Chapter Thirteen
Roman D’Angelo pulled his phone from his inner suit pocket with record speed. Kristopher’s gaze narrowed on the Vampire King. He watched his expression, and when Roman’s eyes focused back on him, Kris knew who was on the other end of the line.
He’d been waiting seven months for this call – they all had. “It’s about time,” D’Angelo muttered as he glanced sidelong at his bride, Evie. Her eyes widened, and her expression became hopeful. She glanced at Kris and the others.
The room grew quiet to allow the Vampire King to hear, though that was probably unnecessary. He could hear a mouse squeak in a house next door.
There were three other couples in the room with D’Angelo and his wife. Kristopher and his Queen, Poppy, the Phantom King and Queen, and the Goblin King and Queen were nestled in different areas around the library of Roman’s mansion, watching D’Angelo silently. They, specifically, were here for good reason. All three kings had awoken that day with a feeling. Well, okay, they’d all awoken from exceptionally erotic dreams. And that had Hesperos written all over it.
Though the Nightmare King had not always been one of the Thirteen at the Table, he had indeed always been a king. Always. He was created for the role, wired for it so to speak. As long as there had been men and women of any race, fae or human, there had been the “monsters” who’d fed upon their sexuality. These were the Incubi, known to their peers as Nightmares.
These Nightmares had a single king. That king would be reborn again and again upon destruction, and his reign would continue. When Hesperos became one of the Thirteen, it was decided that with the mess involving the Traitor, an extra precaution would be wise. Just in case.
Hesperos entrusted two words of power with the two men at the Table he’d known for millennia: Thanatos, the Phantom King and Lord of the Dead, and Damon Chroi, the King of the Goblin Realm. Kristopher was chosen as the third recipient quite simply because he was a close friend to Hesperos, despite the fact that the son-of-a-bitch Nightmare King had once slept with Kristopher’s sister and Kris had locked him in a block of ice for it.
Hess had taken it in good stride. According to the grinning bastard, it was worth it.
The words entrusted to them could not be read from a person’s mind or plumbed from the depths of their thoughts by means of magic. They were words of power. Ancient, protected, armored by the oaths of time: They were Hesperos’s original names.
There is a lot of power in a name. Enough to see a king to a throne forever.
It was agreed that upon Hesperos’s incidental destruction, the Nightmare King would exchange these words with them, proving his identity and reclaiming his position at the Table of the Thirteen.
When they’d found his lifeless body on the table in their last meeting place, Roman and the others had instantly known that this moment was coming. The fact that the one weapon capable of killing the Nightmare King, the Sleeper, had been chosen for the deed either meant the Traitor had access to more than previously thought, or the Nightmare King had somehow and for some reason taken his own life.
But the “why” had to take a back seat to the fact that the Traitor was still clearly among them.
The shock of the attack rode them for seven months as the three chosen Kings, their mates, and D’Angelo gathered together and waited. For a moment just like this.
“I see,” said Roman into the phone. Not for the first time, Kris wished he had some of the powers his cohorts had, such as incredible hearing or the ability to read minds.
The Vampire King looked up at Kris, then at the other two Kings. He looked torn between smiling and worrying.
Well, that pretty much says it all, thought Kris. He knew that look.
Hesperos had found his queen.
“Got it,” said Roman, looking down at the floor now as he clearly concentrated on the conversation. “Can you transport? Then head to your realm and regroup, then meet us at the cemetery.”
The Cemetery. It had been a long time since Kristopher’d heard those particular words issued in that particular manner. When Roman referred to “The Cemetery” as a meeting place, he was talking about one specific, fairly special place. Decades had passed since Kristopher’s last visit.
Sad Hill Cemetery was the extremely famous end-scene cemetery from the film, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Contrary to appearances, it did not exist in the southwest United States. And it also wasn’t a cemetery. As a matter of fact, it had been created by extras, film workers, and volunteers solely for the filming of the movie more than half a century ago. Over the years, it had fallen into complete disrepair, overgrown and invisible beneath the greenery of time. Its grave markers had been filched or destroyed, its stones buried under grass and weeds.
For the fiftieth anniversary of the film, volunteers restored the “cemetery,” bringing it back to its circular, surreal, and Romanesque glory right down to the fitted stones at its center. But long before this restoration, the location had been chosen as an occasional meeting place amongst Roman and his companions.
Roman was by blood European. So for centuries, he’d used private settings in and around Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Spain, and France to conduct meetings of vital importance. When he saw one of these meeting places “made up” into an end scene in an extremely famous movie, he could only smile – and Sad Hill Cemetery, henceforth known simply as “The Cemetery” to the Kings – became a more popular meeting place than others.
Plus the truth was, Roman was a fan of westerns. Who’d have thought? Kristopher had once asked him why, and Roman replied with a chuckle, “It’s always high noon.”
Roman hung up with Hesperos and re-pocketed his phone. Damon Chroi was the first to speak. “That was Hesperos, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was.”
“But I bet he isn’t going by Hesperos any longer,” said Poppy, the Winter Queen and Kristopher’s sole reason for existence. He smiled. He’d forgotten that Hess would have a different name this time. Leave it to Poppy to guess as much.
“No,” replied Roman with a smile.
“What is he going by now?” asked Evie.
“Nicholas Wargrave,” Roman said, and now he grinned.
“No shit,” said Thanatos disbelievingly. He sat forward, taking his motorcycle boots off Roman’s coffee table. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“He’s found his queen, hasn’t he?” asked Poppy.
Roman nodded. “He didn’t say it in so many words, no doubt because he was actually in her presence and, well….”
“We tend to be skittish to the subject at first?” asked Siobhan teasingly. She glanced at her husband, Thanatos, who went by Thane in close company.
“More like downright impossible,” Thane muttered. He was very relaxed in jeans, a rather worn concert tee from the sixties, a leather jacket, and likely non-removable oil stains.
“Right,” said Roman with his own small smile. “But of course, it isn’t that simple either.”
“It never is,” said Diana, the Goblin Queen. She blew a stray strand of hair out of her beautiful face.
No joke, Kris thought, observing her. Diana Chroi was in charge of an entire realm of trouble makers, her husband included. But then she was a full-time veterinarian in the mortal world, she had a house filled with rescues of all species, and she’d recently given birth to triplets. Who were now toddler triplets. The thought made him cringe. “It isn’t that simple” was an understatement for her.
“Apparently the new queen needs to keep a low profile,” Roman explained as he went to a cabinet in the library, opened it, and pulled out a few essentials for the trip. “And he needs our help smoothing over some fairly big wrinkles.”
“Is she a criminal?” Evie asked, almost hopefully.
“You’d love that, wouldn’t you?” Roman asked, giving her a side-long glance.
“It’s the author in her,” said Thane. “Looking for material.” He grinned.
She grinned back, flashing fangs.
Roman closed the cabinet and turned to his constituents. “I’ll explain everything on the way. We’re headed to Spain.”