The Demon King Read Free Page A

the word
could just mean they were trying to be polite, even if they were nervous. The truth
was, cops could be dicks. People had a right to be nervous. Having
worked with a few bona fide dicks herself, Rosa knew that first
hand.
    She sighed, feeling suddenly very tired.
“Here,” she said softly, reaching out to take the baby. The girl
hesitated just a slight, slight moment. And then she placed the
baby in the police officer’s arms and took a step back.
    “ Thank you,” the blonde
said. And then, like a flash of yellow and blue jeans, she was
spinning around and running full-tilt to the front door. She
slammed into the release bar and hurtled out into the twilight
beyond without a hint of slowing or a second glance.
    Rosa called after her.
“Whoa, wait! Hey wait! You can’t leave, you have to fill out – ”
    But the girl was gone.
    The police officer stared at the front door
and the empty space beyond it. On the upside, she could almost
certainly mark the woman off the list of possible moms now. That
had been some Olympic-style running for a brand new mother. But on
the downside, there were a thousand things to do. There were
protocols to follow. And….
    The police officer looked away from the door
and down at the infant in her arms. Acting on instinct, she pulled
the blanket away from his face again, once more revealing those
beautiful blue eyes.
    Why anyone would want to be
rid of you , she thought, is beyond me.
    “ Hey little guy,” she said
softly, offering her finger for him to clutch. He did, making a
soft cooing sound as he gripped it. She felt a tugging at something
inside her, and suddenly her eyes felt strange and her throat felt
tight. She smiled at the infant. “Don’t you worry. Everything’s
gonna be alright.”
     
     

Chapter One
    Present Day, Meeting of the 13
    Time had a funny way. A lot could be said
about it, most of that conjecture: Time was fleeting, Time was
cruel, Time flew when you were having fun, and Time healed all
wounds. Time was apparently bipolar.
    But in the end, which was
an ironic thing for Time to think, there were a few things that it
truly did know.
    It knew what sand felt like, not just in its
infinitesimally small form, but in its infancy as a mountain. It
knew the sounds of birth and of death and understood that they were
often the same. It knew how to forget, and how to remember. It also
knew how to recognize when it was staring at something that had
seen a lot of it. A lot of Time.
    That’s what William Balthazar was fairly
sure he was doing right now. He was gazing at something very
old.
    His gaze sharpened, honing in with
supernatural adeptness. Colors brightened and contrasts grew
sharper. Normally when Will did this, the imperfections carved upon
a mortal by nature became starkly clear to him. But though Steven
Lazarus had been born a mortal and hadn’t died to become the Akyri
King until his thirties, he showed no visible signs of having aged.
Not even to William.
    Lazarus was as handsome as any man who sat
at that table, which was saying something. He was tall and
perfectly proportioned, broad shouldered, narrow-waisted. His voice
resonated like magic, and his jaw was strong. He was rakishly
barely shaven, which William chalked up to being busy more than any
actual desire to appear rakish. His teeth were straight, white and
perfect, and of course he had a full head of lustrous hair. That
hair had strangely enough darkened several shades since he’d become
king, and was now a medium to dark brown rather than blond. But it
seemed to suit the blue-eyed man somehow, as if what was on the
inside was finally showing on the outside.
    However, like the others,
it wasn’t physical appearance alone that lent the king his majesty.
Lazarus had the aura as well. It was an unmistakable aura of power… and that was
very strange to William.
    The Akyri King was a
relatively new addition to the Table. He was a fledgling at being a
king, and yet, there was that power