by Wyatt Kane
Time Master
By Wyatt Kane
Copyright © 2018 Wyatt Kane, All Rights Reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Also by Wyatt Kane
The Enhancer series (ebook)
The Enhancer series (audiobook)
CONTENTS
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
XXXI
XXXII
XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV
XXXVI
XXXVII
XXXVIII
XXXIX
XXXX
XXXXI
XXXII
Author’s Note
i
I stood rooted to the spot, wide-eyed and gaping. I’d never seen anything like it.
A blue, undulating wave of … something … was expanding in the dark parking lot outside the Good Times Club. It was a ripple of energy, a distortion in the night, and something about it made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Maybe it was the sound it made, a high-pitched keening, like the sound the universe might make as it was being torn. Beside me, my new friend April wrapped her arm in mine, pulling me close. Her twin sister, June, gripped her free hand.
Others crowded around to watch. The strippers, the bartender, and the manager Tom. I even spotted that asshole Eddie cowering behind a car, but I didn’t have time to threaten him. The whole scene was surreal, and the only thing that kept me grounded was the cold, creepy, and slightly exhilarating feeling I got from watching the show.
The blue wave of energy pulsed. Blue lightning sparked and crackled around the edges. In the center, it looked almost liquid. I could see through it, in a way, but it was like looking through heavy fog. It wasn’t clear whether I was looking at the normal night sky through some sort of lens or if this thing, this anomaly in space, was showing me a different universe entirely.
As we all watched, it expanded, engulfing more of the parking lot. Whatever it was, it was huge, the size of a barn and then some, and its lower edge touched the concrete of the parking lot. It was difficult to see, but it looked like something was moving within it. Something massive. I squinted, my curiosity getting the better of my fear, but the liquid-fog obscured my view.
I must have taken a step toward it, because April pulled me back. “Caleb! Let’s get out of here!”
“Just a minute.”
Maybe I should have listened, but despite the strangeness, the creepy sounds and Close Encounters vibe, the anomaly held a fascination for me I couldn’t explain. Except, somehow, I actually could. I didn’t know how or why, and all my education couldn’t explain what I was seeing, but somehow I knew I was watching a time event. A rift in time.
I couldn’t explain how I knew. I just did. And with that understanding came a question: had I somehow caused this?
One of the other strippers let out a wail that was almost a scream. My head whipped around, looking for the problem. Joanna was backing away, toward the Club, holding her pregnant belly protectively and pointing to the top of the portal. Everyone followed her gaze.
I blinked to make sure I was seeing things correctly, but the crowd’s response was proof enough. A giant claw had emerged, gripping the top edge of the anomaly like it was a tangible thing.
The claw looked like it could have belonged to a cockroach, except it was about a million times larger than it should have been. The light from the Club’s neon sign reflected redly off the tip, making it look like it had been dipped in blood.
No one waited to find out what else would come through. As if Joanna’s wailing scream was the signal they’d been waiting for, people scattered, their terror getting the better of them as they ran to their cars, to the road, or back inside the club. But I hesitated, feeling like I should do something.
I must have been more stunned than I thought because when I looked down, April was tugging my arm, trying to get me to move.
And then, as if having a huge time rift open up in the parking lot of a strip club wasn’t enough, something even weirder happened.
An old man with a knobbly old staff and knobbly old knees ran out from nowhere and stopped in front of the anomaly. Looking like something straight out of Lord of the Rings, he waved the staff around in front of him, his long, disheveled, gray hair flowing wildly about his shoulders.
He was cursing, fluently and imaginatively, his words partially obscured by the keening sound made by the time rift.
What the hell? I thought.
April stopped tugging on my arm. “What is that dumbass doing?” she asked, incredulous.
Some of the others had stopped to watch as well. Eddie, still drunk, stumbled around the side of the car out into the open. He was gaping like a goldfish and blinking as if he was struggling to focus on the scene. I figure he must have kept drinking after I’d thrown him out of the Club. Dried blood from his nose covered his mustache and the front of his shirt, which was unbuttoned to expose his hairy chest.
The old man shoved his sleeves up to display his knobbly old elbows. He looked almost comical as he swayed back and forth in front of the portal. For all I knew, he could have been as drunk as Eddie, but his cursing changed into a full-voiced chant and he started to trace a pattern in the air with his staff.
Whatever he was doing, the time rift didn’t like it. The lightning around the edges intensified, and the liquid middle bulged outward all around the claw, like a balloon expanding. It seemed to pulse, faster and faster, with energy or time radiating outward in a cold, endless wave.
Nor were the visible responses the end of it. The keening grew suddenly louder, turning into a high-pitched screeching, and we all winced and covered our ears. The old man put his staff out in front him, taking on a guardian-like stance as he leaned forward as if a strong wind were blowing from the portal. Then, his chanting reached a crescendo, and I could imagine him shouting, “You Shall Not Pass!” very easily.
The shriek intensified, and the claw gripping the edge of the time rift worked its way toward the bottom. It then reached through, and all of those still watching collectively took a step back.
Except Eddie, who took a wobbly, drunken step forward, and we all watched in morbid fascination as the claw reached for the old man.
Then the anomaly shuddered, and let out a flash of light and a large bang! The old man—wizard?—stumbled back, and the creature within shrieked again. The rift sucked its bulging, liquid center in, then let it all out with a massive detonation that knocked the old man backwards onto his ass but left the anomaly itself unchanged.
He rolled on the ground and pushed himself to his feet faster than I would have imagined possible. Grabbing his staff, he looked around at the fascinated but horrified crowd.
>
He kind of laughed. “Well, fuck. That used to work a lot better. Shouldn’t be surprised,” he said, loud enough for us to hear despite the ongoing keening noise. “At my age, it’s a wonder anything works at all.” Even though he was still some distance away, he caught my eye and grinned, then swept his hands out in a grand gesture. “Well, what are you all waiting for? A dismissal bell? Run!”
Putting his own words into action, he ran straight toward me and the girls. Behind him, the creature continued to emerge. The hairs on my arm stood on end as I realized how fucking big this monster was. It was a living nightmare, a blending of the most awful bugs imaginable grown monstrous. At its core, it looked like an overgrown centipede with membranous wings, giant pincers, hundreds of eyes, and a stinger like a scorpion.
The awful creature was like all the nightmares of everyone in the parking lot added together, and it was as tall as the two-story strip club behind me. It screeched as its last leg came out of the opening, and I stood frozen at the shock. I looked at the beer in my hand, wondering if someone had added something to it, but it wasn’t open yet.
Nor was that the only thing crawling out of the anomaly. A handful of other, smaller creatures scuttled out, screeching at different volumes and frequencies. They looked like diseased, mutated variants of the larger monster, and the sight of them was enough to nearly make me sick. Burn them, my brain was telling me. Burn them all with fire.
Maybe the big fucker could read my thoughts, because it stared at me, its eyes giving me an intelligent look, and that’s when I dropped the beer bottle. It smashed on the concrete, and the sound startled me out of my stupor.
That, and the old wizard running into me.
He grabbed my elbow and roughly turned me away from the portal. My arm tingled strangely when he touched it, but I didn’t have time to wonder about that, because the old man was yelling in my face.
“What’s the matter with you?” he cried, his long beard waving in the wind. “Get the hell out of here!”
II
It was damned good advice. He followed it himself, with the girls and I doing our best to stick to his heels. The creatures followed, the click-click-click-click-click of their chitinous feet on the pavement growing ever closer. I couldn’t help looking back as I ran, and saw that the largest monster had paused to pounce on someone. A man went down with a God-awful scream under those claws, and the bug grabbed his neck between a pair of razor-sharp pincers.
“Wait!” I yelled. I jerked unthinkingly away from April’s grip and turned around, breaking into a limping run. Somehow, I thought I heard gunfire from somewhere.
The old man wasn’t too pleased. “Damn it! What do you think you’re playing at? You don’t even have a plan!” he shouted after me.
He was right, I didn’t, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t—
Too late. It didn’t matter. I’d made it pretty close when the captured man gave a second, even more hideous scream that was abruptly cut off when the monster decapitated him. The force of the pincers cut clean through his spine, and the head popped off, bouncing and rolling to land at my feet. I had to jump to avoid tripping over it. The head rolled over, and I saw Eddie’s shocked eyes staring lifelessly back at me, his mustache waving in the breeze for the last time.
He wasn’t the only one who was shocked. I’d seen some brutal things in my time, but this took the cake. It was enough to make me gag.
Except I didn’t have time. The creature was doing something horrible to Eddie’s body, and I turned away. It may have been a bit slow, but my self-preservation instinct had kicked in with a vengeance, and I was searching for the old man and the girls.
Before I could locate them, before I’d done more than take half a step toward any sort of safety, something hit me with the force of a truck. I went flying across the pavement, and I would have skinned my arms as I caught myself if I hadn’t been wearing my leathers. I didn’t know what hit me, but the sound coming closer gave me a clue: click-click-click-click.
I thought I was done for. I thought the huge monster had finished with Eddie and turned its attention my way, and rolled about as fast as I could.
It wasn’t the big one, but one of the smaller creatures. It pounced, reaching for me with oversized scorpion pincers, and I grabbed one in each hand as the lion-sized insect bore down. Sweat poured off me as I tried to hold it back.
“Help!” I yelled without expecting any. This was it, I thought. I was going to die. Not exactly how I had expected to go, and very much too soon.
I tried to concentrate, to slow time as I did whenever I needed to, but it didn’t help much. It was almost as if the hideous bug was immune to my little talent. It was still on me, and I just got to stare at it for more terrifying seconds as I tried to wiggle free.
I couldn’t. I was trapped.
The bug wrenched itself out of my grip, then went for my face. I raised my arms and cried out in anger mixed with real terror, expecting at any moment to learn what Eddie had felt as he died.
Then … nothing.
The loathsome bug-monster had disappeared. Vanished completely, as if it had never existed. I was lying on the ground all by myself, panting hard, my heart pounding loudly in my ears, feeling dazed and confused.
Yeah, and scared as well. You would be, too, if a giant bug had tried to gouge your face off.
Not that I was complaining. I was still alive, and it felt good to draw breath. I wanted to just lie there and rest for a bit, but there were more of the monsters about. And anyway, the old man had appeared beside me.
I heard more random gunfire. Sounded like an assault rifle, but before I could figure out where it was coming from, the old man started to talk.
“You done making a damn fool of yourself?” he asked as he held out his hand and pulled me to my feet, bracing himself against my weight with his staff. Luckily, by then, I’d regained enough composure to not whimper at my near-death experience.
I didn’t have much to say to that, so I nodded.
“Somehow, I doubt that,” the old wizard said with a grin.
Before I could come up with any sort of reply, another bug, a spiny, multi-legged thing the size of a horse, leapt for us. I tried to duck out of the way, but the old man took a small metal object from his pocket and casually flung it at the approaching monster. The object was the size and shape of a pocket watch, and it glinted in the ambient light. To me, it was like lobbing a lollipop at a charging rhino, and I couldn’t for the life of me see what good it would do.
But the moment it made contact with the spiny bug, the creature disappeared, winking out of existence with a flash of blue light.
I stared at the old man.
“What the hell?” I asked.
“Time displacer,” he said. “Not powerful enough to work against the big one, but they can take care of the minor demons, like the one trying to have you for lunch. Moves them to different temporal locations. Now, are you just going to stand there? Or are you going to move?”
He swayed as he spoke, and his breath stank of alcohol. Great, I thought. A drunk wizard had just saved my life. Yet I owed him everything. So I didn’t complain as the old man took off at a shambling run, and did my best to keep up with him on my bad leg.
“Where to?” I asked.
The wizard nodded to an old, beat up Bedford van at the edge of the parking lot, close to the road. I couldn’t think beyond trying to hide behind it. But he pulled out another device, pointed it at the vehicle, and the Bedford gave the familiar beep of a security system disengaging.
I could have laughed if it weren’t for the anomaly still keening in the middle of the parking lot and the nightmare creatures stalking anything that moved. Even so, it was with a sense of relief that I followed the wizard.
Then I stopped. “The girls!” I said, spinning around, looking for any sign of April and June. My heart was pounding more at the thought of one of those monsters killing them than it had when I thought I would die. A trickle of
fear rolled down my spine, but the sensation felt strange, almost as if that fear wasn’t mine.
It made me look back toward the Club’s back entrance.
“Here!” April yelled.
She and June were huddled behind the dumpsters next to the building, and I made a beeline for them. As I approached, the sensation of fear grew stronger.
“June sprained her ankle,” April said when I reached them.
Perhaps surprisingly, the old wizard had come with me. I’d mostly expected him to just get in his Bedford and leave when I’d turned back for the girls, but he arrived on my heels within moments, and I couldn’t have been more grateful.
Even though he was drunk, possibly mad, and grumbled every step of the way, he took one of June’s arms and between us we half-carried her to the Bedford, with April following behind.
The van didn’t look very fast, and I worried if it would be enough should the enormous monster turn its attention our way. But a quick glance over my shoulder gave me some reassurance. That walking nightmare wasn’t looking our way.
Maybe we would be able to get away cleanly.
The wizard heaved the side door open, and the girls and I piled in. As I sorted myself out, for no reason I could see, the old man brought out the remote he’d used to disarm the security. He looked me dead in the eye and said, “While I remember, take this. You’re going to need it.”
“Huh? What?” I asked. What would I need his remote for?
“Take it,” he repeated in a way that was strangely authoritative. I reached for the device out of reflex.
“Put it in your pocket,” he said.
I looked at it and saw it was a lot more complex than it had any right to be. It looked like it controlled far more than just the alarm.
As if under some sort of spell, I did as he said. Moments later, the old man slid the door shut behind me, and I forgot all about the remote as he climbed in the front. The crazy old man stashed his knobbly staff in the passenger seat and started the engine.
