Prologue

When Eugene Schenkel was thirteen he'd been a loser. A tall, gangly, pimple faced teenager lacking in social skills. An angry, sullen child who turned into an angry, sullen teenager who regularly experienced the sort of mood swings that would have triggered alarms in more attentive parents. When he was fourteen and loitering in a local music store he heard the song that would change his life forever. When the rumbling bass, the arrhythmia-causing tempo and the deep-throated vocals of Danzig's Lucifuge blared over the store speakers, Eugene was snared.

He spent his high school years striving to emulate his idol. The God-like physique, the glowering, brooding disdain for social conservatism. A single-minded focus on weight lifting and body building that had the bullies who had tormented him cowering in respectful fear four years later.

The words of the songs became his mantra. I Am Demon. Apokalips. Dominion. Belly of the Beast. Bringer of Death. His skeptism of his father's Jewish faith turned to loathing. If there was a God - - and he did believe there was, because without good there could be no evil - - he was an undeserving one. Lucifer was his almighty.

He spent the summer of '94 following the Danzig 4 tour. It was there, after a show in his home state of New York, that he met a few fellow minded Doom Metal enthusiasts. When they took him to the basement of an old abandoned brownstone and introduced him to the world of organized anti-religion in the form of a group of eight, tattooed, doom espousing worshippers of Lucifer, Eugene had finally found his calling. A tight knit group of cronies who believed the same things he believed, who listened to the same music, who enjoyed killing things now and then and immersing themselves in the blood of their sacrifices. Who despised the world at large and longed for the chaos that hell on earth would bring.

Their little cult was only one of a network of brotherhoods around the world who worshipped their dark lord under the noses of polite society. Some of them were organized, secretive little societies whose members lived in suburban houses and held 9 to 5 jobs. Some were outcasts, spewing death and destruction in their wakes, going from city to city, leaving their bloody handprints for the local law to puzzle over.

The one thing they all had in common was the general knowledge and belief that one day their patience would be rewarded when the powers of evil were finally unleashed to ravish the world. In all the diverse myth and lore, one thing held true, that that was the existence of the Book of Pure Evil. The ultimate weapon in the arsenal of Lucifer. The Holy Grail to the worshippers of the Dark Lord.

By the time Eugene was 25, he'd changed his name to Draxal Gottslayer (which he thought sounded appropriately Germanic and apocalyptic at the same time), and had elevated himself to the head of his growing brotherhood. Thirty members strong, and they'd all filed into the den of dark worship in Hoboken one Friday night to find their former cult leader dismembered and disemboweled, his entrails arranged inside and around the pentagram etched into the stone floor they used for their ceremonies. Draxal had stood in the center, knives still in hand, those muscles he'd worked so hard for, glistening with sweat and blood.

He was voted in as the new leader of the Hoboken satanic sect without dissent.

Draxal was smart, he was clever and most importantly he was brutal in the pursuit of his goals. He ran a music store that sold refurbished stereos and old vinyl, heavy metal shirts and gear, black lights and posters. Anything your teenaged or not so teenaged hard rocker would find appealing enough to spend money on. Under the glass at the counter he kept his own personal obsessions, a wicked collection of daggers and bladed weapons.

Draxal liked to think of himself as a jack of many trades.

At thirty-seven he still worked out daily to maintain the intimidating, muscle-bound physique that got him laid on a regular basis by girls half his age. He treated them like trash, of course, but then women, he found, as a general rule, tended to flock towards guys who couldn't give less of fuck about impressing them.

Which was why when the girl showed up at the store one day, casually running her fingers across the rack of t-shirts, he gave her a disdainful leer and turned back to sharpening one of his knives. He watched her from the corner of his eye; she was a hot little number, with long black hair and black leather pants so tight it seemed they were painted on. She had on a mutilated Danzig t-shirt - - which fact alone sent her up a notch on the hotness scale. A fucking hot little piece of ass, and he absently rubbed his swelling balls through his jeans as she drifted through the store.

There was a kid in the store, a wanna be rocker that still lived at home with mommy and daddy if the braces he was sporting were any indication. But then kids that lived with mommy and daddy usually had money to burn. The kid was watching her too, staring at her ass with wide eyes as she bent to look at a pair of black lace up boots on a rack by the floor.

She turned around and looked at the kid, and Draxal didn't catch her expression, but the kid's face paled and he almost knocked a display over in his haste to scramble to the door.

"Watch it, you little turd - -" Draxal snarled, but the kid was long gone, the doorbell chiming in his wake.

The girl casually followed and Draxal thought she was leaving too, but all she did was turn the latch, flip the 'open' sign to 'closed', then turn to face him.

"What the fuck, bitch?"

She lifted one dark brow and in her smoldering gaze he saw something he hadn't seen directed at him in a woman's eyes since he was fourteen. Disdain.

"We need to talk, Eugene," she purred.

He straightened up, offended. "The names Draxal. Draxal Gottslayer and you can get the fuck out of my store."

"I don't think so." She strode forward, all swaying hips and perky tits and forcing his gaze back up to her face was like fighting gravity.

"Bitch, you don't know the depths of the shit you're about to step in," he said threateningly. Draxal could be damned threatening when he focused his scowl and flexed his impressive upper torso.

Her smile was canine, like a jackal, deadly and beautiful. No, not a jackal. A wolf. And from one step to the next she melted, morphing from a black clad girl of the hottest degree to a huge, silver coated wolf. And not the sort of wolf you saw people keeping as pet, the hybrids and the tame half-breeds - - but like something that never stepped foot outside the deepest of primordial forests. Huge and blue-eyed and staring right through his eyes into the depraved depths of his soul.

The wolf grinned at him. A wolf's grin, with teeth as long as the girl's fingers that could shred flesh as easily as any of his knives. Its great claws clicked on the scuffed tile floor as it padded around the counter and stood staring at him.

Draxal's fingers were numb on the hilt of the knife. If it had been a normal, mundane wolf, he might have braced himself for a fight. But this wasn't mundane and yellow wolf eyes flashed with a glint of hellfire that made his cock rock hard in his pants.

Two more strides right up to where he sat frozen and the wolf shifted, fur and teeth and claws melting back into soft female flesh and silky black hair.

"Would you like to talk now?" she purred.

Draxal gaped. In all his years worshipping the dark lord, in all his satanic ceremonies and his faithful sacrifices, all his research into satanic history, he'd never seen anything remotely supernatural. He'd waited all his life for it. Patient and faithful that one day, his devotion would be rewarded.

He laid the knife carefully on the counter and stood, nodding.

"Who are you?"

She slid right up to him, close enough to smell the scent of some night blooming flower in her hair, the smell of something wild and wicked on her skin. He was hard under his jeans, erection straining against denim. She looked down, noting it, then cast her eyes back up at him.

"You can call me, Nikki," she said.

"What are you?"

"What do you think I am, lover?"

"A she-demon." He breathed, praying it was so.

Her smile widened and she shrugged. "Close enough.

He felt like dropping down to his knees in front of her in gratification. All these years - - all these years and here she was. He held firm and braced his feet, putting one arm on the counter to casually show off the bulging contours of his arm. She lifted a hand and ran fingertips from his wrist to his shoulder appreciatively.

"You're needed, Draxal Gottslayer, to right an unfortunate wrong."

He straightened, a thrill of excitement rushing though him. "What wrong?"

Her smile was like sex and sin. "Show me your temple, Draxal."

Denying her anything was beyond him. He took her downstairs to the basement where he and his sect practiced their dark devotions. Shag carpet around the edges where there were couches and a mini bar, and a flat screen TV flush against one wall. The center of the floor was cement, with a inverted pentagram stained here and there with blood and black candle wax. Other trappings lined the walls, satanic symbols, posters, icons.

Nikki walked around the pentagram, then stopped across from it and looked at him.

"The prophecy has come to fruition. The Book has chosen a Master, "

"By Lucifer," he gasped, excitement bubbling up. Then it occurred to him that hell had not risen up to wash the world in its chaos. That the world was very much like it had always been. Hellish, yes, but not the sort of hell that he and his kind prayed for.

She waited until that notion sank in before she padded across the symbol on the floor. Slim fingers reached out and traced the outline of his erection.

"Yeah," she said. "The Pure Evil One fucked us. He laughed in the face of the prophecy and instead of bringing about the end of this age, he stabbed us in the back."

Draxal gaped at her, trying to wrap his mind around that astounding concept at the same time his cock was being stroked. He was having a hard time juggling those two things simultaneously.

"How?"

She shrugged. "He banished the Book. It's gone."

He blinked, cock deflating at that terrible statement.

She sighed and withdrew her hand. "It's not a total loss. We can get it back. You can get it back."

"How?"

"The satanic sect of Crowley Heights is in shambles. Nothing but a town full of closet worshipers and doddering old geezers that were entrusted with the safeguarding of the Book - - and failed."

"Crowely Heights? Never heard of it."

"No reason you should have. It's a little piss ant of a town that's only saving grace - -" And she smiled, showing sharp little canines. "Is that it lies at the intersection of powerful ley lines. It's a place of power and a place where blood has drenched the land over the millennia. For the last century the book has been there - - in one form or another - - waiting for the moment when the Pure Evil One would accept its power. And when he did, he chose to cast that honor aside."

Draxal couldn't conceive of such utter disregard. Of such utter stupidity. "You want me to kill him?"

"That's an option, but no. We need him. Without is master, the Book might disappear for another few millennia and we're so bored with waiting."

"We? The dark overlord and his minions?"

She shrugged noncommittally and leaned in, tits brushing his chest, fingers skimming up his arm. "The Pure Evil One banished the book and the only way to bring it back is through him. There's a ritual that we can't perform, requiring things we can't touch, that will shatter his control and allow the Book to find its way back."

"And you want me to perform this ritual?"

"Only the most faithful of the dark lord's followers is capable. And you, are more capable than most. Crowley Heights needs a new satanic sect to replace the useless idiots that were supposed to safeguard the Book."

"You want me to uproot all my shit and drag all my guys to some bumfuck town I never heard of - -"

She dropped to her knees, looking up at him from crotch level. Her hands skimmed the fly of his jeans and he swallowed back further complaint. He remembered her teeth when she'd been the wolf and a shiver of excitement went through him at the prospect of flirting with the danger of her mouth around his cock.

"If the Pure Evil One won't use the book the way it was meant to be used - - then we'd prefer if using it all became unpleasant. Without the hand of a master, we may not be able to bring about the conflagration, but there are other ways to bring about chaos and the Book is the key."