The Winter King (2 page)

The night passed without incident, but Erikk
had an unsettled feeling. Every time he glanced at the large, surly
Bjarke to find him and his mates staring darkly back, that feeling
deepened. By the time Erikk’s head hit his mat, his nerves were
alight with worry, and it took a while for sleep to find him.

Chapter One

Present day, Seattle Washington, United
States

He was not into coffee shops. Coffee was
served either very hot or very cold, and neither had any effect on
him unless he willed them to, and then it just felt like too much
effort. The people in coffee shops wore Converses and Abercrombie.
He wore boots and a leather jacket. The atmosphere was one of
sedate money, young ones drawing together to utilize their parents’
wealth by studying for classes their parents bought for them on
laptops their parents bought for them. Or it was the old coming
together to show off diamond rings when they lifted their mugs and
discuss church or wedding preparations or how lovely their
vacations were.

Kristopher had no use for money. He was
anything but sedate. And the last time he’d been to a wedding, it
had been to stop it. Because he’d felt like it. And the guy the
bride had been about to marry was a dick.

Winter is not quiet.

And neither was Kristopher.

True winter was not a season. There were
people along the equator of Earth who would claim that between the
months of November and February, they were in “winter.” They would
smile and shrug and say that it was always mild, but in some
places, winter was fortunately like that. Then they would don
snorkeling gear and get their asses burned laying face-down in the
ocean for hours on end.

But that wasn’t
winter.
That
was
a joke.

Winter did not always come, and certainly it
absolutely ignored some locations. Winter sometimes had a temper.
It could be stunningly beautiful and graciously comforting. But
when it raged, it blotted out the world and cut it to the bone. And
when it died, it did so with unspoken yet seething promise: I will
return. And I do not forget.

Kristopher would know. He’d
been charged with its keeping. Long –
long
– ago.

So why the hell he was leaning up against
his bike with his arms crossed over his chest, standing across the
street from the busiest, most commercial coffee shop in the world
was a mystery to him. But apparently, winter was coming. And
according to the power that had made him its king for eons, it was
beginning here.

Tonight. In this coffee shop.

Kristopher took a deep breath and rubbed his
eyes. The dual temperatures fighting for control inside of him
sometimes made them hurt. They were blue, the color of the hottest
heat and the coldest cold. And right now, they felt like dry ice,
torn between burning and freezing.

“
I don’t have time for this
crap,” he muttered. Winter was fickle, and right now, it was riding
his nerves. He had other things to worry about. He’d
just
received word from
his men in the north that the seed storage facility they guarded
might be compromised. He’d also
just
received word that the base of
the damned Tree itself had developed a hairline fracture. It wasn’t
that hairline fractures in the Tree were especially rare, but they
did require attention just in case. The afternoon had gone south
really fast.

He had work to do and was needed elsewhere,
so it pissed him off more than a little that winter had decided it
was going to just up and start right here and now, at this very
moment, weeks before the Solstice.

“
I don’t understand you,”
he muttered next.

You don’t need to
understand me
, Winter whispered
back.
You just need to love me.

Kristopher sighed, uncrossed his arms, and
made his way across the street to the front door of the enormous
building that was the Starbucks Reserve Tasting Room and Roastery.
Or something like that. He happened to know that the Shadow Queen
was a fan of the place. He half wondered if she was in there at
that moment. The Tuath loved coffee, and in the two and a half
months since she’d taken her place at the table of the Thirteen
Kings, coffee had become a regular staple amidst the food and
drinks offered at it.

Plus, he was fairly sure she was from
Seattle.

Which increased Kristopher’s curiosity about
this location. Why here? Why had winter decided this would be its
inception in the northern hemisphere this year?

In the southern hemisphere,
he didn’t really have to worry. Winter almost slept through its
designated months there. It touched a few peaks here and there,
gave a few careless climbers frostbite, and then drew back, as if
it were preparing for its
real
winter. On the other side of the
Equator.

On this end of the planet,
winter officially began every mortal year on December
21
^st
,
the winter solstice. It was the shortest day of the year, and
because things took a while to cool off, it was the days following
the solstice that were the coldest. That date and its thousands of
years of recognition had given birth to generations of customs, and
had been adopted by various religions and practices around the
world. Kristopher had been there for all of them. He’d seen winter
grow and change repeatedly, and yet always stay the
same.

The Christmas tree with its bright, warm
lights was one of Kris’s favorite adoptions of mortality for this
time of year. It had originated in the pagan celebration of the
solstice with trees that sported candles lit amidst their branches
thousands of years ago. That had been a dangerous practice, if ever
there had been one. The more recent electric lights were a much
safer bet, and they could be done in a host of colors!

The wreath and the feast he
also enjoyed were taken from the celebration of Saturnia, an
ancient Roman event covering four or five days, beginning around
December 21
^st
and including December 25
^th
, that again celebrated the
changing day length associated with the solstice. That one, he was
less fond of, if only because it was always a touch too warm in
Rome for his liking.

And… he’d known too many Romans.

On and on, the traditions went, dating back
far further than most mortals were aware, and all having something
to do with the solstice. Why so many revelries? It may have been
the shortest day of the year, but in the cold and the dark, people
naturally needed something to look forward to. Knowing that the
days would now grow longer from this point out allowed them to
celebrate the dawning of a “new sun,” and a warmth they equated
with renewed hope.

But winter –
actual
winter – couldn’t
have cared less what day on the calendar mortals had decided would
be its “first day.” It came when it was good and ready, and it
looked like
this
year, it would be arriving on December
4
^th
.

From the way the people around him, both
entering the establishment, and leaving it, were bundled up in
their layers of scarves and gloves, it was clear most of them felt
it had already started. But if the sensations in Kristopher’s blood
were any telling… they hadn’t seen anything yet.

He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt winter coming
on quite as strong as it felt right now. There was a stirring in
his blood, almost like his cells were crystalizing. It wasn’t
painful, not for him, but it was rare. There was a humming at the
end of his nerves. And there was a scent to the air….

Just as he reached the front door of the
coffee shop, Kris looked up to the heavens. When he did, he exhaled
and noticed the steam vaporizing. The air smelled like snow. There
wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

He looked back down at the
door, steeled himself for whatever he was going to find inside, and
went in. The air
inside
was stifling with humanity. It hit him at once
like a wall of anti-magic, and like he usually did, he steadfastly
ignored it and walked on through. It was just something you had to
put up with in crowds of humans. Magic was dulled around mortals,
and the more mortals there were, the more dulled the magic. In
enormous crowds, it could feel as if there was no magic left in the
world.

It was just after seven at night, and the
coffee shop was chock-full of people in the holiday spirit,
families out shopping, and those who just enjoyed the night and the
cold. Kristopher actually enjoyed the atmosphere; it was filled
with life, mortal though it may be. And that life was vibrant.

Because he was who he was, he managed to
“find” a table and chair near one of the corners – okay, he just
summoned them up when no one was looking, along with a cup of
coffee – and he took a seat, anxious to see what Winter had in
store.

People came and went, orders were processed
and created, and Kris sat back, wove his hands together behind his
head, closed his eyes, and tuned his hearing into the crowd.

“…
you don’t need to
understand me. You just need to love me.”

He opened his eyes and swung his head toward
the door. Two women were walking in, one with dark skin and black
hair, and the other with lighter skin and multi-hued brown hair.
The latter had her back to him, but her scarf was an extra-long
knit number filled with so many colors, it grabbed his attention as
much as the words she’d muttered. He found himself sitting up
straighter, his breath held, his attention fixated – waiting for
her to turn around.

And then she did. And his world went
tumbling.

Chapter Two

Poppy tried very hard to keep the smile on
her face as she entered the coffee shop, despite the pain behind
her right eye. But the day had just been crappy from the get-go.
This was her absolute favorite time of year, but she was stressed.
And stress often brought with it one of the banes of her existence
– migraines.

That’s what it had done
this morning. She’d awoken to a coffee cup enshrouded in a migraine
aura, and right then and there, she’d known it was going to be a
bad day. Then her coffee had been
cold
– like, right out of the coffee
maker. Damn thing was on the fritz or something. So she’d tried to
microwave the coffee, but apparently the microwave wasn’t working
either. The liquid was still cold.

The pain in her head had started in then,
right on schedule, settling somewhere in the space between her
right eye and the base of her skull on the right side. It was
always on the right. Some days, she would pay money just to have
the damn thing switch sides.

She’d sighed, pinched the bridge of her
nose, and taken two Excedrin on an empty stomach, swallowing it
down with water that was so cold out of the faucet, it chilled her
teeth. Then, as she’d prayed it wouldn’t give her one hell of a
stomach ache, she pulled on her coat, favorite extra long, highly
colorful scarf, and favorite boots before she headed out the door
to Starbucks.

She really could have used
the company of her best friend right about then, but she wasn’t
going to bother Violet this time, no matter how badly she wanted to
complain to her. The fact was, Violet was on her honeymoon. A
honeymoon that came after getting hitched to a freaking
king
.

Some girls had all the luck.

In short, Violet was out of
commission.
Way
out of commission. Most likely, she wasn’t even in the same
realm just then. And she was probably sore from too many
orgasms.

Lucky bitch.

That thought made her smile, an action she
immediately regretted when the throbbing behind her eye picked up
in both speed and severity, and she was forced to grit her teeth.
She hated it when the pain on the inside began to show on the
outside. She always felt like a freak. No one ever showed their
emotions in society any longer. It was only acceptable to keep to
yourself, be polite, and make your face a stone mask. As the
British said, “Stiff upper lip and all that.”

But a migraine was a migraine, and unlike
Violet and the British, Poppy was only human.

So she simply vowed to drink a shit-load of
coffee as fast as she could and “nix” this headache like lightning,
and hurried her pace to Starbucks. Half way there however, her cell
phone chimed. She stopped in her tracks and looked down at the
screen.

Her boss.

“
Poppy, I need you to
re-send that copy for the digital camera to me ASAP. Our file is
lost for some reason, and we need to get it to the printer before
three.”

Poppy worked as an
instruction manual writer for a company that actually
did
that for a
living:
RightInWrite
. She wrote instructions on everything from video game
consoles to blenders to hair dryers. There was never a shortage of
need for a new set of directions; things were invented every single
day. Hundreds of things. Hell, thousands.

And someone had to tell people how to use
them. That was what Poppy did.

It would become too hectic
for
RightInWrite
authors to take items home and use them; their houses or
apartments would become overrun with objects far too quickly. So it
was customary for the writer to fill their itineraries with seven
items per week, use those items in the RIW warehouse rooms, and
then type up a manual for each one. Seven a week.