The heir to one of the world’s most influential families reckons with the demonic secret of their power in this contemporary dark fantasy that melds occult magic with shocking family drama, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Accidents.
“Vivid, unsettling, and darkly compelling, The Calamities is Chuck Wendig at his best.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth
Mourning Mayne knows he’ll one day bear the duty of managing his family’s vast empire of wealth and power. But the feckless Mourning has always struggled to accept this legacy of cruelty, domination, and exploitation . . . and something even darker.
Because the Maynes are no ordinary family: Hidden in our world are the fiends—half-human, half-demon, and possessed of a dark magic born from buying human souls—and the Maynes are one of the oldest and most influential fiendish families.
But when Mourning’s estranged father, the formidable and terrifying Hadrian Mayne, demands that Mourning return to the fold, he has to decide whether to accept his legacy and embrace his role in the family or to forge his own destiny, and with it, change the course of the world.
Because along the way home, he will meet Key, a black-market seller of human souls, and Quinn, an artist who may hold the dark truth behind the fate of the fiends. Alone, they have all struggled with the darkness of their natures . . . but together, they might find a path out of the shadows.
Book One of The Fiends
Release date:
August 18, 2026
Publisher:
Del Rey
Print pages:
560
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AGARES. A great duke of Hell. Hail the old man on his crocodile! Hail the hawk upon his wrist! Beware the forked spear in his grip! He is the master of tongues and the keeper of runaways. He destroys dignities and undoes blessings. The very fundament is his to command-fear the quaking of the earth, for Agares awakens from long slumber with bitterness and wrath upon his fat, hungry tongue.
From the Liber Progenies Daemonicarum by Anton Nauendorf, 1845
Bucks County, Pennsylvania
The man woke up, which he would swiftly regard as his first mistake of the day. A mistake compounded by the fact that the act of awakening was not done in his bed, but rather, in the back of a black Rolls-Royce SUV.
He did not remember getting into this vehicle.
He sniffed, sat upright, blinked. He moved too suddenly and the seatbelt tightened, nearly choking him. Mourning-both his name and, it seemed, his lot in life, what with all his grieving the life he'd once had-looked around. He started with himself, and saw he was wearing a rumpled zigzag knit shirt the color of spilled coffee, and a pair of distressed jeans. Both Todd Snyder. His own clothing, at least, so that was good. No shoes, though. No socks, either. Just bare toes.
Outside, rolling hills, green trees. Which was to say: very much not Seattle. Which, last he'd checked, was where he had been.
Ahead of him, the dark shape of a driver, sitting stiffly upright. No mask on him. No gun to be seen. At least I haven't been kidnapped. Or, if this was a kidnapping, it seemed to be a gentle one. No one in the passenger side.
Then, he saw it. In one of the cupholders sat not just a clue but the key to the whole thing:
A bottle of Glacial Moraine brand sparkling water.
He knew it all too well. It was disgusting water. A bottle of water taken from a melting, and in fact disappearing, glacier (thanks to climate change) and sold at a premium price, close to a hundred and twenty bucks just for 750 mL of the stuff. Mourning gave less than a shit about all that—the world would end one day with or without his woe—but the water tasted terrible. It tasted like you were licking dirty snowmelt, so toxic that its effervescence burned your throat going down. It was aggressive, sulfurous, and celebrated its own awfulness.
Just like the old man, he thought.
Even still, Mourning's own mouth tasted presently like a pack of cigarettes soaked in a glass of vodka and crushed vitamins. And he didn't even smoke.
So he popped the cork—because of course this bottle of pretentious bullshit had to be corked—and took a swig. It was worse than he remembered. The mineral stink of burned eggs in there, somewhere. As he gulped it, wincing, he thought of the person who would've demanded it be here in this car:
His father, Hadrian Mayne.
It seems I have been summoned, he thought.
His head ached with a dull throb. Tinnitus rang in his ears. Like the discomfort of hearing a leaf blower somewhere in the distance—a sound that bored its way into the skull.
Mourning took another gulp of the glacial apocalypse water and leaned forward. "That you, Verner?"
The tall man at the wheel, his long face spotted and stained like old couch leather, gave a stiff nod. "It is, sir. I see you're awake. There's water there if you want it."
"Water. Yes. Thank you, Verner."
"Food, too, if you care for it. Protein bars in here." With a hand, Verner patted the center console. Mourning lifted its lid, found in there a stack of Elation brand bars—he scowled and fetched one with the grace and disinterest of an arcade claw machine. The flavor was just listed as Behoove, whatever that meant. Ingredients: lion's mane mushrooms, ashwagandha, goji berry, artichoke inulin, collagen, plus 300 mg of adaptogens. His father wouldn't eat these. But they cost money, so he bought them. Mourning looked at the bar. Expired two years ago. He shrugged, shoved it in his pocket anyway.
"So, it wasn't you that plucked me out of the Northwest . . . I assume last night?" Mourning asked.
"No, sir, I just facilitate pickup on this end." Verner sounded tired.
"Flight? Private?" Jet, he meant.
"Yes, sir, picked you up at Plumridge Airport."
"Whoever the receiving team was, they must have given me quite the cocktail to keep me out that long."
The driver shrugged a little. "As I'm to understand it, you gave yourself the cocktail and they simply helped keep the party going long enough to get you here, but like I said, sir, I wasn't there."
"Right." He winced as he sat upright. Memories from the night before pulsed briefly in dark flashes—ketamine, lo-fi beats, a woman in an outfit made of red rope smoking hand-rolled cigarettes through the mouth slit in her white leather mask. The memories were tenuous, evasive. Like trying to capture mist with grasping hands. When those memories fled, they were replaced with the clarity of the current moment: His father, after five years, had summoned him. Mourning Mayne was going home. And Mourning Mayne was terrified.
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