Meanwhile, across town…

At seven AM precisely the twenty individuals who made up the higher echelon of the Cult strode, lounged, or sidled, each according to their character, into the workmanlike board room on the second floor of Town Hall. Mayor Chapman was already in his seat. No greetings were exchanged. The atmosphere was toxic. The mood black. They sat very still and looked up the table at the Mayor with expressions of the sharpest interest and what, in lesser men, would have been obsequious respect.

Though the Chapmans had produced many great sorcerers and had played an active part in the town since its founding, the Cult in its current form was a rather new development. Eric had not always been in a position of power- in fact as the second of two boys he was often overlooked growing up. It had been expected that he would be the right hand to his older brother David when their father died. Eric had decided at a young age that this would not be acceptable. His older brother, while more outgoing and charming, was a dumb jock who lacked the sharpness needed to live up to the family lineage. His father could not see that, would not even hear Eric out on the subject. So, on the eve of his brother’s eighteenth birthday, he cut the brakes on David’s new car as father and son went on a joy ride. The police called not an hour later informing the family that Vincent Chapman and his oldest son had crashed into a tree. They were both pronounced DOA.

After taking his family fortune it was a matter of stretching his magical prowess. He knew some things, but his father had never given him proper instruction. New teachers were sought, and after a time, found. The first of these mentors was the geriatric Smith, though that old fool and his obsession with bending the barriers of time had proven to be a dead end. For a man like Eric Chapman, the past was dead- the present was what mattered.

Then there had been Victor Maywood. The man had been everything Eric admired- driven, ambitious, unrestrained by the imaginary shackles of morality. For two years Eric had worked alongside him, a devoted pupil. They would experiment together with the Higher Powers, test the limits of magic in the mortal realm and press against the soft boundary of the Other Side. It was also through Maywood that Eric was introduced to the parties, the gatherings, the truest indulgence in hedonism around. He made many great friends at those occasions, friends who would come in handy years later.

Of course it all went to shit when Eric had turned his eye to the man’s daughters. The old lineages were important, and who better for him to take as a bride than another child of the founders? Victor hadn’t been pleased with that, though he would never explain why. The older man also grew secretive, his experiments with the other side becoming a mystery. It became clear that Eric would need to look elsewhere for the higher ideas.

That was when the Incubus found him. The Great Ones could whisper, it was said, but it was rare for them to truly reach out. Humans were so beneath them that it would be akin to a man speaking to a termite. But the Incubus had spoken, and told him things. It gave him directions that allowed him to rise in prominence until he became mayor of Silent Oaks and had a group of like minded individuals around him.

He looked at them all with cold eyes.

His stalwart was Halbert, who sat to his right. The man was hungry, for flesh and for power. He had given his own sister to the gatherings and watched as she was warped and fashioned into a being of lust. There was a use for a man like that, one so completely unrestrained by humanity, but his greatest virtue was that he knew not to bite the hand that fed him.

To his left sat one of the few women of their number. Asa Nakamura might not have been the most adept sorceress, but she was deeply involved in the financial and political side of their enterprise in a way that made her invaluable. She would argue with him on occasion, but only on the trivial semantics. Her loyalty was to the Incubus, to the coming emergence.

Around the table, in the dimly lit room, there were other faces. People he had recruited over the many years of climbing, networking. Men and women who would usher in the new order of the world. And those eighteen pairs of eyes stared at him, waiting.

“My friends,” he started, voice deceptively light, “I think we can all agree that what happened at the steel mill was an unmitigated disaster.”

His eyes searched the room until he found his target. “Leon, stand up.”

There was hesitancy on the other’s petulant face, but it was a brief thing. The small, ginger-haired man rose to his feet. His face shone with sweat, but he kept his expression trained into a mask of neutrality. Ten years a serving as sheriff had hardened him to such things.

“Leon,” Chapman glanced down, examined his fingernails. There was still a little ash on them from the fire. “Explain for the room what you think happened. Or rather, what your men think happened.”

“Someone broke into the mill, got rid of the cameras, and set fire to the whole damned place. Had to have been a few of them.”

“And how many is a few?”

The man spread his hands. “Less than ten, more than two. It’s hard to say. We’ll know more in a few hours when we get more of the professionals to look at the scene.”

Eric stared at him a moment longer, then nodded for him to sit down. His eyes searched for the next face. “Gregory, please stand.”

Gregory was tall and rough looking. They had found him years, working as a Vegas hard man with a touch of the gift to him. He was capable as a blunt weapon, but looking at him now, Eric realised that the man had grown lax.

“You’re the head of security,” he said, calmly. “Mind explaining how it is that we had people gatecrash a major ritual at what should have been a secure site?”

The big man licked his lips, a nervous tell. “I had guys watching, I did. But we were out of the way, it was night, in the basement, I didn’t think that we’d have a fucking team of intruders-”

“That’s exactly right,” Eric cut in. “You didn’t think. You didn’t think at all….and it cost us. A lesser spawn of the Incubus was to be summoned last night, to help us prepare for the great Ascension.”

“Sir, I swear-”

Eric didn’t let him finish. He squeezed on a small marble he kept in his pocket and brought forth a burst of powerful, perfectly focused dark magic and sent it right for Gregory. The effect was instantaneous. The harsh, calloused features began to melt and shift into something smaller and smoother. Bones began to shift and reform while flesh be muscle redistributed into something that was feminine and small. In a matter of moments, Gregory had become a woman. Her panic was overwhelming.

“What the hell have you done to me?” She touched at her chest, feeling the breasts that had inflated, and then touched at her groin and her now absent penis. A choked sob of horror escaped her lips, but no one in the room was sympathetic. Some of them watched on with some apprehension, but others, like Halbert, wore expressions of sadistic interest.

Eric pressed a button on his desk and two men, both naked and with magically induced erections, approached like automatons. The Mayor gestured to the new girl and within moments they were on her. She cried and tried to weakly bat them away, but very soon she gave in to the magic arousal that the spell had caused. The men wasted no time and made good use of her, each of them claiming a hole and fucking with animal rawness.

The Mayor didn’t spare them a second glance, instead turning to the rest of his number. “I shouldn’t have to remind you that stupidity and laziness go hand in hand with failure. I don’t like failure, especially when it is now clear that we have someone working against us. The hybrid is causing trouble, yes, but this has proven to me that there other hands involved. Human hands. I want these interlopers found before the Ascension and I don’t care what you have to do to make it happen. Squeeze this town like never before. Because if you fail,” he gestured to the scene going on off to the side, the ****, moaning sounds of the girl being railed from both ends. “You’ll end up like this slut, and then fed to the next demon we summon.”