Kings of the Wyld (The Band, #1)

by Nicholas Eames

But life, Clay knew, didn’t work that way. It wasn’t a circle; you didn’t go round and round again. It was an arc, its course as inexorable as the sun’s trek across the sky, destined at its highest, brightest moment to begin its fall.

and it wasn’t until a few days after (a hard choice and too many miles away already) that he understood what he’d seen in her eyes just then. A kind of sorrow, thoughtful and resigned, as though she already knew—his loving, beautiful, remarkably astute wife—what was coming, inevitable as winter, or a river’s winding course to the sea.

“Seriously? Is there a reason you’re bringing a handful of rocks on this fool’s quest of ours?” Gabriel went to the roadside. When he found the stone Jain had kicked into the grass he examined it as though seeing it for the first time. “These belonged to Rose,” he said. “She used to bring them up from the beach when we lived in Uria. I thought I’d bring them in case sh—” “She won’t want them,” Clay snapped. “She won’t care that you brought her a handful of rocks from halfway across the world, Gabe. She’s not a little girl anymore, remember?” “—in case she’s dead,” Gabriel finished. “I thought maybe I would put them on her grave. She’d like that, I think.” Clay shut his mouth. He felt, at this particular moment, like an asshole.

Clay had heard it said that some couples were like fire and ice, but although Gabe and Val held opposing ideologies they were more like identical clashing swords. On fire. In an ice storm.

“Why build the temple at all?” Clay ventured. “Seems cheaper just to shout at the sky.” Kallorek looked at him as though Clay had suggested putting out a fire by tossing a few logs on it. “Shout at the … What the fuck are you on about, Slowhand?” “Nothing. Never mind.”

Unless …” She paused to swallow, and a wry grin tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Don’t tell me you’re getting the band back together?” “We’re getting the band back together,” Clay admitted. Gods, but it sounded dumb when he said it out loud.

“What a nice bunch of girls,” declared Matrick, watching her go. “They certainly were,” Gabe agreed. “I mean, they made us breakfast and everything,” said Moog, and the other two nodded. Which left Clay to state the obvious. “Y’all are fucking crazy,” he said.

“We were giants once, remember? Kings of the Wyld.”

“Judge them for what they wished to be,” he begged the Father of Gods, “not what the world made of them.”

Which are you, the monster or the man? It wasn’t the words that had moved him. It was the look in her eyes, green as the sunlit sea. She was offering him absolution, the defining choice of a lifetime balanced on a blade’s edge. The truth, he knew, was that the world needed his kind of monster. It was a brutal place. It was unfair. And Clay Cooper, such as he was, was quite simply the right kind of wrong. But Ginny wanted the man. The man, Clay knew, that his mother had been trying to raise—not the monster her killer had made of him. The man, he’d said. Yeah? she’d asked, looking hopeful. Yeah. The world has enough monsters, I think. His answer had made her smile, and so he’d known it was right. But this morning, with the lives of his friends at stake, Clay had felt that old anger resurface inside him like blood fouling a clear spring. He’d seen, reflected in Raff’s dying gaze, the monster staring back at him.

WHEN WE SEEK TO RULE ONLY OURSELVES, WE ARE EACH OF US KINGS.

The mind, Clay had learned long ago, could witness only so much carnage before it ceased to comprehend. You saw it, still. You heard it raging like a rainstorm against a closed window, but it simply did not register. His capacity for slaughter was overflowing, like a cup filled to the brim with wine, or water. Or, more aptly, with blood.

What’s that, honey? What was I doing while Uncle Gabe was duelling a god with all of civilization at stake? Why, I was wrestling in the muck with an exceptionally tenacious cow.