The Demon King
Book 9 in the Big Bad Wolf spinoff series, The Kings
by Heather Killough-Walden
Copyright 2016 Heather Killough-Walden
Smashwords Edition
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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 their 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
(future The Kings books TBA; 13 total)
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.
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Chess is not for timid souls.
- Wilhelm Steinitz
Not all who are born kings are born good.
Not all who are born good are born kings.
Some are born neither.
But we make ourselves who we become.
Life is the board. It’s your game.
And it’s his move.
*****
Titania the fairy of the Unseelie Realm looked long and hard at her very old friend. She knew a little more about her now than she did a hundred years ago. Lalura Chantelle was not what she appeared to be. She was not only a human witch. She was quite literally an ancient and brave soul, one willing to sacrifice untold amounts to learn a little more about the world and those within it.
“You know,” Titania ventured softly as she poured them both the obligatory up of tea, “I get now why you wanted to be one of them. But I sort of liked it when you were one of us.”
“I bet you did. But nothing lasts forever, even one of you.”
Titania snorted, which was an impressively rude sound for someone of her delicate stature and appearance to make. “I beg to differ. We can last forever. You just have a habit of getting yourself killed.”
Lalura sighed. It sounded well and truly tired. “You can’t gain perspective if you’re only ever seeing things from one height,” her scratchy voice reminded Titania. There was a pause before Lalura added, “And it’s not much of a height as it is.”
Titania’s eyes grew wide at the insult. The fact that fairies were short had always been a sore point with her. “You know, when you say things like that, you sound less like you and more like, well, him.”
Now Lalura laughed, and the sandpaper sound filled the small cottage with grainy warmth. “There is a little wrong in all of us, fairy.”
Titania looked up, Lalura’s words echoing through her mind. She understood why Lalura said “wrong” and didn’t say “darkness.” There was certainly a darkness in some, but not everyone. You had to be special for a darkness. You had to be lucky. A wrongness, however… it was different. It was bad.
And Lalura was right. There was some of it in everyone.
*****
Introduction
Excerpt from The Phantom King, by Heather Killough-Walden
Thanatos, who went by Thane most of the time, knelt beside his latest project and ran his arm over his forehead. He wasn’t normally bothered by temperatures or climate; they rolled off of him the way they would a ghost. But today, he was off his game.
The Phantom King could go a very long time without sleep. Days, weeks, even months. Every once in a while however, the energy that made him who and what he was needed to be replenished. He’d slept last night. And that’s when the dreams had come.
He’d been standing in the desert, alone as usual. The air shifted, growing dark, and the ground became checkered as if it were a massive chess board. In the distance, outlined by the horizon, a shape appeared. He could see her long hair blowing in the wind, highlighted by the sun like a flame. But he couldn’t see anything else, no matter how fast he ran toward her, no matter how long he dreamed.
He wondered whether it had anything to do with the thirteen kings and queens that the Vampire King had told them all about during a meeting a few months ago. He wondered…. But he tried not to wonder too hard. Thoughts like that could drive a man mad.
Now, after the dream-filled sleep, he was physically whole again, but mentally exhausted. It was a new sensation for him and one that left him feeling edgy. Even mean.
Thane pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. And then he felt the presence at his back in much the same manner as he always did. It was a disturbance in the air, an unsettled sensation, as if the wind were preparing to take a breath and blow.
Thane did what he always did when he felt that particular disturbance. He tossed the tool he was presently using into the tool chest to his right and stood, coming to his full impressive height before reaching for the rag atop the work bench and wiping his grease-covered hands.
Then he turned in the dusty but relatively cooler gloom of his garage and waited as the air in front of him shimmered, warped, and separated.
Genius scientists hit the nail on the head when they claimed that everything was relative. Time was relative. Especially here in Thanatos’ realm.
This was Purgatory, it was a desolate layer of reality, sparse and hopeless and dry. At least, right now it was. It seemed to change over time, becoming a reflection of the man who ruled over it. And because that was the mood Thanatos had been in for several of the last few centuries, that was the mood his plane was in as well. The vast desert stretched out as far as the eye could see, its distant boundaries melding with those of the astral plane and the faint, inconceivable borders of reality.
It was the land of lost souls – the place where spirits went to die.
Thane’s
realm took in every “essence” of every human that had been dealt an untimely and unjust death in the material world. And because, due to war and homicide, there were simply too many of these to count, time in Purgatory worked differently. It stretched itself out, turning the seconds into days and the years into centuries.
As the Phantom King, Thane retained control of this time loop, this suspension of quantum physics, and dealt with the plethora of wronged one at a time.
Which is what he did now.
The air before him in the garage finished breaking apart, and inside of this strange portal-like crack, a human form coalesced. It crackled and shimmered into solid male form, dropped to its booted feet before Thane, and the air around it slammed shut once more, filling the space with the sound of thunder.
Thane was used to this, but of course the spirit was not. The Phantom King watched and waited patiently as the newly-formed man slapped his hands over his ears and ducked down in reflex.
A few seconds later, the man slowly straightened once more, lowered his hands, and stared around at Thane and the surrounding garage with wide, frankly terrified eyes.
Thane frowned. The man had a familiar feel about him. It wasn’t that Thane recognized him from anywhere, it was more like an energy signature that his body carried. Like an aura. He was sure he’d felt it somewhere before.
“Where am I?” the man asked. “Who the hell are you?” His voice was harsh and a bit hoarse, as if he’d just been screaming at the tops of his lungs. He was fresh from the fight, Thane could tell that much simply by experience. He was also fully dressed, and if Thane wasn’t mistaken, he smelled a bit like fire.
His silver gaze narrowed. “Don’t tell me someone set you on fire.” It would be the only thing that made any sense. But it sure as hell was a strange way to kill someone.
The man in front of him continued to stare at him, and Thane had a chance to look him up and down. He was clearly an American, given what he’d already said and the accent in which he’d said it. Plus, Thane’s magic always fed him the basics about a spirit when they appeared in his realm. This one had grown up as an orphan and had no living family remaining. He was the last of his line.
He was tall and well built, with a hard edge. “You’re a cop, aren’t you?” Thane reasoned quietly.
The man swallowed hard and straightened. “I’m dead, aren’t I?”
“I asked first,” Thane said, trying not to smile. It was just that he had so few chances at fun in his line of work. And again, he was feeling mean. Also, there was something about this guy that just ticked him off.
The man watched him in silence for several long, contemplative moments – moments that Thane magically stretched into the timeline ahead. After all, another murder victim was sure to come along any minute now.
“Detective,” the man corrected as he straightened a bit and clearly tried to regain control of his faculties. “Detective Steven Lazarus.”
Thane gave a simple nod.
“Now please tell me,” the detective went on, his expression desperate. “Am I dead?”
“Oh yeah,” Thane said, nodding as he turned his back to the detective for a second and bent to pick up the tool he’d been using a few moments ago. “As a doornail,” he finished, and once more straightened.
He glanced at Lazarus, and the detective at once came forward, rushing toward Thane with his hands out as if pleading. Thane frowned as a wave of something strange washed over him. It moved before the fallen cop like a ripple of water, dark and tingly. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it took him by surprise. Thane unconsciously took a step back and found his leg flush with the side of the bike he’d been tinkering with.
But the cop continued forward, and on reflex, Thane held up his hand. The Anime stopped at once, blinking in confusion and looking down at his body.
That was when Thane realized that this particular Anime had taken on an incredibly solid form. It happened every once in a while; a spirit’s anger or desperation was strong enough that the energy it possessed made it a good deal more tangible. But in this case… it was almost as if the detective had simply been reformed. Whole.
Thane squinted at Lazarus’ broad chest. He couldn’t see through it. Not at all. Not even when he really tried.
“Shit,” he muttered, speaking more to himself than to Lazarus, who was clearly confused as to why he’d stopped in his tracks when Thane had raised his hand. The detective tried to move, tried to come forward again, but remained glued to the spot with Thane’s magic.
“You’re a live wire, aren’t you?” Again, Thane was talking to himself.
But this time, the detective’s blue eyes narrowed on Thane, shooting aquamarine sparks. “If I’m dead, where the hell am I?”
“Purgatory,” Thane told him. He wondered what he was going to do with this one. The really pissed spirits often caused problems for him. Not that he minded, really. Life got incredibly boring without the occasional rabble rouser to deal with.
But there was something wholly, entirely, and uncomfortably different about the man who stood before him now. And the wheels in Thane’s head were spinning furiously as they tried to figure out exactly what the hell that was.
“And the demon who killed me?”
Thane blinked. “Demon?” His attention focused.
“The demon who is after my girlfriend!” the detective hissed.
If Thane hadn’t been the Phantom King and well aware that demons actually existed and that they did tend to go after people’s girlfriends, and if he hadn’t been staring at the spirited evidence of demonic foul play standing before him then and there, he might have automatically labeled the cop as crazy.
But Thane knew better.
“You were set on fire by a demon who killed you to get to your girlfriend.” He was working things out in his head, thinking out loud more than anything.
The detective glared at him. “You didn’t answer me,” Lazarus told him, his white teeth gritted in furious impatience. “I shot him in the head point blank,” he said. “Eleven times. So where the fuck is he?” The detective raised his arms and gestured to the garage and the dust-filled ghost town beyond. “Is he here somewhere too?”
Thane wasn’t sure how to answer that question. The truth was, he’d never dealt with a spirit as animated as this, he wasn’t sure what kind of demon he’d been fighting with, and for that matter, no one had any real idea what happened to demons when they died. If they died.
And that darkness that Thane had sensed earlier wafted around the detective like black pixie dust. Thane could actually see it now. It was truthfully rather beautiful.
But it was also ominous, and Thane’s insides felt heavy with trepidation.
Suddenly, the detective shook his head and dropped his hands at his sides as if giving up. “Fuck this,” he spat. “Siobhan needs me. She’s alone and it doesn’t take a first class detective to figure out that you’re not answering me because that god damned demon is still there – right where I left him.” He shook his head, his expression fiercely determined. “Fuck this,” he said again.
And then, for the first time in the history of the desolate realm and its Phantom King, Thanatos watched as one of his Anime stepped back in his garage and the air behind him cracked open once more.
Detective Steven Lazarus retreated right into this newly born crack and was at once surrounded by fissures of light and magic.
Thane was rushing forward before he knew what he was doing. He wasn’t even certain what it was he was witnessing, but he knew that he needed to do something about it. Whatever it was.
However, he was too late.
That beautiful, sparkling darkness that had been growing around the detective wrapped around him now like a tight blanket of starry night. As Thane closed in on it, that blanket sucked Detective Lazarus through the crack in the air, smothered the hole until it shrank like a fire devoid of oxygen, and then whipped outward in a strange, black flash.
The air thundered, as
it always did when it sealed itself back up, and Thane skidded to a halt. He stared at the space where a newly formed spirit had entered his world – and then escaped it once more.
Such a thing had never happened before. Not ever.
“Lazarus,” Thane whispered, letting the name and its historical significance roll off of his tongue. Then he took a slow, deep breath and ran a hand through his thick black hair. Life for the Phantom King had just gotten a hell of a lot more interesting.
Prologue
A small town in West Texas, 1982
For perfection, it really should have been storming. If this had been a movie, lightning would have split the sky, slicing it up on its celestial chopping block. Thunder would have echoed a mourning song, rolling up and over the mountains to slide low over the valley below. But this wasn’t a movie, and naught but the dark of night, the quiet of the desert, and the distant yipping of a coyote pack accompanied the ill goings-on in the warehouse of the all-but-abandoned southwest mining town.
The heat was sticky with that impending storm that wasn’t quite there. The air was unmoving, unstirred by the air conditioners that buzzed from peeling paint windows further down the road. This was one of the older buildings, unkempt, unused, and left to rot as much as anything can rot in the desert. The cracked cement ground was dusty. The pointed rafter beams overhead were dotted with pigeon shit and tied together by spider webs. Nests dripped hay and grass here and there, but the nests were empty right now. No animals stirred in this torrid darkness; animals can tell when there’s wrongness about.
It was the humans who stirred. And something else.
Candles and melted wax marked the layout of the chalk-drawn circle. There was no pentacle or pentagram or any of that nonsense Hollywood would so like viewers to believe had something to do with the devil. Stars were symbols of enlightenment, power and healing, not devils. So they had no place here.
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