DARK LORD: VINCENT VALTREZ

A darkness lives inside me, a darkness I can not control.

I’ve struggled with it all my life, but instead of fading, the call grows stronger each year. And lately, I’ve been slipping into it more, into the black holes where I lose time.

I wake hours later, sometimes with blood on my hands, and no memory of where I’ve been or what I’ve done.

But the voice in my head tells me that I’ve getting closer and closer to losing myself into the darkness for good.

It all started when I was a boy. My father was a cold, brutal man. He taught me lessons in unspeakable ways. Punished me if I didn’t obey. Forced me to kill with my bare hands. To taste the blood of my victims.

And to crave the scent of death.

I can not erase the past. Or change who I am.

I’ve been running from it ever since the day my mother died. My mother, the Angel of Light, of goodness.

My father The Dark Lord.

They were forbidden to marry, but they did.

And they produced me.

Another Dark Lord, destined to battle an inner war that will never allow me peace. I don’t know how much longer I can resist.

My primal needs consume me – my thirst for flesh. To pound myself in a woman until I feel nothing but the pleasure of her milking my length.

To close my eyes and feel her neck snap between my hands.

I thought my becoming a federal agent, I could make that darkness my friend. That by protecting others, I could end the battle once and for all. And I’ve used it to track down killers, the madmen I understand.

But now the past has returned to haunt me. I’ve been forced back to my home town. Eerie, Tennessee, a lost town in the heart of the Smokies, a town where evil scents the town and legends of demons and the dead abound.

A medium claims that a serial killer is stalking the town. One who can touch a woman and know her greatest fear. Then he uses it to kill her.

Trouble is, the killer is a demon. And he’s out to get me.

He’ll use anyone I care for to lure me into his trap.

Including the woman who talks to the dead. The woman who I’m drawn to, the one I’ve wanted for years.

But I must resist her as well as the demon’s hold.

If I succumb to the darkness, then evil will win.

top

THE MEDIUM: CLARISSA KING

I didn’t ask for this gift, to talk to the dead. Some people don’t believe me. Some think I’m strange, spooky, scary. And others call me crazy.

My grandmother was just like me. And my mother, too. But the dead drove her insane, drove her to kill herself, to hang herself in the Devil’s Tree, because she took their pain on as her own.

As I fear that one day I will, too.

Still, this is my destiny. I cannot run from it – believe me, I’ve tried. But the spirits have followed me all my life, no matter where I go, I cannot hide.

They hound me day and night. I see their wide sightless eyes pleading with me to help them, see their skeletal remains floating in the shadows, their brittle fingers reaching for me to help them understand their death, their flesh turning to ashes in the night.

To save their souls, I have to help them cross into the light.

But first I must uncover the mystery of what brought them to death so they can move on.

I’m no detective, no glutton for punishment, no hero at all. Just a woman haunted by the dead’s cries, by screams that are only quieted when I answer the call.

In Eerie, there have always been deaths. Legends of dark creatures and monsters who roam the hills. Places like the Black Forest where no light exists, where no mortal enters and comes out alive.

And now a demon has risen, his evil scent lingers in the air, vile and terrifying. He’s already taken three lives and will take more

Unless I stop him.

For that, I need help.

Vincent Valtrez once lived in the town. Survived the Black Forest. Ran away from it all.

Including me.

But now he’s back.

Only he doesn’t believe my stories of the dead.

Convincing him is the only way to find the killer before he strikes again.

But falling in love with him is not an option.

For he is part demon, and loving him might mean sacrificing my soul, and my life...

top

THE DEMONS:

ZION:

Once a Dark Lord, I relented to the dark side when I burned my wife at the stake.

I have paid the price for years, burning in the underground, serving the Masters of Evil.

Finally I am assuming my rightful place as the new leader of the underworld.

I have dispensed the Soul Collectors to Earth in masses, ordered them to destroy innocents and bring me their souls to build my kingdom.

I promised that evil will one day rule the world. And I will not fail.

Recruiting other Dark Lords to my regime will ensure my success. And turning my son will strengthen my hold tenfold.

For my firstborn Vincent has the potential to walk in my following, to one day rule my command. I trained him as a child before he drove a fiery stake into my cold, unfeeling heart. That kill brought him one step closer to losing himself.

The time has now come for him to follow his destiny and join me...

If he refuses, I will be forced to kill him as I did my wife...

PAN; THE GOD OF FEAR

My name is Pan. I am the God of Fear, a black faceless demon who feeds on mortal’s fears. One who can touch a mere human and read his mind like an open book – sort through the pages of gibberish until I find the human’s deepest fear.

Only fitting that that fear should bring them death.

Laughter bubbles in my parched throat as I picture the kill. I love the roar of the innocents’ hearts pounding in that second before death, their wide, terrorized eyes when they look into my demonic face, the sound of their terrorized screams just before they draw their final breath. Their sorrow as they recount the days of their pitiful lives. The regrets and hopes that flail and die as they contemplate heaven or hell.

Yet for all my demonic power, I have been tortured and punished for centuries. Forced to one of the lowly realms, banned from Earth.

But the demon rising, Zion, is the fiercest one to date. And with the year of the eclipse, he has given the demons a chance for redemption within our realms.

All I need to sit at Zion’s hands are seven souls. Collect them and I will bring glory to his name.

Collecting his son’s soul will raise me to his right hand side.

All I need now is a human body. For disguise will allow me to get closer to the innocents in the quaint little mountain town.

My journey has already begun.

Will I find you in Eerie? Will you walk past me and know who I am?

If I press my demonic hand upon your back, will I learn your greatest fear?

A laugh starts low in my belly. What are you afraid of?

The dark? Snakes? Spiders? Suffocating. Drowning? Heights? Being buried alive?

The possibilities are endless.

So many ways to die.

Let the fun begin..

top

THE SOUL COLLECTORS:

We come in various demonic forms. But we all have one goal: lure the innocents into our traps. Win their souls for our leader to glorify his kingdom.

So good will die and evil will thrive...

LEGENDS >>>

top