prologue

Prologue: A Devil’s Bargain

The room smelled of blood and roses.

Candlelight flickered over polished marble, casting long shadows that stretched and twisted like the echoes of a nightmare. The pentagram on the floor—drawn in something thick and dark—glistened in the low light. At its center, sprawled across the cold stone like a discarded lover, was the body.

Angel had been beautiful once. He still was, in a way—his pale skin flawless even in death, his lips parted as if waiting for a kiss that never came. His arms were stretched out at his sides, wrists bound with crimson silk. His eyes, wide and empty, stared upward at the ornate ceiling of the private club where he had drawn his last breath.

A slow, satisfied exhale came from the far side of the room.

A man in an immaculate three-piece suit leaned against the bar, swirling a glass of brandy. His sharp features were set in amusement, his lips curling around the rim of the glass as he took a sip. Around him, others lounged in dark, expensive attire—men and women draped in wealth, their eyes glittering with the same hunger that had drained the life from the boy on the floor.

"The press will eat this up," one of them murmured, running a perfectly manicured hand over the pentagram’s edges, smearing the blood just enough to give it a theatrical flair. "Another Satanic Panic headline for the tabloids."

The man with the brandy chuckled. "Let them panic. Fear is good for business."

A heavy wooden door groaned open. A figure stepped inside, a shadow slipping through candlelight. He was older, taller, wrapped in a priest’s cassock black as midnight. He moved with the careful precision of someone accustomed to power—not the fleeting, material kind that dripped from stock markets and political favors, but the kind that lingered in whispers and the cold kiss of the grave.

He stopped beside the body and looked down with something resembling curiosity.

"Did it work?" he asked.

The man with the brandy raised his glass. "That depends. You tell me."

Silence stretched between them. Then, something moved—just a flicker, a breath, a shift of shadow where there should have been none. The priest smiled.

"Yes," he murmured. "He’s listening."

Somewhere in the city, the streets thrummed with life. Neon lights buzzed, traffic roared, men whispered their sins into each other’s ears in dark alleyways. The city didn’t know it yet, but something had woken up tonight.

And it was hungry.