The Last King, Episode # 1

By A. Yamina Collins

Twenty-eight year Emmy Hughes has never quite fit in---she's six feet tall, dark-skinned, and daydreams of being Galadriel from Lord of the Rings. But when she is badly injured in a car accident that kills her mother, Emmy does not dream of fantastical worlds anymore---she just wants her shattered life to be normal again.

Unfortunately, normalcy is the last thing in store for her once she meets Lake George's newest arrival, Dr. Gilead Knightly. Granted immortality from a line of people whose Great Ancestor marched into the Garden of Eden and ate from the Tree of Life, Gilead has been alive for centuries and has met everyone from Nubian kings to Napoleon.

But Gilead and his eccentric family are also hunted beings because God considers the Edenites' possession of immortality to be theft. And for thousands of years He has dealt with their transgression by sending each of them a "Glitch" ---an unsuspecting human meant to retrieve this stolen "property" of immortality and kill them off.

When Emmy discovers that she is Gilead's Glitch, she is not only thrown into a world of immortals who eat bone marrow, panthers who read minds, and a family whose blood is made of pulsing gold, but she finds herself the target of Gilead's vengeance: he must get rid of her before she gets rid of him.

Easier said than done. Because Glitches are not only an Edenite's greatest threat---they're also their greatest love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A. Yamina Collins
• Release date: Mar 27, 2014

A. Yamina Collins

Author A. Yamina Collins runs the popular, 100,000 hits per month literary blog, Yaminatoday.com. She has been a journalist for such publications as Affluent Page and New York Resident magazines and has been featured on About.com for women in business. The Blueberry Miller Files is her first published book.

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Copyright Information

Copyright © 2013-2014 by A. Yamina Collins. All rights reserved worldwide. Published by DeeBooks Publishing, LLC - First Edition, December 2013

No part of this publication may be replicated, redistributed, or given away in any form without the prior written consent of the author/publisher or the terms relayed to you herein.

The characters in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to person living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Also by A.Yamina Collins

The Blueberry Miller Files

Cover design by Bookcoversale.com

Edited by Jessie Leaman

Thanks to New York Police officer Raymond Cerrano for technical help.

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Visit A. Yamina Collins at her blog Yaminatoday.com or visit her on Facebook & Twitter

Dedicate to the memory of the giants upon whose shoulders I stood:

Devorice Jean Collins (1944–2010)

David Britton Collins (1913–1995)

Susie Mae Collins (1915–1998)

Table of Contents

Epilogue

CHAPTER 1

The Boogeyman

CHAPTER 2

Emmy

CHAPTER 3

Aunt May

CHAPTER 4

Harry Puddifoot

CHAPTER 5

Nosebleeds

Epilogue

Epic of the Hunted [From the Mesopotamian text, circa 2450 BC]

The First One came from the line of Man, weeping---

Weeping for help, weeping in deep distress;

If only he could keep away the Gates of the Netherworld

If only he could turn his back on death

Then he would be glorious! Then he would be divine!

And death could not come and feast on him

But he knew not where the Garden lay

Though he staggered about and cried, Help me! Help me! Help me.

Searching for an entrance to Eden

At last it was found, and so came his chance to be like the Master Shepherd.

For a treasure had been discovered

A gift had been given!

Eternal life was finally granted

And yet . . . why did he feel no joy?

Why did a restless mourning fill his days?

Because a trumpet call had been sent out from the Master Shepard

The hand of the Almighty had been unleashed upon him:

Return your immortality or perish, went the call.

But the children just laughed and laughed and laughed

And even now some of them live today:

Those offspring of the First One

Legends they are,

Legends of old

And the Mighty Hunter seeks them still!

[Courtesy of the University of Sankore, West Africa; translated to English by Marvin Calhoun]

CHAPTER 1

The Boogeyman

It is doubtful the Master will ever hear about it, Markus thinks, pushing aside a few strands of blond hair that have fallen over his eyes as he stands on the bank of this deserted lake; the branches on the trees around him sway peacefully, and the evening air hums a lullaby.

He does not suppose the Master will hear about it and, really, what difference should it make if he does? It's just an old homeless man, anyway. Markus feels no guilt about it, so how could his thoughts give him away?

Removing his hand from the old fellow's mouth, Markus already knows the poor fool is too stunned to scream---people are always speechless when they first see Markus's wings, stretched out as they are, twenty feet in length on either side of him and thirty feet high. Tonight the old man simply blinks and lets spittle hang from the corners of his lips.

Markus does not know the man's name, but the old man himself certainly knows it: Johnnie is what they call him, Johnnie Kubrick, and at present his very soul seems to have unzipped itself from his body and stepped outside of him. How he longs for this to be some terrible dream from which he will soon awake.

But this is no dream at all: there is a man standing before him who looks human, yet has yellow wings made of glass coming out of his back. The wings shimmer, like translucent gems, and they taper off to thin, razor-sharp edges, making the sound of metal crunching against metal as they flap---it is a harsh sound, a cruel sound, and yet the wings themselves do not frighten Johnnie so much as what is attached to the wings.

The old man's pale lips tremble.

Wha---what are you? he finally stutters. He does not mean to ask questions. He means to beg for his life, because he does not want to die in this manner---not in these shabby clothes, near a body of water where he can easily be disposed.