Chapter One

The one thing I know for certain about myself is that I am not a good person. Not to say that I do not fight everyday to do what is right, but from birth I have been tainted by my own blood. Born of Satanic ritual, raised as an assassin against a good, and as a man, champion for the dark lord Stygian himself: these are not the credentials of a good man.

But not for lack of trying.

Freed of Stygian’s control by my half-brother, the Templar Alexander Graymalkin, I now walk the endless night of the Shadowside. I seek absolution for my deeds of yesterday by seeking out and destroying the evil that plagues these city streets. I fight now against Stygian’s dark rule and all that would follow in his path.

My name is Charon. I have no other, not anymore. If you carry malice in your heart, pray you never hear of me again.

*****

Lifeblood, they call it. I’m told it is Shadowside’s “trendiest hotspot”. I trust that means something to those who might frequent it, for I know little of such things. One such as I has little time for personal entertainment, especially the kind sold from Lifeblood’s back room.

Ichor, or ick, they call it. I call it a walking death. Distilled from vampire blood, the drug worked as a mild hallucinogen. It doesn’t carry the ill effects of many illicit drugs, which made it highly popular with the rich younger set that used it. But what the Breed’s dealers didn’t tell the drug’s users was that it made them far more susceptible to vampiric influence.

Very susceptible. Dangerously so.

The club was brimming with life and unlife as I approached its entrance. Vampires, wannabes, ick junkies, and normal ‘siders (that should honestly know better) mixed together in a tightly packed dance floor. Strobe lights flashed from above and mixed with black lights on the floor to create a supposedly eerie effect. I doubt anyone here knew anything of the true sinister nature of their world.

I entered the club with ease. The security guard at the door let anyone willing to pay a fifteen dollar cover inside. I have little need for human wealth, as the dark energies coursing through my veins sustain me. But the entrance fee was easily earned a few minutes earlier when I relieved a would-be rapist of his weapons (both hand-held and between his legs) and his wallet.

My height and choice of dress did little to make me stand out in the gyrating mass of human flesh. Everyone seemed to dress in dark leather here and several of the beefier tights were about my size.

I made my way through the room as quickly as possible, which proved to be not very quick at all. The dancers and addicts did little to clear a path for me. Why would they? The residents of Shadowside feared far worse things than a larger than normal human. Creatures that lurked in shadows or beneath the street. Malignant, evil things.

The kind of creatures I fight every night.

My mystic-sense picked up any number of supernatural creatures on the club floor, but it was the back room that held the greatest concentration of inhuman creatures.

Where the ick was made. Where I would find the first of the objects sought by my former master.

Or so I hoped.

I threw the door to the storage area open. I pushed my way through cases and drums of various alcoholic beverages as well as bag after bag of empty bottles and crushed cans.

The back wall seemed to be solid brick, but my extra senses told me otherwise. I felt along the wall’s surface and in a matter of seconds I found the hidden latch. The wall shuddered and slid open. Inside was a large den. Multiple vampires supervised their mind-numbed servitors. The dozen or so humans in the room worked endlessly at a pair of fold out tables in the center of the room, cooking and distilling the ingredients for ick.

They continued to work in their trance as I entered the room. I counted six vampires in the room. One to either side of the entrance, three more in a loose triangle around the ick production table, and a final vamp supervising from a raised desk on the far end of the room.

The nearest vampire, a brute of a creature even bigger than me cut off my entrance.

“You came to the wrong place, human,” he said. “Now you’re going to learn what it’s like to be dinner.”

He lunged for me, teeth bared like so many newborns of his race. I brought up my left forearm and his teeth smashed in to the chain around my wrist. I felt his teeth break before I brought my other fist down in to the vampire’s skull. The bone gave way, and the creature’s brain matter oozed from his ears. His undead nature would probably keep his body alive, but with little more intelligence than an insect.

His comrade to my other side came up from behind me. Unlike his friend, he was smart enough to strike with the crowbar in his hand. Like his friend, he didn’t stand a chance in hell.

I twisted around and caught the end of the crowbar with my left hand. As the stunned vamp realized what I had done, I brought my knee up in to his groin. The vamp buckled forward as lunged forward and drove my fist through his chest. My hand exploded out of his back. Seconds later, the vampire’s body crumpled to dust around my forearm.

“I’m here for the Osiris Scripts,” I said. “Give them to me and no more of you will need taste oblivion today.”

Another vamp lunged from his perch just past the table. He floated up and over the humans manufacturing ick. He brought his foot down in perfect line with my forehead. A deadly kick.

I sidestepped the blow. I threw my hands up and around his ankle and knee. I twisted my arms and forced his body down and around. His momentum drove him head first in to the floor. I raised my foot up and brought it down hard on his ribcage. The bones snapped at the impact. The jagged fragments of rib drove through his heart and he faded to nothing but dust.

“Any of the rest of you want to try something stupid?” The vamps didn’t answer. The human thralls continued about their work, blissfully unaware of anything happening around them.

“Where’s the artifact?”

The vampires’ obvious leader rose from his desk across the room. He stroked his long Fu Manchu-style beard as he looked down at me.

“Many have died for this tome. Take it from us, and rest assured no good will come of it.”

“I have dealt with a lack of good for all of my life. Give me the Osiris Scripts.”

The leader stared at me for a moment, but he only saw I had no intention of backing down. He turned around and rested his hand against the wall. After several seconds of mumbled rune-speak, the wall melted away.

He reached in to the new alcove and gently lifted the tome from its perch within. Bound in ancient gray leather, reportedly made from the skin of a thousand Egyptians, the tome oozed infernal energies in to the room. It could feel its dark presence as a palpable force. I could hear its dark words as they tried to whisper their way in to my thoughts. I pushed its malignant energies away as I reached out my right hand.

The vampire leader hesitated for a moment as he looked at me again. He reluctantly passed the tome to one of his lieutenants. With reverence from the unholy book, the underling carried it to me and placed it in my outstretched hand.

Eldritch energy coursed in to my hand and connected with the sorcery already flowing in my veins. I fought the tome’s dark grip, but its unearthly powers overwhelmed me. I could hear the surviving vampires as they saw the dark energies overtake me. I closed my eyes and fought a battle within myself. A battle for my very soul.

The energies coursed for me and my veins burned with the tome’s unholy might. I dropped down to one knee and gritted my teeth so as not to scream. I dropped to the floor and everything went black.

When I opened my eyes again, I found myself standing in a barren wasteland. No sign of Lifeblood, Shadowside, anything. Desert as far as the eye could see.

And above me, the burning light of the sun. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt its warmth. It burned in to my skin with its cleansing light; my skin started to itch beneath it.

I looked down at the Osiris Scripts, still clutched tightly in my hand. I could feel its dark power, but it was quieter now.

I could still hear an occasional whisper in rune-speak, but the voice no longer reached out for me. I walked up and over the crest of the nearest hill to find it less a hill than a cliff. I stood on the edge of a mesa, and below me stretched a small town nestled in to the valley. The tome whispered to something in this strange new town.

And something within the town answered it.

I knew not what unholy quest I had been brought into, but I knew I could not let this new force go unchecked.

I could not risk such power falling in to the hands of Stygian.

My name is Charon and while I live, evil will die.

I started my trek down to the village below.