Prologue

The sunlight shone down on the park, as it did every day. Children played amongst the grass and trees, running, laughing, playing about while their parents watched over them contently. Men and women made their way down the walkway winding through the breadth of the park, toting purses, briefcases, or simply the clothes on their backs as they went about their days. Benches played host to pigeon feeders, or the occassional newspaper-clad drifter.

A clean, wholesome Summer's day.

In the blink of an eye, however, the demanor began to change. A fight broke out amongst a pack of children to a chorus of screaming and crying. Parents began to converge on the pack, only for they themselves to begin bickering as they shouted blame.

A man who'd been happily married for decades zeroed in on teenage jogger's tight shorts, biting his lips as the sight of her jouncing cheecks as the front of his pants tented, while the teen slowed, wiggling her ass at him when she noticed his eyes on her.

A homeless man in an army jacket scowled at the man's tailored suit, fingering the rusted bowie-knife in the pocket of his coat while resentment burned within him. As the lech came up behind the girl, his hand slowly tightened around the hilt as he was reminded of the daughter his bitch of a wife had stolen custody of. The daughter he hadn't seen in years, but hadn't been much younger than the girl before him.

The struggling ball of children had expanded, and their parents were raising fists at one another. Nearby, the teen leaned back as the man's hands found her, leaning back with a purr as they caressed her bottom. The drifter stalked towards the pair, glaring at the man as his hand worked inside his coat...

Suddenly, as if a switch had been thrown, the whole park seemed to stop. The parents lowered their hands, darting into the pile to extricate their abruptly-pacified children, sobbing and moaning at the cuts and scrapes they hadn't noticed. The buisinessman snatched his hands from the teen at the same time she jerked away from him. The drifter shook his head, hand sliding out of his jacket as the two looked at one another, then slowly turned and went about their way, careful not to look at one another.

As the homeless man trudged back to his bench, a seed-tossing bird feeder shook his head in disgust. He'd dropped his back as the scene had played out, heedless of the swarm of pigeons which descended on the spilt sack, grinning maniacally as events had built to a crescendo, only to snarl silently as the tension which had pemeated the area disappeared.

There was nothing overtly remarkable about him, from his sandy-brown hair to his gleaming white tennish shoes. In fact, the few people who did notice him found it unusually difficult to focus on him, their eyes straining and watering the longer they looked. Those that tried anyway saw nothing out of the ordinary; merely a man tossing seed in Central Park.

How foolish.

The man rolled his eyes as the last bit of anxiety filtered out of the surroundings, before casting a reproving eye over his shoulder. "Spoilsport," he whined as he glanced up at the conservatively-dressed woman behind him.

"Back to this already?" she replied wearily. "I thought you would have learned your lesson by now."

"And I thought after all this time, you would have gained an appreciation for my art," he said with a sneer, turning to fold his arms over the back of the bench.

"This is not art. It is an abomination. As dark and ugly as your soul, Inanis."

He stiffened, then lunged forward until the woman's face was inches from his bared teeth. "Fuck you, Castus!" he snarled over the sound of the wood bench splintering in his grip. "You could never understand what I hope to achieve!"

She looked unflinchingly into the writhing blackness of his eyes, then sniffed. "I understand, fool. But you know as well as I that your meddling cannot be permitted. Even your Master has agreed on that."

For a moment, Inanus seemed to disappear into blackness, a dark aura springing up around him as they stood face to face. The next moment, it disappeared, and he snorted as he flopped back onto the broken bench. "Yeah, whatever ... so what are you doing here, anyway? Come to congratulate me on my release?"

"Hardly. I'm here to bring you in."

Inanis froze, then chuckled. "You had me going there. I served my time, all 900 years. It's not as if-"

"We know about the Seeds."

His teeth came together with an audible click. "Seeds?" he asked, a bead of sweat sliding down his brow.

"Don't play dumb," she said bluntly. " We know you've been cultivating some new temptation on your own. We might not be able to track your movements in the Pit, but your Master can, and he tipped us off." She shook her head. "How many humans did you think your temptations would snare? Ten? A hundred? Did you really think He'd permit those souls to fall into the hands of a mere incubus?"

Chapter 1 »