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  Chapter 1

  If you’d like to see a map of the Shadow Quarters, you can find it in my Facebook group (Search for Logan Jacobs in Facebook Groups), or on my Patreon (search Google for Patreon + Logan Jacobs).

  I could see my reflection in the metal of the knight’s armor, and my mouth twisted into a sinister grin as he stepped closer and closer to me.

  Three of his comrades already laid dead on the ground.

  Their wounds were clear for all to see, and I rejoiced at the sight, as well as the knowledge that I had been the one to end their lives. I had thrown the last punch, and now, not even two feet away from me, their bodies turned cold on the forest floor. I barely gave the dead men any more attention as I focused on leaving the remaining two in the same state.

  One was already unconscious on the ground, but I’d deal with him shortly.

  The last standing knight let out a grunt as he swung his sword over his head and attempted to tag me with it, but I was much faster than he was. I dodged out of the way and used this nanosecond of spare time to my advantage. With the knight focused on controlling his sword, I swooped behind him so quickly that I was gone within the blink of an eye.

  His armor clattered together as he moved his head from side to side to try and catch me.

  I could smell the fear that radiated from my prey, and it only made the game even more exciting. He knew what his outcome was going to be, and he knew I’d be crowned the victor, but this didn’t stop him from trying. Part of me wanted to give him a round of applause for his valiant effort, but the other part snickered at the awful idea.

  I’d been sent up here to kill these five members of some mortal king’s guard for a reason, and despite how they fought, I wasn’t going to stop until my job was done.

  The knight stumbled around on his feet when he realized I was right behind him. His armor didn’t make his movements very streamlined, although it may have helped to keep him alive for a minute longer.

  A mere mortal’s armor wasn’t a concern for me.

  Neither were their weapons.

  A mortal’s sword may have broken my skin, but that’s about as far as it was going to go. I’d have to be fighting my own kind if I were to end up on the ground like the men at my feet.

  All this death and violence really was a glorious sight, and I realized I was chuckling as I fought these lesser beings.

  My prey attempted to get me again, but this time, I caught his wrist in one hand as he swung his arm over his head. I tightened my grip around the metal that covered his hands, and the solid material warped under the strength of my fingers.

  The man let out a pained cry as I crushed his bones, and his hand became limp from the lack of structure to keep it upright. His sword fell to the ground, and if I could have seen his face, I was certain I would have seen the pain and desperate plea that flashed across his eyes. He either wanted me to stop, or wanted me to get it over with, but I wasn’t going to do any of those things.

  Where was the fun if I didn’t get to play with them first?

  With the man now completely unarmed, I let go of his broken wrist and grasped his helm with both hands. He probably thought I was going to crush his skull in the same way I’d done with one of the others, but I wanted to look him in the eye as he died. The shield around his face would obstruct his vision, and I wanted to make sure he could see me properly, and see the evil that swarmed my face.

  Once the helm was abandoned on the forest floor, I took my first proper look at the knight. Beads of sweat coated his round cheeks, and his face was blushed a deep red from the blood that surged through his body. His brown hair was a greasy mess on his head, and as I had suspected, his green eyes pleaded with me to keep him alive.

  “I have a family,” he spluttered. “Please, you don’t have to do this.”

  “But I do,” I replied. My demon voice gurgled with smoke as I spoke the words.

  Even in his terror, the knight was ripe with the pungent scent of the filthiest greed and malice, and it was this scent that assured me he deserved exactly what was coming to him. Still, he continued to beg for his life, but this had the opposite effect on me than he probably expected.

  All of these men had committed some awful crimes. They were the kind of devious cretins who called to my every sense, and the stench of their evil only made it more satisfying to destroy them.

  They deserved the punishment, and this bastard’s last-minute desperation only fed my appetite.

  I positioned one hand around his throat as sinful energy pulsed through my body, and every time he took a shallow breath, my hand constricted some more. It was always a fun game to play, and I was intrigued to see how long he would hold on before his lungs gave out.

  My hands began to burn, and I noticed the violet glow that shadowed over his skin as the feeling intensified. It was only seconds later that my hell power gained in strength, and a heavy jolt of crippling electricity thundered through the man’s body. His head snapped back as his neck shattered from the force, and his dead body collapsed to the ground.

  Four down, one to go.

  The fifth and final member of this king’s guard wasn’t going to be hard to defeat, especially since he still laid unmoving beside his fallen brothers. He had been unconscious for a while now, partially due to the tree trunk I’d thrown at him. That was one advantage to fighting in the forest. It always gave me an opportunity to really play around up here and use whatever I could get my hands on. Of course, with my demon strength, this could have all ended the second it began, but when I was given the opportunity to play, I always took advantage of the free time.

  I gently placed my foot on the man’s helm and tried my best not to squash his head straight away. I rolled it back and forth to jostle the man awake, but when that didn’t work, I hooked my hands under his arms and hoisted him up. It looked like the man wasn’t going to wake up any time soon, though, so I gave up trying and let him crash down into a heap once again.

  “Pathetic,” I chuckled.

  A small flock of birds in the branches above my head startled and flew away at the sound of my demonic laugh. It surprised me that they’d managed to find some comfort with me around up until then. Animals could often sense when they shouldn’t be near me.

  The unconscious man slowly began to come to at last, and I watched as his head rolled from side to side.

  I stood for a second and took in the humorous scene, and I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on inside his battered head, or whether he remembered the fight at all.

  He let out a painful moan as he tried to move his arms and legs, but this seemed to be a struggle for the weak mortal.

  I quickly became bored of watching his movements, and I hoisted him back up again with one hand. I smirked at the noise he made, but then I tore off his helm and tossed it onto the ground like I’d done with my previous prey.

  They both looked fairly similar, with messy brown hair and a red sweaty face, but all mortals looked the same to me these days. Still, I knew this one didn’t even have strength left in him to fight, and I chose to do the right thing and put him out of his misery.

  My hand was around his throat within a fraction of a second, and I waited patiently as his face grew redder and
redder. Then a blue tint crossed over his cheeks, and the feeble mortal spluttered as he struggled to take in some oxygen. He was twitching as his eyes bulged, and he began to glow in the same violet light as my eyes right before a jolt of energy ran through my arm and took his life.

  I let out a sigh as the knight flopped to the ground with a clank.

  Then I quickly glanced around the forest to make sure no one else had come into my path before I continued to finalize my work.

  These cretins needed to go, and there was only one place for them.

  I brought out a small dagger from my leather jacket. The weapon had been forged in hellfire which made it treacherous to mortals. If these men did something as simple as touching the handle, their body would begin to burn and bubble with thick, oozing boils.

  But a completely different reaction would occur if the dagger pierced their skin. It would be ten times as torturous, of course, but I’d done them the kindness of ending their lives first, at least.

  I took the first knight in front of me, pushed his head to one side to get better access at his neck, and then stabbed the hellish blade into his skin.

  The second the hellfire had been deposited into his body, the mortal began to tremble violently, and it almost looked as if he was alive again. I watched in delight as a visible, clear blue energy lifted from the man, and it seemed to scream in a high-pitched squeal before the spirit burst apart in a blinding light.

  I grinned as the scream faded, and I wasted no time before completing the ritual with the last four knights. Then I looked down at the hellish dagger in my palm, and the cursed weapon burst into deep-red flames and dissolved back into the Hellscape where it belonged.

  My job was done.

  I’d been sent to this city for one reason, and one reason only, and now, the cretins had been siphoned straight to the Hellscape for the Dark King to deal with.

  Not that they put up much of a fight about it.

  “Good boy, young Atticus,” a deep voice ran through my head. “The Dark King will be very proud.”

  I instantly bristled at the words, but I clenched my fists and nodded my head slowly. I didn’t bother saying a word in response, since I knew my Lord Captain was probably watching me from where he stood in the Hellscape. The Lord Captains certainly didn’t need to keep a constant eye on us wherever we went on the surface world, but mine was an overbearing prick like that.

  I stepped over the wasted corpses of the mortals at my feet, and the blood of the five knights sloshed under my boot as I made my way deeper into the forest. I always felt a surging, addictive sense of purpose after I completed a mission, but this time, it felt different. I wasn’t sure if it was a good or a bad thing, but I tried to focus on the adrenaline and nothing else.

  These were some of the few moments in my existence where I was truly satisfied.

  Rain had started to fall sometime during my killing spree, and as I crunched through the leaves and branches beneath my feet, I embraced the feeling of the droplets on my skin. I had visited this world plenty of times before, so it wasn’t the first time I’d experienced the change in weather up here, but I hadn’t realized how pleasant it was. My skin was always burning in the Hellscape, and even though it changed to that of a human on the surface world, I suddenly felt like one miniscule raindrop held enough power to extinguish the fire coursing in my sinews.

  “Atticus,” my captain spoke again. “You know what to do now.”

  “I know, sir,” I replied in a gravelly whisper.

  “Good boy,” he added, and my jaw clenched.

  My Lord Captain held the reins over his lessers, and I just had to do as he said. Every time a mission was completed, we were to return straight to the Hellscape along with the souls of our prey. I wore a shackle permanently attached to my upper left arm for this express purpose.

  I hated the slave shackle more than fire hated water.

  The band was made of pure hell gold and bore the Dark King’s emblem etched into the center. It acted like a portal, which gave us the ability to leave and return whenever a mission came about, but it was also how my Lord Captain managed to watch over me. He knew of my every step because of that shackle, and if I changed my course, he’d be right there behind me.

  For now, he had received his answer, and he knew I would return soon like I always did, so I took the opportunity to continue my walk through the forest.

  The trees raised high in the sky and blocked out most of the dark blue glow above. I could feel and hear the rain falling from above me, but the wide branches acted like a canopy to keep me mostly dry. The leaves rustled around me, but I knew it was nothing for a demon to fear. Perhaps a wolf, or another wild animal was on a hunt like I was. They could have been taking a walk through the forest after securing their kill, or maybe they were running from a much larger animal that was still in the middle of their mission.

  After a half an hour of walking, the forest trees came to an end, and I found myself out in the open in a small street packed with cobblestones, and dark stone buildings lined the road on the opposite side. A couple of humans hurried past me with their arms over their heads to protect them from the rain, but I couldn’t understand why it appeared so dangerous to them.

  It was only water, and while the mortals’ bodies were obviously weak, this rain was nothing like the acid that fell from the sky in the Hellscape.

  Regardless of the number of times I visited the surface world, I never understood the workings of mortals.

  I ignored another passerby and continued on my way. I kept my head low and watched the pools of water at my feet as I walked over the cobblestones. I could smell something delectable coming from a building nearby, and my mouth began to salivate at the idea of chomping down on a piece of meat. It had been a week since I last ate, and usually, I wouldn’t have felt hunger just yet, but then I remembered the form I was in.

  Whenever I arrived in the surface world, my body changed to help me blend in with the occupants who lived here. The knights from before would have thought I was a mortal before they took a look at my glowing eyes. This was the biggest sign I wasn’t remotely human.

  I still wore the clothes I had originally been wearing, which included a pair of black leather pants, a white ruffled shirt, a leather jacket, and a pair of boots. A variety of things were different between my demon and mortal form, though. I used to have thick, curled horns that protruded from the top of my head, my slender fingers were more like claws than these blunt things, and then there was my hair. Hair wasn’t something we had in the Hellscape, but now, it was long, black, and stopped at my shoulders. No matter how many times I changed into this form, I couldn’t get used to the feeling against my neck and ears.

  The dark clouds were ever so slightly lighter now while they continued to trickle with rain, and I followed the small street around a corner. The road continued downhill, and more of the same dark brick buildings lined the edge of it. For a second I thought I ended up on the same road as before, but I continued to walk and hoped I’d come across something more interesting to look at.

  Now that it was a little lighter, I could see lofty, forested mountains encroaching on the city from three sides in the distance, and the briny smell of a sea lingered in the air. The clouds were so dense, they seemed to sit on top of the tallest peaks, and some of the metal spires in the distance were swallowed up in the blue blanket.

  A flurry of noise hit my ears as I made my way further down the rainy street, and I turned my head in time to see a man head toward me with a wooden cart being pulled behind him.

  I jumped out of the way, and the man barely acknowledged my presence as he continued to walk. The back of his cart was piled high with green, leafy vegetables and brown sacks that bulged at the sides.

  I knew from my orders that this city was called the Port of Rengfri, but that was where my knowledge of it ended. Apart from the obvious forests and small, grim streets of the outskirts, I didn’t know anything else about this area. It wasn�
��t a place I’d been sent to before, but I was interested to find out more and see what information I could gather in the short time I had.

  Which reminded me, I needed to return to the void sooner rather than later, otherwise, my Lord Captain would get on my ass about it again.

  I couldn’t bring myself to do it, though.

  Listening to that angry bastard call me a “good boy” had started to get under my skin more than I cared to admit. I knew my place, and I knew what I had to do under the laws of the Dark King, but I hated being thought of as a minion and nothing more. There were some in the Hellscape who enjoyed it and begged at their Lord Captain’s feet to get their approval, but I wasn’t one of them.

  And I’d never once groveled for the Dark King, not in all the eons I’d served in his ranks.

  By now, I should have stooped that low.

  The other demons were broken things, and I despised them as much as my enslaver and his enslaver and so on until the top of the bloody pyramid where the Dark King sat on his throne of bloody skulls.

  Fuck them all.

  I was different from them.

  I was better.

  I remembered who I was.

  Well, not all of who I was, but I remembered once being mortal. At least, I remembered small things.

  The words “Los Angeles.”

  A six-stringed instrument played with a small piece of material between my fingers.

  Something called a “PlayStation.”

  Her blonde hair tickling my nose.

  Her lips pressed against mine.

  They were like shadowy memories in my foggy mind.

  Us hellborn were said to come from the vilest of mortals who had committed the most horrific of crimes, just like our prey, but I didn’t have memories of any violence from the time before I was a demon. I only remembered these small things like bits of ashes caught on the wind that lived for just a half moment.

  I could never remember much more, but none of my brethren remembered anything at all. They just festered in their home of fire, and hate, and screams.