Part 1 

Chapter 1 | January 1st, 2024

From the mangled corpse, a single drop of blood oozes. It bleeds into the rain-birthed current snaking along edges cut into Laguna Beach’s deserted highway. In defiance, it floats apart from mud and muck as it weaves through the last stretch of its journey. And then the crimson droplet chooses an unnatural turn.

Banished behind black storm clouds, the midnight moon would not bear witness as the blood surges toward its destination. For murdered blood creeps not. Seeps not. It claws and screams. It rages and burns. 

As the ember-red droplet soaks slowly into Lucinda’s garden, Lucinda sits upright in bed. Her flesh tingles and her bones shiver. Instinctively, her hand grasps for Spider. His side of their bed: cold. 

Her bare feet patter across the wood floorboards to their tiny living room. Outside their home, the crazed storm conjures madness from her beloved Pacific Ocean. Angry sheets of rain threaten to shatter the delicate glass panes.

Tightening her silk robe against her trembling body, she walks with measured steps toward the round table draped in raven-black cloth beneath their storm-battered windows. The skull-sized crystal centered on the shimmering black surface seems to hover.

Lucinda stops before the jagged amethyst. Its center–a deep aubergine. Its edges–sharp and ghostly. Now, pulsing with violent shards of violet light, it hisses and beacons to be held. She struggles not to reach to it. Instead, she centers her shaking hands mimicking a prayer: if only she could pray. 

“She lost her life,” Lucinda whispers. “She’s reclaimed her soul.”