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PROLOGUE

CEREbrUS

T hey called him a genius.

It’s what all the online magazines and newspapers called him.

It’s what the talking heads on all the social media videos and texts and sound bytes called him. I only looked at those things because I couldn’t help but look at them. Because I was alone. Because that world sucked me in like it did everyone else. Because I wanted to understand more about him even as I unwillingly drew closer.

Because I was a ghost.

He wasn’t a ghost.

They said he was a genius. A visionary.

The Michelangelo of the modern world.

I could feel those lights around him, though.

Even in the darkness and confusion I’d been in for longer than I could remember, I could feel the truth of what he was.

The two sides battled, separated out, reformed, broke apart.

Two sides. Too many sides.

I fought to blink through that multiplied vision…

…and the lights around him snapped into focus.

They were drunk, dark, clouded, like watery tentacles.

I recognized this feeling.

It made me feel like I wanted to throw up the steak I’d just wolfed down, only a few hours before. I’d been trying so hard. Trying so hard to blend in, to make myself normal, like the rest of them… like him… like all of them.

I had to be him.

He liked steak, so I must like steak, too.

He could talk and laugh like everyone else, so I could do those things, too.

He could be loved…

I blinked back tears.

My mind spun as I stared around at them, familiar but not, mine, but not.

I saw photos I knew, people I knew, but all of it was wrong, none of it was mine. I stared at the one who stared back the longest, who looked at me with love… and gods, it hurt. It hurt so damned much. I fought the hunger that rose in me, the unfairness of it, the frustration at everything denied me, given to him, always for him, always at my expense.

I was like a parasite, coveting a life that could never be mine.

Coveting a life I felt entitled to, anyway.

Faking. Pretending.

Stealing.

I stole what wasn’t given to me freely.

My own body felt so far away, so not- mine, so corrupted. My missing soul craved a different type of sustenance; I only had to figure out what it was.

But I knew what it was. I’d always known.

I knew, but the knowing didn’t help me.

That half of my soul had already been claimed.

He’d stolen that from me, too.

I watched the green metal on the door of the building, and I choked on the blinding rage that rose within me, burning in my chest. I blessed the practiced skill of these fingers, so strong and long and foreign and deft, and yes, beautiful. They were beautiful. Everything about him was beautiful, outside and in.

Beautiful, complex… deadly.

Right now, I blessed the structure there, the knowing, the way I could wield every part of it, like a puppeteer pulling strings, making them dance the way I wanted, making them sing and fuck and eat steak and laugh like I wanted.

This was the hunger that mattered now.

This was the only hunger I could truly sate.

The only one I would ever vanquish.

I hunted the black light.

I hunted the devil with the empty eyes.

I hunted, and I ran it down, dragged it to the earth, sank my teeth, tore out its throat.

And I ate.

I ate until I’d had my fill.