The Fallen King: The Bellum Sisters 4 (paranormal erotic romance) (14 page)

Abby’s eyes widened as she eyed
the plants and mentally thanked Alrik for walking them far around them. “So how
far until we reach this rogue camp you were talking about?” They had to be
closer. They’d reached the lake last night, and he said it they only had some
miles left to go from there.

“I’m not sure. I don’t know if
they’re still there. They could have moved on long ago.”

“And what is it you hope to get from
them if you do find them?” She felt it more then saw it—the tension radiating
from him.

“Supplies,” he said shortly.

His odd response didn’t go
unnoticed but she didn’t know what to make of it. The man could get tense from
the smallest things. Who knew what went on in that mind of his.

“The things I would do for a bar
of soap and a change of clothes,” she sighed.

Angry dark eyes cut to hers
immediately stamping out her little daydream of getting a sweet smelling bar of
soap. “You need only what I get you and nothing else.”

O-kay. Well, it’s gonna be a long
day
, Abby decided.
Mr. Tight-Lipped wasn’t being any fun at all. She had the urge to grab his face
and plant a big fat kiss on him just to see what he’d do.

The day trudged on and still they
walked. The forest grew denser so that some trees stood only a foot apart from
one another and they had to squeeze in between the trunks. After some time,
they walked out of the dense forest and into an area where trees grew further
and further apart.

The light had just started fading
from the sky. Unlike on the earthen-side when the sun went down some light
still lingered from the moon, here in the rift, it stayed quite dark. Not
completely dark, some hazy pinkish glow still shone from somewhere far in the distance,
but it was hardly enough to see where you were walking. Abby hated walking at
night.

They walked on until they stepped
out of the forest and came into an open vista. They stopped so he could examine
the area, and she took the opportunity to catch her breath.

The land looked to go on forever.
Yet, unlike on the earthen-realm where light poles and electrical lines staked
across the country alongside houses, developments and cities filling in the
every inch of land, this was on open unused piece of earth that flowed up and
down in rolling hills and rocky crevices. Towards the right a steep hill rose,
almost as tall as a mountain but not quite.

“We’ve made it,” he said.

Abby frowned. “This is it? Where
are the rogue demons then?” She stepped up beside him so she could read his
expression. She’d expected a camp or houses or
anything.
He didn’t look
happy. A frown marred his lips, and his eyes were tense with thought.

“They must have moved.”

For some reason she wanted to
comfort him. She shouldn’t. Her future with him wasn’t exactly certain. However,
certain things couldn’t be denied. She couldn’t deny that he had the ability to
make her heart race or for her breath to catch. She also couldn’t deny that she
wanted to know everything about him and how he came to be cursed.

Something was happening between
them. Maybe it started with that kiss or maybe it started before that, she
couldn’t be sure. They spent so much time together that it was all beginning to
blur. Still, once she got powerful enough, she was porting her butt out of here
and leaving him in the wind. If he came back after her, she’d be powerful
enough to keep him away. Of that, she felt certain. He already said his mother
was more powerful than he was and only Abby would be able to kill her, which technically
made her more powerful than him too. Just, not yet. She was getting there
though. Her powers were growing, becoming easier to reach and use.

“What are we—?”

“Krishnoe!”

He held his hand up at her,
stopping her mid-sentence.

A new wave of tension poured over
him and she stilled too. She didn’t know what he just said but she got the gist
of it. Even without thinking about it, her body tensed, breathing turning quiet
as her eyes scanned the distance. Something was very wrong.

Alrik silently lifted his hands
and grabbed the handles of his swords. With only a soft hiss of metal on the
leather casing, he lifted the swords over his head and freed them.

They had no warning when it came.
It all happened at once.

The sound of dozens of feet
pounding the earth sent Alrik and her spinning around. From the forest, she
spotted a small army of
idummi
demons sprinting for them. Abby backed up
behind Alrik without realizing she’d done so.

“These aren’t the demons you were
talking about, right?” She tried to insert some humor into the situation
because right now, she had to fight the urge not to run in the other direction.
He couldn’t possibly win against so many demons. Before there had only been one
and he’d taken care of it quickly. But now there had to be at least twenty
headed right towards them.

“No they are not. Stay back!”

That was all he said before he
let out a roar that threatened to deafen her and charged into the forest. Abby
pressed a fist to her mouth, teeth biting down. The man was a warrior.

He caught up to the first demon
heading the pack and slew him to a bloody mess in seconds, but there were too
many. The demons narrowed in on him, their line formation closing in, circling
him. They jumped at him at once, their heinous cries and squeals piercing her
ears.

But, something else caught her
attention. That eerie feeling of being watched. Abby froze and slowly looked
left. There, three demons had broken off from their friends and slowly came
towards her, their knees bent, arms dangling low with sharp curved knives at
their belts.

Abby didn’t think—she acted. In a
blast of magic, she shot the demons back. They flew into the trees, barreling
into them with a hard whack. She didn’t stay to see what happened with them—she
ran.

She never ran as hard in her life
as she did in that moment. She didn’t know how she knew that the
idummi
would get up and come right after her, but she did. They were going to kill
her. An ear-splitting war cry followed right behind her. She flinched knowing
that sound was directed at her and what she’d done.

Pounding feet sounded behind her.
Abby strained to make her body move faster. She just had to go faster, that’s
all.

Her lungs worked hard to suck in
air through the panic. Any strain on her limbs didn’t register as she was in
panic mode. She raced flat-out across the plain, swiftly stomping down patches
of grass and flowers in her wake. She headed for one of the hills towards the
left. Some thought that she could hide there came to mind and she charged
forward with her only goal to escape.

The pounding feet closed in on
her. The creatures made clicking, gnashing sounds with their teeth. She pushed
her last reserves of energy hoping it’d be enough, but a hard body slammed into
her. Abby cried out as she went flying hard to the ground, the momentum of her
speed banging her head into the ground and making her ribs kiss her spine.

She groaned, unable to move. The
thing that tackled her growled and grumbled in a hissing deep voice. It spoke
garbled, strange sounding words at her. She was flipped, not gently, onto her
back and another painful groan escaped. She had to move. She had to fight back
and get away, but her body had given up.

The fall had knocked the wind out
of her and sharp pains made each breath she took a chore. Her right knee
throbbed with a fiery, burning sensation from the landing. Her bruised sides
pulsated in anger at the treatment.

Her eyes flashed open as an
idummi
climbed over her, one leg on each side of her waist. Its teeth gnashed together
in a chomping motion making yellow spittle drop from its mouth. The spittle hung
from its thin green lip for a long second. Then it fell from his mouth. The
spittle landed on her shirt and started to sizzle, a tendril of grey smoke
swirled up. It burned straight through the shirt leaving a black hole. Then it touched
her skin. Abby cried out as burning pain engulfed her. She scrambled and wiped
with her shirt at the spittle until the pain ebbed.

Breathing hard, she stared up at
the demon. It had a nasty sort of smile on its face that only served to bear
sharp, pointed teeth.

Only straight meat eaters had
such teeth. That thought popped into her head at that exact moment, and it
scared the shit out of her. She wasn’t going to become a meal for this thing.

Sucking in a deep breath, she
thrust her leg up in a brutal kick catching the demon between its legs. The
demon’s hands flew between his legs as its knees buckled. Before it collapsed
over her, she scrambled backwards. Now that she wasn’t running, her body
started sending warning signals to her brain to let her know her body hurt in a
bad way from that fall.

The demon screeched and its
yellow, strange red-inflamed eyes narrowed on her. She had a moment to gulp
before it launched itself at her landing on top of her. All the air whooshed
out of her at its weight. The thing was shorter than she was and bony, yet had
a layer of hard muscle over it. It seriously weighed a hell of a lot more than
she’d expected. It felt as if a grown, fat man was sitting on her.

The demon’s eyes widened with
glee and a black, forked tongue slithered across its lips. It pulled its curved
dagger from its belt, pressed its knees into her chest to lock down her
squirming body, and lifted the dagger above its head with two hands.

“Kraju d’menuni kash!”
it hissed. Then it jerked its
arms further back an inch and lurched down with the blade.

Abby screamed and shut her eyes
waiting for the knife to plunge into her body. A whizz of air stirred her hair
making her flinch. She panted, waiting for the blow, but the demon groaned
above her and fell to the side. Abby jerked up, scrambling away.

“Huh,” she grunted.

An arrow was stuck in the demon’s
chest where its heart should be. Dark murky blood oozed around the wound. Black
feathers were stuck in the end of the arrow. It looked handmade and very real. The
demon didn’t move any more.

Abby started to shake. She
couldn’t help it. She’d been in several scary situations in her life,
especially since meeting Alrik, but this one took the cake. She stood up and
her knee gave out. She could already feel it swelling from when she landed, but
she locked it and gritted through the pain so she could turn around.

What she saw she could barely
comprehend. A group of demons, not
idummi
, but tall, human-looking demons
like Alrik surrounded her. They had various colored skin and hair just like
Alrik too. They carried an array of swords, knives, axes, and one in the front
held a black bow. He seemed to stand taller than the rest, though that may just
be the command that surrounded his presence. He strode towards her. His lips
were moving and garbled sounds came out, but she didn’t understand any of them.
She recognized the sounds of Demonish being spoken between the men.

His gaze traced up and down her then
he glanced back and commanded something to his group. The others vanished in a
flash of movement. Then he spoke once more.

Her thighs started trembling, and
she flexed her thigh to try to keep her leg from giving out. Hot fire started
burning in her muscle. It jerked and she grimaced as her muscle rolled and her
knee burned tight. It felt a good two sizes bigger than it should be.

The strange man with the bow said
something else to her, his eyes intense. Too bad she didn’t speak Demonish.

With a curse, her knee gave out
and she couldn’t keep from crying out. She landed on her side, her hands going
to her upper thigh to apply pressure there. It helped to ease the pain some but
not by much.

The demon came towards her. He
had skin like the pale moon and hair as black as Alrik’s. His eyes were what
really caught her attention though, they were green. No, that was too plain
sounding. It didn’t do them justice. They were the most beautiful green eyes
she’d ever seen. Like the green in a photo of a tree in Hawaii that’d been
colored and highlighted by some designer’s hand to enhance it. It was brighter
than the brightest grass or leaf even down here in the rift where colors were
more vibrant. And, they were on a face that stared down at her with such
intensity that it stole her breath away.

The demon stopped before her with
his hand held out and whispering foreign words. She felt his magic travel over
her body an instant before darkness took her.

Chapter Eleven

“What are you going to do with
the woman?”

That same question had been
plaguing Aidan since he caught her. He and his men didn’t know what to make of
her. She wasn’t demon, nor vampire or shapeshifter, yet she traveled with none
other than King Alrik Demuzi. That left them with human.

Just what the king wanted of
them, they didn’t know. If the king thought he could garner any kind of support
from Aiden and his men then he couldn’t wait to show him just how wrong he was.
Few were hated more than the king of the
shahoulin
—a treacherous, evil
bastard that deserved no less than a slow, painful death. Aidan just hoped some
good might come out of this chance meeting.