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Prologue
Late 1800s…
It wasa curse that had been passed down in my family from generation to generation.
I am the last of the lineage and I have made it my life’s mission to make sure it ends with me.
My great grandmother, Ella, was a lost soul. After her one and only love had died, leaving her with a two-year-old infant, she was left with nothing. His fortune taken by his family, her home destroyed, her name dragged through the mus. It came to a point where she just couldn’t bear it anymore, and she was prepared to take her life.
In her desperation, she ran across a healer who took pity on her. He was not an appealing man by any means. He held a sordid and wicked mentality, but he was one of the elites, and anything that came from him was seen as acceptable amongst the throng of society.
Well dressed in a three-piece suit and a top hat, he lived a hidden life. His shifty gaze should have been a red flag, as well as the way he licked his thick lips and rubbed his belt as he watched her. His breath smelled rancid, his teeth yellowed, and he had this hacking cough that would shake his entire belly. But Ella didn’t see that. She sought out warmth in the deep of winter, food, and wealth, and that’s just what he’d offered her. He promised her everything he had in his possession, including free reign of his manor, and all she had to do was keep his bed warm and her legs spread.
So night after night, Ella would go to him and give herself willingly. She would do anything to keep herself and her child safe, even if it meant lying with the devil. Because in the end, the healer was an evil man who preyed on the weak and weary only to benefit himself.
Using dark magic, he would speak to the demons. Offer them blood in return for power and with it he’d help the rich get richer and use the poor as a sacrifice. At first my great grandmother thought him a great doctor, curing plagues and diseases. Until the one night she witnessed the hidden atrocities that went on in the depths of the manor.
She’d been taking her nightly walk through the gardens when she heard one of the servant girls gasping and whining. Running toward the sound, she stopped short at the edge of the brush. There lay the youngest daughter of her maid, spread out and tied onto a platform. The good doctor knelt in front of her, covering her mouth and fucking her.
Ella could tell in the girl’s eyes that she was not a willing participant in this display of power. As the young girl’s eyes landed on her, Ella ran off, not wanting to witness any more of it. The next morning, she was told to search for a new servant, as the one they had had disappeared. Not left. Not resigned. Just disappeared.
Ella thought it odd, but she thought maybe the Shaman just didn’t want to get caught. She began to follow him, watch him from within the shadows. She began to write down his chants, learning them well and practicing them while he was not around.
Night after night, she’d deterred his questions on why items went missing with a kiss and a whisper of temptation. Manipulating him until he submitted to her. She’d fuck him until delirium, and then would crawl away, lured by the dark magic the Shaman kept secret.
She came to learn that her husband wanted to accomplish only three things: control his client’s will, create an illusion, and gain knowledge from them by manipulation them with illusions. All details that could be done without the use of dark magic. He claimed the dead would whisper to him giving him the ability to communicate with them. But in the end, he’d been a dark soul. One who raped and killed under the visage of Satanism.
Ella found this out when she went down to his office. It was at the end of a long tunnel beneath the house. There she was shocked to find the young servant girl. She’d been disemboweled, and pieces of her were being used as props for his evil doings.
From then on Ella was careful. She didn’t want him near her precious daughter, and she kept her hidden away, telling her one day she’d understand. Ella had taken what she’d learned a step further, and she started to practice a darker magic. One where demons were summoned, and energy was controlled. She had a power unknown to the Shaman, an empath that was both a receptor and a controller. Whispers roamed around her, tempting her, luring her to do some of the most vile and evil things. Until she finally realized this power could do more if you willed it so.
She could suddenly bring the dead back to life, wielding a power so immense, only God had a right to it.
One of the dangers of necromancy is that you don’t really know what or who is on the other side of your communication. Nor do you know what they’re going to give you in return. My great grandmother had slowly begun to fall in love with a man who came calling every Friday night. He was eager to talk to his departed wife. Ella would watch him from beneath her dark lashes as he spoke of the love he had that was now gone. In doing so, she willed another type of spell. One that spoke of obsession and loyalty.
When the shaman wasn’t looking, Ella would approach the man, speak to him, offer him a beverage in which she’d concocted her spell. And then one day that man went further. He wanted more from Ella, he’d become obsessed with her sweetness and her beauty.
Behind her husband’s back they would love each other. Hiding in the shadows of the brushes he would teach her all the ways a man should love a woman.
By now the shaman had become suspicious, and in one of their dalliances, they got caught. The shaman was furious, and he shot the man three times in the chest. Mortified, Ella wielded her power, shielding them from the shaman. She summoned back her lover, but with him came a darkness unlike any other she’d witness.
Jealousy ignited his corpse, and in that moment, she unleashed a ruthless killer. The shaman was shocked, to say the least, and could barely move she watched the undead rise and charge toward him. Ella watched with a conniving smile on her lips, as her undead lover destroyed the evil that was the shaman. He then turned toward her, and what she thought was a loving vengeful man, was worst.
With the same blade he’d used to cut one viscous throat, with a kiss, he did the same to her. As she died, so did he, and they were discovered a day later by my grandmother. She knew of what her mother had attempted to do, and she swore that she’d keep that power contained and hidden as much as she could.
I had watched my mother suffer with it, hiding away as my grandmother begged her to keep their secret. That was, until she tumbled across the Ringmaster’s path. Serge Bastien was a broken soul, and my mother could see that in him. He’d been cursed by the witch, and his love had been taken from him. My mother had been his hidden solace. A woman who could love him and care for him after so many years of loneliness. That was until I was born.
Yes, I am the daughter of the Ringmaster, although he would never admit to it in fear the witch would come after me. But I was stronger than he thought. My mother saw to that before she died.
Now it was my turn to keep my power at bay, but that did not mean I couldn’t use it to fight evil with evil.
Chapter1
Imogen
Present Day…
The power etchedout of my hands and reached out among the graves. With a shuddering breath I watched as the soil that covered the fresh burial plot beneath me, began to shift. I stumbled to my feet, smiling down at the sound of cracking wood below the surface of the ground.
