Present day

People didn’t need water to drown or flames to burn. They drowned in lost hope. They drowned when they’d gulped down too much desperation and had traded acts of love for wickedness. The evil that had been birthed from wicked decisions and wrong-turned paths licked flames up their legs and burned them alive.

Riam knew all too well what wicked decisions could do. He and his people had created a future that all of mankind was paying for now.

Riam faced north in his bedroom, in his usual cross-legged Sukhasana yoga pose, with a thick ring of salt surrounding him, and he meditated. Meditation pulled his guard down, the salt kept the noise of the wicked from ringing in his ears. Although he was not Wiccan and did not practice ritual magick, he knew evil existed and it gunned for him as much as he had gunned for it. Millennia of hunting the dark and perverted had left his name tattooed at the top of every evil and corrupt hit list in town. He was used to having the massive target on his head. Every path taken had a price and he paid dearly, always. It was a debt he was more than willing to pay, for the safety of those he cared about.

He sat with his long sandy-blond hair pulled up into a bun. His body was nude and free of any objects that grounded him to his current reality. He focused on letting go of his thoughts, willing himself to let go of the world that surrounded him. He cleared his mind of those in the house, of the noises that echoed down the halls, from the pool balls that cracked against one another to the playful banter that passed between his fellow Slayers. He had built a wall in his mind and around his body to filter out the sounds of the world. It left him alone and in silence. He directed his thoughts inward on his center-most consciousness, releasing the external world and the distractions it brought with it.

It had become increasingly difficult to calm his thoughts after the raid six months ago. Flashes of war had filled his mind and busied his thoughts—war from a time so long ago that the memories had bled into one another to form one large tribute to the man he used to be. He once had been a man who was brave, fearless and a warrior of the highest rank—someone he was thankful to have walled up in a stone tower in the back of his mind, never to escape again. He’d become a man who couldn’t look in the mirror. To do so would mean he’d have to look deep into himself—a task that was much harder than any time he’d stood alone on a battlefield and faced off against dozens of enemies.

Everyone struggled with looking Riam in the eyes. He didn’t blame them. The darkness of his soul would stare out and scare even the strongest. For Riam, it was a constant reminder of how close he had come to the brink of Hades. His actions had paved the way toward his own personal pit of hell, a cliff he looked over each time the thought of screwing with fate had crossed his mind.

In the six months that had passed, between the cleansing of Blood Alley and this moment he now sat in, nothing had changed and yet everything was transformed. Their raid had knocked the Rancor Order on their asses. Fewer and fewer hunts were needed. Although the Order was in hiding, the Slayers still went after them. And as they’d slaughtered the Order, no one had heard from Strain. He’d dropped off the face of the earth. The Slayers knew that he’d be back. Cockroaches always came back for the decaying leftovers and unwanted odds and ends. And that was Strain—a scavenger of the lowest variety.

Even with Strain in hiding, the Genesys was still out there. This war would continue until he was gone and his ashes were scattered across six bodies of water. The Genesys would continue building an empire with or without his son. Until he was stopped, the Slayers would continue their hunt for his ending.

The cleansing had wiped out the Proletaryans and the labs needed to create them. The raid had destroyed the compounds, training camps, caches and stockpiles. The incursion against evil had done what it had promised it would do, bring Hades to the doorsteps of the scum that tainted the streets of Van City. Each door Riam had kicked down, he’d hoped to find one specific woman—the woman who had screamed for him to leave her behind. The woman he’d left the night they’d saved Neri, Zylan’s Fyrvor. He didn’t regret the choice. Neri had to be saved. She was needed to create a cure for the irregular gene. Regret or no regret, it still pained him to have left the woman behind.

‘Get out of here.’

Riam could still hear the woman behind the door who’d screamed to him.

A little window in the door had showed the smallest slice of who she was, but it was enough to burn the image of her eyes into his mind. She’d stood with shoulders straight, nude body bruised and battered and not a drop of fear in her voice. Her voice had rolled over his skin like a million ants marching. It held determination and fearlessness he could relate to. The smell of home had risen in his lungs and coated his clammy flesh like sugar water. Her eyes, blue as the ocean and as deep as the center, housed a pool of darkness that had threatened to pull him under and eat him whole. They were a mirror of his own, a sinkhole so deep it drowned anyone who was ignorant enough to go for a swim.

‘I’ll come back for you,’ Riam had screamed to her.

It had taken everything he’d had to force his feet to carry him away from her. Leaving someone behind had cut him up, but it had to be done. Sacrifice the one for the many. That had summed up his entire godforsaken life.

It was a pipe dream, never leaving someone behind. The thought was a noble one, but not realistic in the least. People were left behind all the time, or so that was what he had told himself when he’d had to leave her. It was inevitable in times of war. It’s in the fine print. It was the risk taken every time a soldier stepped onto the battlefield. They knew they could die on that field or be left to die alone. Every warrior alike knew those risks and took them willingly.

Movies gave people an unrealistic idea of what war was. It wasn’t glamorous and no one came back the same. War was hell. War was wicked. It was a tar pit of pain and suffering. The reasons people were fighting never truly mattered, not to war anyway. War didn’t care about good or evil. War couldn’t give two fucks if there were wounded dying in the field or if an innocent was trapped under rubble. That’s what war did—gave a man balls of steel then kicked them up into his throat with a bullet to the brain. The last thing he heard was the laughter of war. That was true war, not the shit they put up at the cinema, filled with romance and going home. No one went home, not completely. A piece was always left behind, a payment to war.

Riam had been front and center. He’d fought shoulder to shoulder with his people in endless wars against the evil and the wicked. And each time, he’d left people behind—good people, righteous people. They were his people, left in the trenches to save the innocents. Each time he stepped off the battlefield, war was beside him, clinging to him like a starved animal.

Riam—with no last name—was a Seer. That’s what they were called. He didn’t call himself that name any longer. He’d given that life up, willingly. He’d been a missionary, a hunter, a killer, a general in the Holy Wars. He’d been many things over his one thousand years—a lifetime of near misses and praying for his life to finally come to an end. But each day, he woke up. Each time he lay on his back, bleeding out, he woke up, having been dragged off the field. But he knew he’d live. He’d seen his own future in war, and it was a long fucking life. When death finally took him, he’d come back. His people always did, at least once.

Although he could see the future, he hadn’t seen Sasha coming, the woman behind the door. He couldn’t see her path. He knew because of his blindness toward her that her road was wicked—evolving and altering with each string she plucked—and that he would come face to face with her. She was like so many of his people that had changed the future. He had felt her manipulations in his bones the moment his eyes had locked with hers. It had left a taste on the back of his tongue—a sour flavor that told his brain to turn to go the other way. She was bad news.

Each time she’d changed the future to suit her needs, it had changed her own fate. A story that was once written for her now sat faded. She was a blank page to him, but he knew their paths would cross again. She could alter as much as she’d like, but destiny still had a way of working itself out, only more would die than originally planned. More would suffer and more pain would come. It was the way of his people. When you fuck with fate, fate fucks you back.

Riam and his people came from a long history of face palms and fate fucking. Sasha wasn’t the first to alter the future, she had learned from the best. They’d paid dearly for trying to reweave the fabric of time not yet passed. They’d all had suffered for what they’d done, but it was nothing compared to what mankind would face.

The history of his people was warped. Riam’s people were created to battle against the shadows. Their creator was none other than the Orygin. Banishing the darkness to Hades, the Heavens were created and man flourished. Riam’s people were granted freedom to live among man. Some chose to remain behind. They were formed into Watchyrs, Healers and Messengers. They would become the light above.

Riam’s line had walked among mankind. His direct descendants had come from the line of Laocoon. Laocoon, a Priest of Apollo, a Seer, had broken his vows to the gods by fathering two sons, Antiphantes and Thymbraeus. As punishment, two serpents were dispatched and attacked Laocoon and his sons. It was said that the eldest son Antiphantes had lived. He had fathered children with a Sibyl, an oracle, a Vampyre. They had birthed the future of hybrid Vampyres, Seers.

Like every other species walking the earth, there were varying stories of his origin. Riam didn’t care where he came from—not anymore, not after one thousand years. All he knew was that when he died, he’d come back a hybrid Vampyre and live out his days until someone bigger and better than him took his last life.

He’d walked away from life as a Seer. He’d left behind the wars, the fighting and thinking the Seers had somehow done something great for humanity. They hadn’t. The path they had interrupted by their acts had only created room for more hate and evil. Seers had been the difference between one person dying and one hundred, them causing the larger number. Their righteous wars had been nothing short of judgment day and murder. Riam had not been able to be who he was born to be. He’d lost the right to call himself noble and honorable. They all had.

On the floor of his bedroom at the Slayer compound, Riam felt the weight of his body lessen. After willing himself to calm, he searched for Sasha with his birthed abilities. Abilities he hadn’t used since the day he’d walked away from his people were on the tip of his fingers. Opening up to this extent made him vulnerable to a bombardment of visions and voices. He’d learned how to shut down and control his Seer side. They were the same teachings he’d passed on to Desdemona, to help her control her Kler’ abilities.

A person would grow mad, deranged, having to listen to the whispers of the wicked. The asylums were filled with Klers who couldn’t control their abilities. They were a hairpin away from leveling the block or imploding. He, himself, was an inch from that insanity to find Sasha.

During the raid, he’d let the wicked parts of himself out, to uncover where Sasha was. He thought he’d be able to sleep just fine at night, letting out his own wickedness for a good enough reason, but he’d lied to himself. He had lied long enough to torture members of the Rancor Order. What he had done to those he caught alive was heinous and cruel.

He’d broken his word to his sister for the first time. He’d known it wouldn’t be the last time he threw his honor to the side for Sasha. If she survived, he knew he’d be able to live with his decisions to reopen that chapter from long ago. If he found her alive, he’d be able to sleep at night—or so he hoped.

He had her name and a few details he didn’t want to hear, but no location—at least, no location that was still standing. The men he’d questioned had paid—dearly, lengthily, for all they’d witnessed done to Sasha. But it hadn’t been enough. No amount of abhorrent, beastly hate would be enough for the Order. Complete and utter annihilation wouldn’t even touch the tip of what he wanted to do to them.

Sasha Grant. It was enough to send him on a hunt, digging up everything he could on her. It had taken a few days, but he’d found records of an explosion that had claimed the lives of two children and their father. Their mother had been spared, thrown through the front window. The photo in the paper was of Sasha sitting on the curb in front of her leveled home and burned life. She hadn’t aged a day. The only change he’d noticed was in her eyes. Her eyes in the photo were bursting with tears and sadness. But now they were filled with vengeance, deepening the pool of wickedness looking back from under the lids.

A little more digging and Riam came up with a file from the Netherworld. The Rancor Order had been the prime suspects. They’d hit multiple locations—homes of officials and those who had alliances with the Netherworld—but this one didn’t make sense. Sasha had no connections to the Netherworld, like the others always had. She’d been a full-time mother and her partner had been a public defender. They’d lived in the burbs—no social influences, nothing. But there had to be some connection. There always was. He just didn’t know what it was yet.

Days previously, as Riam tossed and turned in bed, Sasha had come to him in a dream. One moment he was dreaming about a battlefield and the next he was staring down into the eyes of a fallen soldier, Sasha.

“Riam, help me,” Sasha had whispered. Then she was gone and Riam was awake.

He allowed his mind to wander through the cobwebs of his abilities, then his body began to shake. His room was the perfect temperature, yet he was frozen to the bone. His marrow frosted and his blood slowed to a crawl, thickened from the arctic ice. Pushing his mind toward her, he saw nothing but darkness—like opening your eyes to find you have no sight. He followed the voice he’d heard in a dream.

“Sasha, I’m coming for you,” Riam yelled out. A trickle of a whisper was all he could hear. The starved darkness ate up his voice.

Warning flares exploded in his brain. The darkness smelled like Strain…but more. On the back of his tongue, he could taste tears and fear and a bitter sadness. His brain screamed with the threat that he was in and sent his mind soaring back to into his body. Riam couldn’t force his mind to stay in the void, even if he’d wanted to. Self-preservation always won out over curiosity.