The Fallen King: The Bellum Sisters 4 (paranormal erotic romance) (34 page)

The queen laughed as if this was
all a game while sweat poured down Abby’s face.

The
idummi
were dropping
like dead flies around them from Alrik and his bare hands. But, there were
still too many of them. Too much happened all at once. She just needed it to
slow down for a minute so she could
think
.

The queen whispered in demonic
calling forth dark powers so evil they made Alrik’s icy magic look downright
hot. Black smoke swirled out of the ground like tendrils of flame. Only this
wasn’t smoke.

Abby stepped back but the tendrils
came for her, snapping at her like hands then they snaked around her ankles and
wound up her legs. The tendrils squeezed tight like lengths of heavy rope. They
solidified before her very eyes into something with mass, something heavy and
strong like a hose. It latched on and yanked her sprawling forward.

Abby pitched to the ground. The
tendrils were trying to squirm their way up to her hips. They’d encase her
whole body if she didn’t stop them.

Abby blasted the tendrils with a deteriorating
spell and the tendrils withered away like dying flowers.

The queen glared at her, then looked
around at her demons, most of which were dead, and raced back through the
forest.

“Damn!” She really was a coward.

Abby ran after her with only one
final glance at Alrik. He kept killing more and more
idummi
as they
swarmed him. She trusted him to be well. She knew in her heart he’d overcome
whatever they dished out. After all, she’d seen him fight against a band of
rogue demons and those were trained fighters.

The queen raced back towards her
swampy camp, her red gown a blur of bloody color in the green hued marsh.

Abby’s heart drummed a thumping
beat in her ears. Her breathing sawed from her throat and her neck hurt like a
SOB. Each time she swallowed, heck, even just breathed with her mouth open it
created aching sensations in her neck like the worst-case scenario of strep
throat.

Abby reached the top of the slope
that lead down into the marshy swamp and paused.

The queen was screaming in
hysterics.

Idummi
were leaving by the scores. What
had been probably hundreds of demons had dwindled down to less than one
hundred, if that.

Abby slowly made her way down the
slope. This would end one way or another. Just between her and the queen.

The queen screamed in
frustration. “AAGH! You won’t leave me,” she said darkly.

Her arms thrust out from her
body, hands curling into fists she turned them as if she was ripping someone’s
heart out of their chest. The large crowd in front of her screeched in pain,
their bodies jerking, and chests thrusting forward as if they
were
having their hearts torn from them. They collapsed to the ground shuddering.
Dark green blood trickled from their mouths.

Abby could barely stand to watch.

The rest of the
idummi
stood watching the show with increased apprehension and fear. Several of them
had curved knives at their waist and some even had swords at their hips or
across their backs. Several started to step towards the queen’s back. Abby
stilled to watch. She cheered in her head.

Yes! Kill her! KILL HER!

The demons on the ground finally
stopped screaming. Their bodies shuddered in the aftermath of death before
freezing in the last position they’d ever be in.

The queen sucked in ragged
breaths. Her hair no longer held the immaculate design it’d been in. The colored
threads had come loose. The braid, if one could still call it that, was
frazzled and fuzzy around her shoulders as if she’d been rolling around the
ground. Her dress had torn at the sleeves probably from running through the
forest with those low hanging branches snagging her. Green blood had splattered
over the very bottom of her dress, ruining the fur trim.

Abby waited. The rest of the
demons around her paced agitated, snarling. She could see their visible
indecision. She prayed quickly to whoever might listen to her.

Let them kill her. Please let
them kill her!

The queen turned around in a slow
whirl with her shoulders held so rigidly that the muscles in her neck flexed to
reveal a stark collarbone. She bared her teeth in a snarl as if ready to bite. With
her arms held out straight from her body, she looked as if one little thing
might set her off...only Abby didn’t want to find out what she’d do once that
happened.

“Kill him! Kill the girl! Kill
them all!” ordered the queen.

Damn. Abby moved fast and ducked
behind a boulder jutting out from the slope. Plastering her back against it,
she waited straining to hear any footsteps. There was no time to waste. The
idummi
stormed back up the slope just a few paces behind the rock. Abby squeezed her
eyes shut at the sound of the demon’s howling war cry. They were revving
themselves up for battle. The thought made her shake. Flattened her back up
against the rock, she ignored the sharp points of it jabbing into her spine and
back and hoped like hell they didn’t spot her.

She had to act now. There were
too many of them. Not even Alrik could take on that many demons.

She had no idea what she was
doing. She shook down to her bones with a heavy cold as if she wore clothes
that had been snowed on. Standing, she saw the demons had left and started for
the queen.

The queen muttered to herself in
soft Demonic whispers that Abby couldn’t understand. She hovered near the black
cauldron that hung over the fire then snatched a leather satchel off the ground
and tossed chucks of herbs into it.

Abby didn’t give her any sign
that she crept up behind her. She just acted. Keeping her steps light she ran
up on the queen.

Then with a hard jerk, Abby
slammed her hands out in front of her using every fiery cell of magic inside her
as if shoving someone. And she was in a way.

Abby’s magic propelled the queen
headfirst in a horrifying scene. With a bloodcurdling scream, the queen flew
into the mighty fire. Abby’s heart roared in her ears. The queen’s terrible screams
pierced something inside her, shocking her so all she could do was stand there
and watch.

The red gown went up in flames.
Her body rolled and jerked in the white-hot logs as if she fought to get away
but couldn’t. Flames licked at her hair and skin burning it away in sizzling,
burning clumps.

Abby fell to her knees. She’d
been shaking before but now she really shook. Her teeth chattered, arms trembled,
and her stomach bobbed. It took everything in her not to keel over and vomit at
that very moment.

Her stomach gave a vicious roll again,
this one even harder as the smell of burning flesh filled her nose, and Abby
couldn’t hold it any longer. She doubled over and wretched as her entire body
convulsed. Burning acid coated her tongue and stung her throat. After three
heaves, she simply knelt there gasping like a fish out of water.

She’d done it. She’d done
something so appallingly immoral. She’d really killed another person. Her
stomach lurched again, but she tightened her throat to keep any more bile from
rising. The action might have kept her stomach slightly in control but it did
nothing to ease the pain around her neck from where she’d been choked.

Slowly she caught her breath and
sat back.

Several things seemed to happen
all at once.

What she saw sent an all new wave
of fear through her while in the distance she heard mighty roars. Not a roar
she’d heard before, but a different one. She heard not just Alrik’s voice but
also others.

Had Aidan and his men come? She
could almost sigh with relief at the thought. They could help him fight back
the horde of
idummi
. Yes, that had to be what she heard. Those were not
the war cries of the
idummi
and certainly not of her Alrik. The rogues
had come to help.

Then none of those sounds of war
taking place atop and beyond the slope really registered in her mind. They were
all thoughts rushed to the back of her mind.

She couldn’t think of it any
more.

Because in that moment, the queen
was climbing out of the fire pit on her stomach. Her body moved at a twitchy, irregular
pace. Her skin was charred black, her clothes burnt to ashen tatters across her
enflamed body. Her hair...had been burnt off leaving a bloodied and darkened
scalp where the flames had destroyed it. Yet she moved placing one elbow into
the grass and tugging her body along as her legs dragged behind her as if she
couldn’t move them.

She alternated elbows until her
entire body was out of the pit. Smoke clung to her body and drifted up from her
like a smoking corpse. Yet she wasn’t a corpse.

“Siradu shika gh’daburem!”

The demonic words registered in
her mind. Abby didn’t have time to try to understand the words because just
then the demonic spell entered her body like a bomb and tore her insides to
shreds.

“AAAH!” Her piercing screams tore
through the night.

The spell...whatever it was...the
queen had put something evil inside her. Agony engulfed her. She clenched her
gut as she fell to the side curling into the fetal position. Right before she
squeezed her eyes shut she saw the queen ever so slowly crawling towards her,
one unsteady tug at a time.

The pain was the most intense
feeling she’d ever felt. Like hot acid being poured inside of her. It kept
filling her chest cavity and when that wasn’t enough, she felt the molten-hot
sensation pour into one leg then another. She just knew that if she sliced open
her thigh right now some awful black tar substance would pour out.

Something was happening to her.
She couldn’t control herself anymore. Her body shook in violent seizures. No
matter how many times she told herself to keep her eyes open and do
something
—she
couldn’t. Pain overtook her. She couldn’t move, not even to save her life.

That rib-crushing, skin-squeezing
pain covered her everywhere spreading like lava until it enveloped her in
darkness.

She stopped being aware of much
of anything then.

She could no longer hear the
sounds of war taking place with Alrik. Was he dead? Were they all dead? Maybe
that’s why she couldn’t hear anything.

No, that couldn’t be right
because she couldn’t hear the crackling of the fire either or her own breathing.
As she strained to hear, a soft high-pitched ringing started in her left ear.
Her head twitched at the sound or at least she thought it did.

Were her eyes open? All she saw
was black. Black nothingness.

Maybe this was death. Maybe she’d
finally died.

No!

Her body jolted, this time she
knew she’d actually jerked because she felt her heart jump too.

She needed to find Alrik. He
needed her help. She had to finish this.

She struggled to become aware, to
come back to consciousness. She felt her body swimming as if floating
listlessly beneath the surface. She swam towards that surface, each swipe of
her arm through the murky area around her like trying to move through molasses.
Finally something gave. Like a bubble bursting. She broke through.

Then, her eyes opened.

A gnarled creature glared in her
face.

No, not a creature. The queen. Or,
what was left of her.

Her face, colored in black ash
and rosy burns grinned like a wild beast above her. Only the whites of her eyes
and teeth could be seen among the fleshy red welts of the burns. In some places
along her skull where there’d once been glorious hair, skin had melted to
reveal the hot red layers of fresh skin beneath.

The queen held Abby by her shirt.

Abby screamed at the sight. Then
she reacted and sent her fist fly up. She caught the queen’s chin with a
satisfying crunch of bone.

The queen fell off her and Abby
moved. The spell the queen had casted on her hadn’t lingered any longer. The
intense pain had faded but she still felt weak as a kitten and feeble. Each
motion felt sloppy. Even her punch felt like she couldn’t have hurt a baby. Nevertheless,
this was her last chance and Abby wouldn’t fail. Not for her Alrik.

She and the queen rolled. Abby
landed another punch square across her jaw. The queen’s skin was still hot and
the warm, gooey texture of her flesh made her skin crawl.

The queen’s hand, now nothing
more than skeletal bones and raw tendons, climbed over Abby’s face. The warm
sticky feeling nearly made her vomit but she held her gut in check.

Still the queen managed to grab a
fistful of her hair and pull—hard. Abby grunted through the hair-tearing pain
as she reached up to dislodge the hand.

She grabbed hold of the queen’s
burned, gnarled hand and yanked her fingers backward, hard. The queen exhaled a
garbled shout of pain.

Abby heard a sound so lovely then
she could have wept tears of joy.

“Abbigail!”