Reign The Assault of Lucifer Morningstar - The Silver Blood Knight Series-(Book 1) - CAROL MCKIBBEN
PROLOGUE
GAMINO AND LUCIFER
Vito Gamino raged against the world. The head of the Italian Mafia sat in his palatial estate in Sicily drunk with grief.
Tears streaming from his eyes, he raised his hefty body from his gold brocade chair, picked up a Waterford Marquis crystal glass, and pitched it into the marble fireplace of his den. “Damn God!”
Three years had passed since he had lost his entire family—his wife and two young sons—to the zombie plague while they were visiting Florence. Yet, his anger and grief weighed on him like a heavy blanket he couldn’t shed.
“What kind of God would turn an entire city into a herd of zombies? Why had I let Marina and the boys go alone?”
Gamino’s mafioso family had at first thought he’d married the young, beautiful model out of ego. They had wondered how she could possibly have been attracted to the stubby, balding mob boss, except for the money and power it brought. They had soon realized, however, that this odd couple truly adored each other.
Gamino whirled around, picked up another expensive glass, and hurled it into the fireplace.
His servants and henchmen, afraid to be in his presence when he was in one of his frequent dark moods, hovered outside the door.
“Damn God! Damn humanity!” He launched an entire crystal decanter filled with Loch Ness Blended Whisky into the fireplace which shot out flames upon contact.
“Yes, let’s do so.” A deep, sinister voice spoke behind Gamino, who whirled in surprise. His intoxication flooded away at the sight in front of him.
The man was beautiful. The strong facial structure framed by long golden hair enhanced the bluest eyes the mobster had ever seen. They gleamed with cold malice.
Gamino stepped back, almost losing his balance. “Who? What? How did you get in here?”
At his question, the henchmen outside his door attempted to enter only to be pushed back with a wave of the beautiful one’s hand. The door they’d tried to open slammed back into them. Their bodies, along with that of the servants, fell and they were dead before they hit the floor.
The full lips in the handsome face smiled at the gangster. “I think you know.”
“No, no, I don’t. Satan wouldn’t be beautiful.”
Satan suddenly transformed into a menacing horned creature with scaly red skin, a sharp, pointed tail, long claws, and yellow catlike eyes.
Gamino rushed toward the den’s double doors when the man’s words froze him.
“What is it you desire most in this world, Gamino?” Just as quickly, the intruder reverted to his handsome demeanor. “Your lost family, perhaps? What if I told you I could restore them to you?”
The mob boss whirled around, his eyebrows raised. “What? You couldn’t do that.”
Lucifer Morningstar smirked. “Of course, I could. I’m the one that took them from you. Didn’t you know?”
Gamino clenched his fists, let out a growl resembling one of a hurt animal, and charged, stumbling toward the devil. “Damn you!”
Lucifer halted the man in his tracks with a flick of his wrist. “I started the plague to challenge the damn vampires working for God. You see, my Father and I made a wager. Good versus evil, you know? Your family was merely collateral damage. I took ’em. I can return ’em.” A quick wave of his hand released the mob boss.
Gamino struggled to stand, weaved over to the chair by his fireplace, and slumped into it. “You can give them back to me?”
Lucifer smiled and polished his long, pointed nails on his three-piece black suit. “Well, of course. For a price, that is.”
“What? Anything.” The crime leader sank to his knees on his expensive tapestry rug.
“Well, I promised God not to mess with his beloved vampires, but I didn’t swear not to screw with his pitiful humans. So, the cost is your soul, of course.” Lucifer’s smile widened on his face, and his blue eyes turned red.
Gamino nodded. “Is that all?”
“Well, you’ll be working for me, of course. In Florence. You see, the place is a mess. Its inhabitants are confused and weak. I want to wreck them and their beloved city. You’ll be my instrument of destruction.”
Gamino stared into the face of the devil. “But why would you want to do that?”
The fallen angel threw back his head and laughed. The vibration from his voice shook the room. “Why, because I can. What else?”
“And, for this, you will return my family to me?” The gangster stood. His eyes narrowed. “No tricks? No bait and switch? You won’t bring them back like those people in Stephen King’s Pet Sematary? They’ll be like they were before the plague?”
“Yes, yes… such details.” Satan dismissed the thought with a wave of his hand. “You’ll do it? Give me your soul to use as I wish?”
“Yes. If you restore my family… as they were before you took them… to me.”
“Awh, there’s the rub. You must first work to get them. Get it?”
“Yes. I get it,” Gamino said as his den faded away, then vanished, and he found himself standing in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.