My thanks to deej1957, anickamarie and ajcaddick for the great beta! kumaproogey made a wonderful vid to go with this fic, it and the amazing art for this fic are posted on my website, the link there is on my profile page. This story is next in the Two Souls verse and picks up a few months after Fire and Blood.

Prologue

It came out of the home of demons and roamed the land when the first few primitive, ruddy skinned humans trekked down from the colder northern pole cap and started to settle in the wild, rugged mountains. The area would later be known as Black Hills. The name was bestowed on that piece of land because of the way dark evergreens made it appear black from the distance. The demon thought it fitting. It swept across the land, from time to time igniting it with its special gift. Delight filled it when the great flames swept over the land, burning out the old, creating the new.

A second group of people, how it hated those beings and wanted nothing more than to burn them from the land, these with paler skin moved across the land eventually. There were wars and wrath between the two groups of humans, much to the demon's entertainment. Despite its best efforts and the warnings of the first people, the lighter skinned ones settled on the land. The land belonging to a demon.

It dug in, staking out a plot and curling into the ground, claiming it, owning it. Whatever people stupid enough to stay there would belong to it, as would their descendants, forever. It had been in this corner of the world, come to be known as South Dakota, far longer and it owned that land. It came to know a man, Charles McCreedy, who lived on its land along with his wife, Michelle Redding. It tainted her seed, their seed, and all the seeds of all their generations to follow. It embedded in their plot of farmland and stayed.

It followed their son, popping in and out until he was caught by the humans and incarcerated hundreds of miles from the patch of land. Prison turned out to be a boon for the demon. It ruled via the man, keeping his body going long after it would have stopped. Mending it and through it lording over other creatures in the place called prison.

Stories of demons and possessions abound in this land, the demon's land, yet it never feared. When they got too close it reached out and swept the land with fiery blades, clearing it and burning away as much of the human taint as possible.

Other humans eventually followed the farmers, they settled in a hidden town, Haven. They were men on horses and later gas powered machines who called themselves hunters and tracked down demons, worked to eradicate them from the land. They had names like Colt, Campbell, Turner and Elkins. Later there were names like Singer, Wendell, Winchester and Murphy.

Sometimes it would spend weeks or months on its patch of land, burning away those people unfortunate enough to be caught in its grasp, helped by some of its tainted ones, descendants of Redding and McCreedy.

Then one fateful day the demon was offered a truly wonderful prize. One of them, one of the hunters, nothing more than a boy really, wandered into its trap. Abaddon, demon of fire, wrapped its flaming fingers around the boy's chest, squeezed hard and held on tight.