Chapter 1

Lewis Zachary “Zach” Black

My sister stood before me just having admitted to murdering Charles’s mother to cast the memory wipe spell. I told her not to. We didn’t have to cut out the heart of a woman to do it. There had to be other ways. Better ways.

I knew that there would be deaths on the way to my goal of wresting this world from the powers in the shadows, but this was so gruesome. It was beyond murder to do that. I recoiled from my twin sister standing there in the cheap t-shirt she’d bought at a gas station, her dyed-purple hair spilling around her pale face.

“I told you not to,” I croaked. “Why?”

“Because it had to be done.” She stared at me with her brown eyes quivering with pain. “Charles is our enemy. He’s plotting to kill you, and she’s helping him. You needed the spell cast, and that was the only way. So I did it. I did what had to be done for you, Zach!” Her eyes grew wet with emotion. “It’s always been for you. Everything ... Everything I do is for you.”

Tears spilled down her cheeks. I had never seen my twin sister looking so vulnerable. So raw. She begged me to understand and accept what she had done. I could see what it cost her. She acted so callous and jaded, like she had not a scrap of innocence in her, but...

It was a facade that had just collapsed.

She had done it. She had crossed that line into murder. I had. I could remember stabbing the pig who ran the porno shop. I had taken his life because it was necessary. We had to keep anything from getting out and ruining Susannah’s reputation.

And we had to do the same with her mother.

Moira had made the choice. She had sacrificed her own innocence. Maybe she thought it would be easy. No big deal. Now she knew the truth. Her soul bled before me, and I couldn’t keep being angry at her any longer.

I pulled my twin sister to me.

“I had to do it,” she sobbed as she buried her face into my chest. “I had to, right?”

“You had to,” I whispered, stroking her back. I held her in the living room of the small trailer we shared with our mother.

Who was now my lover? My secret wife pregnant with my child. I had claimed her like my father had. I was walking in that bastard’s footsteps without even realizing it, but I wouldn’t vanish. I wouldn’t disappear and abandon Susannah and Mom and Mrs. Augustine.

I wouldn’t abandon my sister.

“It’s okay,” I told her, rocking her. “It’ll be okay.”

“Will it?” she croaked.

Mom walked out of the hallway that led to hers and Moira’s bedrooms. Mine was at the other end of the trailer right off the living room. Mom swallowed as she watched me holding my trembling sister. Mom didn’t know what was going on, but she was our mother.

She might be naked and fresh from our latest love-making, but that didn’t change who she was.

Mom hurried over and engulfed us both. She held her children in her arms as Moira shuddered with her sobs. Her tears soaked my chest. She rubbed her face into my torso as she trembled. I didn’t know what else to do but hold my little sister.

Mom and I held her as the tears ran their course. It was a few minutes, maybe ten, before the emotions drained out of her. She whimpered. Mom pulled away and nodded her head toward the hallway. I picked up my sister and followed Mom.

I held Moira in my arms. She was so light. My twin sister was such a petite thing. So different from Mom and Susannah. She felt fragile. A statute that might shatter if I didn’t hold her with the utmost care.

Mom slipped onto the bed and patted the space beside her. I sat Moira down there and slid in on the other side. Like parents comforting their frightened child, Mom and I lay around her, shielding Moira from the world.

She rolled onto her side and pressed her face into Mom’s bosom, snuggling up to the comfort of our mother’s breasts. I held Moira from the other side, my hand resting on Mom’s hips. I lay here, thinking about what this meant.

War.

Charles would retaliate in a violent way. I wasn’t even sure the charade with Mrs. Augustine could continue. She might be in grave danger if I let her go to his house again. It might be best to cut that tie even if it meant not learning what was happening on Charles’s end.

I had to talk to Sable. We would need protection. We had to start thinking long-term. I glanced to Nisha, my thought form. She stood behind Mom, her arms folded beneath her dusky breasts. Also called a tulpa, I had birthed her from my will to dominate the world.

She would be my guide on this quest.

“Yes, Master,” Nisha said. “You need bodyguards. Sable will handle recruitment. That is why you had to bind her to you. This is what she craves, remember.”

Sable was the second woman I had recruited, the rich bitch from my school. A dominatrix and sadist. If she had cut out Mrs. Swartzenburg’s heart, she would not be broken by it. She would bathe in the blood. She wanted power from the shadows.

Mistress of Spies and shit like that.

I was glad to have a plan.

Charles Ludwig Swartzenburg II

“Put your back into it,” Mother said. She sat on the couch, naked, her legs crossed. She held a glass of chardonnay in one hand that I filled for her. She smiled at me as I scrubbed up the blood that stained the stone floors of the house we lived in here.

Father had sent me to track down the threat to our family, giving me my mother to be my personal woman. His own wife whom he had never loved. She had just been a tool. A woman from an old bloodline that held power. Perfect for birthing his heir.

I loved Mom, but that wasn’t her watching me. Not really. That was Mother. Her corpse was possessed by the demon Ashtaroth. My mother was still in there, but she was mixed in with a monstrous being that delighted in blood sacrifice.

It was my punishment. I had found the threat and followed the advice of the witch. I was befriending him so I could stab him in the back, but he had struck first. He had cut out my mother’s heart and performed a ritual to Hecate with it.

He had cast a powerful spell invoking one of the Five Rivers of Hades.

I had begged my own god, Molech, to restore her to life. I had sacrificed a married woman named Jenny I had enthralled with my powers. A slut so willing to obey me, she had laid down on my mother’s corpse while I stabbed her in the heart.

My first sacrifice. I would do anything to bring back my mother. Anything.

And Molech punished me for it.

Mother’s eyes fell on me. They were full of cold darkness. I shivered and scrubbed hard on the blood, cleaning it up. I sprayed more of the bleach on the floor and dipped my rag in the mop bucket full of sudsy water.

I worked at it naked as she watched. It amused her to give me orders. I was no longer in command of this mission. I wanted to be subtle with Zach. Use his girlfriend’s mother to stab him in the back. I had Mrs. Augustine charmed, too. She would have poisoned him.

The final chemical I needed to brew the poison that was supposed to arrive tomorrow. I had ordered it carefully through several chemical wholesalers. In pieces, they were innocuous. Once assembled, they would cause Zach to have a heart attack.

A rarity, of course, but the poison metabolized so fast in the body, that by the time he was dead, there wouldn’t be any traces of it left. The byproducts were normally found in the blood. That would be that.

I should have just had her shoot him in the head and kill herself. Murder-suicide. People would speculate. Maybe they were having an affair. A scandal that would never lead back to me. Too cautious. Father would never have been so cautious.

How could I be expected to take over the family fortunes if I was too timid?

Ashtaroth wasn’t timid.

“You’re slacking,” she said, setting down her glass.

“Sorry, Mother,” I gasped and scrubbed harder, sweat dripping down my forehead. I had never done such menial work in my life.

My back ached. So did my shoulders. I scrubbed away the magic circle and the blood stains. I had already cleaned the pot of burned pasta Mom had been making for dinner when Zach showed up to murder her.

My vision went red with anger.

She was making me dinner when he stole her life.

“That’s it,” purred Mother. “Put that rage into it. He took my life. A good boy avenges his mother.”

“Yes!” I snarled and scrubbed at the blood.

I worked faster now. I used that rage. I would take such pleasure in killing Zach, and once he was gone, I would pin down Susannah. I wouldn’t charm her. No, no, I would rape her. I would rape her until her mind broke and she begged for it.

Until she was a shattered doll that just craved my cock plunging into her pussy. Her belly would swell with my child. I would glory in it. Once she was ripe and ready, I would sacrifice her to Molech. Her and the whelp in her womb.

He would reward me.

I would have the power to restore Mom fully and free her from the demon’s clutches. I would be strong enough to take over the rule of our house from Father. Molech would bless me with more wealth. Influence. My tendrils would reach out into the world and guide it from the shadows.

“I’m finished,” I said, my future so clear.

“Good, good,” Mother said. She patted her lap. “You were such a bad, bad boy, weren’t you?”

“Yes, Mother,” I said, my head bowed in shame.

“And bad boys are spanked, aren’t they?” she purred. I could hear Ashtoreth’s delight in the prospect.

“Yes, Mother,” I said and rose. I moved to her and slipped over her lap on the couch, my face in the cushions.