No Rest for the Wicked excerpt

Get a sneak peak at our latest release, No Rest for the Wicked, from first-time author Vincent Alcaras. You can follow him on twitter at @VincentAlcaras, on facebook at Vincent Alcaras Author, or at his author page, vincentalcarasauthor.com.

The book will be coming out soon, so stay tuned.

Prologue

THE SNOWY PARK in Upstate New York was usually a pristine getaway from the weight of the world. There was a small clearing surrounded by large trees, their evergreen needles providing a beautiful contrast to the blanket of white. A peaceful place to go when you needed to forget your troubles, when all you needed was a little space and a lot of fresh air to clear the mind. On this particular night, however, it was the scene of a bloodbath.

Animistic roars accented by squeals of anguish and the wet, slapping sound of fists hitting bloody flesh echoed through the still night air. The beating doled out on this night could have been described in a few different ways. Most would call it an unnecessary act of violence. Others might call it bad karma, the payback for a lifetime of preying on the weak. But one man, the one hidden just past the tree line, would call it an opportunity.

His bright, metallic, silver hair shone with the light of the moon while his matching eyes were wide with awe. A dark, twisted joy racked his designer-suit-clad body as he watched the violence unfold. The awe lasted only a few moments before a dark intelligence flooded him. You could almost hear the gears in his mind turning.

His eyes scanned to and fro, asking and answering his own questions in milliseconds, yet not the ones that consumed his mind the most. What had pulled him here? What had triggered that primordial tug he felt on the base of his spine to appear at this location? And just when he thought he would receive no answers, the savage beating reached a surprising crescendo.

In a few moments the anguished squeals of the victim ceased, falling silent as he fell unconscious. Instead of rejoicing, the assailant only roared louder, a new wave of rage and insanity flooding his body as he continued pummeling the seemingly lifeless form even harder. His blood lust would not be sated.

An electric thrill went up the Watcher’s spine at the sight of beautifully depraved violence. Just then the air got heavy with a thick, oily energy that clung to his skin and flooded his senses, and that’s when those two pivotal questions were answered: This was it. This was the one he’d been so desperately seeking for centuries upon centuries. Just a few more moments and everything would be sealed.

And then, at the last possible moment, it all ground to a halt.

To the Watcher’s chagrin two policemen stormed into the clearing and, with their Tasers in hand, interrupted the answer to a millennia of the Watcher’s aspirations. At first rage filled him. Every fiber of his being told him to storm the clearing, to tear the policemen apart with his bare hands for interrupting, but then his good sense took over. Instead, a Cheshire grin split his face.

Looking up to the sky he mockingly pressed his palms together and wagged them to the heavens before he strutted back into the forest. Had anyone cared to listen they would have heard a sonorous laugh echo through the trees, and all the small animals that scattered through the forest at the sound of it.

You see, the Watcher understood one very important thing about human nature that most people forget: it’s never just one thing.

A man’s descent into madness is always a confluence of events. A perfect symphony that starts off quietly, building slowly until climaxing into a deafening crescendo. As the tempo of the music builds, the quiet, urging whispers of madness turn into deafening roars. It becomes a force independent of one’s own consciousness, and ultimately far more powerful. A force that, once unleashed, can never be tamed again.

A force that, if guided properly, could burn the world to the ground.

Stay tuned for more excerpts from No Rest for the Wicked.