The Time King (The Kings Book 13) Read online

  The Time King

  Book 13 in the Big Bad Wolf spinoff series, The Kings

  by Heather Killough-Walden

  Copyright 2017 Heather Killough-Walden

  Cover art by Neytirix

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  Heather Killough-Walden Reading List

  The Lost Angels series:

  Always Angel (eBook-only introductory novella)

  Avenger's Angel

  Messenger's Angel

  Death's Angel

  Warrior's Angel

  Samael

  The October Trilogy:

  Sam I Am

  Secretly Sam

  Suddenly Sam

  Neverland Series:

  Forever Neverland

  Beyond Neverland

  The Big Bad Wolf series:

  The Heat

  The Strip

  The Spell

  The Hunt

  The Big Bad Wolf Romance Compilation (all four books together, in proper chronological order)

  The Kings - A Big Bad Wolf spinoff series:

  (in proper order so far)

  The Vampire King

  The Phantom King

  The Warlock King

  The Goblin King

  The Seelie King

  The Unseelie King

  The Shadow King

  The Winter King

  The Demon King

  The Shifter King

  The Nightmare King

  The Dragon King

  The Time King

  (Future The Kings and The Kings spinoff books TBA)

  Monsters (New open-ended paranormal romance series coming soon; 1st book release TBA)

  The Chosen Soul Trilogy:

  The Chosen Soul

  Drake of Tanith

  Queen of Abaddon

  Redeemer (stand-alone)

  Hell Bent (stand-alone)

  Vampire, Vampire (stand-alone)

  A Sinister Game (stand-alone)

  The Third Kiss: Dorian's Dream (stand-alone)

  Note: The Lost Angels series (not including Always Angel, Warrior’s Angel and Samael) and the Big Bad Wolf series are available in print and eBook format. All other HKW books are currently eBook-only.

  Visit Heather’s Facebook pages at:

  http://www.facebook.com/killoughwalden

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  Acknowledgements…

  That seems like such a cold, not to mention difficult to spell word for what I’m actually wanting to do, which is to send out a genuine thank-you to the multitude of people who had my back during the making of this series. You gave me time to work, watched the dog, took care of the daughter, passed on my advertisements, shared my release news, edited my manuscripts, spread the word about me, kept me supplied with caffeine, and let me cry on you like a quivering mass of snot and tissue when it all got to be too much. Which was more often than I care to admit.

  It isn’t easy being a writer. But it would be downright impossible if not for you.

  There are too many of you for me to name, and I would forget someone and feel awful, but know that I know who you are. You, who waited until 6 a.m. after being up with me all night just so you could receive that final bit of manuscript and finish the editing on time for its release. You, who took care of all of the chores and cooked me spaghetti without having to be asked. You, who never, ever forgets to click “share” on every single one of my book related posts (yes, I know who you are). And you, who listens to me and hears me and never judges me and hugs me from across the miles. I love you. I thank you.

  This series is because of you.

  “It’s only forever. Not long at all.”

  -“Underground,” David Bowie

  Labyrinth

  Last time on The Kings…

  (Epilogue from The Dragon King)

  Roman and Katrielle were leaving the café they’d been sitting in for the last few hours when Roman suddenly felt dizzy. It was a foreign feeling for him, one he was not at all accustomed to. He reached out for the wall, and Katrielle was at his side. “Roman?”

  “I’m just light headed,” he said, leaning into the bricks of the building.

  His phone chirped and vibrated in his suit breast pocket, and he recognized the tone as coming from Calidum. Closing his eyes to gather his wits about him, he pulled the phone out and answered it. “Cal, what is it?”

  “Roman, she’s gone. Eva’s gone.” The Dragon King’s voice was nearly frantic, his tone grating near the edge of a transformation due to barely leashed rage. “Someone fucking took her! Roman!”

  That’s not possible, thought Roman numbly. Evangeline was a queen now.

  But there was something wrong inside Roman. Once the initial dizziness swept through and was gone, he realized there was an unsettling sensation left behind. It was, for lack of a better word, an emptiness.

  He glanced at Katrielle. Her eyes were wide, and her expression was ripe with fear.

  “Evie,” he said. Before he fully realized what he was doing, he was hanging up on Calidum and pulling up a transportation portal. Just before he stepped into it, his phone rang again. Roman glanced down at the screen. This call was from Nicholas Wargrave. Roman sent it to voicemail and stepped into the portal.

  It carried him with fantastic haste toward his home, a safe house he kept in the Redwood Forest in northern California. Evie was supposed to be there.

  He stepped out of the portal as soon as the exit appeared, cutting it very close so that he had to leap down from the edge of it to land on both feet in his living room.

  “Evie!” he called, his gut already going cold, his heart of hearts already knowing –

  His phone rang again.

  Oh gods, he thought desperately, glancing at it like a victim in a horror story. It was Jack Colton, the Shifter King. And with a swipe of Roman’s shaking thumb, he saw that he’d had three other calls while in the portal. All from different Kings.

  “EVIE!” he bellowed, throwing back his head to roar her name at the tops of his lungs. His butler came into the room, followed by other members of his household. Roman D’Angelo spun like a madman to face them. “Where is she? Bones, where the hell is my wife?”

  “She’s gone, sir,” said the butler, whom buttled for many of the Kings in the Thirteen Realms. His face was drawn, and his eyes sparked with terrible meaning.

  Behind Roman, the hearth that was normally only lit with electric flames sparked to very real, urgent life. Fire crackled furiously, drawing everyone’s attention, and within the flames, a face appeared. “Your majesty!” said Pi, the fire elemental. “I bring a message from the Goblin King!” He was highly agitated. “And also from the Seelie and Unseelie Kings!”

  “Pi,” said Bones in his ancient and weathered voice that held unknown power. Pi looked at him, and the old man’s head shook just once. “We know.”

  Then Bones turned back to his king. “I’m so sorry,” he said with a drop of his gaze. “But I’m afraid they have each vanished, my lord. All twelve of them. The Queens are gone.”

  Introduction

&nb
sp; In the autumn of 1918, US soldiers at naval bases in the United States unwittingly released into the civilian public a virulent form of flu. Origins of the flu are unknown still today, and historical opinions on where it originated differ widely. What is important is that it spread.

  Due to Woodrow Wilson’s Sedition Act earlier that same year, newspapers were forbidden from reporting on the spreading sickness, and doctors and nurses were gagged with threats of up to twenty years in prison. The results were hushed or downplayed reports on the disease and its effects. Further aggravating the problem was the fact that this particularly strong strand seemed to strike hardest, not children or elderly, but strong and healthy young adults, who felt no real need for extra precaution.

  The only newspapers allowed to report on the blooming epidemic were the free papers of Spain, a neutral country in WWI, the “War that would end all wars.” Hence, the sickness took on the name the Spanish Flu.

  Without proper awareness or protection from the virus in the United States, the pandemic plowed through US cities unchecked, striking it hard. Within the course of a few months, the life expectancy for people in the United States dropped by twelve years, and more than 675,000 Americans were dead, with as many as a thousand dying per day in some cities. Fifty million people world-wide would eventually fall to the disease: one-fifth of the world’s human population. For the United States, twenty-five percent of the population was struck.

  That same autumn, World War I would come to an end. However, few realize that more people would fall to this quiet but deadly strain of flu than they would to their enemies in World War I and World War II combined….

  October, 1918 just outside of Chicago, Illinois

  William placed the last of the spell components against the manor’s final attic window and stepped back. The floorboards of the attic creaked beneath his custom leather shoe. He ignored the sound, shrugged off the fine tailored jacket of his three-piece suit, and folded it, setting it aside on a spare wood crate. Then he unbuttoned the cuff of his left sleeve before rolling it up to reveal the intricate lines of what appeared to be an emerald-green tattoo. When he twisted his arm slightly, the markings glimmered in the shafts of light streaming through the window.

  He took a deep breath, whispered the words of a shielding spell, and traced the outline of the mark with the fingers of his right hand. It shimmered to life as if lit up from within. He pressed his lips into a fine line against the now very familiar pain, and waited it out until the light faded, and the house was secure.

  He then rolled his sleeve back down and stepped away from the window. His shoe bumped up against a rolled newspaper, and he looked down. It was one of dozens of papers strewn across the attic floor. They hailed from various cities across the United States, but their headlines bore a terrible likeness to one another.

  …URGES DOCTORS TO BE CAUTIOUS…

  …INFLUENZA TOLL INCREASES AS EPIDEMIC CONTINUES TO SPREAD…

  …VOLUNTARY FLU BAN URGED…

  …INFLUENZA ON INCREASE IN NEW YORK…

  …FLU HITS WESTWARD; MANY DIE….

  William’s green gaze skirted over the headlines with a hard coldness that only grew harder before he looked up at the door across the attic and strode to it. He opened it, stepped through, and closed it behind him, waving his hand over the knob to make certain it locked securely. He didn’t want Helena to find her way inside.

  The newspapers were a gift from Victor Hush. He was flooding William with them somehow, and Will couldn’t rid himself of them. When he burned one, the ashes reconstituted. This wasn’t Victor’s doing however, it was a trait of William himself. He was capable of destroying nothing bearing written history. It was a part of who and what he was.

  So he kept the papers in the attic and locked it up tight, claiming it was unsafe due to broken floorboards, mouse traps, and spiders. Old house and whatnot, so that much was actually true. That was the easy part.

  Everything else was far more difficult.

  The world outside was being infused with wrongness. It was a wrongness that attacked at a molecular level, bringing sickness and death. It was also an unnatural wrongness, one that was completely avoidable, and one that William had to hide from Helena at all costs. Because it was her fault. In a way.

  And it was his fault.

  But most at fault was Victor Hush and his undying, undeniable, unquenchable desire for the one thing in the universe that could complete him. The one thing in the universe he wanted, and the one thing in that same universe William refused to let him have: Helena.

  Victor had promised William that if Helena wasn’t delivered to him, humans would suffer. But William had heard the spiel before. He’d been threatened by the same person for the same reason so many times, he’d lost count. And the answer was always the same.

  “Helena will never be yours. Not ever. Not in this universe. Not while I still draw breath.”

  “So you say.”

  And the bodies began to fall. Every time.

  This time however, William found himself fighting harder, with more desperation, and with far fewer compunctions than ever before. This time… he couldn’t lose her. It was as simple and as grave as that. He simply could not lose her.

  Something made him pause just beyond the door, some strange sensation like a hiccup in the natural order of things. He took a deep breath, cocked his head, and listened. All he could hear was the rapid racing of his heart, the continued rain falling from beyond the window pane, and the softer sounds of someone moving down below on the first floor of the manor.

  But then she opened the front door, and William’s head snapped up. He disappeared from where he was standing and reappeared behind Helena in the front room as she met the milk delivery boy on the threshold.

  “Adam! It’s good to see you,” greeted Helena kindly. Adam beamed where he stood, all sun-kissed cheeks and nervousness and bright, shining eyes that were only for Helena. She had that kind of effect on people, especially the opposite sex.

  The thirteen-year-old boy joyfully handed Helena a small basket of milk bottles, and then placed a newspaper on top of them. “Oh! I picked you up a paper too, Miss Dawn,” he said proudly. “No extra charge of course. It’s the least I can do.” He rolled forward onto his toes with giddiness and waited for his praise.

  Which Helena gave at once. “Thank you, Adam!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been meaning to pick one up, but…” she leaned forward and whispered, “my deadline has been just about killing me and I haven’t had time.”

  “I must have known!” said Adam conspiratorially. He leaned in as well and winked, his ability to flirt with a woman nearly unequalled. “And your secret is as ever safe with me.”

  Young Adam John Jenkins was one of the very few people on the planet who knew Helena was a student at the local university. But the world as a whole was not ready for women who not only knew how to read, but to study and write, and write well. Helena’s thesis was nearly complete, and she would be defending it soon. But she had decided to keep her career choice a secret from the locals. It was easier that way.

  William stepped toward them, moving out of the shadows. The sound of his shoes on the floorboards drew Adam’s gaze and had Helena turning around in surprise. “William!” she said as she grinned. “Adam brought us a paper. It’s been a while, I must admit.” She held the basket of milk out to William for him to take, her attention turning to the rolled-up news rag.

  William could feel it all crumbling. Again. He’d been down this bumpy road so many times, and this was how it always began. Perhaps the minute details differed, perhaps the people were not the same, but it fell apart eventually. And there was always one block pulled that set the foundation unsteady.

  This time around, this would be it. He could sense the ground shaking, hear destruction coming, feel misfortune churning like a chunk of burning coal in his stomach.

  So rather than take the paper from his brand new fiancé, he took the container of milk cartons
like she expected and waited as she unfolded the newspaper to read the headline.

  “100 NEW CASES OF INFLUENZA IN CITY”

  Helena’s large, luminous eyes skirted over the headline, and she froze. Slowly, she lifted her head, lowering the paper. She swallowed hard; he watched the workings of her throat, one of his favorite parts of her. She showed her emotion there, in that smooth and pale column that was so easy for him to wrap his hand around.

  She calmly turned to Adam, handing him several coins. “Thank you so much Adam. Good luck this weekend in your competition. I’ll be rooting for you.” She smiled warmly, and Adam nodded gratefully, tipping his hat.

  “Yes ma’am,” he replied brilliantly and spun on the front doorstep to make his way down the walk.

  Helena closed the door. William waited, watching her straight back. He knew what was coming.

  She slowly turned to face him. “You knew.”

  William didn’t bother denying it. There was no point now. The universe and its damned fate had caught up with him. He nodded, just once. He felt his eyes heating up, the magic in his core infusing every cell and striking his eyes with emerald light.

  “He’s here, isn’t he?”

  Again, he nodded.

  Helena looked down at her slim waist and slowly lifted her free hand to place it gently over her stomach. She dropped the newspaper. “He’s killing people, William. Innocents.” She hesitated, then added in a voice tight with emotion, “Children.”

  “Helena, if he succeeds in his efforts, many more will die.” William set down the milk and moved in front of her. “I had no choice but to hide this from you.” He pulled the paper from her grasp and tossed it to the floor. Then he reached for her hands, but they were colder than usual. “You must see that.”