The Goblin King (5 page)

Diana
drank to that. “Assholes.”

“But you should have them checked anyway,” Selene said. “Just sayin’.”
She paused a few minutes before adding, “Your hair still looks gorgeous though.”

“You can see my scalp through it.”

“
You
can see your scalp through it,” Selene corrected. “To everyone else, it’s a gorgeous ginger-gold mane. But I know. Noticing it yourself is bad enough.”

Diana
appreciated those last few words more than she could say. Fortunately for her, her best friend had always been as sensitive and empathetic as she was, if not more so. Selene was also
smart
. She tended to bitch some, true. But Diana had noticed that good, smart people were very often pissed off. Smart people really recognized what was going on in the world, and if they were good people too, then they
cared
about it. Noticing it and caring about it tended to cause empathetic feelings of anger and frustration. And to Diana, that was a good sign. As far as she was concerned, all the worthwhile individuals on the planet were angry.

Several
hours later, Selene helped Diana clean up their snacks and bottles and then left to drive back to her house, which was only about ten blocks away.

Diana
downed a glass of water and a few aspirin and put Midsomer Murders on Netflix. She tried to relax.

But the truth of the matter was, she’d only had ha
lf a beer for a reason. She’d known she would end up heading out to the hospital tonight. She wouldn’t be able to stop herself.

She wasn’t getting enough sleep at night because of her evening jaunts, and the stress of making certain she was never, ever
seen – even by the security cameras – was rather overwhelming. Plus…. She felt
weak
. It hadn’t been as bad when she was in her twenties. She’d been able to heal more people and more animals without it catching up to her. But now a stark kind of exhaustion was dogging her heels.

Maybe Selene was right. Maybe it
was
her thyroid.

Or maybe she was using up her magic.

Diana felt the blood drain from her face and heard her heartbeat pound for a moment in her ears. It was a terrifying thought. She leaned forward in the love seat and pressed her fingers to her temples. Long strands of hair that had dislodged from her scalp and dangled loose from her head brushed against the backs of her arms.

Suddenly irritated beyond belief,
Diana stood up, ran her hands roughly through her hair, and pulled out so much of it, her heart began to race. She tossed the hair aside, rushed to the wall hanger to grab her coat, and shoved her arms through the holes as she ran to the front door.

S
taying home and simmering in the soup of her frustrations and fears was just not an option.

And a
t least outside it would smell like rain.

Chapter Five

She’d gone maybe five blocks and was beginning to feel all too aware of both her femaleness and aloneness when she heard the
crying. It was high-pitched, desperate and clearly inhuman.

It was a cat’s cry, filled with pain.

Diana broke into a run, using the horrible sounds as a guide. It was an otherwise relatively quiet neighborhood. Most indoor lights were extinguished. Cars were parked in driveways, as the houses were family homes and the garages were filled with the keepings of decades. Porch lights had been switched off, and motion detecting lamps were on.

The distant sounds of the city were muffled. Far, far off, a train whistled and traffic sounded like static.

The street was wet from a recent rain, and hazardously slick. She hadn’t been planning on going for a run, and the leather soles of her boots were not only far too loud in the otherwise silence, but far too slippery.

She used care rounding the final corner, and drew up short when she saw what awaited her.

Three teenage boys, perhaps sixteen years of age, were huddled over the trash cans of the alleyway. The pitiful, agony-wracked animal sobbing was coming from something between them.

All three boys looked up when she entered the alley. They froze in that wide-eyed, unsure manner that bespoke of guilt and indecision.

They’re punks
, Diana told herself as she squared her shoulders and pulled a tablespoon of courage from somewhere deep inside.
Just boys. You can handle them.

Act like their mother.

“What the
hell
do you boys think you’re doing?” she demanded loudly, forcing a good amount of authority into her voice.

One of the boys stepped back. He looked down at the lid of the nearest trash
can, at something that Diana could not yet see, and then looked back up. The street lamp at the end of the alley reflected in his gaze.

“Yo, she’s just a nosy bitch,” another said, turning back to his
friends as if to reassure and fortify them. “None of your business, cunt!” he yelled back at her.

Diana
’s gaze narrowed. Her fingers twitched.

The cat they had clearly been torturing made a mewling sound, soft and filled with liquid. It was dying. She could tell without even having to look at it.

The three boys straightened a little. Their chins popped out in that chicken-like way boys’ chins did when they were trying to be tough. Their sneakers squeaked and scuffed on the debris and wet concrete as they moved around the trash cans and formed a wall in front of them. Their fists were clenched.

She smelled something – like burned meat… and hot iron singed hair.

A strange feeling came over Diana. It was strange, and unexpected, because it was utterly devoid of fear. It was a numb sort of sensation that made her bones feel like tree trunks and her blood like quicksilver. In that moment, it didn’t matter that the boys were probably feeling the same kind of feeling. It didn’t matter that she was outnumbered. Fight or flight had well and truly kicked in.

And there would be no flight here. Not on her part.

She was just too damned stressed out.

She rushed them
, all reason and logic flying out the window like loose pages on a rogue wind. A war cry emitted from her throat, loud and unfamiliar and just a touch insane.

One of the boys stepped back again. But it was too late.

Her mind flew away in that moment, and she could almost hear its wings fluttering wildly, bat-like and crazy. But her body was there, and it remembered.

It dutifully,
finally
, recalled every single second of every single day of Tae Kwon Do training that she had religiously undergone over the last twenty-four years. Every competition she had ever won. Every hit, every strike, every punch, every kick, every ability to push the pain away and go at it again.

And within slowed-down seconds of inordinate length, two of the boys lay on the ground nursing fresh wounds. The third had half limped, half run away.

“Crazy bidth!” one of them lisped. Diana looked down at the kid, wide-eyed and furious, her blood roaring like Niagara Falls. She barely heard him, in fact.

She waited, fists balled, stance wide.

Someone said, “Get the hell out now before I finish the job,” and only vaguely did she realize that it was her.

There was a scrambling, at first slow and uncertain, and then faster and desperate.

Diana stood still in the alleyway and watched the boys round the corner and disappear from sight. She listened, making certain the sounds of their shoes on the ground grew fainter and further away.

And then a new sound drew her attention.

At once, she was back inside herself, fully aware – and she was shaking. Slowly, she turned.

They’d singed off most of its hair, a
nd fresh third-degree burns covered the left side of its body.
Her
body, Diana corrected herself.
She’s a female
.

The cat blinked up at
Diana, the depths of its eyes swimming with pain. But there was also knowledge there. She knew Diana would not hurt her. Either that, or she only hoped so. She was slipping away anyway.

And she’s pregnant
, she mentally added as tears welled up in her eyes and an ache claimed her chest, far outweighing the more insignificant pains of the sprained wrist and bruised ribs and toes that had occurred during the fight.

“What the fuck is wrong with humanity?” she whispered as her shaking fingers found the cat’s head.

She was a gray cat, with light ice-blue eyes. Or she
had
been. All but a few singed tufts of the fur was missing.

Diana
closed her own eyes and pushed her anger and hatred back down inside herself where it usually remained, simmering and festering. Once she’d done that, she reached for another and entirely different emotion. She imagined the cat whole, her unborn babies healthy and unharmed, and the world a better place.

It was hard. It was always hard when she was healing someone or something that had been brutally and meaninglessly hurt by another.
But somehow, as she always did, she managed.

A light and warmth began to emanate from beneath her palm.
Diana sent that warmth through the cat’s broken body. As she did, she imagined the skin mending, the hair growing back.

Within seconds, she felt a gentle and comforting rumble come from beneath the touch of her palm. The cat was purring.

Diana opened her eyes and looked down. The cat blinked up at her, bumping its head against her hand in thanks.

She couldn’t
help but smile then. She realized her lips were wet. Somewhere along the way, the tears in her eyes had broken loose and cascaded down her cheeks.

She wiped the back of her hand against her face, and then knelt so that she would be on eye level with the cat. “So what’s your name, then, little one?” she asked gently.

The cat continued to purr, it’s beautiful blue eyes gazing at her with love and trust.

“Would you like to come home with me?” she asked next.
She didn’t want to leave the animal out here, especially not after what had happened, and
double
especially not when she was pregnant. It just wasn’t safe.

With all the gentleness she
could muster, Diana scooped the cat up and held it to her chest. The feline continued to purr, trusting and docile.

“We’re going to get along just fine,”
Diana whispered as she left the alley and its messy wet ground and trash cans and bad memories.

*****

Unseen and still, two cats watched in the shadows as the woman who would be a queen and the guardian who would be her companion became friends and left together.

The large ginger cat with eyes
like the sun made a dingo-like half-pur, half meow and looked up toward the skies. A shooting star arced overhead, appearing from behind one roof and disappearing behind another.

He
lowered his head and sighed the way cats do. The fates had brought the human woman and her companion together that night. But the fates had much more in store.

Dawn would not be coming for a very long time.

Chapter Six

“Well now we know,”
she said.

Lightning split the sky and its thunder bellowed into the world after it.

Lalura released Lily’s hand. The blonde woman’s shoulders slumped as she leaned heavily over the table in front of her. Daniel Kane’s arms wrapped possessively around her from behind. Lalura heard him whisper something intimate and perfect in his wife’s ear, soothing the young woman.

Lily and Lalura had just completed the complicated magic that had allowed them to unravel the web of deceit spun by the man who’d taken Roman D’Angelo’s queen. The things they’d learned were not only surprising, they were devastating.

Lalura would not admit it to her young supernatural charges, but she was still recovering from her encounter with her own
ka
. Hence, this spell had drained her more than she liked. She was also not a seer, and had been forced to use magic that was not entirely natural for her. She did so from time to time, when necessary, but never to the best consequences.

Lalura longed for the day that another seer
as talented as Lily would be found. Lily Kane was a gem among their kind, just as was Lalura’s own adopted daughter, Dannai – the Healer. Each was precious… and rare. It was too much responsibility for their small shoulders to bear.

At least they’d managed to get to the center of the evil surrounding Evelynne D’Angelo.

“It’s a trap,” Roman said. His voice had that terrifyingly calm quality to it, so very at odds with the proof of his fury that flashed across the sky outside, felling ages-old redwoods and shaking the rafters of his safe house.

“Yes, it is,” agreed Lalura. “So you’d best not go walking into it, Roman.
I know the wounds go deep,” she said as she turned to face him and leaned heavily on her cane. Their eyes met, and she fiercely held his gaze.