Chapter One
Titus
Iwasgoingtomurder my father. I’d decided his fate the moment he shoved my mother.
It wasn’t the first time he’d pushed her. He’d always been an abusive fuck. But this time was different. This time, he’d pushed her while dozens of his “congregation” watched. She fell to her hands and knees into the circle of white-robed figures, the bonfire in the center of it all burning hot and bright.
My father stepped behind her, raised his hands over his head, and bellowed the words I’d heard so many times before. “Come forth, Elder One. Come forth and claim the offering I have prepared for thee.”
Everyone chanted the words with him, over and over.
I watched the cult ritual from my hiding place behind a pine tree, biding my time.
As the son of the Keeper, I’d been going to the Rituals every full moon since I could remember. They were part of the Old Faith—the beliefs of our people that ran as deep as the roots of these woods. Feed the Elder One souls of innocents, and he would continue to bless our bloodline, our home and keep us safe from the world outside the New Jersey Pine Barrens.
When I was a kid, I’d been blind to the evil that had been a tradition in Bishop. Human-sacrifice rituals were as commonplace in these parts as potlucks and rummage sales.
Tonight, I saw my father in a different light.
He’d told me to stay home. It would have been the first Ritual I’d ever missed, considering tonight’s offering was to be my own mother.
As the Keeper’s son, there had once been a time when I’d admired my father. He’d held on to his position as leader of our little backwoods cult for over twenty years, which was impressive. When you were a priest for a dark forest spirit with a temper, the job didn’t exactly come with a long life expectancy.
Over the years, the pedestal I’d held our Keeper on crumbled, and hatred set in. Watching your human mother get beaten down by your demon father will do that, especially when you learn that she was meant as an offering to our deity all along. Women were kidnapped from other towns in the Pine Barrens all the time and dragged here so their souls could be fed to the Elder One. In the case of my mother, becoming pregnant with the Keeper’s bastard had only prolonged the inevitable.
On my eighteenth birthday, when I was considered a man with no need for a mother, it was decided that her time had come. She was going to be the offering for the next Ritual.
I wanted to believe that Ezra Leeds’ desire to keep his human plaything around would dominate his devotion to our patron. But all hope of him turning around, shoving his family into the car and driving us as far as possible from this hellhole had died when he pushed my mother to the ground.
She’d never been very strong, not after being a devil’s captive for nearly two decades. Her shoulders heaved with sobs that were drowned out by the chanting. As I watched him stand over her small, shivering form, a feral rage clawed at my insides. It was that part of me, the violent monster within, trying to free itself.
Suppressing that part of me was fucking agony.
For once, I wanted to use my devil abilities to knock my father down a few inches by tearing his head right from his goddamn shoulders. But with all of Bishop watching, I would barely get in a few blows.
There’d be no saving my mother that way.
The dark magic hung thick in the air, as smothering as the acidic smoke and cinders swirling up from the bonfire.
It was approaching.
As a little boy, I’d felt a wide range of emotions whenever our Elder came to us.
Curiosity.
Fear.
Excitement.
Now the only thing I could feel was a dark and heady hatred lighting up my veins like electric wire.
My mother looked over her shoulder, her eyes narrowing as she searched the night for me. Humans were intuitive creatures, especially my mother. She knew I was here, and about to do something incredibly stupid.
When her eyes found mine, I stepped closer. Her lower lip quivered when her gaze settled on my devil’s eye. Its white glow gave my hiding place away, but everyone else was too distracted by our Elder’s approach.
“Titus.” My heart squeezed when she mouthed my name. “Don’t.”
No one noticed her. All eyes were on the large silhouette of a hulking creature stepping fourth from the dense thicket of pine trees.
