Page 39 of King of the Damned
“You have guests,” he hisses, and both of us have the same thought–only he beats me to it.
We both conjure stakes in our hands, but Dravon is just a bit faster than me, plunging his into my stomach, clean through to the other side.
I crumble to the ground with an incredibly painful groan, still recovering from Adelasia’s stake.
“Play nice,” Dravon warns. And there’s nothing I can do as he grabs me by my arms and drags me through the halls, leaving a blood trail as he goes. He deposits me in the throne room.
I brace myself before I begin to tug the stake from my abdomen. Every minuscule movement feels like I’m being ripped open. The jagged edges of the stake leave micro-tears in their wake. Just as the stake is nearly out of my body, Dravon uses his boot to press it back down. I have no choice but to let him. I’m too weak to fight it.
I wince as I feel it tearing through me like razors.
“How are you alive?” I grunt. The pain is overwhelming, but I have too many unanswered questions to succumb completely to it.
“Enemy of my enemyand all that,” he murmurs.
“Since when am I your enemy? You’ve been loyal for over nine hundred years! What changed?”
“The times, Lord Kaius. Someone has to take over when you’re no longer King of the Damned.”
Even through the pain, I can’t help but roll my eyes. “That’s what this is about? A throne?”
Dravon kneels and grabs me by the throat, lifting me slightly so we’re face-to-face. “I knew you were a goner the moment I laid eyes on her. You’re besotted. Infatuated. You’ve betrayed the vampire race at the very height of our power! I can’t allow that. Not when your life is tied to the rest of us. With you out of the picture, I can usher us into a new age, a new millennium, where it is thevampiresthat rule this land, not the Coven.”
“You imbecile! You think taking me out of the picture will make the Priestesses stand down from their absolute rule?”
“It was promised.”
“Then you’re a fool for trusting them. They will betray you the moment your usefulness has run its course! They will never give you what you want–it doesn’t matter if it is your immortality or my throne.You cannot have it.”
“If I hand you and the girl over, I get to keep my immortality, and sit upon that throne and command a race you never cared to rule,” Dravon sneers, pulling up his sleeve to reveal a golden vow line. “It. Was. Promised.”
I grit my teeth and make sure he feels the fury in my stare. “Touch her again and it will be the last thing you do before you die for a third time.”
Dravon sneers and leans even closer to me. “You cannot save her. Not from them.”
For all the good it will do, I open my mouth to threaten him again, when the air turns putrid with the smell of the foul magic only the Nine Priestesses possess. It stinks of evil. Even the shadows seem to fear the shift in atmosphere.
Dravon lets me go, and I lie flat on my back, barely able to lift my head. The gem around my neck rumbles with the need to join its siblings in the hands of the Priestesses.
When I find the strength to lift my neck again, the Priestesses stand in a half-circle just a few steps away from my feet. Their long gray robes that cover them from head to toe float like a fog around their feet, billowing from the energy of magic. Their ornate headdresses glimmer with gems, precious metals, and other magical relics. Bones. Wilted flowers. Bloodstains.
Though they all look the same, it’s easy to tell who they are by the authority they command simply by existing. Amatisi became their leader after I killed Yekaterina, and she’s only grown more wicked as the centuries have passed without her sister. More wicked, andfarless patient with me. We’ve never had a pleasant interaction, even when Yekaterina was alive. She always acted towards me as if she knew I’d be the downfall of their coven.
But Amatisi and the others don’t understand that I never wanted to be their enemy. I only retaliated against Yekaterina for cursing me, and then they retaliated against me by cursing me again.Sheis the sole reason for our enmity.
Until I met Adelasia, I would have done anything to give them what they wanted in exchange for my mortality back. I would have sacrificed anyone; done any atrocities they asked.
I’ve always been desperate for freedom from my immortal prison, and the Priestesses know that better than anyone. They’ve used it to their advantage at every opportunity, but no longer.
I see Amatisi’s head tilt downward to look at me sprawled out and injured on the floor. She snickers. “I do love it when a man greets me on his back.”
Her voice sends shivers up the spines of even the most fearless men. It’s feminine, but echoes with a demonic whisper that injects fear into the bravest of hearts. Her sisters say nothing. They stand there, unnaturally still and watch as Amatisi takes a step closer to me, close enough that I don’t have to exert the energy to hold my neck up to see her.
“It’s been too long, Lord Kaius. Three centuries, I think. Or has it been four? One tends to lose track.”
“Not long enough,” I mutter.
Amatisi begins to walk in a circle around my body. She makes a full rotation and then steps on my chest with her bare foot, adorned with golden chains and red paint.
