Authors: Jeremy Laszlo
All their eyes turned up to the top of the wall, and from
one on the ground a fireball lanced towards the defenders. Another of Seth’s
werewolves fell.
Miles away, unnoticed by anyone, Seth’s corpse did something
unexpected. With a twitch of his neck his heart fluttered, as again the synapses
in his brain began to fire. Coughing, the death mage rose from the dead.
I will get the next book out to you as soon as I am able,
but…
If you have enjoyed this book you have to check out:
It is a new Co-Authored series that I am writing with
Aubrianna Hunter. It has the same dark and descriptive flavor as my Young
Adult, Blood and Brotherhood Saga, but is intended for a more mature audience.
Leaning more towards the urban side of fantasy, Beyond the Mask is set in
Detroit with a paranormal tale unlike you have ever read before. Below is the
Prologue and the first chapter, I hope you enjoy it.
Lucifer was once the greatest of the archangels, taking up
his place beside the Creator of all life. From nearly the beginning of time,
he served at the Creator’s side, doing whatever the Lord willed. But slowly
something began to change in Lucifer, and inevitably he sought the source of
the change.
Over the eons he became jealous, envious of the love that
was had for God. Perhaps his inner light darkened. Perhaps being the hand of
God had been too much for him. Perhaps the seed of evil that had come from
free will had taken root in heaven as well as earth. For whatever reason,
Lucifer sought to place himself above God.
So it was that Lucifer stood within the heavens, staring at
the vast kingdom of beauty. Envious of his master, he lusted to have it for
himself to rule. Knowing alone he could not defeat God, he plotted and
subverted other angels to his cause. Gaining momentum he raised an army and in
the heavens a war was fought over not only the kingdom, but the domain of man
as well.
So it was that many immortals were slain, but in the end the
Creator and those loyal to Him were victorious. To teach Lucifer a lesson and
create a safe domain for all He loved, God saw fit not to slay the archangel
that once stood beside Him. Instead, He cast Lucifer down to forever inhabit
hell, a fiery abyss where he would spend eternity in damnation.
“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the
morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!”
Isaiah 14:12
Defeated, Lucifer was cast from heaven into the only portal
between the immortal planes of heaven and hell…Earth. Though most envision
this as an instantaneous process, it is not. For any soul, mortal or immortal,
to pass between heaven and hell, they must first cross through the domain of
man, in mortal flesh, over the expanse of a human life.
Some religions believe this to be purgatory, a place for
souls to absolve all their sins. Regardless of its name, however, those souls
cast down from heaven live yet again, usually as tortured beings whose inner
turmoil allows them little of the fulfillment and happiness a mortal life can
provide. It is conquering this torment and following the path of light that
grants these souls eternity at God’s side. Most are incapable.
Knowing this, and knowing that for him there was no
redemption, Lucifer came upon the world in mortal flesh. Tormented were his
heart and soul, to the very point of no return. But refusing to show his
weakness to those in heaven, and as defiance to his lord and creator, he spread
his seed within mankind.
Taking a mortal lover, as angels were forbidden to do,
Lucifer spawned a demon, which was not too different from the demigods of
legend. Seeking escape from its fleshy womb, the child cursed by God, tore
free from its mother in labor, and instead of seeking her tit, it fed upon her
blood, killing her.
A creature cursed by God, Lucifer taught the demonic beast
dressed in human flesh how to survive as a creature banished from the light.
It was doomed to walk the world without a soul, without chance of redemption,
for all of eternity. Never would his child be permitted to heaven nor hell,
never would it be permitted to die.
For Lucifer’s own vanity and greed, God made the child more
beautiful than its father and made it lustful, as well. Soulless and unliving,
the only blood that would flow within it was the blood of those it fed upon.
His lifetime spent, Lucifer passed from this realm to the
next to inhabit hell for all eternity, to be held by chains and tortured by
flame. His son, the first to ever be called a vampire, was cursed to walk the
world in darkness for all eternity, alone.
It was centuries before the child discovered he could create
more like himself out of those tortured souls in purgatory. Among mankind they
were considered weak of mind, often diagnosed with mental illness. So it was
that he began to seek those who were shunned by society, and by heaven, to
create for himself those who would share his fate.
“Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil
prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”
1 Peter 5:8
A fresh blast of synthetic fog filled the giant chamber as
lasers in a multitude of colors sliced the air into thousands of smaller
pieces. A deep thrumming sound began to grow louder and louder from the
relative darkness as an eerie calm fell over the room. A single note from a
deeply tuned bass drum reverberated off the crowd, the walls, and following it,
a flash from hundreds of strobe lights.
The feeling was surreal in that moment, as over a thousand
sweat covered bodies were instantly etched into everyone’s memories. A single
flash. A single image. Yet to decipher what it contained was impossible. A
roar was building within the crowd and again came the deep resounding reply
from the center stage. Again the strobes flashed and another image replaced
the first. Derek wondered how much the walls of the old industrial building
could take.
Standing in the darkness, he could feel the energy in the
room around him like an electric charge, building to the point of explosion.
The bass drum began to lay out a steady rhythm that echoed across the vast
chamber. Strobes began to flash opposite the drumbeats, illuminating thousands
of raised hands as most in the room bounced upon their toes, their palms lifted
to the heavens and heads thrown back in benevolent bliss. A bass guitar lent
itself to the beat and the crowd began to scream in expectation as the center
stage was finally illuminated and upon it, the main act of the night stood in
all of their glory.
From head to toe the entire band was dressed in professional
zombie makeup and looked more like a movie production than a musical group. Here
in the run down industrial section of Detroit, however, the heavy metal zombie
band called Desolate Perversion had brought life to an otherwise lifeless
portion of the city. Nothing lived here but addicts and bums.
As the lead guitar disrupted the almost intoxicating
thrumming from its deeper counterparts, the band’s lead singer split the air
with a hair-raising scream that sent the crowd into a frenzy. Bodies began to
bounce off one another like a flipbook, their movements broken between the flashing
of the strobe lights. Screams arose and fell and the scent of many freshly lit
joints lent themselves to the banana-scented fog the stage crew was using.
Between the flashes, he watched as a girl not ten feet away
stripped off her shirt, twirling it above her head as she danced slowly,
unnaturally, her movements disjointed, like a horror flick, between the bursts
of light. He grinned.
In a surging sea of drug and alcohol fueled bodies, where
ears rang from the music, and conversations were lost in mere inches, Derek was
an island of isolation. Not in the sense that he was alone, but in the sense
that he did not move as one with the tide surging around him. Truth was, he was
not here for the music. He was here for the inspiration.
Over a thousand glistening bodies inhabited the floor of the
underground concert that had only been announced an hour before, and more
poured in by the second. Derek was lost to the commotion around him. He did
not listen to the music though it reverberated through his very bones. He did
not watch the ever-growing crowd, nor hear their screams. Hell, He hadn’t even
made the walk here entirely for himself; it was for her, for she was the key.
Petite fingers arose before Derek’s face as a crooked grin
parted his lips. She had gotten his attention, at least for a moment. The
tips of her fingers touched his forehead lightly as she nuzzled her face into
his chest a moment before leaning back to trail her hand down his face. Derek
reveled in the sensation. Here he was an island and she his mesmerizing
mermaid. Here she was free to move, and dance, and lose herself to the
electricity that invaded everything in the building.
The strobes flashed and Derek saw her face, milky white with
a tiny smattering of freckles across her nose. Framing her imperfect
perfection, long, heavy brown hair cascaded around her face to tumble over her
shoulders in earthy tones of red and gold. Her emerald eyes flashed and then
were gone as she twirled slowly, removing her hand from his chest. Between the
flashes, Derek watched as she reached behind her, grasped his hands and pulled
them to her waist.
While everyone else in the room screamed, jumped, and
frantically smashed into one another, she slowly, mercilessly rocked and shook
her hips, pressing her firm ass into his lap. Derek grinned again as she
tilted her head back upon his shoulder to look up at him. Then, again, Derek
was lost to the room, to the crowd, even to her.
Here she could let go of whatever troubled her, and when she
was free, in that very moment, her energy unlocked something within him.
Sometimes it was a smile that set him off, others it was her touch, but it was
always when she let go of the world around her. Now amidst a sea of raging
metal heads, she worked to grind her lithe body against his, while his mind
opened up for a moment, her magic setting his brain into overdrive.
These were the only moments of late when Derek could find
that which he desperately needed.
In those moments, when she made the world go away, he could
see clearly. Stories unfolded before him and characters paraded where moments
ago only a dark abyss had been. He watched them within his mind as they
interacted and spoke amongst themselves. He learned their mannerisms, the way
they spoke, and even their accents. In those moments of mental liberation he
could see an entire world play out before him, before once again it would
vanish and nothing but empty anguish would remain. When it was all lost he
raced to mentally catalog that which he had learned. Sometimes these moments
lasted for mere seconds, other times it could last for an hour or more.
Tonight three such moments had come and gone already, and he knew that this
would be the last.
He pulled hard upon her hips, driving his now rigid cock firmly
into her, yet still she continued swaying her hips, listening to a beat no one
else in the giant chamber could hear. She knew all too well what she was
doing, and Derek knew she enjoyed arousing him in public. Hell, he enjoyed it
more; only he would never admit it to her. Oh how he loved it when she played
dirty.
* * * * *
Jade felt his eyes on her and knew that, for the moment at
least, his attention was hers. Realizing that it could last hours or mere
moments, she decided to take advantage of it while she had it. Glancing back
over her shoulder, she watched his eyes glaze over again, lost unto himself.
Some would find it peculiar, his ability to simply fade in
and out of reality; even now he was lost in his own world once more. It was a
world that only he could see. A world he created. Though most people lived in
reality, Derek lived between this world and a fantasy world of his own making.
And she had the blessing and the curse of being his inspiration. His muse.
Smiling to herself, she settled in to enjoy the music. Derek
was here with her, at least physically, but only because she had wanted to
come. This was her world, her scene, and she thrived in the chaos.
The press of bodies, the music so loud it actually
ricocheted off your ear drums. You never heard music like this; you felt it
through every cell of your body.
A quick glance around the room told Jade all she needed to
know. Everyone here was hiding from something. Some were too young to know what
they were hiding from, and others were too old to change their ways. You never
came to a place like this unless you were running from something. This was raw,
pure... real. Unlike so many places, the kind of places where the shiny
platinum exterior hid the decaying, rotting core, this was just pure grit.
And she loved it.
When she felt his attention return to her, she grinned over
her shoulder, before tilting her head back to rest on his chest.
She felt his erection pressing into her ass and added a
little extra twist to her hips.
The crowd parted, giving her a tiny window of opportunity.
She took a small step away from him, swaying to the beat of the music. She
rolled forward at the waist, offering a teasing glimpse of her ass in the tight
leather skirt. His hand landed, hot and heavy, against one cheek, bringing a
full laugh bubbling up. Biting her cheek to stifle the laugh, she straightened
back up.
Spinning quickly, she turned to face him, gently wagging one
finger in front of his face as she shook her head. When his eyes squinted, his
mouth forming into a firm line, she threw her head back and let the laughter
come.