As I went to get up, there was a knock on the door, a sound that never failed to raise my heart rate.

  “Who would that be at this time?” Ruby asked, sitting up.

  “Probably that detective,” I said, my stomach churning with dread as I stared at the door.

  “At this time?”

  “He looked the type to never sleep,” I said as I finally mustered the will to cross the room and open the door. Though it wasn’t Detective Grimes standing out in the hallway. It was someone much worse. “Flintlock?”

  “That’s right,” Flintlock said, smiling with his knife slash of a mouth, his piggy yellow eyes staring at me. As before, the rest of his face was a mask of shifting shadows. “Old Vic is here to see you, Zack.”

  “What… what do you want, Flintlock?”

  “Business,” Flintlock said as he barged past me into the apartment, his dark trench coat smelling like the bums in the alley down the street. “Always business, Zack.”

  Sighing deeply, I closed the door and paused with my hand on the handle for a moment, remembering what Kane had said.

  “Watch yourself with that one…”

  Yeah. No shit.

  Flintlock had settled in on the couch next to Ruby, grinning like a Cheshire cat under his hat.

  “Aren’t you gonna offer me a cup o’ tea, Zack?” he said. “We have lots to discuss, you and me.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Ruby asked him. “Where the hell is your face?”

  “I’m the one who saved your brother’s life,” Flintlock said without missing a beat. “And you wouldn’t want to see my face, little kitty. It might give you a fright.”

  “You’re already frightening me,” Ruby said, jumping down off the couch and standing next to me. “And how do you know who I am?”

  “I know lots of things, Ruby. For instance, a little bird tells me you might be in the market for a new body. Maybe—”

  “No,” I said. “No deals, Flintlock.”

  “But you didn’t even let me finish, Zack.”

  I stared at him. “Why are you here? What do you want?”

  “You clearly didn’t read your contract, old son,” he said. “Which states I can call upon your services any time I want, and if you refuse to help me, I can take your soul right here and now.”

  Bastard. It made me wonder what else was in that damn contract. I had to find a way out of it soon.

  “So, what do you want then?”

  “Go and make that cup of tea. Then I’ll tell you.” His yellow eyes stared at Ruby. “Hop on up here, Missy. We can discuss that new body of yours.”

  “You can really get me a new body?” Ruby said.

  “I can, indeed.” He smiled, showing needle-like teeth. “For a price, of course.”

  I shook my head as I walked into the kitchen. “Always a fucking price,” I mumbled.

  But was it a price worth paying?

  The jury was still out on that one. But whatever Flintlock wanted me to do would sway the verdict either way.

  There was no doubt in my mind about that.

  BOOK TWO IN THE SERIES COMING SOON!

  Unshackled - A Schade of Magic Short Story

  It’s funny how your life can change in a single moment. Sometimes it seems like I went from high-ranking insurance guy and family man to a lost soul with no family and a head full of demons in the time it took me to have that last drink and line of coke. Yeah, I blamed my misfortune on the drink and drugs. But now I know the Archaons had it in for me all along—uncaring, manipulative bastards that they all are. Of course, having never met an Archaon, I don’t know for sure it was they who handed me my fate. But it makes me feel better to think it was them. Otherwise, I’d be forced to believe it was just plain bad luck that befell me. That befell my wife and son. And I can’t accept that, because my wife and son did nothing to deserve what happened to them. Me, that’s a different story. Maybe I deserved what I got. But not them. Not them.

  Everything changed the night I went to the meeting of the Unshackled in Andre Mullagin’s mansion. The mansion was in Woodland Hills, a rich neighborhood bordering the Santa Monica Mountains in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles. My wife and I had moved to LA from New York only a year before, so it was a big change for us. Especially since we came from a rough neighborhood in Brooklyn. I worked my ass off for the insurance company I worked for until I got a big promotion that finally allowed me and Sarah to move up in the world. We got the big house in LA, the fancy car, and more money than I could spend. This was the nineties. Money was everywhere and people partied all the time. At least, we did.

  That’s how I came to meet Andre Mullagin, though I wish I’d never met the bastard at all. In fact, I wish I’d never even got that promotion. That I’d stayed in New York where I belonged instead of of being lured by the sun soaked decadence of L.A. But I wanted more than I had. So did my wife. We all do, right?

  It was a colleague at work who took me to my first meeting of the Unshackled. His name was Rupert Benson, a married guy like me. Only he didn’t act like it. He did what he wanted, fucked who he wanted, and acted like his wife was okay with it. First time I met Rupert’s wife at a meeting, I knew she wasn’t okay with any of it. It was clear she hated her husband’s promiscuity and the fact that he partied all the time, doing coke all day long like it was going out of style. But she liked all the money Rupert earned. Same as my wife. Sarah liked the lifestyle. Enjoyed belonging to the exclusive country club. Liked the clothes and the jewelry and the fancy cars. Sarah was living the dream as much as me, loving every second. But we also loved each other, and I never cheated on her. Least not until I joined the cult. For that’s what it was. A cult.

  Rupert was obsessed with the cult. To him, it was another extension of his power. A way to rise above mere mortal men. Mortal men to him were those who weren’t rich. Rupert had made a fortune in stocks and shares before I met him, and he was just getting into real estate as well. He showed me how to invest my money. Even brought me in on a few lucrative deals. Pretty soon, my net worth had multiplied beyond anything I thought was possible. Coming from an impoverished background, it was all like a dream to me. It never seemed real, even when I was driving around in the fancy cars, eating at all the top restaurants, wearing the most expensive suits. I kept thinking it was all going to be taken away from me at any moment.

  Maybe that’s why I went along with Rupert when he told me about the meetings.

  “I’m telling you, man,” Rupert had said to me. “The things that happen at these meetings, you won’t believe. It’s how men become gods.”

  How men become gods. That was the problem. We all thought we could become like gods, having the power to do whatever we wanted, which usually translated into becoming more decadent and depraved than we already were. A blind man could’ve seen we were setting ourselves up for a massive fall. But I went along with it all, anyway. Because I always wanted more. We all wanted more.

  The first meeting I went to turned out to be one of the most thrilling experiences of my life. Rupert took me into the mansion and introduced me to Andre Mullagin, leader of the Order of the Unshackled. He was as charismatic as you might expect. Tall, handsome, impeccable British diction. Looking into his dark eyes that first meeting, I saw immediately that there was something in them. A fire. A lust for life that topped even Rupert’s. And a great knowledge of things that I had no inkling of. Esoteric things. Magical things. Sexual things. And I wanted to learn it all. I wanted to know everything that he knew. The power radiating from him was contagious. It lit up my soul and stirred my loins like nothing else I’d ever experienced. When Rupert had spoke of becoming a god, I thought at first that he was just exaggerating, his coke-fueled ego getting the better of him. But when I looked into Andre Mullagin’s eyes, I knew it was possible to become more powerful than I ever imagined. And I wanted to be.

  At my first meeting, I was only allowed to watch while the other members took part. Mullagin conducted a sex ritual with his closest acolyte, Francesca Divine. She was a beautiful brunette with a captivating sexual power. I watched with rapt fascination as she writhed around the floor naked, moaning in ecstasy while Mullagin recited passages from the Book of the Unshackled, a book I later learned he had written himself. He spoke of communing with demons and gods, of magic and blood, and of immortality. All in a way that made everything he was talking about seem entirely achievable. There were about two dozen acolytes in the room, all wearing robes over their naked bodies. When Francesca and Mullagin encouraged them to tap into their own power, each of them discarded their robes, and then an orgy ensued. Watching from the sidelines, hard as a rock, I longed to take part. But I wasn’t allowed. Not yet. Mullagin smiled over at me while Francesca had sex with someone by his feet. The cult leader saw the look of desire in my eyes. Not just sexual desire, but esoteric desire. The desire for knowledge and power. He knew he had me hooked.

  It wasn’t until my third meeting of the Unshackled did I actually get to take part in the proceedings. Mullagin conducted a blood magic ritual that night. A ritual that summoned a dark spirit into the room, which Mullagin somehow contained within a magic circle on the floor. Terror struck me when the spirit looked right at me with fiery eyes. But I was also thrilled that the spirit had looked at me at all. I felt its dark, unknowable power, and it made my cock hard. In the orgy that followed, fueled by drugs and absinthe, I got lost in the mass of writhing flesh. Never had I felt such pleasure. Never had I felt such transcendence. As I partook in the pleasures of the flesh, I felt my mind open up to things that I had never been aware of before. Feelings, sensations, hidden dimensions, and glimpses of knowledge that were hidden from those who existed only in the Mundane World, the world known as Skyefall. Multiple orgasms later, a whole other world had opened up for me. And I knew there would be no going back.

  Only later did I find out that Mullagin had entered into a contract with a devil. In return for favors, and eventually his soul, Mullagin had been granted access to magical powers, and to a hidden world known as Mysteria. This was how he could bring magic to the meetings of the Unshackled. It was how he could access knowledge no Mundane had access to. In a conversation with him, I asked him how I could get the same access. He told me I would have to die first, and then a devil might come. Might come, he said. That wasn’t assurance enough for me. Instead, I chose to be satisfied with the access I had to the Secret World, also known as the Occult Underground. The OU existed within the Mundane World and was a network of secret organizations around the world who held regular meetings just like the Order of the Unshackled. With access to such an underground network, one could grow as powerful as it was possible to get as a mere mortal.

  That was the other thing. Mullagin was an immortal. He couldn’t die from natural causes. Only a violent death could end him.

  A violent death that I would eventually give to him, but more on that later.

  I attended the meetings two or three times a week. Sometimes more. I even brought Sarah along to one of them. But my wife was immediately repulsed by the goings-on. She had a strict Catholic upbringing, and to her, it was all the Devil’s work. Even when I tried to explain it all to her, she didn’t want to know.

  “I’m not going to stop you going to the meetings, Edgar,” she told me after storming out of the one I’d brought her to. “But I don’t want to hear about them. Ever.”

  Although I was angry, I should’ve been grateful that my wife loved me enough to let me continue with something that deeply offended her. Even the orgies she was okay with, which made me wonder if she was fucking other people as well. If she had been, I wouldn’t have blamed her. When I wasn’t working, I was hanging out at Mullagin’s mansion, or partying with Rupert. My life had become a whirlwind of money, drugs, sex, and magic. I was even conducting my own rituals outside of the meetings, trying to fill my insatiable desire for more knowledge. For more power. Stopping short only at summoning demons and dark spirits. Sometimes, I would just spend hours looking into a mirror that served as a window into the strange world of Mysteria. Wanting to go there, to experience it fully for myself. But always unwilling to court death in order to do so.

  Then there was my son, Peter. I haven’t even mentioned him yet. Perhaps because I still feel the pain of his death deep inside me. A pain that gnaws at me continually like a cancer, compounded by guilt. Peter had been born in New York eight years before we moved to California. We were best pals, doing everything together. Every day, I reminded myself that my son was the best thing to have ever happened to me. But that was before the move. Once we got to California, Peter was enrolled in an elite school that cost me a small fortune in fees. But we wanted the best for our son, Sarah and I. And with all the after-school activities and endless trips away, it got so I hardly ever saw Peter. When we were together, my mind was on work, or whatever party I had agreed to go to later. My mind was always on the meetings, and my lust for knowledge and power. Those things came to dominate my life completely. Peter tried to get through to me often. Eventually, he stopped trying when he must have realized I had moved on somewhere else. Sarah and he became close. The two of them did everything together, rarely including me. To my shame, I didn’t even mind. It gave me more time to indulge my newfound pursuits.

  So, toward the end, I was living a completely separate life from my wife and son. Sarah, to her credit, put a good front on for Peter’s sake. But she knew things were over between us. She hung on for the money, and for Peter. And she was probably also seeing someone else as well. Though I was too indifferent to even find out if she was or not. As long as she didn’t interfere with my pursuits, she could do whatever she wanted. As I did every day and night.

  The subject that most interested me during my time with the Order of the Unshackled was Situational Synchronicity. The ability to be in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time. Of course, given what later happened, I was led to question this ability, even deride it as nonsense. But what took me a long time to process was this: that fateful night when my wife and son got killed, my Situational Synchronicity powers had been in full working order. I just didn’t want to admit the awful truth of that.

  In learning this ability, I often put it to the test. The waves of synchronicity would be clear in my mind. Like waves of energy rolling through the fabric of the universe. The trick was chasing the right wave to ride. If I rode the right wave, I would sell stocks and shares for maximum profit while everyone else got caught short. I would walk into an occult book shop just as someone was there to sell the exact book I had been looking for. Lucrative real estate deals would fall into my lap out of nowhere. In my job, I nearly always made the right move, and my bosses loved me for it. It was a magical power I just couldn’t get enough of, and it made me feel like a god.

  In my very last meeting of the Order of the Unshackled, I rode a synchronicity wave right up to the front of the Ceremony Room to conduct a ritual myself. Somehow I knew Mullagin would be tied up, and that Francesca wouldn’t be there either. So I stepped up and took charge of the whole meeting, even summoning a sex demon to enhance the pleasure in the room once the orgy started. Mullagin walked in halfway through. The cult leader wasn’t pleased that I had inserted myself into his role. But I didn’t care, and neither did anyone else in the room. Perhaps that had been my big mistake, insulting Mullagin’s ego. Even reveling in it. I later paid for that. But so did Mullagin.

  By the end of that meeting, I was on a total power trip. Filled with drugs, absinthe, and the knowledge that I was ascending to ever greater heights of learning and insight. It even occurred to me I could supplant Mullagin as the leader of the Order. A thought that Mullagin no doubt sensed from me, for I saw the fire burning in his eyes as he watched me fuck the other cult members like a god bestowing love upon his flock.

  After the meeting, Mullagin pulled me aside and asked what I thought I was doing, taking over the meeting like that. I merely smiled and played the innocent, while still subtly letting him know I would eventually become more powerful than him, without having to court death to do it. Which was nonsense. Only now do I know that death is a given if you want full access to all the power and magic the universe has to offer. Otherwise, you are just a bystander looking in, soaking up the dregs of power as if they were the real thing. When really, they were just magic tricks, and not true power.

  I wondered as well, after that night, if Mullagin had somehow made the deaths of my wife and son occur by means of some ritual. It was certainly possible, and Mullagin certainly had the power and knowledge to do such a thing. Though in my grief and shock, it never occurred to me that Mullagin might have instigated the worst thing to ever to happen to me. It doesn’t matter now, anyway.

  When I left the meeting, it was almost midnight. Staggering outside into the freezing air, it suddenly dawned on me I had agreed to pick up my wife and son from the diner down the street from the movie theater. Sarah had said she would simply drive or get a cab. But in one of my more guilt-ridden moments, I insisted I would drive them and pick them back up again. Realizing I was late, I fell into my car and drove like a maniac. There was snow on the roads, and I skidded all over the place as I tried to keep control of the vehicle. Fucking snow, I remember thinking. When does it ever snow in California?

  I don’t know how I made it to the diner without crashing or getting pulled over. With all the drugs and alcohol and fuck knows what else I had in my system, I could hardly see straight. Just holding the wheel was an arduous task. The entire journey, it felt like I had to keep from sliding down a hole and disappearing. It was about a fifteen minute drive. By the time I got there, mounting the curb and nearly hitting a fire hydrant, it seemed like I’d been driving for an eternity.

  Getting out of the car would have been an impossibility in my state. So I sounded the horn, which, to my ears, was like Gabriel’s trumpet. Deafening in the confines of the car.