King Of Flames (The Masks of Under Book 1) Read online

  I just shot a man. A man in full plate armor, who was trying to do…who knew what. Lydia tried to trace through what had happened, working backward. The woman in the red dress and the strange crimson mask. She had said that “Master Edu”—was that who she had shot?—had asked them to come with him.

  Was he trying to abduct them? Why? To where? Who was he? What did this have to do with the mark on her arm or the corpse who had attacked her? Edu was dead now. She had shot him point blank and up into his skull, after all, so at least he wouldn’t be a problem anymore. What about the woman in the red dress, with the freaky mask?

  Eight phone calls to Nick and no answer, so she finally gave up. She’d try again in an hour or two. Something about the drudge of walking and the time alone made it sink in. All of it, all at once, settled on her like the impact of a brick. Without Nick there to help carry the weight, she felt the tears she had been holding back all day finally win out and run down her face.

  At least nobody was around who might see her, bloody and crying, walking through the streets at night by herself. Lydia wiped at the tears with the napkin and let them run their course.

  Now, the task was to accept everything as fact. Lydia had a tattoo that was impossible—fine, but it was still there. Fact. She had been attacked by a corpse of a man who had risen from the dead. Unlikely, but reality. Lydia and Nick had been pursued by a monster in a full suit of armor who could move faster than she could see. Absurd, but the truth.

  All she could hope was that Nick was okay. That he dropped his phone. That he escaped and was fine. That whatever was hunting them hadn’t sent more people after the two of them. A sudden realization came to her that sparked both fear and dread in the same moment.

  Was it these marks that they were hunting?

  She rolled up her coat and looked down at the little tattoo on her arm and let out a wavering breath. These marks were the only things connecting it all. The only thing linking her to the corpse and the monstrous man in the red armor. If they were hunting the marks, then…there was one thing she could try.

  There was one way she knew to get rid of it.

  Lydia let out an audible groan.

  Oh, this was going to hurt.

  Chapter Four

  Breathe in, breathe out.

  It wouldn’t be so awful. Right? There wasn’t another option. It was this or do nothing, and nothing was worse. Nothing was admitting she was helpless—and she hated feeling helpless, more than anything else.

  Lydia sat at her kitchen counter and looked down at the mark on her left forearm. It had been surreal but harmless until two different monsters with matching symbols had chased her. Lydia was resting her arm on one of the junky bath towels she kept shoved on a shelf. They always came in handy. You never knew when you needed a bath towel that you didn’t care if you had to throw out when you were done with it. Spills, leaks, messy projects…

  Home surgery.

  Y’know. Normal stuff.

  All her first aid equipment was scattered around her on the counter. She had a sizable collection from her EMT days. It was hard to throw that kind of thing out.

  Lydia sighed heavily and reached for the metal handle sticking out of the cup of rubbing alcohol on the counter. Pulling her hobby knife out of the glass, she looked at it and let out a groan of dismay. No chickening out. This had to be done.

  If she cut this thing off her, there was a small chance she’d be safe. In theory. It was the only theory she had, so she was going to have to go with it.

  Oh, hell, this was going to hurt.

  Lydia had already swabbed her arm and tied a tourniquet around her upper forearm above the tattoo, just in case. It wasn’t near any major arteries, and she only had to go down the tiniest amount, but she might slip. Lydia even had a cookie tray all set and sterilized for her used equipment—and bits of flesh. That reminder of what she was going to do made her stomach flip, and she wished she had drunk more at the bar earlier. Finally, she put the edge of the blade to her skin.

  Oh, yeah…oh, yeah, this hurt. Lydia made it about a quarter of the way around the symbol before she had to stop, her eyes were watering so badly. She slammed the knife down onto the cookie sheet and punched herself in the thigh a few times, gagging in pain.

  Lydia picked up a washcloth and rubbed at her face then decided to stick it into her mouth to bite down on and muffle her hollering from the neighbors if she had to resort to that. Picking up a swab, she wiped the blood away from the wound and, picking up the knife, resumed the cut where she left off.

  Letting the tears flow, as they didn’t matter, Lydia tried to focus on what she was doing. It got less painful as she went because the nerves in her arms couldn’t scream much louder. At least she knew what she was doing. At least she did this kind of shit for a living. Oh man, at least the dead people didn’t feel it, though. This…oh, god, she was going to be sick. Too bad she had to do this with her off hand.

  Standing from the counter, she tore the washcloth from her mouth and doubled over the sink. Retching into it, she ran the cold water and the garbage disposal before retching again. Cold shivers ran up her spine as the adrenaline—whatever was left of it in her system—rampaged through her. She cupped the cold water and rinsed out her mouth then ran more cold water over her face, trying to cool herself down.

  Okay. So close. So close. Lydia put the bloody and sliced-up part of her forearm under the cold water and let out a breath of relief as it poured across her agonized skin. She had finished cutting around the tattoo, and now all that was left was to, y’know…peel it off. No big deal.

  Perfectly normal.

  Skin peeled. It was a thing. Lydia had done it to hundreds of corpses before. She’d just never done it to a living person before. It was the same thing, right? Totally.

  Don’t chicken out now. You’re so close, Lydia coached herself. One grab with the forceps…and pull. Tattoos were only a few millimeters under the skin. It wasn’t like you were yanking up muscles and tendons. This was nothing. It’s nothing. Totally nothing. Perfectly normal.

  Sitting back down on the stool, she reached into the cup of rubbing alcohol and picked up the small pair of forceps that had been soaking in it. Grab and peel. The other option was to try to slice out the skin as she went, and she’d need two hands for that. One-handed as she was, that option was out. Just rip it off. One movement.

  Like a Band-Aid, right?

  Just like a Band-Aid.

  Lydia wormed the edge of one half of the forceps’ teeth into her skin and nearly threw up again. It took a few minutes of her doing nothing but breathing before she could try to talk herself back into doing this. Just a yank. One yank and it would be over.

  One.

  Two.

  The next thing she knew, she was lying on the floor on her back, staring up at the ceiling. Her arm felt like it was on fire. What had happened? She had decided to count to three, and then she was here.

  Lifting her arm, she saw a bloody circle there, oozing up onto her elbow and the floor. A crimson ring, the size of a nickel—and no tattoo.

  She must have ripped it off and, well, passed the hell out like a champ.

  All right, fine, she’d accept that without any injury to her pride. Most people didn’t do at-home tattoo removal. Pushing herself back up to standing, she gripped the edge of the kitchen sink counter hard with her other hand to steady herself.

  First things first. Rinse it off and make sure the damn black ink mark wasn’t still there under the blood. This time, as the cold water touched her skin, she screwed her eyes shut and swore loudly, pounding her other fist into the counter repeatedly to try to distract herself from the stinging pain.

  Finally, when she felt like she could see straight, she looked down at her arm. She could see the red patch underneath, and thankfully, there was no black ink in the skin there.

  The bandage she wrapped around it instantly soaked through red. The wound would ooze for a while. Lydia would have to treat it lik
e a nasty burn. Maybe she’d scar, not that she really honestly cared. She’d shot a man in a full suit of armor and been chased by a dead man today. A scar was not really on her radar of things to care about tonight.

  Okay. The deed was done. The thing was gone. She found the section of skin on the floor where she had passed out, and she stuck it down the garbage disposal and ran it. Take that, evil, weird tattoo thing!

  Was now the time for another drink? It was three in the morning. And she had just done home surgery. Wandering to her fridge, she opened it, and then she saw something on her right forearm.

  There was only one word that came to mind for what she saw. One four-letter word that she screamed loud enough to wake the neighbors. She didn’t care.

  On her right forearm—not the left one, with the bleeding hole in it—was a small, nickel-sized mark. A backward N with a spiral cutting it in half. It was the same symbol. Identical. Just on the other arm now.

  Lydia felt herself crying again, this time not out of pain, but out of frustration. That was supposed to work. The stupid thing wasn’t just supposed to reappear! That wasn’t possible. None of this was. It might be time to chuck what she considered possible out the window.

  Now she really needed a goddamn drink.

  Lydia threw herself onto her sofa once she poured herself the straight glass of bourbon. Picking up her phone, she called Nick again. No answer. This time, she left a message and told him what she had tried to do and how she’d failed. Begged him to call her if he got this. Hanging up, she knew the message was only to make herself feel better. Somehow talking into the void meant he might hear her, and he might be safe.

  Downing her drink in short order, she folded her phone down onto her stomach and let herself shut her eyes. Her arm was aching. Her head hurt. Her feet and her legs hurt. And she was exhausted.

  When her phone buzzed violently on her chest, she let out a startled noise and blinked back to consciousness. Looking at her phone, she saw it was now half past four. She’d been out for a little over an hour.

  The buzz wasn’t a text; it was a call. She flipped it over and saw Nick’s name on the display. Oh, hallelujah! She answered the phone and put it on speaker, not wanting to deal with the earpiece. “Nick! Oh, my god, are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I am. I’m okay. I got away. I dropped my phone, and it took me this long to trace back and find it. Are you okay?” he asked, equally as excitable. “How’d you get away?”

  “I shot the guy,” she said and sat up, running a hand through her hair, combing it back. “I got it in under his armor and put a bullet in his head.”

  “You what?” he said through a laugh. “No way. Holy fuck, good job, Lyd! Where are you now?”

  “Home. I tried to cut the symbol off my arm, to see if that would work. To see if that’s how they’re finding us.” She looked down at the spot on her arm, and it had grown bigger while she was asleep. Time to change the dressing already. She got up and went to the kitchen and put the phone down, now glad she could use two hands with Nick on speakerphone.

  “You…you what? Jesus Christ, you’re kidding me. Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay, it just…shit, that sucked. And it didn’t work either.” Lydia winced as she unwrapped the bandage from her arm. Good glory hell, it stung. But it was a lot less painful than it was earlier, at least. Tossing the gross and oozy red-stained gauze into the trash, she started re-wrapping the wound with a fresh roll.

  “What do you mean, it didn’t work?”

  “I mean the symbol just appeared on my other arm as soon as I was done.” Saying it made it real, and she let out a worried sigh as she finished wrapping the proof of her attempt. She went to the freezer for an ice pack. Maybe that’d help the stinging.

  Nick was silent on the other side, no doubt trying to reconcile her news with the reality they both believed they had been living in until this point.

  “Hey,” he said finally, “we should circle up. Let’s meet over by Rogers Street and wait for the Starbucks to open.”

  Rogers Street Park, with its two baseball diamonds, sat about halfway between Nick’s apartment and hers. They’d met there a few times before walking for coffee. It was still early, and Starbucks wouldn’t open for another hour. But circling up sounded good, and god knew she wanted to talk to someone about the fact that she straight up had to shoot a man.

  “Sure,” Lydia said. Starbucks was calling her name. It was even pumpkin spice latte season. “Twenty minutes?” She’d need to change and wanted to take a shower.

  “Twenty minutes, Lyd. Be safe, please.”

  ***

  Twenty-five was what it took Lydia to get ready. But, hey, she had long hair. It took time. The streets were just as silent as they were when she walked home, and she found Nick sitting on a bench by one of the baseball diamonds.

  Nick raised his head. He looked exhausted, and she was sure she didn’t look much better. He stood to greet her and reached out to hug her. Lydia hugged him tightly and let out a wavering breath. They had been chased by a monster who had nearly done god-knew-what to them.

  “You all right, Nick?” she asked, knowing it was a stupid goddamn question. Neither of them could be considered anywhere close to being all right.

  “No, Lyd, I’m not. None of this is okay.”

  “Hey, you should take this back,” Lydia said as she pushed away from him gently and reached into her bag. She handed him the gun, making sure for the twentieth time that the safety was still clicked on.

  Nick laughed and shot her a lopsided grin. “You sure? You did better with it than I did. Did you seriously kill him? How?” He didn’t seem like he believed her. Honestly, she didn’t blame him. Lydia wasn’t the kind of person to shoot someone. And Nick had the misfortune of trying to play online games with her. She was awful at it. Still, Nick took it back even as he teased her and tucked it into his holster at his side under his hoodie and pulled it back around him.

  “The guy grabbed me, and I had an option of either letting it happen or fighting back, so I fought back. There was a guy under all that armor. I saw his neck, and…I went for it,” she said with a shrug. It wasn’t impressive. It certainly hadn’t felt impressive. It had felt horrifying and disgusting, and she felt awful, even if the guy had it coming. Even if the monster of a thing had probably not really been human.

  “Shit, Lyd.”

  “I don’t want to do that again,” Lydia said quietly and felt the bile rise in her throat. Nick pulled her into another tight hug, and she let her head rest on his shoulder once more.

  “It’s going to be fine.”

  “It’s really probably not.”

  “No, but that’s what you say to people.”

  Lydia shoved Nick and laughed. “You suck at this,” she teased, even as she was glad for his awful attempt at being personable. Nick really was horrible at anything that involved feelings. This was no exception.

  He only offered his stupid grin again and shrugged.

  “I commend you both on your efforts thus far.”

  Lydia nearly jumped out of her skin as someone spoke from next to them. She whirled and saw a man standing there, about ten feet away. He had appeared from nowhere; neither of them had seen the man approach.

  It wasn’t the giant monster of a man in armor, and it wasn’t the woman in red. This man was tall and thin. He wore all white. His clothing was dated and looked almost…Victorian. A pocket watch was tucked into a double-breasted vest. It seemed painfully familiar in style to the corpse that had chased her.

  His hair was nearly white, as was his skin. He was incredibly pale—abnormally so. His hair was only a shade darker. He was standing with his hands clasped behind his back. The man had the appearance of a marble statue or a ghost. He was beautiful in the way a statue of a saint or an angel in a church was beautiful, cold and inhuman. His eyes were a pale ice blue that almost completed the illusion of him being made of stone.

  He bowed low at the waist and folded one ar
m in front of him as he did. “I fear your attempts at escape will be fruitless from here forward.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Nick drew the gun back out of the holster where it had been for about sixty seconds. He clicked the safety off and aimed it at the man who was watching him with idle disinterest, not caring at all about the weapon pointed at him. “You aren’t wearing armor. I’m betting you bleed, just like the other guy.”

  “I do,” the man confirmed but seemed still entirely unalarmed at the loaded pistol pointed at his face. “You will find that your bullets will have trouble landing all the same. Please, lower your weapon and come with me.” The man reached out a hand and held it still. As if they were going to walk up to him and blindly agree.

  Maybe he was hoping they would. There was a forlorn look to his features, Lydia realized, a strange kind of sadness or grief. It was so etched into him, it was hard to see at first.

  Nick answered the strange man’s threat with “challenge accepted” and fired off two rounds from the gun. But as the strange man predicted, neither bullet found its target before the tall man in question simply vanished.

  The mystery of where he went didn’t last long, barely a fraction of a second. Nick squawked in surprise as the man reappeared beside them. Before Nick could react, the man grasped the gun around the barrel and pointed it upward. “You will wake the neighborhood,” the man in white scolded dryly.

  Nick let go of the gun and staggered back and knocked Lydia to the ground as he did. She landed hard in the dirt and grass and did her best to scramble away. Nick managed to stay on his feet but wound up almost sitting on the bench in a tangled mass of terrified limbs.

  The man seemed unfazed. He merely held the gun in his hand, palm up, and extended it out in front of him, as if for them all to watch. The gun in his hand…melted. Heated up to red and dripped from his fingers in molten drabs of steel that hit the ground with a hiss.

  “Oh, god!” Nick staggered back farther away from the molten blob on the ground as it oozed out from where it had hit the dirt and began to sear and singe the grass.