and his people.

“Tobius en Kulev started it. He
wanted war with us so he could cage us down here like animals. He used excuses to
rally people. He preached how dangerous we were to all…to humans, vampires, and
shapeshifters. Finally, he instilled enough fear that though only a few demons
had ever hurt anyone in such a way, enough people rallied against us. The
shapeshifters stayed out of it and the humans didn’t have the skill required to
war with us, so that left the vampires. He created the Atal Warriors—a vampire
organization trained to kill us.” He shook his head solemnly. “My father died
in the battle. It lasted a long time. We would not give up, but always being
besieged such as we were—it was only a matter of time before we fell.

One hundred years we fought but
they kept coming. Father fell, Telal betrayed us and went to the surface, and
we were left locked inside the rift. The Atal Warriors killed any who dared to
leave instantly. That was their new job, you see, to guard the rift
from us
,”
he hissed.

“So all that happened because of
your brother?”

He nodded his jaw clenching. “And
Tobius’ grudge against us. Rumors spread that his hate for demons came because
of a woman. Some woman he loved ran off with a demon.” He shook his head. “Not
that I could blame her. A demon would make a much better mate than a vampire.”
Suddenly a grin flashed across his face. “No matter, the vampire got what he
deserved. I started training a special team of warriors. We planned it
carefully. I spent years on the plan. Then one night we set it in motion. My
team ported to the earthen-realm, destroyed the Atal Warriors there, and then
tracked down Tobius all in a night. They were the best trackers, the best fighters.
They slaughtered him and brought me back his head as proof.

I kept the head on a pike out
front of the castle for nearly five years after that. It wasn’t just for me but
for everyone who remembered his cruelty.” A strange look flickered over his
eyes. He held his hand out and stared at it as if seeing something weird. “It
was after that I started to change. I never realized it though. I’d look in the
mirror and knew my skin had changed, but I never questioned it.” That hand
curled into a fist. “Such was the curse that gripped me.”

Still, the thing with his mother
rubbed her the wrong way. “But why did your mom curse you? I mean, what could
she get out it?”

He was silent for a moment, his
head cast down over the
futhorc
he skinned. She got the impression that
he was thinking about it as if he hadn’t yet. “Power.”

“But she was a queen. I assume
that means you come from a big fancy castle, get to rule over people, and the
usual aristocratic deal, yeah?”

His hands stilled on the animal
with knife in hand. “Power over a person is much stronger than ruling a
kingdom. It was more than that. She had every bit of control over me, my
feelings, even my actions. She would give me this potion. Stupidly, I’d drink
the nasty liquid. She said it’d calm me down and it always did, but little did
I know that it also kept me ensnared under her toxic spell.” He stabbed the
knife into the animal and cut in a jabbing motion as he tore the skin off it.