The Goblin King (The Kings) Read online

  Roman wanted audience with Lily Kane because she was the Seer, and he wanted her to “see” where they’d taken Evie. They most likely being the ka’s and their ruling god, Kamon.

  Unfortunately, Dannai knew that Lily’s visions didn’t work that way. Not normally. In this case however, she had a sinking feeling that the Vampire King would find a way to make them work that way.

  The hidden mansion D’Angelo used as one of his safe houses existed behind a shield that kept the house shifted out of the detectable range of mortals who hadn’t been given direct permission or access. Its Victorian three stories were tucked back into the cool shadows of the Redwood forest in Northern California, far from any trail and half a mile from the steep cliffs overlooking a cold and restless Pacific.

  Most of the time, it was an idyllic location – and peaceful.

  But right now, the monumental trees swayed menacingly and the sky threatened to explode.

  Dannai sensed movement behind them and caught a familiar scent.

  Lily’s husband came out of his transport and stood beside his golden-haired bride, his vivid blue eyes scanning the tree tops and then settling on the house that only the three of them could see.

  “You sure about this, cher?” asked Daniel Kane. He glanced at Dannai.

  She shrugged. “Not really,” she said. “Sorry.” She had the decency to look helpless. “Like you, I’m really new at the whole vampire thing, and this is pretty much scaring the crap out of me. Lalura is even in there with him and he’s still bringin’ on Ragnarok. But… that’s why your big bad self is here, right?” she asked sheepishly.

  Daniel didn’t say anything, but the look he shot her was response enough. In a physical battle, all magic aside, a master vampire and an alpha werewolf would be well matched. But a master vampire leaking out-of-control warlock spells and surrounded by untold numbers of his minions?

  That was another story altogether.

  Worse yet, Roman had called together his vampire court – six very special vampires with very powerful abilities. He’d done so when Evie was in danger at the hands of Charles Ward, and now he did so again, and for the same reason. There would be no beating that group if it came to out-and-out combat.

  Still, Dannai hadn’t wanted to risk bringing any more werewolves on this scene. Wolves were natural creatures, skittish and for good reason. They’d been hunted nearly out of existence. Coming up against something as unnaturally angry as this would feel too much like a challenge. Wolves didn’t react well to challenges, and Dannai desperately didn’t want to see anyone get hurt.

  Lalura had agreed with her reasoning and had sent her off to retrieve Lily, allowing only for the accompaniment of her husband, Daniel. Both Lalura and Dannai were fairly sure nothing on earth would have been able to keep him from coming with them anyway.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Daniel told his wife. His tall, strong frame was rigid with tension, and Dannai caught the hint of fang from between his lips. He was a half-second flash away from shifting, and she couldn’t blame him.

  “Yes I do,” said Lily. She turned to face him, began to say something else, but ended up ducking and squealing when a bolt of lightning split a nearby redwood, and the simultaneous thunder clashed loud enough to shake the land.

  Dannai heard a whisper of a growl and didn’t know whether it was coming from Lily, Daniel, or herself. All three were werewolves; there was no telling. But the thunder rolled away overhead as it always did, the tree finished its falling, and the forest settled into a ringing, windy silence.

  Dannai watched as Daniel helped Lily back up, and she grabbed his shoulder. The couple gazed long and hard into each other’s eyes.

  Lily cupped her husband’s slightly scruff-covered cheek. “What would you do if it were me?” she finally asked him.

  Daniel didn’t reply. He couldn’t. So, instead he kissed her.

  Dannai chewed on the inside of her cheek. That was one thing about werewolves, and especially alphas. Their kisses were a thing to behold.

  And one hell of a thing to be on the receiving end of, she thought as she recalled quite a few similar kisses from her own alpha husband, Lucas.

  When Daniel finally released his wife, she swayed a touch on her feet, but offered him a grateful smile.

  Daniel took her hand in his and the three of them turned toward the mansion to make their way in.

  Chapter Four

  “What I don’t understand is why I seem to be the only human being in the entire nation who is smart enough to be able to pick the best of both worlds rather than fall blindly into the left or the right.”

  You’re not the only one, thought Diana. But she didn’t say anything; she knew through experience that Selene was far from finished. She’d had a hellish day and half a beer and that was a formula for venting.

  “I hate paying taxes as much as the next hard working American. Hell, the bloody-assed government takes half my damned money every stinking year and is threatening to tax me even more because I actually make donations to charities that desperately need them,” Selene continued, shaking her raven black mane with indignation. Its layers cascaded around her pale, heart-shaped face to perfection, and her pale blue eyes reflected the overhead lights like glaciers in the setting sun. “We were broke as kids, and adopted at the age of ten, Minnie and I. Our parents weren’t rich either. People have no idea how hard I’ve had to work to get where I am. All so I can be robbed at gunpoint by a government who hides its thievery behind legality.”

  Diana had heard this story before. Selene Trystaine was two months younger than Diana at thirty-six years old. She’d been a painter all her life, just as her sister Minerva had been a singer all her life. Both girls, fraternal twins, were artistically inclined. Which didn’t lend itself to financial security.

  Selene had worked twenty hour days for the last several years taking on full time bill-paying jobs while trying to perfect her painting technique, studying methods that very few had learned to develop. Finally, after so much hard work and stress that it had landed her in the emergency room with heart attack symptoms twice, she was making sales. And those sales had finally reached a point where they were bringing in enough money for her to not only live comfortably, but help her sister pay for their adoptive parents’ care. They were both quite a bit older and in need of medical attention because they’d had to wait until they were older to adopt. Rules and regulations made it almost impossible for good, honest couples to give children loving homes. Their adoption had taken six years to finalize. It was repulsive how willing the government was to allow children to wallow and fade in orphanages rather than with families that would cherish them as they deserved.

  “And I’m a woman,” Selene continued, “so of course I see the value of a handgun in the middle of the night when it would take a cop a full fifteen minutes to get to my house and a rapist can do a whole hell of a lot of damage in that time,” Selene went on.

  Diana didn’t mind listening. Selene had that wonderful, deep sort of breathy voice that was pleasant to hear, even when it was having a bitch fest.

  “But what is so absolutely insanely unacceptable about just making sure that the person to whom you’re giving one of the most deadly weapons known to man isn’t a registered psychopath?” She shook her head again, taking a long pull of her beer. “And speaking of female violation, the idea of having to pay fifty bucks every twenty-one days for a pack of birth control pills so that I don’t have to have a painful period is ridiculous, as is the fact that I have to open my legs and subject myself to some random male poking and prodding with a metal tool that scrapes my cervix just so I can pay those fifty goddamned bucks every twenty-one days in the first place.”

  Selene made a truly disgusted face and continued. “I want an end to intolerant religion and all of its wars, I want people to be able to get married in peace regardless of sex, race, or what they want in their private bedrooms, but I want to safely walk the street at night and I want the
government to quit ripping me off. Left, right, I don’t give a flying flatulence. I want Ancient Greece and its direct democracy.”

  Diana had placed several bottles of beer in the freezer earlier to give them an extra chill. She pulled one out now, slipped it into a koozie, and joined Selene on the couch, propping her legs up on the coffee table. “Finished?”

  Selene gave her a long look, took the last swig of her own drink, twisted the bottle a bit between her fingers, and then said, “For now.”

  Outside, a distant peal of thunder rolled over the suburbs. Diana closed her eyes and hoped it was heading toward them instead of away. She loved the way the earth smelled when it was freshly washed by the sky. “What even brought this on?” she asked, giving her friend a long look. “What were we talking about before you went off on that rocky, treacherous tangent?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest,” Selene admitted. “It’s just Friday and you gotta vomit out some frustrations on Friday to cleanse the soul’s palette for the glory that is the weekend.” She grinned and got up to head for the kitchen, no doubt for another beer.

  “How are your parents doing, by the way?” Diana asked, changing the subject.

  Selene hesitated before answering, and though Diana couldn’t see her face since she’d gone around the corner and was messing around in the ice box, she knew that her best friend was having a hard time thinking of what to say.

  Selene’s parents lived overseas in Britain, so Diana couldn’t easily help them with her… ability. But she would have done it anyway if not for Selene’s insistence that she refrain.

  “They’re the same, Di,” said Selene as she came around the corner and leaned up against the wall, pinning Diana with that blue-eyed look that felt hard as ice. “But they’ve had full lives and they’re very proud and….” She sighed and looked down, letting the unopened beer in her hand dangle. “There are too many other people who need your help more.”

  Diana didn’t say anything. Selene was right.

  “Speaking of which,” said Selene a little more quietly. “Are you headed to the hospital tonight?”

  Diana chewed on her lip and looked at the carpet. Truth was, she had been planning to go to the hospital. Every night she could manage it, she somehow snuck into the four-story building and found someone to help. It would have been impossible in a bigger city, where there was so much danger, security was heavy and heavily armed. But here, in this smaller Massachusetts town, it was doable. It just wasn’t easy. She had to go in the thick of the night time hours, dressed in black, and she had to heal those who were heavily sedated so they wouldn’t wake up and give her away.

  “Some day you’re going to get caught,” said Selene.

  Diana looked up.

  “And when you do, Master Kim is going to kill you.”

  Diana smiled. Master Kim was their Tae Kwon Do instructor, and Diana was his star pupil. Selene was probably right about that too. The old man would pitch one hell of a fit if his star pupil landed herself in jail for breaking and entering.

  Selene had only started the class a few years ago, but Diana had been taking lessons from the same man since she was twelve. For some reason, she’d always felt that the ability to defend herself in such a manner might one day come in handy.

  So far, it hadn’t done anything for her other than keep her in excellent physical shape. Which was a good thing since although the fates had for some reason granted her the ability to heal others, they hadn’t seen fit to give her the same ability to heal herself.

  Her hair wouldn’t be falling out so damned badly if they had.

  As if subconsciously, Diana ran a hand through her hair just then and frowned deeply when it felt like half of her strands came out wrapped around her fingers.

  “Didn’t you get a cortisone shot for that?” asked Selene as she came over to study the hair on her hand.

  Diana pulled her hand away, shook off the hair, made a mental note to vacuum, and then shoved herself roughly back into the couch cushions. She really felt like kicking someone’s ass with Tae Kwon Do moves now.

  “I did,” she admitted. “Fat lot of freaking good it did.”

  “Then it has to be more than stress,” said Selene. “Have you had your thyroid levels tested?”

  “You know how I feel about doctors.”

  “Aw come on, Dr. Pepper,” Selene teased gently. “What type of doctor hates her own kind?”

  “Call me that again,” warned Diana.

  Selene chuckled softly and twisted the top off her second beer. “I know,” she said as she made her way back to the couch. “I get it. Doctors are in the pockets of the insurance companies who are in the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies and not a single one of them is actually interested in healing, because if they were, they would go out of business. To make matters worse, they won’t even prescribe the medications proven to effectively destroy pain and allow people to live their lives in peace. They have to prescribe suicide-inducing depression meds instead. ‘Cuz the gods know that if you’re in physical pain, it must be that you’re actually depressed.”

  Diana drank to that. “Assholes.”

  “But you should have them checked anyway,” Selene said. “Just sayin’.” She paused a few minutes before adding, “Your hair still looks gorgeous though.”

  “You can see my scalp through it.”

  “You can see your scalp through it,” Selene corrected. “To everyone else, it’s a gorgeous ginger-gold mane. But I know. Noticing it yourself is bad enough.”

  Diana appreciated those last few words more than she could say. Fortunately for her, her best friend had always been as sensitive and empathetic as she was, if not more so. Selene was also smart. She tended to bitch some, true. But Diana had noticed that good, smart people were very often pissed off. Smart people really recognized what was going on in the world, and if they were good people too, then they cared about it. Noticing it and caring about it tended to cause empathetic feelings of anger and frustration. And to Diana, that was a good sign. As far as she was concerned, all the worthwhile individuals on the planet were angry.

  Several hours later, Selene helped Diana clean up their snacks and bottles and then left to drive back to her house, which was only about ten blocks away.

  Diana downed a glass of water and a few aspirin and put Midsomer Murders on Netflix. She tried to relax.

  But the truth of the matter was, she’d only had half a beer for a reason. She’d known she would end up heading out to the hospital tonight. She wouldn’t be able to stop herself.

  She wasn’t getting enough sleep at night because of her evening jaunts, and the stress of making certain she was never, ever seen – even by the security cameras – was rather overwhelming. Plus…. She felt weak. It hadn’t been as bad when she was in her twenties. She’d been able to heal more people and more animals without it catching up to her. But now a stark kind of exhaustion was dogging her heels.

  Maybe Selene was right. Maybe it was her thyroid.

  Or maybe she was using up her magic.

  Diana felt the blood drain from her face and heard her heartbeat pound for a moment in her ears. It was a terrifying thought. She leaned forward in the love seat and pressed her fingers to her temples. Long strands of hair that had dislodged from her scalp and dangled loose from her head brushed against the backs of her arms.

  Suddenly irritated beyond belief, Diana stood up, ran her hands roughly through her hair, and pulled out so much of it, her heart began to race. She tossed the hair aside, rushed to the wall hanger to grab her coat, and shoved her arms through the holes as she ran to the front door.

  Staying home and simmering in the soup of her frustrations and fears was just not an option.

  And at least outside it would smell like rain.

  Chapter Five

  She’d gone maybe five blocks and was beginning to feel all too aware of both her femaleness and aloneness when she heard the crying. It was high-pitched, desperate and clearly inhu
man.

  It was a cat’s cry, filled with pain.

  Diana broke into a run, using the horrible sounds as a guide. It was an otherwise relatively quiet neighborhood. Most indoor lights were extinguished. Cars were parked in driveways, as the houses were family homes and the garages were filled with the keepings of decades. Porch lights had been switched off, and motion detecting lamps were on.

  The distant sounds of the city were muffled. Far, far off, a train whistled and traffic sounded like static.

  The street was wet from a recent rain, and hazardously slick. She hadn’t been planning on going for a run, and the leather soles of her boots were not only far too loud in the otherwise silence, but far too slippery.

  She used care rounding the final corner, and drew up short when she saw what awaited her.

  Three teenage boys, perhaps sixteen years of age, were huddled over the trash cans of the alleyway. The pitiful, agony-wracked animal sobbing was coming from something between them.

  All three boys looked up when she entered the alley. They froze in that wide-eyed, unsure manner that bespoke of guilt and indecision.

  They’re punks, Diana told herself as she squared her shoulders and pulled a tablespoon of courage from somewhere deep inside. Just boys. You can handle them.

  Act like their mother.

  “What the hell do you boys think you’re doing?” she demanded loudly, forcing a good amount of authority into her voice.

  One of the boys stepped back. He looked down at the lid of the nearest trash can, at something that Diana could not yet see, and then looked back up. The street lamp at the end of the alley reflected in his gaze.

  “Yo, she’s just a nosy bitch,” another said, turning back to his friends as if to reassure and fortify them. “None of your business, cunt!” he yelled back at her.

  Diana’s gaze narrowed. Her fingers twitched.

  The cat they had clearly been torturing made a mewling sound, soft and filled with liquid. It was dying. She could tell without even having to look at it.