Ancient Enemy Box Set
Date: 2020-02-14 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Horror | Paranormal | Supernatural
Description: The complete Ancient Enemy series together for the first time - all four books in one box set. It starts when Stella, an archaeologist specializing in Anasazi culture, finds David, a young Navajo boy who stumbles onto their dig site in a remote corner of the Navajo Reservation. David's coat is smeared with blood and he's in shock from something he's seen, revealing nothing but his name. Soon Stella and the other archaeologists will discover that something is chasing David, an unimaginable ancient evil that will stop at nothing to get him. After Stella escapes the dig site with David, driving n

ANCIENT ENEMY

BOX SET
by

MARK LUKENS

Ancient Enemy Box Set—Copyright © 2019 by Mark Lukens

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be reprinted without written permission from the author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (or in any other form), business establishments, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover Art by: Damonza

Special thanks to: Jet, Ann, Kat, Kelli, and Mary Ann – your help has been invaluable to me, and it means so much to me.

OTHER BOOKS BY MARK LUKENS:

ANCIENT ENEMY – www.amazon.com/dp/B00FD4SP8M

DARKWIND: ANCIENT ENEMY 2 – www.amazon.com/dp/B01K42JBGW

HOPE’S END: ANCIENT ENEMY 3 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07G1MS6RK

EVIL SPIRITS: ANCIENT ENEMY 4 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07L8KLXVB

DESCENDANTS OF MAGIC – www.amazon.com/dp/B00FWYYYYC

SIGHTINGS – www.amazon.com/dp/B00VAI31KW

DEVIL’S ISLAND – www.amazon.com/dp/B06WWJC6VD

WHAT LIES BELOW – www.amazon.com/dp/B0143LADEY

NIGHT TERRORS – www.amazon.com/dp/B00M66IU3U

THE SUMMONING – www.amazon.com/dp/B00HNEOHKU

THE DARWIN EFFECT – www.amazon.com/dp/B01G4A8ZYC

GHOST TOWN – www.amazon.com/dp/B00LEZRF7G

THE VAMPIRE GAME – www.amazon.com/dp/B07C2M72X9

FOLLOWED – www.amazon.com/dp/B078WYGMJN

THE EXORCIST’S APPRENTICE – www.amazon.com/dp/B00YYF1E5C

POSSESSION: THE EXORCIST’S APPRENTICE 2 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07NCZQTNR

A DARK COLLECTION: 12 SCARY STORIES – www.amazon.com/dp/B00JENAGLC

RAZORBLADE DREAMS: HORROR STORIES – www.amazon.com/dp/B076B7W252

COLLAPSE: DARK DAYS BOOK 1 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07SCPL6QB

CHAOS: DARK DAYS BOOK 2 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07TVYNW19

EXPOSURE: DARK DAYS BOOK 3 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07TY5S1S8

REFUGE: DARK DAYS BOOK 4 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07VR8KNJ6

AFTERMATH: DARK DAYS BOOK 5 – www.amazon.com/dp/B0821PWVH5

SURVIVAL: DARK DAYS BOOK 6 – www.amazon.com/dp/B0821QWTGB

SLEEP DISORDERS – www.amazon.com/dp/B07XX9WVGM

CHAPTER 1

New Mexico Badlands—Anasazi Dig Site

He was out there—she was sure of it.

Stella remained perfectly still. She listened for sounds of movement around the dark room, but all she could hear was heavy breathing, some snoring, and the ceaseless wind that howled around the trailer. The room was claustrophobic with the smells of body odor, sweat, and fear. She made herself wait a few more minutes before opening her eyes. She wanted to be sure everyone else was asleep.

Under the thin sheet that covered her body, Stella was fully dressed. She even had her hiking boots on. She had been planning this for more than a day now. This was her only chance.

And David’s only chance.

Finally, after counting slowly to one hundred, Stella opened her eyes just a crack. She sat up, not making a sound. She looked around the dark room at the few people who were left; some of them curled up on chairs, some of them on the floor. Some clutched weapons in their hands as they slept: knives, archaeological axes, anything that could be used in defense.

Jake, who was supposed to be awake and on guard, slept in a fetal position on the floor, a hunting knife gripped in one hand.

Stella watched Jake as she pulled the sheet away from her body and swung her feet to the floor. Keeping her eyes on Jake the whole time, she groped in the darkness for her purse on the floor beside the couch. The keys to her rusted and battered Chevy Suburban were inside the purse.

She grabbed her coat from the end of the couch and stood up in the darkness. She froze. Someone coughed and snorted in their sleep, but then the person rolled over and laid still. After the four days of terror they’d been through, it was unbelievable that they could sleep at all—but the body eventually surrenders to its basic need for food and sleep.

And survival, her mind whispered.

Stella crept past a table cluttered with labeled Anasazi artifacts that they had dug out of the cave only a week ago.

Had it been only a week? It seemed like years—another lifetime.

Stella made it to the side door of the trailer, unlocked it, opened it, and slipped out into the night.

Jake’s eyes popped open. He sat up in the darkness and watched Stella leave. He gripped the hunting knife in his hand, his forearm muscles bunching. He got to his feet and walked to the back door of the trailer.

He knew what he had to do.

*

Stella hurried down the trailer steps and stood on the rocky ground of the canyon floor. She spotted David forty yards away, bundled up in his coat as he gazed out at the barren landscape under the starry night sky. Stella glanced back at the trailer—no one coming yet—and then she hurried out to David.

She stood beside David. He seemed so small and fragile, only nine years old. He was at least half Navajo, maybe even full-blooded, but she didn’t know for sure. The only thing she knew about David was that the others inside the trailer wanted to kill him.

Stella touched David’s shoulder, a gentle touch. He looked up at her and his eyes seemed like dark shimmering pools of liquid in the night.

“David, we need to leave right now. You understand, don’t you?”

He nodded and offered her his hand.

She took it and they ran.

They ran past the three temporary trailers and tents that had been set up at the dig site weeks ago. Even though they tried to be quiet, Stella could hear their shoes pounding the rocky landscape as they raced towards the group of cars and trucks in the distance. None of the vehicles worked anymore, and she wasn’t sure why she believed her Suburban would start now.

But that wasn’t the truth, was it? She had an idea of why her truck was going to start this time.

They were only sixty yards away from the group of trucks when Jake jumped out from behind the last trailer, the hunting knife gripped in his hand, an insane look in his eyes. His hair was wild, his clothes ripped, and he seemed to be unaffected by the freezing air. This wasn’t the Jake that she’d known—longtime archaeologist, longtime friend. This Jake was someone different, an animal trying to survive.

Stella and David stopped; Stella’s arm shot out in front of David protectively.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Jake screeched as he took a step towards them. “You can’t leave!”

Stella didn’t answer; she just watched Jake like someone would watch an unpredictable animal.

Jake took another step towards them; his eyes were unblinking orbs of terror. “You can’t take him!”

“I have to,” Stella answered.

“We have to do what he wants. We have to give him what he’s asking for.”

Stella stood her ground, her arm still in front of David. “No. I won’t do this.”

“We have to!”

There was a rustling in the dry brush near Jake. He turned and tried to look everywhere at once. The cold wind blew harder, it howled down into the canyon, swirling sand around, bringing the coppery smell of blood with it.

He was coming.

Jake shook his head as unnoticed tears of hopelessness slipped from his eyes. He called out to the dark night, to the dark wind. “No! I’m doing what you want!”

Stella remained in front of David, ready to protect him as best she could.

Jake backed up to the last trailer, still shaking his head no, still trying to look everywhere at once. His back touched the metal wall of the trailer, and he held his knife out in a trembling hand like it was his last line of defense.

Jake looked back at Stella and she could see a realization dawning in his eyes now; she could see some of the old Jake back in those eyes. He shook his head as tears slipped from his eyes. He tried to give her a smile, but his lips were trembling too badly.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m not going to let him take me while I’m still alive.”

Stella moved in front of David to block his view of what she knew was coming next. But she wasn’t able to turn away in time and she saw Jake bring the hunting knife up to his own throat. He didn’t hesitate; he slashed his throat in one quick cut, opening up a wide gash that spilled blood immediately.

Stella turned and nudged David forward into the night, keeping him away from the horrible sight of Jake. But she couldn’t block out the sound of Jake’s gurgling throat, the sound of the liquid thump as his body hit the ground, the sound of one of his legs kicking at the trailer in death spasms.

“Run!” Stella yelled at David.

They bolted for the group of vehicles.

As they got closer to the vehicles, Stella could hear something chasing them, crashing through the desert brush—gaining on them.

The Suburban was only thirty feet away now. Twenty feet away. Ten.

Stella didn’t dare turn and see what was chasing them; she opened the door of her Suburban and yelled at David: “Get in!”

David hopped inside and scrambled across the bench seat.

Stella jumped inside and slammed the door shut and then slapped at the door lock button. She rummaged in her purse for the keys to the truck and her fingers finally curled around them. She tried to jab the key into the ignition with trembling fingers, but she was shaking too much and she dropped the keys down onto the floorboard.

David sat up on his knees in the passenger seat as he stared at the inky darkness outside the truck’s windows.

Stella groped for the keys in the darkness down by her feet. Her fingers searched and searched—and then she found them. She sat back up; she didn’t look at David, she didn’t look out the windows, she only concentrated on getting the key into the ignition. They were so close now to escape—so close.

If the truck was going to start …

You know it will start this time, her mind whispered.

She managed to finally slide the key into the ignition. She twisted the key. The motor turned, it made a tired and sputtering sound. She twisted the key again; the motor cranked and cranked. Over the sound of the engine trying to fire into life, Stella could hear something outside, like the wind itself had come alive—the Darkwind, that’s what Jim Whitefeather had called it. Jim Whitefeather—the first one taken.

She couldn’t think about Jim right now.

“Come on, damn it!” Stella screamed at her Suburban just as something slammed into the side of the truck, rocking it so hard that Stella was afraid it was going to tip over. David flew backwards and fell into the passenger door. He hit the back of his head on the passenger window, but not hard enough to break the glass. Stella almost lost her grip on the keys, but she held on to the steering wheel and kept twisting the key.

The truck started! The powerful engine roared to life.

Stella slammed the shifter into drive. She stomped on the gas pedal. The Suburban’s back tires spun in the sand and shot up a rooster-tail of dirt into the night air. Then the tires caught traction and the truck climbed the small rocky incline with ease and drove up onto the dirt trail that led out of this place.

Stella muscled the steering wheel, her foot still hammered down on the gas pedal. The rear tires spun in the dirt and the rear end of the Suburban fishtailed, losing control. She had to be careful; she couldn’t wreck the truck and leave them stranded here. With all of her willpower, she pulled her foot off of the gas pedal, fighting the natural urge to panic. She turned the wheel back the other way to correct their spin away from the decline back down into the parked vehicles.

She pushed the gas pedal down again, and this time she guided the truck back away from the hill that they had just climbed. The Suburban lurched forward, gaining speed quickly, the powerful engine a screaming fury. The headlights knifed into the darkness as she navigated the twists and turns of the canyon road.

Stella let out a long breath that plumed in front of her face in the freezing air. She could breathe again—it felt like she’d been holding her breath for hours. Her muscles began to relax, her fingers loosened on the steering wheel a little.

They were safe for now.

Stella looked at David. He rubbed the back of his head, his long black hair rumpled.

“Are you okay?” she asked him.

David looked at her and nodded; his dark eyes were glassy in the night, his small breaths clouded up in front of his face.

“You’re not bleeding, are you?”

David shook his head no.

Stella glanced at the rearview mirror, the dirt road barely visible behind them in the red glow of the taillights. But someone stood there in the middle of the road—it was a man watching them leave, she was sure of it.

She looked back at David. “I won’t let anything happen to you,” she promised him.

David just stared at her. He didn’t seem so sure.

CHAPTER 2

Cody’s Pass, Colorado

Stella had driven through the night from New Mexico up into Colorado. At four thirty in the morning they reached the outskirts of the small town of Cody’s Pass. Stella was bone-weary; her eyes so tired it felt like she had sand in them. She saw a motel at the side of the road—it was called The Mountainside Inn. The vacancy sign blinked in the night.

She glanced at David. He was still sleeping, curled up against the passenger door with his seatbelt over him. The heat was on low and the truck was warm and comfortable. She looked back at the road and pulled into the parking lot of the motel. She didn’t plan on getting a room—she wanted to keep on the move. But if she could just park for an hour or two, try to get a little sleep.

She parked in the back of the motel, backing into a parking spot far away from any other vehicles. She shut off the truck and made sure all of the doors were locked. It was still warm inside, but she figured that the cold would creep in from outside and wake her up in an hour or so. She just needed to close her eyes for a moment.

Stella glanced once more at David to make sure he was still asleep, and then she eased her seat back and closed her eyes. She instantly slipped into dreams. Not dreams, really—fragments of memories. She remembered the dig site. They had found an undiscovered Anasazi site and set up the trailers not too far away from the mouth of the cave. Jake was excited. Stella was excited. They were finding some great artifacts, never before discovered clues to the mysteries of the Anasazi—why they vanished and where they went to.

A week ago Stella had found a lost boy near the mouth of the cave. He was bloody and barely conscious. He wouldn’t talk. It was like he was in shock. She carried him back to the trailer. She cleaned him up and asked him questions,   but he wouldn’t answer her, the only thing he told her was that his name was David. Jake wanted to call the police, but they were on Navajo land, with Navajo permission of course, and their satellite phone wasn’t working. Jim Whitefeather said he would drive to the nearest town thirty miles away and contact the Navajo Tribal Police. But there was something about Jim Whitefeather, something about the way he stared at David, like he was remembering an ancient story from his culture. And there was something in Jim’s eyes that Stella had never seen before—fear.

And that was the day everything started happening …

Stella snapped awake, her breath caught in her throat. She looked around, forgetting for a few seconds where she was.

In my truck, her mind whispered. Parked in a … her tired mind thought for a moment, sluggish from sleep … parked in a motel parking lot.

It was cold. Stella looked at David. He was awake and staring at her.

It was still dark, but the eastern sky was beginning to lighten up with the rising sun. The sun would bring light but not much warmth to the frozen landscape. Stella turned the key and the truck started right up. The heater blasted cold air at first, but then began to warm up.

Stella had only slept for about an hour and a half, and at first she felt worse, but she knew she would feel better soon. Even an hour and a half of sleep would help. Her mind drifted back to her dream, to Jim Whitefeather, to what had happened to him. But she pushed that horror away.

She looked at David. “How long have you been awake?”

He just stared at her.

“You hungry?” she asked him.

He nodded, but still wouldn’t say a word. He had spoken only a few words since that day she’d found him. She had at least convinced him to tell her his name.

Stella pulled out of the parking space and drove out onto the street. She saw a gas station up the road, its sign lit up in the early-morning darkness.

“We need some gas,” she said, but she didn’t expect David to respond.

She pulled her Suburban into the gas station and parked next to one of the gas pumps. She cut the engine and stared out the windshield for a moment.

“I need some coffee,” she whispered. “What do you want to drink?” she asked David.

David stared at Stella, but he said nothing.

“I wish you would talk to me.”

Still no answer from David.

“I know you’ve seen some … some really bad things. We both have. But you need …” She let her words trail off. Maybe she should try a different approach. “Is there someone I can call for you? Your parents? A relative?”

David stared at her, but still wouldn’t respond. He looked out the passenger window.

Stella sighed and grabbed her purse. She pulled out some money; she had enough to make it through Colorado and up to her aunt’s house. They’d be safe there for a little while, she hoped. They would get there, and then she would figure out what to do with David.

She grabbed her keys from the ignition and flashed a smile David’s way. “Come on inside with me. I’ll get you a soda or something, whatever you want.”

David didn’t move.

Stella hesitated for a moment. She didn’t want to leave David alone out here in the truck, not even for a few minutes. But she didn’t want to drag a child out of her truck with people watching.

“You don’t want anything to drink?” she asked him.

David looked at her with his big dark eyes, but he still wouldn’t answer her.

“Okay,” Stella said, giving up. “I’ll get something for you. I’ll just be a minute. Keep all of the doors locked.”

Stella got out and shut her door. She’d only made it a few steps to the gas station store before she heard the sound of her truck’s passenger door opening and then slamming shut. She turned and watched David as he ran across the parking lot to her. He grabbed her hand and shoved his hand into hers.

Stella could feel the sting of tears threatening, but she fought them back. “Change your mind?”

David nodded.

They entered the small store. A bell over the door dinged as they opened it. A cashier sat at the counter—she looked bored. Stella and David walked down the small aisle of groceries. David’s hand was still in hers. Stella spotted a doorway that led to the restrooms.

“Come on,” she whispered to David. “Let’s get cleaned up.”

They entered the women’s bathroom, then closed and locked the door. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and froze for a second. That wasn’t her, was it? Her hair was wild and stringy. She needed a shower. But it was her face that worried her; it was gaunt, like she’d lost twenty pounds. And the look in her eyes scared her the most. It was a haunted look, like the look in a soldier’s eyes who had just come back from battle and seen horrors that he couldn’t have imagined.

And she had seen horrors that she never could’ve imagined.

She washed her hands and face in the sink; she really wanted a hot shower, but this was better than nothing. She brushed her hair back with her hands and tried a smile at the mirror. Her smile seemed fake. She helped David wash up, and then they took turns going to the bathroom in the stall.

After they left the bathroom, Stella headed towards the coffee machine. She told David to go and pick out anything he wanted to eat and drink—whatever he wanted. He walked down one of the aisles of food as Stella fixed herself a cup of coffee. Just looking at the caramel-colored liquid made her realize just how thirsty she was. And she realized that she was hungry. Ravenous. She spotted a warmer near the cashier’s counter that held typical gas station food: pizza, chicken wings, potato wedges, fried chicken. But all they had at this time of the morning were some breakfast sandwiches. Normally this kind of food would’ve turned her stomach, but she grabbed a few of the sandwiches.

Stella set the sandwiches and coffee on the counter, and then she searched the store for other supplies: bottled water, a roll of toilet paper, two toothbrushes and a travel-size tube of toothpaste, a stick of deodorant, a flashlight, two bags of chips, some chewing gum. She brought the items to the counter.

“You taking a trip?” the cashier asked as she rang up the items with a methodical slowness.

“Yeah,” Stella answered. “Heading up north.”

The cashier met Stella’s blue eyes with her own dark eyes. “I wouldn’t be going anywhere right now if I was you.”

Stella froze for an instant. “Why not?”

“There’s a bad snowstorm coming.”

The bell over the door dinged and Stella turned and saw an old man enter the store. He was dressed in overalls with a brown jacket over everything. He looked like he could be a farmer. He rubbed his hands together and stomped snow off of his boots onto the rug in front of the glass doors of the store.

Stella looked back at the cashier and slid the money to her. “We’re going to make it as far as we can. I also need sixty dollars on the white Suburban out there at the pumps.”

The cashier nodded.

Stella looked around for David. A sudden panic rose inside of her when she couldn’t see him anywhere. She hurried down the aisles and saw him right next to the old man. David held the old man’s hand, and the old man stared straight ahead with ice-blue eyes, like he was seeing something that wasn’t there.

“David!” Stella yelled and rushed at the old man. She pulled the man’s hand out of David’s hand and stared at him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked the old farmer.

The old man shook his head like he was just waking up from a dream and didn’t realize where he was. “I … I don’t know.”

“You okay?” Stella asked David.

He nodded his head. She ushered David away from the old man.

The old man walked back towards the glass doors of the store.

The cashier watched him. “You don’t need anything, Jed?” she asked.

“No,” he said, his voice croaking a bit. “I need to get over to the bank.”

Stella grabbed her bag of groceries and she and David left the store. They walked towards her Suburban, but she kept an eye on the old man as he got in his pickup truck and started it. He drove across the snow-covered streets to a bank nestled among a few other buildings along the main street. Beyond the buildings Stella could see a field of snow that stretched out for miles; there was a line of dark trees beyond the fields of snow.

She put the sixty dollars’ worth of gas into her Suburban, and then got inside the truck.

Stella drove out of the gas station and parked in front of a store that looked closed. She left the engine running, left the heat blasting, and left the radio on. The radio DJ warned about the impending snowstorm.

“Yeah, we heard,” Stella said to the radio.

Stella devoured her breakfast sandwich. She gave one of them to David, but he only picked at it. He ate two donuts and drank a pint of milk instead. Stella finished his sandwich for him and drank down the rest of her coffee. She bagged up the trash and threw it away in a nearby dumpster. She got back in her truck and left the door open as she brushed her teeth with some of the bottled water. She made David brush his teeth.

She felt a little better. She was full, cleaner, and calmer.

She backed out onto the snowy road as more snow began to fall from the sky. She put the truck in drive and plowed forward down the road. The town looked kind of busy for this early in the morning, like the townspeople were doing last-minute preparations before the snowstorm hit: gassing up vehicles, picking up food and supplies, getting money from the bank.

Stella drove towards the edge of town, but there was one more stop she needed to make first. She needed to find a payphone and make an anonymous call to the police and tell them what happened at the dig site, as much as she could tell them, as much as they would believe. Maybe a few of them at the dig site would still be alive, but she doubted that. Now that David was gone, there wouldn’t be any reason for them to be kept alive. But she had to at least make the call.

When she got to her aunt’s house, she would turn herself over to the police. But she wasn’t going to worry about that right now. For now she needed to worry about getting David to a safe place.

She looked at David and smiled at him. “You okay?” she asked.

David stared at her and there was just the trace of a smile on his face. “Yes,” he whispered to her.

CHAPTER 3

Cody’s Pass, Colorado

Not even ten minutes after Stella left the gas station, three snowmobiles raced across the field of snow towards the main street of Cody’s Pass. The snowmobiles held two men each on two of them and one man on the other one with two large metal cases strapped to the back.

*

Inside Cody’s Pass Farmers’ Trust Bank, two tellers waited on customers. Four other people waited patiently in line, snow dripping from their boots and pants. One of the customers was Jed, the old man from the gas station store.

The bank manager sat at his desk in the office right off the lobby. He shuffled through some paperwork, but there wasn’t much to do—he’d already announced that they were going to be closing early due to the snowstorm, and he couldn’t wait to get out of here, get home, and start his three-day weekend.

Moments later the quiet morning was shattered as the five men from the snowmobiles exploded through the front doors. They were dressed in dark coats, gloves, and ski masks; two of the men carried large metal briefcases and all of them carried guns. They moved like a military unit, fanning out in different directions. One of the masked men stayed back by the lobby doors, he locked the doors and stood guard in front of them.

Another masked man, the leader of the men, aimed his gun at the tellers as he approached them. “Nobody move!”

The tellers and customers let out short screams of shock, but they froze and watched the robbers with wide eyes.

“Open the money drawers and back away!” the leader barked at the tellers. “Don’t touch anything else!”

The tellers did as they were instructed. Both of the cash drawers popped open and the tellers raised their hands as they backed away from the counter.

Another masked man, a tall and lanky man, rushed over to the customers still in line, his semi-automatic pistol aimed at them. He herded the customers to the wall. “All of you down on the floor now!”

The Leader nodded at the two men with the metal briefcases.

One of the men hopped the teller counter with ease and began emptying the money from the teller drawers into his metal briefcase.

The other man with the case rushed to the bank manager’s office, his gun trained on the man who already had his hands up, already surrendering.

“Was the alarm triggered?” the masked man yelled.

“No,” the bank manager answered, shaking his head almost violently. “I … I  didn’t—”

“Get up,” the masked man growled at the manager. “Open the vault.”

“It’s already open.”

“Take me there.”

The masked man followed the manager behind the teller counter, around a corner to a short hall where a metal door was wide open. The manager gestured at the door with a trembling hand. “There it is.”

The masked man pushed at the manager. “Get in there.”

The manager’s legs felt like jelly, his heart pounded so hard he thought he was going to have a heart attack. His mouth had gone so dry he could hardly spit out any words. “Please don’t.”

“I’m not going to kill you. Nobody’s going to get hurt, I swear. As long as everyone cooperates.”

The masked man’s words calmed the manager down a little. He nodded and entered the vault. The masked man held his metal case open. “Fill the case up. Take money from different stacks.”

*

In the bank lobby, the Leader glanced down at his wristwatch. “Ninety seconds! Let’s move!”

The Leader looked over at the tall, lanky man who held his gun on the customers; all of the customers were on the floor except for one old man, Jed, who stood his ground.

“What’s going on over there?” The Leader yelled.

The tall masked man stepped towards Jed and jabbed his weapon at him. “You hard of hearing, old man?”

Jed showed no fear of the gun pointed at his face. His ice-blue eyes had a blank look in them, like he was lost in a daydream. Or a trance. He stared at the tall masked man, but he seemed to stare right through him.

“Get down on the fucking floor!”

Jed made no move to get on the floor; he made no move of any kind. But he smiled at the masked man, his eyes still so far away, seeing something nobody else there could see. “You’d better get right with the Lord, boy,” Jed whispered at the masked man.

“What the fuck are you babbling about?”

“You better get right with the Lord, because something real bad is coming for you.”

*

In the vault, the bank manager stuffed stacks of cash into the masked man’s metal case. “Please,” the bank manager whispered. “I have a wife. Kids.”

“Everything’s going to be fine,” the masked man promised the manager. “You’ll see your wife and kids again.”

The other masked man with the metal case entered the vault. There was money in his metal case from the cash drawers, but there was room for much more. The bank manager stuffed his case full of stacks of money.

When the cases were full, the masked man closed them and handed one of them to his partner. “Get back out to the lobby.”

The second masked man ran out of the vault with his metal case.

The masked man pointed his weapon at the bank manager who closed his eyes as tears slipped out. His lips whispered silent prayers.

“Open your eyes,” the masked man ordered.

The bank manager did as he was told.

“Get out in the hall, get down on the floor and just stay there. Don’t follow me out, don’t make a sound. Got that?”

“Yes. Yes, thank you.” The bank manager hurried out of the vault and got down on the floor. He closed his eyes and he continued his whispered prayers to a God he hadn’t prayed to in a long time. But he felt okay. He believed the masked man’s words. Something in his voice told the manager that the man was telling the truth. He could hear the masked man walking away. “Thank you, God,” the bank manager whispered. But seconds later the manager heard gunshots and his whispered prayers were back on his lips.

*

In the lobby, the Leader watched Jed as he stood his ground. The tall masked man still had his gun pointed at the old man, but Jed wasn’t getting down on the floor.

“What’s the problem over there?” the Leader asked.

“No problem,” the tall man spat out as he glanced at the Leader, and then he looked back at Jed. “I’m only going to tell you one more time—get down on the floor!”

“The devil himself is coming for you,” Jed whispered. “For all of you.”

The masked man jabbed his gun at Jed. “One last chance, old man.”

“I’ve seen what’s going to happen to you,” Jed whispered with a smile frozen on his face.

In a flash of movement, Jed grabbed the masked man’s arm.

Suddenly, the masked man could see what the old man could see. Images flashed through the masked man’s mind at lightning speed: a rustic cabin in the middle of a snowy field, puddles of blood in the snow, pieces of a dismembered body, a shadow moving down a wall.

The masked man pulled the trigger.

The back of Jed’s head exploded as the bullet tore through it, knocking him back into the wall where he slid down, leaving a smear of blood behind. His eyes were still wide open, still staring right at the masked man, the ghost of a smile was still on his face.

The Leader rushed over to the masked man who stood frozen as he stared down at the old man’s dead body. The other customers on the floor screamed in horror and panic; they covered their heads in protection.

But the masked man only stood there, shocked by what he’d just done. He couldn’t even remember squeezing the trigger.

The Leader grabbed the man’s shoulder, turning him around to face him. “What the fuck are you doing?”

The masked man’s eyes bulged with confusion behind the eyeholes of his ski mask, his mouth moved, trying to talk. “I … I don’t know…”

The other two masked men with the metal cases of money hurried out from behind the counters. “What the fuck happened?” one of them screamed.

The Leader turned and motioned towards the front doors where the last masked man was already unlocking them. “Let’s move!”

The masked men fled the bank and ran down the sidewalk towards an alley that led to the back of the building where their snowmobiles waited. The field of snow lay beyond the bank, a line of trees in the distance. They strapped the briefcases down to the back of the Leader’s snowmobile, and then they hopped on the snowmobiles, two men each on two of the snowmobiles, and the Leader and briefcases on one snowmobile. They took off for the snowy field.

CHAPTER 4

The three snowmobiles raced across the snow-covered field that stretched out underneath a sky of gray clouds that promised more snow. Once they reached the cover of the unending evergreen trees, they parked and cut the engines. The world was suddenly silent around them.

But not for long.

The Leader, Frank, jumped off of his snowmobile. He tore off his ski mask and marched through the snow towards the snowmobile that Jose and Needles sat on. Everything about Frank was hard and lean, his eyes were like glittering black stones set deep in a face that seemed like it was carved from granite. His dark eyes never left the two men as he raced through the snow at them.

Jose, small and twitchy, dismounted the snowmobile and stepped aside; he knew Frank was coming for Needles and he wanted to put some distance between himself and Needles right now.

Needles, a tall and wiry man, lifted up his ski mask. Prison tattoos peeked out from underneath his coat collar and wound their way up the sides of his neck. His long, unruly hair cascaded down to his shoulders. Usually Needles was an imposing figure; the kind of man you thought twice about messing with, an air of danger and violence about him. But right now he looked stunned; his eyes were wide and nervous, his mouth hung open slightly. He watched Frank march towards him.

“What the fuck, Needles?!” Frank yelled. “What the fuck happened back there?”

Needles shook his head no as he stared at Frank with lost eyes. “I don’t know, Frank. That old man, he wouldn’t get on the floor. He … he grabbed me. Tried to attack me.”

“So you kill him?”

Needles didn’t have an answer for Frank.

Frank was only a few feet away from Needles, insane fury dancing in his eyes.

Cole and Trevor dismounted their snowmobile. Cole pushed up his ski mask, revealing a handsome face and close-cropped dark hair. He rushed over and stepped in between Frank and Needles at the last second. “Come on, Frank. Let’s think about this for a minute.”

Frank turned to Cole—they locked eyes. Cole’s muscles tensed; he was ready for anything right now. He’d seen Frank angry before, but never this angry.

Finally, Frank stepped away. He paced through the snow for a moment, breathing out a long slow breath that misted up in front of his face.

Cole watched Frank, still a little unsure about him for a moment. “What now, boss?”

Frank looked at Cole, then at the others. “Change of plans.”

“Change of plans?” Jose yelled.

“Yes, a change of plans,” Frank growled at Jose. “Since that psycho motherfucker over there decided to kill someone, every cop in the state is going to be looking for us now.”

A silence blanketed them for a moment. Frank glanced at Trevor, a pale but athletic-looking man who looked more like a grad student than a bank robber. Trevor pulled out a pair of glasses from his coat pocket, completing the look. He took a folded paper out of his jacket, unfolded it, and studied it for a moment. It was a hand-drawn map. He looked up and pointed at the dark woods. “If we go through those woods for about half a mile, there will be a road.”

*

Stella’s rusty Chevy Suburban rumbled down the lonely, snow-covered road. Unending evergreens lined both sides of the road and it made her feel like she was driving through a gigantic maze, a white path that twisted through big green walls. She concentrated on the road, gripping the steering wheel as the windshield wipers struggled to push the falling snow out of the way.

The heater blasted warm air at Stella and David as the radio played classic rock-and-roll. The song ended.

“That was Fleetwood Mac,” the DJ on the radio said. “Looks like there’s no end in sight for the big series of snowstorms moving through. Some areas can expect at least another foot of snow and possible whiteout conditions.”

“Yeah, we know,” Stella muttered at the radio.

Stella watched the road, slowing down a little as they rounded a curve which revealed more trees. More and more trees. Unending trees. No buildings. No other cars in sight. No signs of human life. She hadn’t seen another vehicle for the last twenty minutes. That was probably because everybody else knew about the snowstorm; they were already tucked safely inside their homes, ready to ride out the storm. They weren’t driving through it like idiots.

She glanced at David who stared out the windshield, his body rigid, his face tense. He looked out the passenger window and watched the dark green blur of trees whip by. He turned around and stared out the back window of the Suburban, watching the road and dark trees disappear into a mist of white snow behind them.

Stella forced a smile on her face—hopefully a reassuring smile. “David, don’t worry. It didn’t follow us.”

David turned back around in his seat and stared at Stella, searching her eyes for the truth.

Stella changed the subject. “Don’t you want to know where we’re going?”

David nodded. “Where?” he whispered.

“My aunt’s house. She lives in northern Colorado. We’ll be safe up there. I promise. Then we’ll figure out what to do next. We’ll call someone for you.”

David looked down at his coat and toyed with one of the buttons.

Stella watched the road for a moment as she rounded a bend. She glanced back at David as she talked to him. “There has to be someone I can call for you.”

No answer from David.

“David, why won’t you tell me?”

Still no answer from David.

“You need to talk to me,” she said a little louder and sharper than she had intended.

David looked at Stella. His eyes drilled into hers, they seemed to burn into her mind for a split second. “My parents aren’t here anymore.”

The words shocked Stella. “What do you mean? What happened to them?”

David looked out the windshield, his eyes widened in shock. “Look out!!”

Stella looked back at the road and saw a man dressed in a dark coat standing in the middle of the snow-covered road; he waved his arms, trying to flag her down. She stomped her foot on the brake. Too hard. The tires locked up; the Suburban skidded along the snow and ice, sliding helplessly.

“Hold on!” Stella shouted at David as she muscled the steering wheel, trying to turn the truck, watching in horror as the man only stood there, perhaps frozen with fear. The truck got closer and closer to the man, and then it slid right past him, barely missing him.

Her truck slid off the side of the road and ran down through a ditch where it crashed through snow drifts and shrubs, running some of the shrubs over, crunching them to the ground, before finally coming to a stop with a jolt.

Stella sat there for a moment in shock; her fingers gripped the steering wheel like she was still driving. The windshield wipers thumped back and forth, the headlights stabbed through the murky daylight, one of the headlight beams pointed at a crazy angle now.

For a moment Stella’s mind buzzed with panic. It was him, her mind whispered. It was the person she’d seen standing in the road when they’d left the dig site. But her rational mind fought back. It wasn’t the same person. She’d seen the man’s face for a split second as they slid past him.

She turned to David. “Are you okay?”

David nodded as a shudder of breath escaped him, his eyes still wide with shock.

Stella looked back out the windshield as she exhaled a long breath. “What … who was—”

A knocking at her driver’s window cut her words off, a small scream escaped her throat. She turned and stared straight into Cole’s ruggedly handsome face.

“Are you okay?” Cole called through the driver’s window. He bent down, his face close to the glass, his breath coming out in plumes, fogging the glass a little.

Stella nodded as she rolled down the window. The freezing air invaded the truck immediately. “Yeah, we’re okay,” she answered. “What were you doing in the middle of the road? Is something wrong?”

Cole winced as he pulled his pistol out from his coat pocket. “I’m sorry, lady.” He pointed the gun at her. “We need your vehicle.”

CHAPTER 5

Stella couldn’t move or respond; she could only stare at the barrel of Cole’s gun pointed at her face.

Cole backed up a few steps, his boots sinking down into the snow piled up on the side of the road. He looked across the road, but his pistol was still aimed right at Stella.

Stella’s eyes darted to the other robbers who emerged from the trees, crossing the empty road. They looked like black blurry shapes at first in the snowy mist, but in a moment they crystallized into human beings, criminals with scowls on their faces, metal briefcases and guns clutched in their gloved hands.

Cole looked back at Stella. “Just take it easy. We’re not going to hurt you. We just need a ride.”

Stella nodded, her hands still on the steering wheel, still gripping it without realizing it.

“Slide over,” Cole told her.

Stella pried her hands loose and slid across the bench seat without a word; she slid right up next to David.

Cole looked at Frank. “We need to get this thing back up on the road.” He shoved his gun inside his coat pocket and plopped down in the driver’s seat, he adjusted the seat back quickly. He shifted the Suburban into drive, his foot down on the brake, snow dripping all over the floorboard.

Frank opened the back door and threw one of the metal cases of money inside. He turned to Jose who held the other metal case. “Throw it inside, Jose,” Frank told him.

Jose tossed the metal case inside, it clunked against the other case.

“Get back there and help them push,” Frank ordered.

Jose sighed, but he hurried to the back of the truck, joining Trevor and Needles.

Frank waited by the open back door, his hands on the door and the frame of the truck, ready to help push. “We’re ready!” he called out to Cole.

Cole closed the driver’s door and lifted his foot from the brake and pressed gently on the gas pedal.

The tires spun; snow spit out of the back, pelting Trevor, Jose, and Needles as they pushed. They dug their boots into the snow, trying to find a purchase.

The tires spun and spun as the men strained, grunting and growling, muscles burning. Cole gave it a little more gas. The engine revved, and the tires suddenly grabbed and gained traction. The Suburban inched its way out of the shallow ditch. The three men let go of the truck as it climbed all the way back onto the road. They were breathing hard with their hands on their hips.

A crashing noise through the trees caught their attention. All three men reached for their guns, ready to aim and fire. They stared into the thick woods but they couldn’t see anything moving among the trees.

“What the hell was that?” Needles asked.

The noise was gone now.

“Maybe it was a bear,” Jose said.

“Bears should be hibernating this time of year,” Trevor said as he shoved his gun down into his coat pocket.

“Then it was a deer,” Jose said. “How the fuck do I know?”

Jose and Trevor ran to catch up to the Suburban as it waited on the road. The truck’s powerful motor rumbled and exhaust plumed up from the tailpipe. The taillights were bright red dots in the murky day, and the increasing clouds made the day even darker and drearier.

Needles stared into the dark woods as fear crept into his body like the numbing cold. That wasn’t a deer in the woods, he was sure of that. It was something bad in there. Something bad coming for all of them.

“Needles!” Frank yelled from the Suburban. “Hurry the fuck up, or I swear to God we’re going to leave you here!”

Needles tore his eyes away from the trees and hurried to the waiting truck.

As Needles got in the backseat of the truck, Frank blocked Jose from getting in the other side. “No room in here,” Frank told him. “Get in the back.”

“Why the hell do I have to get in the back? Tell Needles to—”

“Just get in the fucking back,” Frank growled at him.

“Alright. Fuck, man.”

Cole found the latch for the hatch and pulled on it, He heard the clunk of a latch in the back opening.

Frank sat down in the backseat and slammed the door shut as Jose hurried to the back of the truck.

As Jose ran to the back of the truck, a moment of panic seized him—he was sure that Cole was going to stomp down on the gas pedal and take off, leaving him here alone on this desolate road in the middle of a blizzard. But the truck waited. Jose pulled the hatch up and crawled inside, and then he pulled the hatch door closed against the snow and biting wind. It wasn’t exactly warm inside the Suburban, but it was a lot warmer than outside.

Jose tried to get comfortable on top of the piles of tools scattered around the back of the Suburban; there were tarps, shovels, picks and other digging tools. He moved to the back seat and propped his hands and head over the back of the seat in between Trevor and Needles, but he stared at the front of the truck.

“What are you?” Jose asked Stella. “A gravedigger?”

Stella glanced back at Jose, and then she turned back around and stared out the windshield. “Something like that,” she muttered.

Cole gave Stella an odd look, but he didn’t say anything.

Trevor looked at Jose who was right beside his face now. “You mind sitting back a little?”

Jose smiled at him, inches away from his face. “Why? Is this bothering you?”

“Your breath is bothering me.”

Cole shifted into drive, and then stomped down on the gas pedal; the truck slid sideways on the road before finally gaining traction.

Jose wasn’t ready for the sudden jolt forward; he fell over in the back of the truck and smacked his elbow on a shovel. “What the fuck?” he called out. “You trying to run us off the road again?”

Cole just smiled.

“Shut the fuck up back there,” Frank said. He glanced back at Jose, but then he watched Needles. Needles stared straight ahead, but it was like he wasn’t seeing anything, like he was lost in some different world. There was something wrong with Needles, Frank was sure of that now. But he couldn’t worry about that at this moment. Right now, they had more pressing issues. Like this woman and this child.

Cole concentrated on the road. He was an expert driver, and he maneuvered the large truck around the bends and curves of the road much faster than Stella would’ve dared. “This storm is getting worse,” Cole said to no one in particular.

The music on the radio was interrupted by an announcement from the DJ. “We’ve received some breaking news. Police are on the lookout for five men wanted for a bank robbery earlier today in Cody’s Pass where one man was shot and killed. Police are asking—”

Cole clicked off the radio.

The truck was silent except for the rumbling engine, thumping windshield wipers, and howling wind.

Cole looked at Stella as he drove.

Stella looked right back at Cole, matching his stare, holding it, showing no fear of him.

David stared out the passenger window, lost in thought, watching the unending trees whip by in a blur. It was like he never even heard the radio broadcast. But he’d heard it, Stella was sure of that.

Frank leaned forward from the backseat and tapped Stella on the shoulder.

Stella jumped from the touch, like a current of electricity had just jolted her. She spun around and stared at Frank.

“What’s your name?” Frank asked, trying what he thought was a reassuring smile—but it wasn’t working.

“Stella.”

“Okay, Stella. Don’t worry about anything. Nothing’s going to happen as long as you stay cool. We just need to get to the state line, find another vehicle. Then you can have your truck back and be on your way.”

Stella nodded. But she didn’t believe a word Frank was saying. She turned back around without a word.

“Aw hell,” Cole said as he glanced down at the instrument panel.

Everyone in back leaned forward. “What is it?” Frank asked.

Cole shook his head in disbelief. “The engine’s overheating.”

CHAPTER 6

Everyone in the truck leaned forward—except David, who still seemed to be in his own world.

Frank gripped the back of the driver’s seat as he leaned his head forward. “What the fuck are you talking about, Cole?”

“The engine’s overheating. She must’ve punctured the radiator when she ran this truck off the road.”

“Yeah, to avoid hitting you,” Stella muttered.

Cole ignored Stella’s comment as he glanced down at the temperature gauge; the needle was already climbing into the red. He glanced out the windshield and he could see steam drifting up from under the hood, blending in with the swirling snow.

“We need to find somewhere to stop or this motor’s going to seize up,” Cole told everyone.

Trevor leaned forward even more and pointed at the windshield. “Look. I think I see a mailbox.”

Cole drove on for a few more seconds and he could see a mailbox on the side of the road materializing out of the snowstorm. He eased down on the brake pedal, slowing the large SUV down to make the turn. They turned at the mailbox onto a narrow drive that cut through the dense trees. The truck bumped along the rutted trail as tree branches scraped along the windows and sides of the truck.

Everyone was tense and quiet as Cole navigated the twists and turns of the driveway that seemed to be going on forever through these trees.

“How long is this driveway?” Jose asked from the back.

“If this is even a driveway,” Trevor muttered.

Cole kept glancing down at the temperature gauge; it was in the red now. The steam poured out of the front of the truck like a ghostly mist rushing at the windshield. They weren’t going to make it much farther, Cole thought, but he didn’t want to say the words aloud.

After one more bend in the drive, the trees gave way to a large open field, acres of cleared land in the middle of the never-ending forest. And only a few hundred yards away was a log cabin.

Cole smiled as he drove across the field of snow (which he hoped was still a driveway) to the front of the cabin, he turned the truck so that the headlights shined on the dark cabin thirty yards away, and then he shut the motor off. Everything was quiet now except for the howling wind of the storm. Steam drifted up in a cloud in front of the truck for a few seconds, obscuring their view of the cabin, but then the wind blew the steam away and they could see the cabin in the glow of the headlights.

The cabin was dark, no lights on inside, no smoke drifting up from the chimney. To the right of the cabin was a large, free-standing garage with a pickup truck parked in front of it. The pickup truck sat under a blanket of snow—it looked like the truck hadn’t moved in a while.

“I don’t believe this. It’s fucking freezing out here and the engine’s overheating,” Jose said, and again he poked his head in between Trevor and Needles.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Trevor smiled at Jose.

“Whatever you say, man.”

Cole stared at the cabin in the glow of the headlights. He watched the curtains in the two windows underneath the roof of the front porch which ran the length of the front of the cabin. There was no movement of the curtains, no one peeking out from the dark rooms of the cabin. His eyes flicked to the door. It remained shut.

“Can this truck be fixed?” Frank asked Cole.

“Maybe. If we’re lucky it’s just a hole in one of the hoses.”

They sat in silence for another moment, all of them staring at the dark cabin.

“Maybe no one’s home,” Trevor finally said.

“Only one way to find out,” Frank said and opened his door into the howling wind. He got out and ran through the snowstorm to the front porch of the cabin. Jose and Trevor didn’t waste any time, they followed Frank out into the storm—Jose had to crawl over the backseat to get out.

David opened the door, ready to get out. Stella touched his arm gently. They locked eyes for a moment, but David turned away and got out of the truck. Stella grabbed her purse. She was about to follow David, but Cole grabbed her arm. She turned and stared at Cole.

“We’re going to knock on the door,” Cole told her. “Don’t try anything stupid. Okay?”

Stella just nodded, and then she ripped her arm out of Cole’s grasp. She got out of the truck and hurried after David.

Cole looked back at Needles who still waited in the backseat, staring at the cabin in horror.

“You coming?” Cole asked Needles.

Even though Needles seemed afraid of this place, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from it. “This place,” he whispered. “Something’s wrong here. Really, really wrong.”

“Needles!” Cole barked, and Needles finally tore his eyes away from the cabin and looked at him. “Needles, you better get your shit together. You hear me? You’re the reason we’re here in the middle of fucking nowhere instead of at the warehouse splitting the money up.”

“But Cole, you don’t understand—”

“Just get it together.”

Cole got out of the truck without another word to Needles.

Cole and Needles met up with the others on the front porch. Frank stood in front of the solid wood front door. He had already slipped one of his gloves off, and he pounded on the door with the edge of his fist.

They waited.

No answer at the door.

Trevor watched the window to the left of the door—no movement of the curtains inside, no lights turning on.

Frank pounded on the door again.

Trevor walked to the window and cupped his hands beside his face as he peered in through the glass.

“See anything?” Cole asked.

“Too dark,” Trevor answered.

Trevor tried to open the window, he lifted up, but it wouldn’t budge.

Frank tried the door handle. He jiggled it, but it was locked. He looked at Trevor. “Go around back and check it out.”

Trevor hurried across the front porch and hopped the railing with one quick movement. He landed down in the snow, turned the corner and disappeared around the side of the house.

*

Trevor hurried down the side of the cabin, his boots sinking into the snow that reached up to his knees in some places. He reached the end of the cabin and peeked around the corner. Nothing much back here: a small stack of firewood against the back wall of the cabin; a wheelbarrow overturned and buried under snow; a small wood building fifty paces away that looked like it housed a water pump or a well.

Shielding his eyes as best he could from the stinging snow, Trevor walked towards the back door of the cabin set in the wall of logs.

He climbed the steps up to the door and tried the door handle.

Locked.

He turned and looked out at the field that stretched out from the back of the cabin. The field in the back of the cabin was at least three times the size of the field in the front—it had to be at least five acres back here. He was about to head back to the front of the cabin when he thought he caught some kind of movement out of the corner of his eye in the field. He looked back at the field, at the line of trees just barely visible in the distance through the snowstorm.

Nothing there. No one moving. No animal moving.

Again, he was about to go back to the front of the cabin, but then he heard a clicking noise from the back door; the noise was audible even over the howling wind. He looked at the back door as it slowly creaked open.

“What the fuck?” Trevor whispered.

He pulled out his nine millimeter handgun from the waistband of his pants and crept towards the back door. He walked up the steps and stood in the doorway and stared at the darkness inside the cabin.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but then he saw a hallway that led away from the doorway he stood in. He could make out closed doors along the hall, two on one side, and one on the other. The hallway at the other end opened up to what seemed like a living room, but the living room was too dark to make out much detail.

Trevor hesitated for another moment in the doorway, his gun gripped in one gloved hand. The wind of the storm howled behind him, some of the snow drifted inside the doorway onto the wood-planked hallway floor.

“Hello?” Trevor called out.

No answer.

“Is someone here?”

Trevor waited for another few seconds.

No answer.

No sounds of any kind coming from inside the cabin.

“Our car is overheating. We need to use a phone.”

Trevor took a step forward. The floorboards creaked under his weight. His eyes were beginning to adjust even more to the darkness now.

“Hello?” Trevor called out again as he took another few steps.

He didn’t like this—something felt strange here, wrong. He was afraid some old man would be waiting in the darkness with a shotgun, praying for the day some punk would try to break into his cabin. But there was something else he was afraid of, something much worse, a deeper fear, like a fear from a long time ago when he was a child—the fear of a monster in the closet, a monster in the darkness, something unimaginable waiting for him.

Trevor took one more step forward and that’s when the back door slammed shut.

CHAPTER 7

Cole, Stella, David, and the others waited on the front porch as the blizzard scattered snow across the floorboards of the porch.

Cole glanced at both ends of the front porch. What was taking Trevor so long?

Jose hugged his arms, shivering. “Maybe nobody’s here right now. Maybe this is like a summer cabin or something.”

Frank had his back to the cabin as he stood at the edge of the porch in front of the steps. He stared out at the vast field in front of them, the line of dark trees just barely visible through the swirling snow. Frank’s face was as hard as stone as he stared at the trees. He didn’t move a muscle as he finally answered Jose. “Maybe.”

Needles stood by the railing of the front porch, almost leaning against it, like he didn’t want to be close to this cabin. He stared at the cabin with that same look of terror Cole had seen in his eyes when they were sitting inside Stella’s Suburban.

Frank’s eyes, like little black stones, noticed Needles. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

Needles shook his head in disbelief. “This can’t be right,” he muttered.

Frank was about to ask Needles what the hell he was talking about when the front door of the cabin flew open.

Frank and Cole drew their guns and aimed them at the front door, both of them only a split second away from pulling the trigger.

Trevor stood in the doorway with a big smile on his face. “The place is empty.”

Cole lowered his gun and let out a breath. “That’s a good way of getting yourself shot, little brother.”

Frank glared at everyone else. “Come on, let’s get inside.”

Jose walked up behind Stella and pushed her towards the door. “You heard the man, get inside!”

Stella whirled around on Jose. She stared at him with piercing blue eyes—she showed no fear of him. “I can walk by myself.”

Jose took a step back without even realizing it.

Stella turned to David and took one of his hands. “Come on, honey. Let’s get out of the cold.”

After they were all inside the cabin, Cole closed and locked the front door, then he twisted a deadbolt lock shut. He turned and looked around at the cabin, which was really one big room, a living room and a kitchen divided by a half-wall and dining room table in between. The hallway led off from near the dining room table to the back door and bedrooms and a bathroom.

The décor was rustic, masculine; it didn’t seem to have a woman’s touch. A couch took up nearly one wall of the living room, a blanket thrown over the back of it. A recliner sat near the couch, closer to the hallway—the two pieces of furniture didn’t match. A large TV occupied the corner closer to one of the front windows; it was the only really modern-looking thing in the whole cabin. Between the TV and couch was the fireplace, cold and gray now, but charred marks suggested a recent fire. A stack of firewood sat on the large stone hearth, an ax leaned against the stone fireplace. Other fireplace tools dangled in a stand on the other side of the fireplace screen.

Cole gazed up at the high vaulted ceiling with heavy, decorative beams adorning it. He could hear the wind howling through the eaves outside.

Stella and David stood in the middle of the living room on a large handwoven Native American rug that consisted of bright colors and strange designs. The snow dripped off of their shoes and dampened the middle of the rug.

Frank nodded at Stella and David. “Go sit on the couch for now.”

Stella and David did as they were told. They sat down on the couch right next to each other. David took one of Stella’s hands in both of his and they watched the men huddle together in the middle of the living room. Except Needles, he didn’t huddle; he stumbled over to the dining room table and plopped down in a chair like his legs had suddenly gone weak.

Jose hugged his arms. “It’s cold in here, man.” He spotted a thermostat on the wall near the hallway and hurried over to it. He moved the dial and listened for a moment. He heard a slight click. He looked at the others, a big smile on his face as the heat kicked on. “We’ve got electricity here. We got heat.”

Cole looked at Trevor. “How’d you get inside?”

“It was weird. I tried the back door, and at first I thought it was locked. It seemed like it was locked. I was about to leave, but then the door opened.”

“What do you mean, it opened?” Cole asked.

Trevor shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it must’ve been stuck or something.”

Cole didn’t say anything, but something about the back door being unlocked bothered him. The windows and the front door were locked, but the back door had been left unlocked?

And something else bothered Cole. He stared at the galley-style kitchen beyond the dining room table. A refrigerator and some counters took up one side of the kitchen. A sink, stove, and more counters on the other side. A large freezer (it looked like a refrigerator laying on its side) sat on the floor at the far wall of the kitchen. There were two frying pans on the stove. A few unopened cans of food sat on the counter. A sink full of dishes.

Cole nodded at the kitchen. “Look. Somebody was in here not too long ago.”

Frank glanced at Cole, and then at the kitchen. He looked back at Cole and Trevor. “You guys check this place out. Make sure no one’s hiding back there.”

*

Cole and Trevor hurried down the hall.

As Trevor went to check out the second bedroom, Cole entered the small bathroom. He saw a tub with the shower curtain drawn back on the left side and a sink and a toilet on the other side. A mirrored medicine cabinet hung above the sink. A small window set into the exterior log wall faced him from the far end of the room. Snow was piled up on the window sill outside. A few small generic Western prints hung on the walls in cheap frames. A threadbare rug had been laid down on the floor in front of the tub.

Cole caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He saw his chiseled face and his short hair which was now spikey from the melting snow glistening in it. But his dark eyes stopped him cold. They looked so tired. He just wanted this job to be over. And it would’ve been over by now if Needles hadn’t killed that old man in the bank.

Cole opened the medicine cabinet. Normal stuff inside: cough medicine, shaving cream, cheap razors and cologne, a stick of deodorant. He reached inside and pulled out a prescription bottle of medicine, some kind of antibiotic. He shook the container, only a few pills rattled around inside. He read the name on the bottle—Tom Gordon.

He set the pills back inside and shut the mirrored door. Cole knew someone lived here. This wasn’t a seasonal cabin or a hunting lodge—this was someone’s home. And that someone had just been here not too long ago. But where was that someone now? Where was Tom Gordon?

Cole looked down at the sink. The faucet dripped water into the basin. He turned the water on for a second, and then turned it off. He turned the handle as hard as he could, but the water still dripped.

Cole left the bathroom and went to check out the other bedroom.

*

In the living room, Frank stared at Needles who sat at the dining room table. Needles still had a frightened look in his eyes as he looked around at the cabin in disbelief.

Frank pulled out a chair and sat down next to Needles, watching him the whole time. “You okay, Needles?”

Needles didn’t answer Frank.

Frank leaned towards Needles, speaking to him again, his voice sharper and louder. “Needles!”

Needles turned and stared at Frank for a long moment, his expression miserable, his eyes lost in some other world. “I didn’t mean to shoot that old man in the bank. I swear I didn’t. It was an accident. You know me, Frank.”

Frank nodded. “I know.”

Needles pulled out a crucifix on a chain from under his thermal shirt as he looked away from Frank. He rubbed the cross gently over and over again with his fingers—a nervous habit.

“This place,” Needles said in a low voice. “I’ve seen it before.”

This caught Frank off guard. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Needles turned and faced Frank, his rheumy blue eyes boring into Frank’s coal-black eyes. “When that old man grabbed me in the bank, I saw things. Bad things. I saw this place.”

Frank inhaled a deep breath; he let it out slowly, trying to calm himself. This was the last thing he needed—Needles taking a nosedive off the edge of sanity. “Needles, just take it easy. I know you’re still upset about what happened.”

“Upset?” Needles screamed at Frank. He jumped up from his chair and jabbed a finger at Frank. “You don’t understand what the fuck’s going on here!”

CHAPTER 8

Cole entered Tom Gordon’s bedroom; he walked around the bed, which wasn’t made. Books and magazines were stacked up against one wall. A pile of dirty clothes lay near the closet door. A flannel shirt and T-shirt were draped over a rickety chair. An old TV, one of those big heavy ones, sat in the corner on top of a scratched and scarred table.

He found the remote control to the TV on the nightstand next to the bed; the remote was lying right beside a Louis L’Amour book: The Haunted Mesa, which was open and face down, a place being saved in the book. He pressed the power button on the remote and turned the TV on, but there was only static. He switched through channel after channel—nothing but static.

After shutting the TV off, Cole tried the telephone next to the bed; it was one of those older telephones that made an annoying ringing sound when someone called. There was no dial tone. He checked to make sure the phone line was plugged in. He jiggled the hang-up buttons—still no dial tone. He ripped the cord out of the wall, unhooked it from the phone and balled up the cord in his hands.

Phone lines must be down from the storm, he thought. Maybe the TV, too. But the electric was still on. The water was still on. Those were good things.

Cole stood at the foot of the bed a moment longer, staring down at the messed up covers. He bent down and looked underneath the bed.

No Tom Gordon hiding there.

No Tom Gordon in any of the closets.

If this Tom Gordon wasn’t here in the cabin somewhere, then he had left in a hurry just before they got here. But what would make someone leave so suddenly in the middle of a snowstorm?

A small dark spot on the carpet near the foot of the bed caught Cole’s attention. He bent down and touched the spot on the carpet—it was sticky and a little wet. He brought his finger up to his face to inspect the red liquid on his finger tip.

Blood? It sure looked like it.

Trevor entered the bedroom and Cole quickly wiped the blood from his finger on the bottom of his coat.

“All clear in the other room,” Trevor said. “How about this room?”

“No one here,” Cole said.

The yelling from out in the living room caught their attention. Frank and Needles were screaming at each other out there. They hurried back out to the living room. “Everything okay out here?” Cole asked.

Frank glared at Cole and Trevor, and then he looked at Needles. “Sit the fuck down, Needles.”

*

Needles remained standing at the dining room table, his finger still pointed at Frank, his hand trembling.

For a moment Frank thought Needles was going to yell again, start babbling again. But Needles sat back down without another word and he looked down at the table as he rubbed the crucifix around his neck with his fingers.

Frank’s eyes darted to Stella and David who sat on the couch, David still held Stella’s hand and he stared at Frank.

Frank looked from David back to Needles. He had to get Needles back in line and get this whole thing under control. “That’s right, Needles,” Frank said. “Just calm down. We all need to stay calm.”

Needles looked at Frank. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of Needles’ forehead despite the chilly air. His face twisted into a tortured mask and he seemed to be on the verge of tears. “You don’t understand, Frank. We can’t stay here. We’re all going to die. I’ve already seen it.”

Frank pointed his finger at Needles and glared at him with murderous eyes. “Not another fucking word. You hear me, Needles?”

Frank walked away—he needed to get away from Needles for a moment.

Cole glanced at Needles who went back to rubbing the crucifix around his neck, whispering something to himself—a prayer perhaps. Cole followed Frank into the kitchen and he set the balled-up telephone cord on the kitchen counter as Frank opened the refrigerator, checking the food supply.

“Nobody in the back rooms, but someone definitely lives here,” Cole said. “Someone named Tom Gordon. I think he lives here alone.”

Frank looked up from the refrigerator, their eyes locking for a moment.

“I found a prescription pill bottle with his name on it.” Cole looked over at the stove, at the two frying pans on the gas burners, at the couple of cans of food waiting to be opened. “It’s like this guy was just here. Like he was just about to make some lunch and then he left.”

Frank closed the refrigerator door. “You should’ve been a fucking detective. Maybe this guy forgot something. Went to the store.”

“This guy’s kitchen is stocked for the winter. And why would he leave with a blizzard moving in?”

“Maybe he saw us pull up and he took off out the back door.”

Cole nodded. “But there would’ve been footprints in the snow; the storm wouldn’t have covered them up that quickly. And leaving on foot? I don’t think this guy would’ve panicked just because someone pulled up in his front yard.”

Frank glanced at the freezer against the wall as Cole continued. “And this house was cold when we got here. No lights on. No heat on.”

“You said you thought this guy just left,” Frank said.

“It seemed like he left suddenly, but it must’ve been a little while since he was here.”

Frank shook his head … this was beginning to give him a headache.

“I think we should move that lady’s truck around to the back of the cabin in case this guy comes back,” Cole said. “Get it out of sight.”

Frank thought this over for a moment, and then he nodded. “Yeah. You and Trevor move the truck around back. And bring those cases inside.”

Cole hurried over to Trevor. “Come on, let’s go.”

Cole unlocked the deadbolt, and then opened the door up to the howling snowstorm. Cole stepped out onto the porch. Trevor was about to follow him, but Jose called out to him. “Bundle up, sweetie.”

Trevor flipped Jose a middle finger. “Fuck you,” he muttered and walked out onto the porch and slammed the door shut.

Frank watched the door for a moment, and then he looked at Stella and David. Frank walked over to Jose. He leaned in close to Jose as he spoke in a low voice. “Go out there and watch those two. If they try to run, kill them.”

*

Cole and Trevor sat down inside Stella’s Suburban. Cole started the truck and the temperature gauge climbed immediately into the red. He shifted into drive and gunned the gas. He needed to get this truck behind the cabin before the motor seized up halfway there.

As Cole drove, Trevor lit a cigarette with his Zippo lighter. The cabin was just a dark blur to their right—that’s how much the blizzard had intensified.

Once the truck was safely out of view from the driveway, Cole put the truck in park and shut the engine and headlights off. He sat there for a moment as Trevor inhaled on his cigarette and blew out smoke.

Cole looked at his little brother.

Trevor met Cole’s eyes and then he turned away, taking another drag from his cigarette. “I know what you’re going to say, Cole. I’m sorry. I didn’t know all of this was going to happen.”

Cole sighed as Trevor exhaled smoke. “It was supposed to be a simple job,” Trevor continued. “But that fucking trigger-happy Needles fucked everything up.”

“When we’re out of here,” Cole said, “you give Frank what you owe him and we’re done with this. Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Swear to me, Trevor.”

“Yes, Cole. I promise.” Trevor took another drag from his cigarette. He looked at Cole again, trying to change the subject. “What do you think’s going on here?”

“I don’t know. But something isn’t right.”

“What about Needles?”

“I think he’s losing his mind.”

Trevor just nodded.

“Come on,” Cole told Trevor. “Let’s get those cases inside.”

Cole and Trevor got out of the SUV. They opened the back door and grabbed the cases of money. They turned and saw Jose standing in the snow, just watching them.

“What are you doing out here?” Cole asked. He was ready to reach for his weapon. He knew what could happen on big jobs like this, when there was so much money at stake. People got greedy. People wanted more than their share. And sometimes those people were ready to kill for it.

“Frank sent me out here to help you,” Jose said.

“Help us with two cases?” Cole asked, the howling wind trying to tear his words out of the air.

Trevor tossed his case of money at Jose. “Be my guest.”

CHAPTER 9

The front door burst open. Cole, Trevor, and Jose stomped inside the cabin as snow dripped from their coats and boots. Trevor slammed the door shut and locked the deadbolt.

“Where do you want these cases?” Jose asked.

“Set them over there by the fireplace,” Frank told him.

Jose and Cole set the dripping metal cases on the hearth right in front of the small pile of cut wood and the large ax. Cole turned and gave Frank a sarcastic grin. “This good, boss?”

Frank didn’t answer Cole.

Trevor shrugged off his coat and threw it over the back of one of the dining room chairs. “What now, boss?”

Frank stared at Stella and David. “I think it’s time we asked this lady some questions.”

Frank walked across the room to the couch and stood in front of Stella and David. “Stella,” Frank asked in a calm voice that seemed menacing no matter how pleasant he tried to make it sound. “You got a cell phone on you?”

Stella shook her head no.

“Let me see your purse.”

“I told you, I don’t have a phone.”

Frank held his hand out, waiting for her to hand the purse over.

Stella sighed and handed Frank her purse. Frank tossed the purse to Jose. “Check it out.”

Jose dumped out the contents of Stella’s purse onto the dining room table. He moved the items around: a wallet with a driver’s license and a few credit cards inside, a pack of gum, a brush, lip balm, scraps of paper. He picked up the wallet and read the driver’s license as he looked at Frank. “Stella Weaver from Arizona wasn’t lying. No phone in here.”

Frank turned back to Stella. “Where were you two headed?”

“A relative’s house. My aunt’s house.”

“Far from here?”

“Northern Colorado.”

“So she’s expecting you?”

“No, it was going to be a surprise.”

Frank’s eyes moved to David. Frank crouched down in front of David, trying to get on the kid’s eye level. Frank smiled at the kid, it was supposed to be a comforting smile, but it came across as creepy.

“Hey, kid. What’s your name?”

David didn’t answer, he just stared at Frank.

“His name is David,” Stella answered.

“I was talking to him,” Frank told her with his eyes still on David.

“He doesn’t talk much,” Stella said. “Especially when he’s scared.”

Frank nodded and stood back up. He glared at Stella. “Where were you two coming from? What’s with all the tools in the back of your truck?”

“I’m an archaeologist. I specialize in Southwest American Indian cultures, especially the Anasazi. They were a people who used to live in what is now the southwestern United States until they mysteriously vanished around—”

“Enough with the history lesson. Where were you coming from?”

“We were coming from a dig site in New Mexico.”

“And David is your son?”

Stella hesitated. “Yes.”

“No he’s not.”

Jose left the contents of Stella’s purse scattered all over the table. He walked into the kitchen and rummaged through the cabinets.

Cole walked to the dining room table and collected the contents and put them back into Stella’s purse.

Jose moved boxes and cans around in one of the cabinets, and then he broke out in a big smile. He pulled out a nearly full bottle of whiskey. “Jackpot,” he whispered.

Cole brought Stella’s purse and handed it to her.

As she took it, Cole asked her a question: “Who are you running from?”

The question caught Stella by surprise. She took her purse and set it on the couch beside her. “What do you mean?” she finally asked. “I’m not running from anyone.”

“There aren’t any bags or suitcases in your truck,” Cole said. “Not even a change of clothes. Only some items you bought at a convenience store.”

In the kitchen, Jose closed the cabinets and walked over to the large freezer against the far wall. He lifted up the lid of the freezer, expecting to see pieces of wrapped meat. What he saw made him stumble back a step. He jerked his hand away from the freezer lid and it slammed shut.

The others turned at the noise of the lid closing.

Jose turned and looked at them with shock in his eyes. “You guys better come take a look at this.”

CHAPTER 10

Cole, Frank, Jose, and Trevor gathered around the freezer—it was a tight squeeze in the small kitchen. Even Needles broke out of his daze and stood up at the dining room table, staring at the others in the kitchen. But he wouldn’t enter the kitchen.

“What is it?” Needles asked them. “What’s in there?”

Nobody answered Needles. They all stared down at the freezer.

“I guess we know where Tom Gordon is now,” Cole finally said.

Tom Gordon’s body was stuffed down inside the freezer. His legs and arms were bent at odd angles, like his limbs had been broken when he’d been stuffed inside. He looked like some doll pushed down inside a kid’s toy box. Except that this doll didn’t have any eyes—Tom Gordon’s eyes had been carved out.

No, Cole thought, they didn’t seem like they were carved out—they looked more like they were torn out of his face.

Or eaten out, his mind whispered.

“Holy shit,” Jose muttered. “Holy shit, I can’t believe this. What the fuck, man?”

Stella and David still sat on the couch; David’s hands still clutched one of Stella’s hands. She looked at David and their eyes met. Stella felt a lump in her throat, a knot of dread worming its way through her body. She had promised David that it hadn’t followed them. She had promised him that it wouldn’t be able to find them. She had promised David that they would be safe now. But the look in David’s eyes stung her. He had dared to believe her. But now he knew the truth.

It had found them.

Needles hurried over to the kitchen, rushing up behind the others. “What did you find in there?” he asked, his voice trembling.

Jose turned and marched away from the freezer, needing to pace, needing to move, needing to be away from the gory sight of Tom Gordon’s body.

Needles walked to the freezer on unsteady legs. He took Jose’s spot. He stared down at the body and inhaled a sharp breath, and then it was like he couldn’t exhale, like the breath was caught in his lungs.

“Shit,” Frank finally said as he stared down at Tom Gordon’s crooked body. The lips of Tom Gordon’s mouth were pulled back in some kind of strange rictus smile. There were two deep black holes where his eyes used to be, ragged gray flesh around the edges. But there was no blood anywhere on his face, or anywhere around him inside the freezer.

“Somebody was in here,” Jose rambled, still pacing back and forth by the dining room table. “Somebody was in this fucking cabin and they killed that guy. Stuffed him in the fucking freezer. Took his fucking eyes out.”

Needles could finally breathe again. He stared at Frank. “I told you, Frank. I told you we couldn’t stay here. There’s something bad here. There’s something coming for us. For all of us.”

“Shut up, Needles,” Frank growled.

“The devil’s coming for us. That’s what that old man in the bank said. The devil’s coming for us and he’s going to kill us all.”

“I said shut up,” Frank snapped. “I’m trying to think.”

Cole watched as Needles backed away out of the kitchen, shaking his head no over and over again. “No, I’m not staying here. I’m not waiting for the devil to come.”

Frank rushed at Needles. He grabbed him by the front of his thermal shirt and bunched his fists up in the fabric. He pushed Needles back a few steps into the kitchen counter. “You want to leave so bad?!” he yelled at Needles, spittle flying from his lips. “Go on, then!”

Needles stared at Frank for a long moment, his body trembling; his eyes darted to the front door like he was re-thinking his statement, like he was thinking about being out there alone.

“Okay, then,” Frank said as he let Needles go. He turned and walked away. “Just shut up and let me think.”

Everyone was silent, the cabin eerily quiet except for the nonstop howling wind outside.

Jose couldn’t take the silence anymore. “We need to do something, man. There’s some kind of psycho running around out there.”

Frank looked at Jose. “There’s nothing we can do right now while that blizzard’s out there. We’re stuck here for the night.”

“What about that guy’s truck parked out there?” Jose asked. “Maybe it runs. Maybe we should start it up.”

“In the morning,” Frank said. “After the storm lets up.”

End of discussion, Frank’s eyes said.

Cole looked back down into the freezer at Tom Gordon’s body. He studied it for a moment. Then Cole opened a drawer near the stove. He rummaged through the kitchen utensils until he found a long wooden spoon. He poked Tom Gordon’s body with the spoon’s handle. The handle of the spoon pushed into Tom Gordon’s soft flesh.

“Somebody did this to him within the last few hours,” Cole said. “His body isn’t even frozen yet.”

“Oh, that’s comforting,” Jose snorted.

Trevor looked around. “This doesn’t make any sense. There should be blood all over the place. His eyes are gone. There should be blood somewhere in that freezer at least.”

Cole thought of the large single drop of blood he’d seen in the bedroom, but then decided against saying anything about it. It was only one drop of blood. But Trevor was right; there should be a hell of a lot more blood somewhere in this cabin.

“There aren’t any signs of struggle anywhere in this cabin,” Cole said.

“Maybe they knocked the guy out,” Frank suggested. “Took him to this freezer and then carved out his eyes.”

“Then there should be blood in the freezer,” Trevor said again.

“Why?” Jose asked as he walked back towards the group. “Why would someone do that to him?”

“I don’t think it was a robbery,” Cole answered. “It doesn’t look like anything was taken. It doesn’t even look like anything was searched through.”

“Then why, Sherlock?” Jose asked. “Someone just killed this guy for the hell of it. Just for shits and giggles?”

“Maybe he had some enemies,” Trevor said. “Maybe he owed someone some money.”

Trevor and Frank locked eyes for the briefest of moments.

“Then this place would’ve been ransacked,” Cole answered quickly, trying to break the sudden tension between his little brother and Frank. “They would’ve looked for the money in here.”

“Then it’s some fucking psycho,” Jose said. “Some psycho who just likes to kill.” Jose glanced at the front door of the cabin. “Maybe he’s still out there. Maybe he saw us pull up here in front of the cabin.”

Stella and David stood up from the couch and started to walk towards the hallway until Frank’s voice stopped them in their tracks.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Stella stared at Frank. “We’re going to the bathroom,” she answered in a strong voice.

“Both of you?”

“There might be a crazy person out there. I’m not letting David out of my sight.”

“What if they try to run?” Jose asked.

“Run where?” Trevor answered with a snort of sarcastic laughter.

Frank ignored Trevor and Jose. He made a go-ahead gesture at Stella and David, and then he turned back to the others.

Cole glanced at the hall. He waited until he heard the bathroom door close and lock. A thought occurred to him, a thought he didn’t want to say aloud. Maybe whoever Stella and David were running from had done this to Tom Gordon.

*

Stella closed and locked the bathroom door. She looked at David.

“It’s happening again,” David whispered; his voice trembled as he stared up at her.

Stella nodded. “I know.”

“You said we would be safe,” he whispered. “You said it wasn’t going to follow us.”

A pang of guilt ran through Stella. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“It’s going to start asking for things,” David said, his voice getting louder.

“Shhh,” Stella said as she glanced at the bathroom door, and then she looked back at David, locking eyes with him. “David, listen to me. This is very important. I know you’re scared. I’m scared, too. But we have to be strong. We can’t let them know what we know. Do you understand?”

David just stared at her.

“We can’t let them know that we’ve seen this before. We have to try and survive. You know what’s going to happen at first. We have to be patient and plan a way out of this. Just like last time. Okay?”

David finally nodded.

“Can you be strong?”

David nodded. “I’ll try.”

“Good,” she said. She got down on one knee and hugged him, holding his trembling body tight. “I’m going to protect you again. I swear I will. You believe me, don’t you?”

David nodded as she held him. “Yes,” he said into her shoulder.

Stella and David both jumped from a sudden loud knocking at the bathroom door. “Let’s not make a career out of this in there,” they heard Jose say from the other side of the door.

Stella and David looked at each other. “A career?” Stella said, and she couldn’t help it—she burst out laughing.

David began to laugh a little, but Stella couldn’t stop. It wasn’t even funny, but that made it somehow funnier in her mind.

Finally, they regained their composure. Stella flushed the toilet to make it seem like they had used it. Then she washed her face in the sink, and then she washed David’s face with the warm water and a washcloth.

“We’re going to be okay,” she whispered to him. “We’re going to get through this. I promise.”

*

They all watched Stella and David come out of the bathroom and walk back to the couch. Stella stared at Frank.

Frank could see something different in her eyes—defiance, a lack of fear. He finally tore his eyes away from her and turned to Trevor. “Find some blankets and sheets. Pillows. Sleeping bags. Anything you can find. We’re all sleeping out here in the living room together where we can keep an eye on each other.”

Trevor took off down the hall for the bedrooms.

Frank looked at Cole. “Tomorrow, when the storm lets up, you check out Stella’s truck—see if it can be fixed.”

Cole nodded.

“Check out that other truck out there, too. And the garage. Maybe you can use some parts from that truck on Stella’s truck.”

Cole shrugged, but he didn’t look too hopeful. “Yeah, maybe.”

Trevor came back with an armload of blankets, sheets, and pillows. He dumped them on the floor, but he kicked a blue sleeping bag away from the blankets and sheets. “I got dibs on the sleeping bag,” he called out to everyone.

“We’ll sleep in watches tonight,” Frank said. “I’ll take the first watch.”

CHAPTER 11

Cole’s eyes popped open in the murky, early morning light that invaded the dark cabin. Something had woken him. A noise … some kind of thumping noise. Over and over again. And it was cold in the living room, like someone had turned off the heat.

Thump. Thump.

Cole sat up quickly, his fingers already wrapped around his gun, a black H&K nine millimeter with hollow-point bullets. He looked right at the front door—the source of the noise.

The door was opening slightly, and then it thumped shut. It creaked back open again from the freezing wind outside.

Creak. Thump.

Cole had slept on the floor, blankets spread out around him. He was still fully dressed except for his heavy coat, gloves, and hat.

He twisted around and looked at the couch. Stella and David stared back at him in the early morning light, their eyes dinner plates of fear that glistened in the semi-darkness. They stared at Cole, and then they looked at the front door as it creaked open again and then thumped shut.

Cole turned towards Trevor who was already sitting up on his blue sleeping bag. Jose sat near him. Both of them looked like they had just woken up, both still groggy, but they had their pistols in their hands.

Cole’s eyes darted to the other blankets spread out all over the floor—Frank’s blankets.

But Frank wasn’t there.

Everything seemed to be moving in a syrupy slow-motion for Cole; he was tired, he was sure of that, but this was a degree of grogginess he’d never felt before, like he imagined it would feel to be coming awake from anesthesia after a surgery. He forced his sluggish mind to think.

He looked back at Jose and Trevor. “Where’s Frank?” he whispered.

“That’s what we want to know,” Jose whispered back.

Cole sighed, his mind finally chugging back into action, not quite at full steam yet, but getting there. “Who took the next watch?” he asked. “After Frank.”

“Not me,” Jose answered.

“Me either,” Trevor said.

Needles? Cole wondered as he got up and stared at the front door that had just thumped closed again. No, Cole thought. Frank wouldn’t have woken Needles up for a watch, not in the mental condition Needles was in these days.

“Who opened the door?” Cole asked.

“It was like that when we woke up,” Jose answered.

Cole walked to the front door with his gun still clenched in his hand. A knot of dread sat heavy in his stomach. Something was wrong here.

He stood in front of the solid wood door and watched it for a moment. Then he brought his pistol up, ready to aim it at whatever might be on the other side. He could hear Jose and Trevor getting to their feet in the living room behind him.

Cole pulled the door all the way open. He stared out at the front porch which was empty—nobody out there. He relaxed a little, lowering his weapon.

“Is he out there?” Jose asked from behind Cole.

“I don’t see him,” Cole answered. He stepped through the doorway and looked out past the front porch to the front field which was hidden under a blanket of pristine white snow. The line of dark trees stood in the distance like a wall that surrounded the clearing. The snowstorm had stopped sometime during the night and everything was quiet and calm. The scene outside could be the front of a postcard, Cole thought. The freezing wind immediately bit at the skin of his face and hands.

“Frank!” Cole called out. “You out here?”

No answer.

“Frank!” Cole took a tentative step onto the floorboards of the porch. Something in the snow caught his eye, something just beyond the four steps that led from the porch down into the snow. He stared at what was in the snow for a long moment.

Cole hurried back inside the cabin. He shut and locked the door. He saw that Trevor and Jose were still standing on their blankets and sleeping bags, their guns ready, but they weren’t making a move towards the front door. Needles struggled to come fully awake on the recliner; he knuckled sleep from his eyes.

“Maybe Frank’s in the bathroom,” Cole said as he stood in front of the door, almost like he was blocking it.

“I don’t think so,” Trevor said. “But I’ll check.” Trevor took off for the bathroom. They could hear him stomping around in the hall, and then in the bathroom.

Cole’s mind was still a little sluggish. He had slept like a rock even though he didn’t think he was going to be able to sleep very well in this cabin, especially with the corpse of the former homeowner stuffed down inside the kitchen freezer. Yet he had slept deeply and without any dreams that he could remember.

Trevor came back into the living room, shaking his head. “He’s not back there anywhere. Back door’s still locked.”

“Where the hell would he go?” Cole asked as he hurried over to Frank’s blankets. He rummaged through them and he found Frank’s coat balled up in the blanket.

“His coat’s still here,” Cole said, holding it up. “His gloves. His hat. He wouldn’t have gone outside without his coat and hat.”

“What about his gun?” Jose asked.

Cole moved the blankets and sheets around; he tossed the pillow across the room. “I don’t see it anywhere.”

Jose let out a frustrated sigh.

“Oh shit!” Trevor yelled, startling all of them.

Trevor sprang into action. He rushed across the room to the fireplace hearth. He grabbed one of the metal cases, laid it on its side, popped the latch, looked down inside and breathed out a sigh of relief. “Looks like it’s all still here.”

“You thought Frank ran off with the money?” Jose asked in a disgusted tone of voice.

“Yeah, it crossed my mind.”

“Frank would never do that,” Jose growled.

“Well, I wanted to rule it out. Is that all right with you?”

“Okay, guys,” Cole interrupted. “Let’s stay calm and think about this.”

Needles, fully awake now, looked around at them. He had stripped down to only his thermal underwear at some point in the night, the small crucifix hung outside of his shirt. The sleeves of his thermal shirt were pushed up to his elbows, revealing even more tattoos covering his thin, sinewy arms.

“What happened?” he asked.

“We just woke up,” Trevor told Needles. “Frank’s not here.”

“What do you mean, Frank’s not here? Where is he?”

“We don’t know.”

Cole grabbed his coat and shrugged into it. He pulled his wool ski-mask hat and gloves out of the pockets. He stuffed his hands into his gloves and pulled the hat onto his head, covering his ears. He had seen something down in the snow when he’d opened the front door all the way—something he couldn’t believe.

“Where are you going?” Trevor asked Cole.

“Outside to look for Frank.” He looked at the others. “Alone,” he added. “You guys wait in here and watch them.”

CHAPTER 12

Cole stood on the porch, at the edge of the steps that disappeared down into the snow. And there they were, just what he thought he had seen when he’d opened the door earlier.

Footprints.

There was a set of footprints in the snow that led from the front porch steps out towards the line of dark trees in the distance. Cole stared down at the footprints, trying to understand why Frank would walk out of the cabin in the middle of the night to the woods. Did he see something out here? Hear something?

Cole pulled his nine millimeter out of his coat pocket. He always wore thin leather gloves on bank jobs—they didn’t leave prints behind and they allowed him the dexterity he needed, but now his hands were very cold. He caressed the trigger lightly with his index finger as he stared out at the line of trees.

There was a ribbon of deep blue sky right above the trees where the sky was beginning to lighten up with the sunrise. But there was also a mass of dark clouds building up in the sky in the other direction, the next storm in this series of snowstorms. Right now they were in the calm of the storm, like an eye of a hurricane.

He hesitated before stepping down off the porch. Everything about this felt so wrong to him and that pit of dread was back in his stomach. But then he forced himself to check out the footprints.

His boots crunched in the snow as he stepped down into it. He stood in the snow for a moment, which came up to his mid-calf. He stared down at the set of footprints. A man’s footprints. Regular gait. Not like this man was running. Like he was walking; a leisurely midnight stroll through the freezing snow to the dark woods.

Cole followed the footprints, staying three feet away so he wouldn’t disturb them. His eyes darted around as he followed the trail of footprints to the trees. There didn’t seem to be anything threatening out here that he could see, but that sense of dread wouldn’t leave him.

*

Stella got up and walked towards the kitchen.

Jose watched her in shock. “Hey, lady! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Stella stopped, she looked right at Jose, but she showed no fear of him. “David needs something to eat.”

“Did we say you could just get up and walk around?” Jose spat out.

“I didn’t ask,” she said.

Jose was about to explode with rage, but Trevor’s words stopped him. “Leave her alone, Jose.”

“What?” Jose said, turning his anger on Trevor.

“I said leave her alone. She’s not our prisoner.”

“You aint my boss.”

Stella ignored the two men and continued to the kitchen. She wasn’t going to wait around for them to quit arguing with each other—that might take forever. She looked through the cabinets.

Trevor turned his attention away from Jose and he watched Stella. “What are you making him for breakfast?”

Stella didn’t look at Trevor as she spoke to him. “There are some packets of oatmeal up here.”

“How about some coffee for us?”

Now Stella looked right at Trevor who was giving her his sweetest smile. She was sure it worked on most of the ladies. “Sure,” she finally answered in a sarcastically sweet voice. “Coffee coming right up.”

She pulled out some instant coffee from the cabinet along with the packets of oatmeal.

Oatmeal would be good for her and David, Stella thought as she boiled water on the stove for the oatmeal and started the coffee maker. They were going to need all of their strength for what was coming soon.

*

Cole followed the footprints. He was almost to the woods now. He glanced back at the cabin, which was at least seventy yards away. He looked back down at the footprints and followed them for a few more feet—then he stopped dead in his tracks.

He stared down at the snow in disbelief, having trouble believing what he was seeing.

A crackling noise deep in the woods startled him. He brought his pistol up and aimed it into the dark woods, his hand shaking slightly, his breath pluming up in front of his face from his heavy breathing.

Nothing moving in the trees that he could see.

He turned and ran back to the cabin. Even in his panic, he made sure that he stayed well away from the set of footprints in the snow. He didn’t want to disturb them at all—he wanted the others to see what he had just seen.

*

The oatmeal was ready. Stella poured some in a bowl for David. She looked at David on the couch. “David, I made you some oatmeal.”

David stared at her, but he made no move to get up. His long hair was a little rumpled from a night’s sleep.

“Come on, David,” she said. “You need to eat something.”

Trevor got up from his sleeping bag and came to the dining room table. He looked down at the bowls of oatmeal sitting on the table. He looked at Stella with a half-smile on his face. “What kind of oatmeal is it?”

“Apples and cinnamon.”

“My favorite.”

Stella looked past Trevor at David who still wasn’t moving.

Trevor sat down at the table and took a big bite of his oatmeal. “How’s that coffee coming?” he asked around a mouthful of oatmeal.

Stella sighed, but she poured cups of coffee and set them on the dining room table. Trevor took a sip. “Perfect,” he said.

Jose sat on his blankets and laced his boots up. “I can’t believe you’re eating that,” he told Trevor. “How do you know she didn’t poison that stuff?”

Trevor stopped eating suddenly, his mouth hung open as he made choking noises, his eyes bulging. He dropped the spoon back into the bowl and grabbed at his throat, clawing at it, some of the oatmeal dribbling out of the corner of his mouth.

Jose stood up and shook his head. “You’re really an asshole, you know that?”

Trevor erupted in a fit of laughter.

Even David cracked a smile.

Stella smiled, too. Her eyes met David’s eyes for a moment and she grabbed a bowl of oatmeal and brought it to him.

Needles didn’t look at anyone or join in the conversation. He sat curled up in the recliner, rubbing his crucifix and staring at the front door.

Jose grabbed his coat and slipped it on. He fished his gloves and hat out of the pockets of the coat.

“Where are you going?” Trevor asked around another mouthful of food.

“Going to help Cole look for Frank.”

“Who said you could do that?”

“I never asked for permission, did I?”

“He said he wanted to go alone,” Trevor reminded him.

“I don’t give a shit. Just because Frank isn’t here right now doesn’t make you and your brother the boss.”

Jose turned away from Trevor and took a few steps towards the front door, but then he stopped as the door flew open and Cole rushed inside.

Cole slammed the door shut and twisted the deadbolt lock. He backed away from the door, and then he turned and looked at the others with wide eyes of shock.

“What’s wrong?” Jose asked. “You find Frank?”

“He’s gone,” Cole said in a hoarse voice.

“Yeah, no shit,” Jose said. “We can see that.”

“No, I mean he’s … just gone.”

CHAPTER 13

They all followed Cole through the snow, all of them bundled up in their coats, hats, and gloves. Cole stopped when they got close to the trees. He pointed down at the snow.

They gathered around, all of them careful to stay away from the set of footprints in the snow. The footprints led from the cabin almost to the woods. About twenty feet before the woods, the footprints stopped, like the person took a step, and then he was gone.

“I don’t understand,” Jose said as he scratched at his head underneath his wool cap. He looked around. “It’s like something picked him up right off the snow.”

No one said anything.

Jose looked at the line of dark trees looming in front of them, the unending forest beyond the first line of trees. “This doesn’t make any sense,” he continued.

Stella and David stood several feet away from the group of men, closer to the trees. David stood in front of Stella, and Stella’s hands were on his shoulders. David pulled away from her and walked towards the trees, staring at them with a fierce intensity.

“Honey,” Stella said as David took another step through the snow towards the trees.

David didn’t turn around at the sound of her voice.

“What’s wrong with him?” Jose asked.

Needles watched David. “It’s like that kid can see something in the woods.”

Needles hurried through the snow towards David, a sudden rage on Needles’ face. “That kid can see something in the woods!”

Stella jumped in between David and Needles, an animal-like look of protectiveness on her face. “You stay away from him,” she warned.

Needles stopped, but he wasn’t letting it go. “What’s wrong with that kid? What’s he see in those woods?”

Cole stepped over to Needles; Cole’s hands hung at his sides like a gunfighter’s hands, ready to grab at his gun in a flash if he needed to. “Needles, back away from that kid.”

Needles looked around, nodding his head quickly. “There’s something wrong with those two. I don’t know why you guys can’t see that.”

Cole ignored the babble from Needles as he trudged through the snow and stood beside David and looked at the woods, trying to see what David was seeing. He looked down at David. “You see something in there, kid?”

David looked up at Cole and stared at him. He didn’t nod yes or shake his head no. He didn’t say anything; he just walked back to Stella and grabbed her hand again.

Stella just shrugged.

Cole looked up at the sky. Darker clouds were moving in fast, promising a lot more snow. “Let’s get back inside.”

*

The men sat around the dining room table, all of them sipping cups of coffee. Stella sat beside David on the couch. David had eaten half his bowl of oatmeal, but then he wouldn’t eat any more.

Cole looked at the other men at the table. “I want to know what made Frank get up in the middle of the night and leave.”

“You think those are his footprints?” Trevor asked.

“Who else’s would they be?” Cole asked.

Trevor shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he heard something in the middle of the night. Or he saw something. Then he went out there to check it out.”

“He would’ve woke us up,” Cole said.

“Then maybe he ran,” Trevor answered.

All eyes were on Trevor. A tense silence blanketed the room.

“Frank wouldn’t run out on us,” Jose growled.

“Hey, I’m just exploring possibilities,” Trevor said. “Besides, this is a different situation we’re in now.” Trevor’s eyes rested on Needles. “We’ve never had a murder rap hanging over our heads before.”

Needles stared at Trevor, but he didn’t say anything.

“Even with a murder rap,” Jose said, “Frank wouldn’t run.” Jose stared right at Trevor. “But I have a theory—maybe somebody did something to Frank in the middle of the night.” Jose’s eyes were still locked on Trevor. “Somebody with a lot to gain.”

Trevor stared right back at Jose. “You trying to say something, Jose? Go ahead and spit it out.”

“Come on, you two,” Cole said. “Let’s think about this for a minute. Frank leaves in the middle of the night without his hat or coat.”

“Or his share of the money,” Jose offered.

“Or his share of the money,” Cole repeated. “Then he walks straight from the cabin to the woods. And then his footprints just stop.”

“Maybe somebody else got him,” Trevor said. “He heard something, went out there to check it out and someone got him.”

“Have to be a bad motherfucker to take Frank,” Jose stared at Trevor.

“You mean like the bad motherfucker that tore a guy’s eyes out and stuffed him in a freezer?” Trevor answered.

Cole leaned back in his chair and ran his hands through his hair as he exhaled a deep breath. “This shit doesn’t make any sense. There’s no sign of struggle anywhere. If somebody got to Frank, we would’ve heard something. Frank yelling. Gunshots. Something.”

“I slept like a rock,” Trevor told them.

“Me too,” Cole said. “It was like I passed out.”

Needles chuckled. They all looked at him. Needles sat back in his chair, the wood creaking. He laughed harder now. “Nobody’s going to say it, are they?” he said through his laughter.

“Needles …” Cole started.

“No, Cole,” Needles snapped, his laughter stopping suddenly. His eyes blazed with fear and insanity. “People just don’t go out in the middle of the night and walk into the woods. People don’t just disappear in mid-step. Something’s wrong here. Really wrong.”

They were all quiet for a moment. Needles took a deep breath, like he was trying to control himself and then he continued: “Something took Frank. Not someone, it was some-thing.”

“Needles, don’t start with that shit again,” Cole warned.

“You guys know it’s the truth,” Needles said, almost under his breath. “You’re going to realize it before long.”

Cole got up and took his coffee cup to the kitchen. He poured another cup of coffee, spooned a few teaspoons of sugar into it and stirred—the sounds were loud in the quiet cabin.

Trevor glanced at Needles, then at Stella and David, and then back at Cole. “Cole, maybe Needles is right.”

Cole turned and stared at Trevor. “There’s got to be some kind of rational explanation here,” Cole told him.

“I’m not seeing any rational explanations.” Trevor glanced around at the others for a moment, and then he looked back at Cole. “Maybe it’s time we thought about getting out of here.”

“I think we should look for Frank,” Jose spat out.

“Frank’s gone!” Trevor shouted. “He ran. When are you going to get that through your head?!”

Trevor and Jose jumped to their feet; their chairs tipped backwards and fell over on the hardwood floor. They glared at each other, ready to fight. Cole rushed back into the dining room and stepped in between them. “That’s enough,” he said as he stared at each of them. “We’re not going to fight each other.”

Neither of them said a word as they grabbed their chairs and sat back down. Cole went back to the kitchen counter for his cup of coffee. He took a sip as he walked back into the living room. He stared at Stella and David. “What about you?” he asked Stella. “Did you hear anything last night?”

“No,” Stella answered in a low voice.

Something about her, Cole thought. She’s hiding something.

He saw her eyes dart to the fireplace, at the cases of money, and then she looked at him again.

“What?” he asked her. “If you saw something or heard something, you’d better spit it out.”

Stella hesitated, and then finally she said, “None of you noticed that the ax from the fireplace is gone?”

CHAPTER 14

They all stared at the fireplace.

Cole remembered now that there had been an ax leaning next to the small stack of firewood set on the hearth. He had thought it was odd that someone would have an ax inside the house, but it looked like Tom Gordon had used it to break up the logs into smaller pieces before placing them into the fireplace.

And now the ax was gone.

“What the hell?” Jose whispered.

Nobody answered Jose. They all stared at the fireplace.

“This just keeps getting weirder,” Trevor mumbled.

Cole looked at Stella and David for a moment, and then he looked at the others. “Okay, I’ll go check out her truck; see if it can be fixed.” He looked at Jose. “You come out there with me. Watch my back.”

Trevor jumped to his feet. “You don’t want me to come with you?”

“No. You stay here and watch these two.” Cole pointed at Stella and David.

Cole walked to the kitchen counter and above the end of the counter on the wall was a wooden key holder carved into the shape of a large key. But there were no keys on the key holder. Cole looked at the counter where someone might throw a set of keys—but there were no keys on the counter, either. He opened the first drawer; it looked like a junk drawer. He rummaged through it.

“What are you looking for?” Jose asked as he shrugged into his winter coat.

“Probably the keys to Tom Gordon’s truck, genius,” Trevor said to Jose.

“What the hell’s your problem?” Jose said as he took a step towards Trevor.

“Nothing,” Trevor said with a smirk.

Cole found a set of keys, but they couldn’t be the keys to the pickup truck outside, but they did look familiar and he was pretty sure that he knew what these set of keys went to. He palmed the small set of keys inside his hand and continued his search through the drawers for the keys to the pickup truck.

Then a morbid thought occurred to Cole. What if the keys to the pickup were still in Tom Gordon’s pants pocket when he was murdered? What if they were in his pants right now, frozen in there? Cole could imagine pulling the frozen corpse out of the freezer, prying the pockets open or cutting them away with a knife as frozen flesh peeled away with the cloth.

He pushed the thoughts away, and moved to the next drawer, opened it and found the truck keys. He closed his hand around these keys, collecting them with the small set of keys he already had in his hand, and then he pocketed them both.

Cole turned and looked at Jose. “Found them. Let’s go.”

*

Cole and Jose walked around the cabin to the back where Stella’s Chevy Suburban was parked under a blanket of snow. Jose trudged through the snow right beside Cole, his gloved hands stuffed into his coat pockets. “I don’t know what your brother’s problem is,” he grumbled.

“He’s just nervous and trying not to show it,” Cole answered. “The more nervous he gets, the more sarcastic he gets.”

“He better stop fucking with me,” Jose said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

Cole opened the driver’s door and looked at Jose. “You two are going to cool it right now. We have enough to worry about without you two at each other’s throats.”

Jose looked away and exhaled a long breath that plumed up in front of his face in the freezing air. “Whatever,” he mumbled.

Cole still stared at Jose. “Maybe Trevor’s right. Something’s not right here in this cabin. Needles is halfway to La-La Land right now and pretty much useless, so the rest of us need to keep our cool and work together.”

Jose shrugged and kept looking around, averting Cole’s eyes.

“Jose, I’m serious. I need your help. And Trevor’s.”

Jose looked back at Cole. “Just get that fucking truck fixed so we can get the hell out of here.”

Cole pulled the latch to pop the hood. He marched through the snow to the front of the truck. He lifted up the hood and stared down at the mess that used to be engine.

Jose saw the look on Cole’s face. He hurried over to the front of the truck and stared down at the destroyed engine. He didn’t know near as much about engines as Cole did, but he knew enough to know that this engine was ruined. Inoperable.

Cole stuck his hand down in the motor and picked up some loose parts, then he tossed them back down onto the engine, the clanking sound was loud out here in the silence. Cole picked up the cables that used to go to the battery. “Battery’s gone,” Cole mumbled.

“Holy shit, Cole,” Jose yelled right beside him as he stared in shock down at the engine. “Holy fuck, man. What the fuck?”

Cole studied the frayed end of the battery cable. It looked ripped, torn apart, like someone had torn the battery out of the truck with tremendous force, snapping the battery cables.

“What the fuck?” Jose said again as he backed away from the truck, pacing around in the snow in a small circle, still cussing. “What the fuck happened?”

“It looks like someone destroyed the engine with an ax,” Cole said, his voice even and controlled, like he was a scientist analyzing a piece of data. “See those chop marks there. Hell of a swing.”

Jose swung his fists at the air. “Fuck!” he screamed out into the freezing air. “FUCK!!” His voice echoed across the snowy field.

Cole lowered the hood of Stella’s truck, but he didn’t close it all the way. He turned to Jose. “Let’s go check the other truck.”

*

Inside the cabin, Stella stood at the sink and washed the leftover oatmeal out of the bowls.

Trevor watched her. He still sat at the dining room table, his coffee cup in front of him. He toyed with the cup, spinning it around slowly on the table as he glanced at David who sat on the couch. Needles was curled up in the recliner, comforting himself by rubbing the cross around his neck, his eyes half-closed, his lips moving in silent prayers.

Trevor looked back at Stella, watching her rinse the dishes. “What’s wrong with your kid?” he asked. “Is he autistic?”

“No,” Stella answered, not bothering to look at him.

“Retarded?”

Stella gave Trevor a hard look with her blue eyes. “No,” she said.

“Seems like something’s wrong with him.”

“He just doesn’t talk much,” Stella said as she turned her attention back to the dishes, setting them in the strainer a little too hard.

Trevor smiled as he kept playing with his coffee cup. “Stella, could I get another cup of coffee? It was really good.”

“Get it yourself,” she told him without looking at him.

David got up from the couch and walked across the area rug in the middle of the living room. He gave Needles a wide berth as he hurried over to Stella.

Stella turned and smiled at David. “What is it, honey?”

He tugged on her sleeve. She bent down and he cupped a hand beside his mouth and whispered into her ear.

She nodded. “Sure,” she said. She went right to one of the drawers under the counter and rummaged through them.

Trevor watched the two of them with that same smirk on his face. “What’s the kid want?” he asked.

Stella found a spiral-bound book of notebook paper. She flipped through it, all the pages were blank and it looked brand new. She handed the notebook to David. His face lit up as he took it. She continued looking through the drawers for something else.

“Is he writing a book?” Trevor asked.

“He wants something to draw on,” Stella said over her shoulder as she continued looking through the drawer.

“Really?” Trevor’s face lit up. He looked at David. “Are you a good artist?”

David stared at Trevor for a moment, and then he looked at Stella with hope in his eyes.

Stella turned to David with a ballpoint pen in her hand. “Sorry, honey. This is all I could find.”

David took the pen with a big smile and he hurried back to the couch, his long hair flying out behind him as he ran. He plopped down on the couch and opened the notebook.

Trevor got up and grabbed his coffee cup from the table. He walked to the coffee pot and poured another cup. He watched Stella as she went back to the couch and sat down beside David.

Stella looked at Trevor. “You don’t seem particularly worried about what’s going on here.”

Trevor sipped his coffee as he mulled over an answer. “I’m not afraid of anything,” he finally said.

You will be, Stella thought.

*

“Pop the hood,” Cole told Jose.

Jose lifted the handle on the driver’s door of Tom Gordon’s truck, and then wrenched the door open as snow fell in heaps from the top of the door and the roof. He reached inside the murky truck—all of the snow covering the windows made the interior dark. He groped around until he found a lever. He pulled until he heard the clunking sound that released the hood.

Cole lifted up the hood. He was pretty sure what to expect, but he still hoped anyway. He prayed that he was wrong.

But he wasn’t.

Jose rushed around to the front of the truck, slipping in the snow a little. But then he stopped in his tracks when he saw the expression on Cole’s face. “Fuck,” Jose breathed out.

Cole slammed the hood of the truck shut. “Somebody doesn’t want us to leave.”

CHAPTER 15

“There’s no way you can fix the truck?” Jose asked Cole.

“I don’t think so,” Cole said as he looked at the large, free-standing garage behind Tom Gordon’s pickup truck. “I’m going to check in there. You stay out here by the truck and watch for anything.”

Jose nodded. His gun was in his gloved hand already. He looked at the woods as Cole stomped through the snow drifts to the double doors of the garage.

Cole pushed on one of the wooden doors. At first it didn’t budge and he thought he was going to have to call Jose to help him, but then it broke free. He slid it open far enough so that he could slip inside. He stood there for a moment in the doorway, breathing hard from pushing the door open, his breath clouding up in front of his face.

Cole entered the garage which was longer than it was wide. On both sides of the garage boxes, crates, and bags were stacked up. There were stacks of lumber and wood siding, cinder blocks, and an old water heater. Cole walked down a pathway through the stacks of junk. He paused and looked at a long workbench covered with automotive parts. Tools hung from an unorganized pegboard above the bench. Boxes were crammed underneath the bench, some of the boxes split open from the weather. Cole wondered if there might be some spare parts to the trucks among the parts on the counter, but it didn’t matter—he knew both engines were too far gone to repair in a day or two.

Besides, he was looking for something else in here. His hand went to his pocket, his gloved fingers reached into his pocket and pulled out the set of keys he’d found in the kitchen drawer.

He ventured farther down the aisle through the maze of junk. He saw boxes and crates stacked on top of each other. A large set of wood shelves built into the wall held more boxes and bags. There were at least fifteen fifty pound bags of rock salt.

On the floor near the shelves was a red plastic container of gasoline. That was a good sign. He hurried over to the gas container and lifted it up. It was nearly full. He set it back down on the concrete floor and noticed a tarp covering up something large.

That might be what he was looking for.

Cole pulled the tarp away which was nearly frozen solid, but it broke free, crinkling loudly in the silence. And under the tarp was what he suspected the keys went to. A snowmobile. An older one, but it looked like it might still run.

“Cole!”

Cole turned to the doorway of the garage, towards the sound of Jose’s panicked voice. “Cole, get out here right now!”

He threw the tarp back over the snowmobile, covering it completely, then at the last second he pushed some of the boxes down on top of it—he didn’t want Jose or Needles discovering it. Then he broke into a run towards the garage doorway and pulled his gun out of his coat pocket.

*

“So, you’re an archaeologist, huh?” Trevor asked as he stood in front of the coffee maker. He added more sugar and cream to his coffee.

“Yep,” Stella answered. She was already getting very tired of whatever game Trevor was trying to play here. She glanced at Needles who was still curled up in the recliner, massaging his crucifix. He stared down at the large area rug, seemingly transfixed by the colorful patterns. Stella looked back at Trevor. She decided to flip the questions around. “What about you?” she asked. “You look more like a grad student than a bank robber.”

Trevor smiled. “Things aren’t always what they appear to be.”

“Believe me, I know.”

“What does a grad student look like?” Trevor asked, and then he sipped his coffee. “You some kind of expert?”

“I’ve been to college before. Archaeology, remember? You need to go to college for that.” She wasn’t going to let him weasel his way out of an explanation. If anything, it would keep him from asking her more questions. “What made you decide to rob banks?”

“Long story,” he told her.

Stella looked around. “Looks like we’ve got nothing but time right now.”

*

Cole ran out of the garage, his gun in his hand. He stopped and looked around for Jose. But Jose wasn’t around anywhere. Cole looked at the pickup truck—Jose wasn’t there.

A movement in the snow beyond the front of the truck caught Cole’s eye—it was Jose, he was running for the woods, almost to the first line of trees.

“Jose!” Cole yelled.

But Jose didn’t stop; he kept on running through the snow, his boots kicking up snow behind him.

Cole ran after Jose. “Jose, wait!”

Jose still wasn’t stopping.

Cole ran across the field towards the trees, his leg muscles began to burn from the slight incline of the ground. He caught up to Jose twenty feet inside the woods, the trees already closer together just this far into woods. Jose stood by a tree, his shoulder against it like he was using it as a shield, his gun was out and pointed at the ground, his eyes wild, darting around like he was trying to look everywhere at once. Mucus ran out of Jose’s nose down into his mustache—Cole was pretty sure Jose didn’t realize this.

Cole took a second to catch his breath. His chest heaved from his sprint across the field, his breath clouded up in front of his face. He looked around at the trees all around them, his pistol ready, his finger on the trigger. Some of the tree trunks were powdered with snow from drifts piled up on them. The trees seemed to go on forever, blending together into a gray darkness deeper into the woods.

“What is it?” Cole breathed out.

Jose didn’t answer. He just looked around with his wild-man eyes. His gun hand trembled as he aimed his weapon into the trees.

“Jose?”

Jose finally looked at Cole.

“What is it?” Cole asked. “What did you see?”

“I saw Frank.”

CHAPTER 16

Trevor set his coffee cup down on the counter and looked at the cabin door. He looked back at Stella and David who stared at the cabin door. Even Needles tore his attention away from whatever daydream his damaged mind was stumbling around inside of and looked at the door.

“You hear that?” Trevor asked Stella.

Stella nodded. Beside her, David stared at the door with his ballpoint pen poised in his hand over his notebook page that he’d been drawing on. Something out there scared David.

“Sounds like someone’s yelling out there,” Stella said in a low voice.

Trevor crossed the room in a blur of movement. He pulled his gun out of the waistband of his pants. He opened the front door and rushed outside.

Stella turned to David. “Stay right here,” she told him.

She was about to get up, but David clutched her hand. His eyes pleaded with her not to go. “I’m just going out on the front porch,” she told him. “That’s as far as I’m going to go.”

David let her hand go.

She got up and hurried to the front door. She slipped out through the doorway, and then pulled the door almost all the way closed.

David stared at the door for a few seconds, but then he looked at Needles.

Needles wasn’t looking at the door anymore—he was looking right at David. “I know what you are,” Needles whispered at David.

*

Stella stepped to the edge of the steps of the front porch. She watched Trevor jump from the porch down into the snow and run across the field towards the woods. He had his gun out, ready to shoot if he needed to.

She saw Cole and Jose in the woods.

*

Cole stared at Jose. “You saw Frank?”

“Yeah,” Jose answered with a shudder. “He was up here in the woods. Watching us.” Jose’s eyes darted away from Cole to the trees. “Just … watching us.”

Cole glanced at the trees. “You’re sure it was Frank?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Jose snapped. “He was wearing that blue flannel shirt he had on before. No coat. No hat. It was him.”

Cole looked at Jose. “Did Frank say anything? Did he wave at you?”

“No. He just stood in the woods, and he was staring at me. No expression. Nothing.”

“Did he have his gun?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t see it.” Jose wiped at his nose with the sleeve of his jacket. “I don’t know.”

Cole looked down at the snow all around them. Then he looked at Jose. “You’re absolutely sure you saw Frank.”

“I know what I saw.”

“There aren’t any tracks in the snow.”

Jose looked down at the snow. His eyes widened in surprise. He shook his head no in disbelief. “He was here. Standing right here in these trees. I’m sure of it.” Jose looked at Cole with wide eyes that were now confused and a little frightened. “I saw him. I swear I did.”

“Cole!”

Cole turned towards the sound of Trevor’s voice.

“What’s going on?” Trevor asked as he ran into the woods.

“Nothing,” Cole answered. “We’re coming back inside.” Cole looked at Jose. “Come on, Jose. Let’s get back inside.”

Trevor stood at the edge of the woods, his gun ready in his hand. He looked around. “What were you guys yelling about out here?”

Cole knew that Trevor wasn’t going to let this go. “Jose thought he saw Frank.”

Trevor stiffened. “Frank?”

“Yeah. He thought he saw him up here in the woods.”

“I saw him,” Jose muttered.

Trevor stepped deeper into the woods, joining Cole and Jose. He scanned the trees, the low-hanging branches, and then the blanket of snow on the ground all around them. “But I don’t see—”

“I know,” Cole finished quickly. “There aren’t any tracks in the snow.”

“I saw him!” Jose snapped.

“Come on, Jose,” Cole said in a calm voice. “Another snowstorm is coming. We need to get back inside the cabin.”

Jose lowered his gun and walked back through the trees to the edge of the field.

Cole and Trevor glanced at each other, and then they followed Jose out of the woods. Cole could read his brother’s thoughts: Jose is losing it now, just like Needles.

Jose stopped at the edge of the clearing and stared at the cabin which sat in the middle of the field over a hundred yards away. He saw Stella standing on the front porch watching them.

“What’s she doing out on the porch?” he asked.

“Probably seeing what you guys were yelling about,” Trevor said.

“She has something to do with all of this,” Jose said.

Cole didn’t respond. He looked up at the sky which was dark gray with clouds. It looked like a wall of snow was heading right for them from the far side of the field behind the cabin.

“Come on,” Cole urged Jose. The wind from the coming storm was already picking up; a wave of even colder and nastier weather was coming, if that was possible. “We need to get back into the cabin. We’ve got other problems to discuss.”

“What other problems?” Trevor asked.

Cole glanced at Trevor, but then he nodded at the snowstorm that was moving in fast. “We need to hurry,” he told Trevor.

The three ran across the front field as the blizzard swept across the back field behind the cabin, whitewashing everything.

By the time they reached the front porch, the snowstorm was right on top of them. They hurried inside the cabin and shut the door on the storm.

CHAPTER 17

“Destroyed?” Trevor asked, his face slack with shock. “What do you mean, destroyed?”

“The engines in both vehicles are destroyed,” Cole told him. He looked at Stella and David but they didn’t seem too surprised to hear the news. He looked at Needles who didn’t seem so surprised either. He looked back at Trevor. “Like someone took an ax to the motors.”

Trevor stared at Cole. His mouth moved, like he was trying to say something, but his voice wasn’t working for a moment. He turned and paced into the kitchen. Then he turned back to Cole. “An ax? Like the ax that’s missing from the fireplace?”

Cole didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

David had the spiral notebook on his lap and the ballpoint pen in his hand. Cole looked at him and wondered where David had gotten the notebook and pen, but then he dismissed the thought. He didn’t really care right now. Cole watched David draw something in his notebook for a few moments. David was really concentrating on his drawing, his dark eyes focused like laser beams on the page.

“Is there any way the engines can be fixed?” Trevor asked, breaking Cole’s hypnosis. The tone of Trevor’s voice didn’t sound hopeful.

“No,” Cole answered as he walked into the kitchen to fix himself a cup of coffee. He poured the coffee into his mug and then held his hands around the cup for a second, letting the heat warm his hands up.

The blizzard was over top of the cabin like a smothering blanket. The wind howled around the eaves and battered the log walls.

“So, Frank takes the ax with him in the middle of the night and destroys our vehicles with it,” Trevor says.

“Frank wouldn’t do that,” Jose grumbled.

“You said you saw him out there in the woods,” Trevor said.

Needles perked up at this news. “Frank’s out there?”

Cole watched Stella when she heard that Jose saw Frank. Something about the way she looked. It was only for a split second, but he saw something in her eyes. It was fear. But not a fear of Frank, a fear of something else. She knew something about this, Cole was sure. But what?

“No,” Trevor spat out the word towards Needles. “Frank isn’t out there.”

“I saw him in the woods.”

“You saw a figment of your imagination. There were no tracks in the snow. No sign of him anywhere. You’re tired and scared and your mind’s playing tricks on you.”

“Don’t call me scared, you motherfucker.”

“Come on, you two,” Cole said.

“If Frank’s out there, then why?” Trevor continued, ignoring Cole’s warning.

“I don’t know,” Jose said. “Maybe he is after the money.”

“If he’s after the money, then why didn’t he just shoot everyone when he left in the middle of the night?” Trevor asked. “He would’ve had the chance. Why didn’t he shoot us in Stella’s truck? Or at the side of the road? Or when we first got off the snowmobiles?”

“Maybe there’s someone else out there,” Jose said. “The same people who killed that guy and stuffed him in the freezer. Maybe Frank went out there and they took him. Maybe it’s the same people who are after that bitch and that kid.” Jose stared at Stella and David. “I think we need to question them. Get some answers out of them.”

“Jose, that’s enough,” Cole said. “We’re not going to interrogate anyone. We’re not torturers.” Cole glanced at Needles. “We’re not murderers.”

“Yeah, but she knows something.”

“If she’s involved with this, then how would Frank know where Stella was going to be in her truck?” Cole asked Jose. “We took a different escape route after Needles killed the old man in the bank. Trevor was the one with the map.”

Jose turned to Trevor. “Yeah, Trevor had the map. He knew where we were going.”

“Oh, so I’m involved with this now?” Trevor said and couldn’t help smiling which only seemed to infuriate Jose even more.

“You and your brother, maybe,” Jose looked at Cole. “How do I know?”

“Like Cole said,” Trevor went on, “we wouldn’t even be here if Needles hadn’t shot that old man in the bank. You think Needles is in on it, too? You think all of us joined together with Stella and David to create all of this,” Trevor spread his hands out at the cabin, “just to trick you out of your share of the money?”

“I don’t know what to think anymore,” Jose grumbled.

“I didn’t have anything to do with this,” Needles said. “That old man in the bank grabbed me! I didn’t grab him, he grabbed me. And I saw things. I saw this place. And he told me the devil was coming. When are you guys going to see what’s really going on here? Something’s following those two,” Needles pointed at Stella and David on the couch. “And it isn’t human. It’s the devil and now he’s after us.”

“Needles,” Cole warned, “we’ve heard enough of your theories.”

“I say we just kick those two outside,” Needles went on. “If the devil’s after them, then let him have them. We’ll be a lot safer.”

“We’re not kicking anyone outside,” Cole said, as the anger seethed through his words. “We’re not torturing anyone. We’re not killing anyone. And we’re not kicking anyone outside in the snow.”

The others stared at Cole in silence.

“We just came across a bad place,” Cole continued, his eyes burning with anger, his patience completely gone now. “A place where a man was murdered, and whether we want to admit it or not, it’s getting to us. Turning us against each other.”

An awkward silence hung over them.

“So what are we going to do now?” Trevor asked. “Sleep with all of our guns pointed at each other?”

“We’re going to stay here tonight,” Cole said. “We’re going to wait until these snowstorms pass us by. And we may have to walk out of here tomorrow if we can’t get one of these vehicles to work. We’ll have to flag down another vehicle out on the road.”

“Four wanted bank robbers with two suitcases of money and two hostages walking down the side of the road,” Trevor said. “That sounds like a good idea.”

“Trevor,” Cole said through clenched teeth. “You’re not helping the situation.”

Trevor didn’t retort—he knew when he had pushed his big brother too far.

“Before we leave,” Cole went on after he inhaled a deep breath and exhaled slowly, hoping it would help his nerves, hoping that it would help the anger building up inside of him. “I think we need to burn this cabin to the ground. There’s a dead body in here and we don’t need to leave behind any evidence that we were here.”

“What about her truck?” Jose said as he hitched a thumb at Stella.

“We’ll burn that, too,” Cole said.

The others nodded.

“Okay,” Cole said. “We’ll sleep in watches again tonight.”

*

Hours later Stella and David slept on the couch. David had his notebook tucked protectively under his arm.

Jose had tried the TV and radio over and over again, trying to get some kind of station or signal, hoping to get some kind of news about the bank robbery, but none of the stations would come in—nothing but complete static. Jose finally gave up. He sipped from the bottle of whiskey, but not too much. He wanted to stay sober and ready for whoever was out there waiting for them in the darkness.

Trevor sat at the table for hours and played hand after hand of solitaire with a deck of playing cards that he’d found in a kitchen drawer.

Needles curled up in his recliner and massaged the crucifix around his neck as he muttered silent prayers with his eyes closed. Soon he drifted off into a fitful sleep.

Cole took the first watch as the rest of them slept. He planned on waiting until three o’clock in the morning and then waking Trevor up. They would need to take turns on watch if they had to stay here one or two more nights—even Needles would have to take a watch.

Cole’s thoughts melted together, and his eyes slowly closed, and he drifted off to sleep without even realizing it.

CHAPTER 18

Stella woke up in the middle of the night and she began to scream.

Cole snapped awake in the pitch-black darkness of the cabin. For a split second he forgot where he was. It was like he was coming out of some kind of a dream, except he didn’t remember any of it; it was more like he was clawing his way out of a cocoon of darkness. But now he was awake and trapped in a real cocoon of darkness.

Cole groped at his blanket and pillows looking for his gun. Then he remembered that he had stuck his gun in the front of his pants. He felt along the front of his pants and then his fingers touched the reassuring feel of the steel of his pistol.

He didn’t even remember lying down on his bedroll. He remembered sitting at the dining room table with a cup of coffee in front of him. He was going to wake Trevor up for the next watch. Had he woken Trevor up and then went to bed and couldn’t remember it? He wasn’t sure, and he didn’t have time to think about it right now because Stella was still screaming.

Cole remained motionless for a moment, his fingers still touching the handle of his gun.

“Cole!” Trevor called out. “Where are you?”

“I’m here,” Cole called back.

“Stella!” Cole yelled. “What happened?”

Stella’s screams stopped, and for a split second the cabin was silent; there wasn’t even the sound of the snowstorm outside.

“Are you hurt, Stella?” Cole asked her.

Stella didn’t answer. Something about her silence in the pitch-black darkness scared Cole even more than her screams. It was like she suddenly realized that there was something in the cabin with them and she didn’t want to make a sound and give her position away.

“What the hell’s wrong with her?” Jose snapped. “Where’s everyone else?”

“I’m on my sleeping bag,” Trevor called out.

“I’m on my blankets,” Cole said.

“What happened to the lights?” Needles asked with a tremor in his voice. “Who turned out the fucking lights?”

“Where are you, Needles?” Cole asked, trying to keep his voice calm as he tried to mentally picture where everyone was in the cabin.

“In the recliner,” Needles answered.

That only left Stella and David. “Stella,” Cole said. “Where are you? Where’s David?”

“David’s gone,” Stella whispered.

Cole’s blood ran cold. “What do you mean?” Cole finally asked even though his words sounded stupid to his own ears. Gone meant gone.

“He’s gone,” she whispered again and there was a movement in the darkness, a rustling of clothing.

“Who’s moving?” Jose called out.

“Nobody shoot!” Cole shouted. “Does everyone understand me? Nobody shoots. We can’t see anything.”

Someone was on their feet and running across the wooden floor of the cabin. Shoes pounded the wood. So loud in the darkness. Someone was running for the front door.

Cole turned to the door and saw the barest dark blue outline. It took him a second to realize that the door was open just a crack. But before he could say anything, the door swung open wide and he saw Stella’s silhouette in the doorway.

“He’s out there!” Stella yelled. “David’s outside!”

“Stella, wait!” Cole yelled at her as he jumped to his feet.

But Stella didn’t wait. She ran outside.

Cole ran towards the dark blue rectangle of the doorway and followed Stella out onto the front porch, his gun in his hand already. He didn’t have his coat on and the freezing air bit at him right away, sinking through his flesh and into his bones. He looked out at the snowy field in front of the cabin and he saw Stella running through the snow to David.

The recent storm had passed and there were cloudless patches in the night sky that allowed starlight and moonlight to shine down, casting a bluish light on the snow’s surface. Cole saw the dark shape of Stella running towards David.

David was just standing there in the deep snow, his back to the cabin as he stared at the dark woods.

*

Stella ran through the snow. The cold stung her skin as the snow saturated her pants legs, but she didn’t care. Her only thought was getting to David. He was out here with this … this thing.

She reached David and she dropped down to one knee next to him and grabbed on to him. Tears spilled from her eyes, but she barely noticed.

“David,” she said, but his name came out in a strangled sob. “What are you doing out here?”

He didn’t answer her. He didn’t even look at her for a moment. He just stared at the dark trees in the distance. The trees looked like a black mass of the purest darkness, only the outlines of the treetops against the night sky identified them as the woods.

“David,” Stella said as she touched his arm, trying to make contact with him, trying to bring him out of his trance. “You can’t be out here. You know that.”

David finally looked at her. His dark eyes reflected the moonlight back to her. His expression was calm.

“He called me out here,” he finally told her. “Didn’t you hear him?”

“No, I didn’t,” she told him. “But you can’t be out here,” she said in a soft voice, her teeth beginning to chatter, her body trembling from the cold. “It’s not safe out here.”

David took her hand and held it. It was like his way of apologizing.

Stella smiled and held on to his hand as she stood up. She could feel the snow saturating her pants legs even more. “We need to get back inside. Okay?”

“Okay,” David answered.

They turned and walked back to the cabin through the snow, hand in hand.

*

Jose, Trevor, and Needles funneled out of the doorway of the cabin and gathered on the porch next to Cole. They all had their guns in their hands, ready to shoot, ready to kill.

Jose looked out at the field where Cole was looking. “What the hell’s going on?”

Cole couldn’t take his eyes off of Stella and David as they walked back towards the cabin. At some point in the night David had walked outside into the snow. Just like Frank. Did he see something in the woods? Did he hear something?

“What the fuck’s going on?” Jose asked, his voice getting louder and louder. “What are they doing out here?”

“I don’t know,” Cole finally answered. “David must’ve walked outside.”

“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Cole said.

“Something’s not right about this,” Jose grumbled.

Cole didn’t respond.

“You know he’s right,” Trevor said. “Why would that kid walk out here in the middle of the night?”

Cole watched as Stella and David walked up the steps onto the porch. They were both shivering, but Stella was shaking more than David even though he’d been outside longer than she had. Cole thought her trembling had more to do with fear than the cold—not only the fear of who was out here, but the fear of losing David. She had never admitted that David was not her son, but it was obvious that she loved him like a mother.

Stella stared at the four men. “You mind moving so I can get him inside?”

Trevor and Needles moved out of the way. Jose hesitated for a moment and then moved aside. Stella and David hurried inside the dark cabin.

Cole turned and followed them inside. Trevor and Needles entered next. Jose took a few more looks around out at the dark night. He didn’t see any movement anywhere and he didn’t hear any sounds. He turned and entered the cabin.

Jose closed and locked the front door of the cabin, plunging the cabin into near pitch-black darkness again.

“Trevor,” Cole called out. “We need to get some kind of light on in here.”

Trevor’s Zippo lighter flicked in the darkness. Trevor’s face came into view right behind the flickering flame of his lighter. His face was an eerie mask floating in the darkness. He turned to the kitchen and his mask drifted towards the counters. Cole could hear Trevor rummaging around in the drawers and cabinets.

“I can’t find a—” Trevor’s words were cut off as he found something. “Wait. Here’s a candle. And another one.”

Trevor lit both of the candles and put them on small plates. They didn’t give off a tremendous amount of light, but they pushed the darkness back a little.

Trevor held one of the plates and gave the other one to Needles. Needles seemed a little more relaxed now that he was holding the light.

Jose went into the kitchen and tried a few of the light switches. “So what happened to the fucking power?” Jose finally said.

No one had any answers.

“Those psychos out there cut the power,” Jose said as he walked back into the living room.

“No power means no heat,” Trevor said. “That’s not good.”

“Let’s not panic yet,” Cole told them. “We have a fireplace if we get desperate.”

Jose looked at Stella and David who stood a little behind Cole, like he was protecting them. Stella wrapped her blanket around her and David. They had both stopped shivering now.

“I want to know what that kid was doing outside,” Jose said.

“Leave them alone,” Cole said.

“No. I want to know. I’m sure everyone else here wants to know. There are some psychos outside cutting the power and that kid decides he wants to go outside and stand in the snow.”

“We don’t know that the power was cut,” Cole said as he sighed. “We just had a snowstorm. It could’ve caused a power outage.”

“Yeah, maybe, but I don’t think so.”

“He was just scared,” Stella said. “That’s all. He was just confused for a moment. He had a bad dream and forgot where he was.”

Jose laughed; it was a sharp and insane sound in the darkness. “Oh, you’re trying to say he was sleepwalking? That’s bullshit, lady!”

“Jose,” Cole said in a warning voice.

“No, wait,” Trevor said. “Jose’s right for once in his life. There’s something weird about that kid being out there. You have to admit that, Cole.”

Jose took a step towards Stella and David, but he stared down at David. “What were you doing out there, kid?”

David just stared up at Jose.

Stella moved in front of David, and their blanket slipped down to the floor. “Leave him alone,” she growled at Jose.

“He knows something about all of this,” Jose said in a low, menacing voice.

“He’s just a kid,” Stella said through clenched teeth.

“He knows something about all of this,” Jose continued. “And so do you.”

“Jose!” Cole snapped.

Jose turned to Cole. “Fuck you, Cole! I want to know what the fuck that kid was doing out there in the middle of the night!”

“He doesn’t want to talk,” Cole said.

“How come every time we want to question these two, you’re always protecting them?” Jose asked Cole.

Cole was about to answer Jose, but David’s voice silenced them all.

“He called me out there,” David said; his voice was low but clearly heard in the dark cabin.

Cole turned to David. “Who called you out there?” he asked in a gentle voice.

“He’s coming tomorrow morning,” David answered.

CHAPTER 19

Jose went berserk. He rushed at Stella and David. “What the fuck kind of game is that kid playing?”

Stella stepped in front of David and protected him with her body; she looked ready to fight to the death if she needed to.

Even though Jose was enraged, he stopped right in front of Stella.

“You back off right now,” she growled at Jose.

“You gonna make me?”

Cole stepped in and pushed Jose back. “Jose, back away.”

“Cole, they know something. They’re hiding something.”

“Just back up and we can talk about this.”

“I’m through talking. They know something about this. They know something about Frank. About whoever trashed the vehicles. About the electric being cut off. And I want some answers!”

“He’s right,” Needles jumped in. “I think those two are very much involved in all of this.”

“Everybody just calm down,” Cole said. He glanced at Trevor, making sure his younger brother had his back. Things were about to spiral out of control very soon, Cole thought, and he needed Trevor on his side.

“Everybody just calm down,” Cole said again. “We’ve got some things to—” Cole’s words were halted as the electricity suddenly came back on.

Every light and appliance was on at the same time. The TV and radio blared static. The microwave oven was on. The coffee maker on the counter sizzled.

They all looked around the cabin, and then they looked at each other.

“Cole,” Trevor whispered to him, his voice barely heard above the blaring TV. “We didn’t leave all of these lights on. Or the TV.”

Cole rushed over to the TV and turned it off. He shut off the small radio. He headed over to the kitchen and shut off the microwave, the blender, and the coffee maker. It was quiet in the cabin now that the noises were shut off. He turned back to the others who were still huddled together in the living room.

“We didn’t leave all of this stuff on,” Trevor said again to Cole.

Jose looked at David. “He did it. He went outside in the middle of the night. He must’ve turned all of this shit on before he left.”

Stella snorted sarcastically.

“And then what, Jose?” Cole asked. “Then he went outside and cut the power off?”

“Maybe,” Jose said. “Who knows what the hell those two are doing?”

“He’s a busy kid,” Trevor said.

“Fuck you.” Jose looked at Trevor. “I know you don’t want to believe that the poor innocent kid is involved in all of this, but he is. He just admitted it to you. He just told you that someone called him out there. And that someone is coming tomorrow morning. There are people out there, people either they were running from or people they are helping. And they’re doing this to us.” Jose looked at Stella. “What kind of game are you guys playing?”

No answer from Stella.

“Because you’re not going to win,” Jose growled at her, and lifted his gun a little to let her know he meant business.

Jose took another step towards them. Stella took a step back, still standing in front of David. “Who is coming tomorrow morning, kid?” Jose growled.

David looked frightened of Jose.

“Answer me, you little freak!”

“That’s enough!” Cole stepped in front of Jose and pushed him back a step. “I’m not interrogating a fucking kid. Who knows if he’s even telling the truth?”

“I guess we’ll find out tomorrow morning,” Trevor said.

“Yeah, I guess,” Cole said.

“Protecting them again,” Jose said as he stared at Cole, then he looked at Trevor.

Cole ignored Jose. “If we’re going to walk out of here tomorrow, then we need to get some rest. We’ll sleep in watches again. I’ll take the first watch.”

“It doesn’t matter who’s on watch,” Trevor said, “because I’m not sleeping anymore tonight.”

“Me either,” Jose said. “I’ll be up the rest of the night and on watch. I guaran-fucking-tee that.”

*

As the murky light of early morning invaded the cabin, Jose and Trevor slept like babies on their bedrolls. Trevor was wrapped up in the blue sleeping bag that he had called dibs on.

Cole sat at the dining room table. He glanced at Jose and Trevor as their words echoed in his mind. I’ll be up the rest of the night and on watch. I guaran-fucking-tee that. Cole smirked and sipped his cup of coffee.

A stirring noise from the living room grabbed Cole’s attention. He turned and saw Stella walking towards him out of the gloom from the living room.

“Is there some more coffee?” she asked as she reached the dining room table.

“In the pot,” he told her. “Help yourself.”

Stella made a cup of coffee. She was slow about preparing the coffee. She sat down at the dining room table, close to Cole.

Cole looked at Stella with tired eyes. “Who’s out there? Who’s chasing you?”

Stella didn’t answer right away. She took a sip of her coffee. She glanced into the living room to make sure everyone else was still sleeping, and then she looked at Cole. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

Cole stared at her for a moment. He wasn’t angry, his face was expressionless. “You know who’s coming this morning, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Are they after the money?”

Stella didn’t answer.

“Are they after you and David?”

Stella was about to answer but a noise from the living room startled both of them—the sound of someone unlocking the deadbolt on the front door. Cole was up in a flash, his gun in his hand, ready to shoot.

But they saw David at the front door. David froze when he saw Cole with the gun pointed at him; he stared at Cole.

“He’s outside waiting for you,” David said in a soft voice. “Can’t you hear him calling you?”

Cole glanced at Stella. “Get David away from the door.”

Stella rushed over to David and pulled him gently away from the door and ushered him back to the couch.

Cole jolted Trevor and Jose awake. They both jumped up, a grunt escaping Jose as his hands searched for his gun.

“Whadisit?” Trevor grunted as he tried to shake off the cobwebs of sleep. “I was awake,” he lied.

“He’s out there,” Cole said to them, and then he looked at Jose. “Get Needles up.”

Jose kicked the side of the recliner. Needles sat straight up, his eyes suddenly wide open.

“Who’s out there?” Jose said as he turned back to Cole.

“The one coming to see us this morning,” Cole reminded him. “The one David was talking about.”

Cole pulled his thin leather gloves out of his coat pockets and wriggled his hands into them. He put his coat and hat on. He checked his gun and racked a bullet into the chamber, ready to fire. He clicked the safety off. “Everyone get your weapons ready.”

Trevor and Jose got their coats on and already had their weapons in hand. Needles shrugged slowly into his coat. Stella and David waited on the couch, huddled together. David stared at the front door of the cabin almost like he could see through it.

Cole looked at Trevor and gestured at him to check the front window. Cole crept towards the front door, ready to open it and charge out onto the front porch.

Trevor stood beside the front window and pulled the curtain back a little so he could peek outside, his gun up beside his head, his finger on the trigger.

“What is it?” Jose hissed. He stood on the other side of the door, ready to run out right after Cole to back him up. “How many are out there?”

Trevor stared out the window for a long moment. He didn’t seem afraid, more like he was confused about what he was looking at.

“Only one,” Trevor answered Jose.

“One?” Cole asked.

Trevor backed away from the window and looked at Cole, shock on his face. “It’s Frank.”

“Frank?”

“I told you I saw him,” Jose said. “You guys didn’t fucking believe me. I told you I saw him out in the woods.”

“What’s he doing out there?” Cole asked Trevor, ignoring Jose.

Trevor shrugged. “Nothing. He’s just standing in the snow and staring at the cabin. Like he’s waiting for us to come outside.”

“Does he have a gun?”

“I didn’t see one.”

They could hear something from outside. A voice. Someone calling their names. Calling them to come outside.

“This could be a trap. They could be using Frank as some kind of bait. We all have to be ready for that.” Cole looked at Stella, hoping for some kind of help, some kind of acknowledgment, but he didn’t get any.

Cole took a deep breath and opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. Jose followed, and Trevor was right behind him.

Needles hesitated before going outside. He looked at Stella and David like he knew something about them, like he knew about the secrets they were keeping. “You coming out there?” he asked Stella.

Stella nodded. “Yeah. We need to get our coats.”

Needles was willing to wait for them.

Stella and David grabbed their coats from the end of the couch. Stella helped David get his shoes on.

Needles still waited for them.

Stella and David glanced at each other—they were ready.

Needles gestured at the door with his pistol. “Let’s go,” he told them, and he waited for them to go outside first.

They walked to the doorway with Needles right behind them. Stella had a feeling that Needles was going to aim his gun at the back of her head and pull the trigger and end her life in an instant. But he didn’t. The three of them stepped out onto the front porch, out into the bitterly cold air. The floorboards of the front porch creaked and popped under the weight of all of them as they stood in a tight group on the porch staring out at the front field.

Frank stood in the snow thirty yards away from the cabin. He wore the same clothes that he’d walked away in, the blue flannel shirt and dark pants. He wore no coat, no hat, no gloves. But he seemed unaffected by the cold. He just stood there, the snow up to his calves. He was statue-still and his head was cocked to the side just a bit.

“Frank,” Cole called out as his breath misted in front of his face in the freezing air. He clenched his gun in his gloved hand. “Where have you been all this time?”

Frank just stared at them, his body motionless, his eyes lifeless, his face slack, his head still cocked at that strange angle. For a moment Cole didn’t even think Frank was going to answer him, but then Frank’s face twitched and he smiled. But it was a fake smile, a wide grin that didn’t even touch his dark eyes. This person looked exactly like Frank, but he didn’t seem like Frank. Frank would’ve never had this goofy grin on his face, and it made Cole’s skin crawl. This wasn’t Frank. It couldn’t be.

“Frank!” Cole called out again. “Where did you go? Why did you leave in the middle of the night?”

“He called me out here,” Frank finally answered, his voice was guttural and deep and not like his own voice. And when he spoke, that strange smile never left his face. “I don’t expect any of you to understand.”

“Understand what?” Cole yelled out to Frank.

“He wants things, and you have to give him what he wants!”

CHAPTER 20

“You have to give him what he wants!” Frank said again with his head cocked to the side and that strange smile on his face. His body was motionless in the snow.

“Or what?” Trevor yelled.

Trevor was jumpy, ready to charge out into the snow. His gun hand twitched just a bit. Cole hoped his little brother would hold his cool for a few moments longer. Trevor had always been the more hotheaded of the two brothers, more impulsive.

Frank’s lifeless eyes and plastic smile focused on Trevor. “Or bad things will happen, Trevor.”

“What kind of bad things?” Trevor asked.

Frank’s smile dropped suddenly and his face went slack. Somehow this expression was even scarier than the creepy fake smile. “Things you won’t even believe.”

“Frank!” Cole yelled. “Who called you out here? Who are you working with?”

Frank didn’t answer.

“This is bullshit,” Trevor whispered to Cole through clenched teeth. “Let’s just rush out there and get him. It doesn’t look like he has his gun.”

“Wait a minute,” Cole whispered back, never taking his eyes off of Frank. “Something’s not right here.” Couldn’t Trevor see that? Couldn’t he see that this person out in the snow wasn’t the Frank that they all knew?

Cole waited for an answer from Frank, but Frank still didn’t speak; he just stood in the snow with his head cocked to the side, his face slack, his expression blank.

Cole tried a different approach. “Frank, are you hurt?”

No answer again from Frank. It was like Frank was thinking this over, his expression and eyes still blank.

“Did you hurt yourself?” Cole asked again.

“I’m hurt,” Frank finally answered. “It’s pain that you couldn’t possibly imagine.”

“Come on inside, Frank!” Cole yelled to him. “We can help you.”

“Cole,” Jose whispered to him. “There’s something fucked up about Frank.”

Cole glanced at Jose, then at Needles who stood behind Trevor. Cole looked at Stella and David; they both stood closer to the front door of the cabin like they were ready to bolt back inside if they needed to. Stella’s eyes met Cole’s, but she didn’t say anything. He looked back at Frank, waiting for an answer from him.

“I can’t come inside right now,” Frank answered. “He wants things and you have to give him what he wants.”

“Who wants things?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“What does he want?” Cole asked.

“He wants all of the money you took from the bank on the front porch,” Frank told them in his strange guttural voice. His speech was slower, like he was concentrating on every word.

Jose took a step forward and raised his gun up.

“Jose,” Cole growled.

“The money,” Jose hissed. “All of this is about the money.”

“You have four hours to put all of the money on the front porch,” Frank said.

“What if we don’t want to give you the money?” Cole asked Frank.

“Then bad things are going to happen.”

“What if we decide to keep the money?” Cole continued. “What if we decide to leave? Just walk out of here.”

Frank thought for a second and he cocked his head to the side even more like he was listening to a voice that none of them could hear. Then his face lit up suddenly, like all of his facial muscles were pulled up by invisible strings at the same time, creating that creepy smile on his face again. “You can’t!” he said. “He won’t let you leave.”

“We’ll see about that!” Trevor yelled out to Frank.

Frank’s face fell slack again, the smile gone, his expression blank again. These seemed to be the only two expressions Frank had now. “You have four hours to give him what he wants,” Frank told them, and then he began to back away from them, backing up towards the woods. But it didn’t seem like his feet were moving in the snow. It was almost like he was gliding backwards through the snow towards the trees.

“Cole,” Needles said from behind him, his voice trembling just a bit. “What the hell’s Frank doing? How the hell is he moving through the snow like that?”

“I don’t know,” Cole said, never taking his eyes off of Frank.

“Fuck this,” Trevor grumbled and charged down the steps into the snow, his gun up and aimed at the retreating Frank. “Fuck you!!”

“No!” Cole yelled. “Trevor, wait …”

As Trevor squeezed the trigger, a wave of wind and snow kicked up instantly, a sudden blinding blizzard from nowhere. Trevor fired three quick shots into the swirling storm, but the shots were muffled by the snow and wind. Then Trevor brought his arms up to his face, shielding himself as best as he could from the snow that pelted the exposed flesh of his face like hail. Trevor turned and stumbled blindly back up the steps, nearly tripping as he stepped onto the porch, getting under the cover of the roof.

Cole grabbed his little brother and did his best to shield him.

The small whirlwind of snow died down as quickly as it had started—it was completely gone now; the world was calm and peaceful again.

They stared out at the field.

Frank was gone.

CHAPTER 21

“Where the fuck did he go?” Trevor asked as he stared out at the empty field of snow.

“I don’t know,” Cole answered.

“I don’t see him anywhere,” Trevor went on, his voice a little shaky. He wiped at his face which was wet and a little red from where the snow had pelted him moments ago. “Do you guys see him in the trees anywhere?”

“We need to get back inside,” Needles said in a trembling voice. His eyes bulged with fear as he stared out at the field of snow. “It’s not safe out here.”

Stella and David didn’t wait for the others. Stella ushered David back inside the cabin.

Needles turned and caught the front door as it began to close. He stared inside at Stella and David. “No way. You’re not going inside by yourself and locking us out here.” Needles hurried in after them.

Cole thought that he’d better get back inside with them. Needles was becoming more and more unglued every second. “Yeah,” he told the others. “Let’s get back inside.”

They all filed into the cabin. Cole was the last one inside. He shut and locked the front door. His mind was whirling, spinning. Everything seemed to be happening too fast. He needed things to slow down so he could think.

Jose paced into the kitchen, his movements quick and jerky. He was edgy and upset. “Fuck, man. Frank’s been doing this shit all along. All to get the money.” He looked right at Trevor. “I told you I saw Frank out in the woods. And you guys didn’t believe me.”

Trevor didn’t answer Jose, he looked at Cole instead. “So, what are we gonna do now?”

Cole didn’t answer.

“What do you mean?” Jose nearly screamed as he rushed back into the living room. “What are we gonna do about what?”

“The mon-ey,” Trevor said slowly like he was talking to an idiot.

“I’m not giving up my share of the money,” Jose spat his words out. “I’m not putting it out there.”

“I want my share out there,” Needles said quickly.

Stella and David took their spot on the couch. David wasted no time in picking up his spiral notebook. He opened it to the middle, to a page he had left off on, and he started drawing again at a furious pace.

She tried to peek at what David was drawing, but he shielded the page with his hand and his body. She hadn’t been able to see what he had been drawing at all. She had asked him a few times to see the drawings, but he didn’t want her to. And she didn’t push. If this was his way of dealing with their situation right now, then she had to let him have his escape.

Needles looked at Cole, Trevor, and then at Jose with frightened eyes. He was scared, more scared than any of them had ever seen him. He nodded his head quickly. “I want my share of the money out there,” he repeated.

“You’re fucking nuts,” Jose said to Needles. “It’s just Frank out there. Not the boogeyman or the devil.”

“So where did that wall of snow come from when Trevor tried to shoot at Frank?” Needles asked Jose. “You saw that … that thing out there. That wasn’t Frank. That was … was something else. You saw the way he was sliding through the snow back to the trees. How was he doing that?”

“Fuck this,” Jose grumbled. “I’m not having a conversation with a lunatic.”

Cole looked at Trevor. “What about you? What do you want to do about the money?”

“I don’t know yet,” he answered.

“Are all of you crazy?” Jose shouted.

Cole looked at Jose. “Jose, you need to think about this. There are some strange things happening here. Things that aren’t easily explained.”

“It’s just Frank.”

“Why would Frank go through all of this trouble?” Cole asked Jose. “Like Trevor said before, why didn’t Frank just take all of the money when he went outside in the middle of the night while we were asleep? Or why didn’t he just shoot us?”

“I don’t know,” Jose snapped at Cole. “I don’t know why he’s doing this. Or how. Or who else is helping him. I just know that I’m not giving them my share of the money.”

Jose took a few steps away, and then he turned back to Cole and Trevor. “Somebody has to be making Frank do this. It’s the only thing that makes any sense. Whoever took Frank in the middle of the night sent him back to get the money.” Jose looked at Stella. “Whoever she’s running from followed her here and realized that we were the guys who stole the money from that bank. And now they want it all.”

Stella stared at Jose as he marched towards her. “Who’s following you?!” he yelled at her.

David put his pen inside his notebook and closed it. He clutched onto Stella with his notebook in his lap and stared at Jose with wide, unblinking eyes.

“Jose,” Cole warned.

Jose turned and stared at Cole. “Why do you keep protecting them?”

“We’re not going to go over all of that again, are we?” Cole said. “None of us are involved in this. When are you going to get that through your head?”

“Okay,” Jose said, nodding his head quickly. “If that’s true, then why don’t we do a little test? None of us put our money out there. Call Frank’s bluff, or whoever’s out there with him. Call their bluff.”

The cabin was quiet for a moment.

Cole finally shrugged. “Why not?” Cole looked at Trevor. “What do you think?”

“I don’t want to give my money away,” Trevor answered. “I worked hard for this.”

Needles stood in front of the recliner, his crucifix swinging back and forth slightly from his necklace, his wild hair spiked out in different directions, his eyes bulging. “No, I want my share out there. I’m not messing with the devil.”

“It’s not the devil,” Jose said. “I’m so sick of hearing you say that.”

“I get a vote,” Needles continued. “And I want my share of the money out there on the porch.”

“You get a vote,” Cole agreed. “We all get a vote. But this is going to be a majority rule.”

Needles looked like he was on the verge of panicking. “Why can’t we just split the money up now? We each hold on to our own share. We each do whatever we want with it.”

“You know we don’t split the money up until we’re ready to go our separate ways,” Cole said. It was something they had always agreed on. Until they were in a safe place where they could all leave, they didn’t split the money up. It was too easy and tempting for one person to take his share and leave. With the money all in one place and with all of their eyes on it, it gave the group safety.

“You’re such a pussy,” Jose said to Needles.

“Enough, Jose,” Cole said. “Let’s take a vote. We know what your votes are Jose and Needles.” Cole turned to Trevor. “What about you?”

Trevor thought it over for a moment. He looked at the two cases of money on the fireplace hearth, and then he looked back at Cole. “I think someone out there is after this money. They don’t want to charge in here and take it so they sent Frank back. I say we call their bluff and see what they do. I say we find a way to get to them, a way to get Frank back.”

They were silent for a moment, and then Jose looked at Cole.

“And what about you, Cole?”

Cole sighed. “I agree. We keep the money and find out who’s out there.”

“There’s an easier way of finding out who’s out there doing this,” Jose said as he rushed towards Stella and David. “Who the fuck’s out there?!” Jose screamed at Stella.

Jose pulled his gun out and aimed it at Stella’s forehead. He stared at her with cold, dark eyes.

Cole crossed the room in a hurry. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Getting some answers from this bitch,” Jose said. “Once and for all.”

CHAPTER 22

Stella stared up at Jose as David clung to her; but she didn’t flinch. She was afraid, but she couldn’t show fear of him—she needed to be strong. David inhaled sharply when Jose jabbed his gun at them; he ducked his head underneath Stella’s arm and hid behind her.

Stella knew she needed to be strong for David, but a soft voice whispered at her from somewhere in the back of her mind. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, the voice whispered. Just let him shoot, the voice whispered. Then all of this would be over for her. She wouldn’t have to go through this anymore and see the things she saw before.

But she knew what would happen to her body after she was dead.

She sat very still as she stared at the barrel of Jose’s gun pointed at her. She had seen things far worse than anything Jose could do to her, so she showed no fear of him. But she had to protect David. She still had him to think about; it was the only thing that kept her going.

“I don’t know what’s out there,” Stella answered Jose. “And that’s the truth.”

Cole moved closer to Jose, trying to calm him down, talking to him in a soothing voice. “What are you going to do, kill the only person who might know anything about what’s going on out there?”

“Not unless she gives me some answers,” Jose growled.

It was like this before at the dig site, Stella thought. But those people were scientists; they were reasonable—at least they were reasonable in the beginning before things got too bad. But these men in the cabin were bank robbers. They were criminals. And they had murdered at least one person that she knew of; the old man in the bank that they kept talking about. She couldn’t risk it much longer. She had to tell them something to back them off, but she knew she couldn’t tell them everything.

“What do you mean, you don’t know what’s out there?” Jose asked Stella.

“It’s not people out there,” Stella told Jose.

“I told you,” Needles said and jumped to his feet, a strange smile of victory on his face—a lunatic smile. “I told you the devil’s out there.”

Jose glanced quickly at Needles, and then he looked back at Stella.

“Is that what you’re trying to say?” Jose asked her. “The devil’s out there? The devil’s the one that’s following you?”

“I don’t know what it is.”

Jose was about to explode with anger. Stella could see his finger tightening around the trigger.

“I swear that’s the truth!” Stella yelled at Jose. “Something’s out there, but I don’t know what it is!”

“Let her talk,” Cole said, trying to keep Jose calm. “Let her explain.”

“The dig site where we came from,” Stella continued quickly. “Something like this happened there. People were taken. One by one. I took David and we managed to get to my truck and get away.”

Jose stared at her.

“That’s the truth.”

Stella could see a movement out of the corner of her eye, Trevor sneaking up behind Jose, but she made herself look back at Jose.

Cole stared at Needles who seemed like he was about to alert Jose about Trevor, but after the look from Cole, Needles slumped back down in the recliner and didn’t say anything.

“Stella, we need your help,” Cole said. “Whatever you know about what’s going on out there could help us. I wish you would tell us.”

“You need my help?” Stella asked sarcastically and she couldn’t stop the bark of laughter that came out of her. “You run us off the road, carjack us, bring us to the middle of nowhere in a snowstorm, point guns at our faces, threaten to torture and kill us, and then you want my help?”

Cole sighed.

Stella could see Trevor creeping up right behind Jose, but she wouldn’t give him away.

“I’m not helping you,” Stella went on, trying to distract Jose from Trevor sneaking up behind him. “Not until you stop pointing your guns at me and threatening us.”

Trevor jammed the barrel of his gun into the back of Jose’s head. “She’s right,” he told Jose. “Lower your gun.”

“What the fuck, man?” Jose said, and a nervous laugh escaped him. “You’re going to shoot me over this woman?”

“And that kid,” Trevor said. “You heard Cole. We’re not going to kill anyone else. Especially not a woman and a child.”

“But they know something.”

“I don’t care.”

Jose sighed and lowered his gun hand slowly. He shoved his gun down into the waistband of his pants and held his hands up, showing that they were empty. Trevor lowered his gun away from Jose’s head and took a few steps back.

Jose walked away from Stella. He shook his head as he stared at Cole and Trevor. “You guys are making a big mistake.”

“We’re going to wait here for the next four hours and see what happens,” Trevor told Jose, his eyes on him, his gun still in his hand. “We’re going to call their bluff, just like we all agreed.”

CHAPTER 23

Five hours later the afternoon shadows grew longer, stretching across the snow as the sun dipped lower behind the trees.

Inside the cabin, Trevor sat at the dining room table with another hand of solitaire laid out in front of him. His gun was close by.

Everyone was tense as they waited.

Needles looked even more nervous now that their four hours were up. He glanced over at the two metal cases of money on the fireplace hearth like he was ready to grab them and bolt for the door, throw them outside in the hopes that it wasn’t too late. But he didn’t get out of his recliner. He just looked at the front door, and then he looked back down at the rug on the floor. The rug was colorful, full of patterns that seemed to change shape after a while. The more Needles stared at the colors and patterns, the more they seemed to swirl and move, morphing into something beautiful.

Jose paced from the living room to the kitchen, and then back to the living room again. He couldn’t sit still. He looked at Cole who sat at the dining room table with his brother, another cup of coffee in front of Cole.

“What’s our plan now?” Jose asked Cole.

“We sit tight for a little bit,” Cole answered. “See what they do next.”

“It’s been longer than four hours,” Jose reminded him. “Frank said we had four hours, and it’s been longer than four hours. Nothing’s happened. Nobody’s coming for us.”

Cole sipped his coffee.

“We gotta do something soon,” Jose continued. “It’s going to be dark in a few hours. Then we’ll have to stay another night.”

Cole still didn’t answer.

“I don’t want to stay in this place another night. We should do something. Go out there and look around. Try and find those motherfuckers out there.”

Cole glanced at Jose. “Just keep watching out the window.”

Jose shook his head and walked into the living room. He gave Stella and David a sneer as he walked over to one of the windows near the front door. He pulled the curtain aside and peeked out the window. “Nothing going on out there,” he said more to himself than to anyone else.

Trevor stood up and stretched. “I gotta take a whiz,” he let everyone know.

“Check the rooms back there,” Cole told him.

“I just checked them an hour ago. All the windows are locked. Back door’s locked.”

“Check them again.”

*

Trevor entered the guest bedroom down the hall. He walked around the bed to the window. He parted the curtains and peeked outside. Nothing. No sign of Frank or anyone else out there. He checked the window. Still locked. He let the curtains fall back in place.

He left the bedroom and walked down the hall, his boots thumped on the wood floor. He checked the back door. Still locked. He entered Tom Gordon’s room and checked the two windows in the bedroom—both still locked. He looked out at the snowy field that stretched out in all directions from the cabin. He stared at the line of trees in the distance that surrounded the fields like a wall of woods in every direction. The woods had grown darker with the approaching night, but he could still make out the individual trees, and he still didn’t see any movement anywhere.

Trevor left Tom Gordon’s bedroom and walked across the hall and entered the bathroom. He closed the door and walked to the toilet at the other end of the room. The toilet was against the long wall by the sink, and the small window was to his left. He took his gun out from the waistband of his pants and laid it on the toilet tank lid; the gun made a loud clinking sound on the ceramic when he set it there. He was about to unzip his pants, but something out of the corner of his eye demanded his attention. There was something moving outside the bathroom window in the snow.

He turned and stared out the window, his body frozen in shock. His muscles all sagged at once, like all of the energy had drained out of his body. His bladder let go and the urine ran down his leg inside of his pants. He wanted to scream, but he didn’t seem to have any breath inside of his lungs to do so. He just stared out the window, trying to understand what he saw, trying to understand how this could be possible. His mouth moved as he tried to speak, as he tried to scream. “I … I don’t understand …” were the only words he could utter in a whisper.

*

Cole sat at the dining room table, the cup of coffee still right in front of him. He had consumed so much coffee throughout the day that there was no way he was going to be able to sleep tonight; he was going to make sure of it. But he had a feeling that at some point during the night, he was going to drift off to sleep without realizing it. It seemed like no matter how much each one of them tried to stay awake, no matter who was on watch, at some moment in the night they would all fall asleep. Like we’re being put to sleep, his mind whispered. But he didn’t want to think of where that thought had come from. Who or what could put them to sleep whenever it wanted to?

Cole glanced at Trevor’s playing cards spread out all over the dining room table. Then he looked at Jose who leaned against the kitchen counter, still anxious, still unable to sit still for very long. “Trevor’s been in the bathroom for a while,” Cole said.

“Maybe he had to take a shit,” Jose answered.

Cole looked at Stella who sat beside David on the couch as he scribbled in his notebook. It seemed like David had already gone through nearly half of the pages in the notebook, drawing at a furious pace. Cole figured it was a way the kid dealt with what was going on. It couldn’t be easy on the little guy to be held captive in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. And coming from whatever they were running from, from wherever they had been, whatever Stella was hiding from the rest of them, had to have taken a toll on him as well.

Cole’s thoughts were interrupted when David jumped to his feet quickly; the notebook fell out of his hands, open to a page on the wood floor at his feet. He stared at the front door like something was frightening him.

*

Stella had nearly dozed off when David jumped to his feet. She tried to take every opportunity to nap when she could so she could try to stay awake at night, or at least sleep as lightly as she could.

But she snapped awake when David stood up. She could hear his rapid breathing even before she looked at him, it sounded like he was having a panic attack, struggling for breath. She had seen this happen to him before at the dig site. He stared at the front door.

Something was outside. It had finally come for them.

“What’s wrong with that kid?” Stella heard Needles ask from his chair that he always sat in; the recliner—his talisman of safety that he curled up in, a place where he could rub his crucifix and pray to his God that he would be safe. But Stella didn’t think God was going to listen to Needles this time—they were all on their own.

“I don’t know,” Stella lied as she glanced at Needles. “He’s scared of something.”

Stella looked at David as he stared at the front door with wide, bulging eyes of fear. His mouth hung open and his body was frozen.

She was about to hold on to David, try her best to comfort him, but her eyes darted down to the open notebook on the floor that David had been drawing in—she saw the open pages. She saw what he had been drawing this whole time. And what she saw on the pages stopped her mind in its tracks for a moment.

That couldn’t be right, could it? her mind whispered. Those aren’t what I think they are, are they?

“Stella!” Cole yelled, breaking her momentary hypnosis.

She looked at Cole. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” she said again. She would have to figure out what she’d seen in David’s notebook later. She would have to confront David about it eventually, ask him how he knew. But for now she needed to put the brakes on her spinning mind and try to act normal—her and David’s survival depended on her not revealing too much; she knew that from experience, she had learned that down at the dig site in New Mexico.

“What’s out there, kid?” Needles asked in a quivering voice.

David didn’t answer Needles. He stared at the front door. Then David’s eyes moved away from the door, scanned past the dining room table, to the hallway that led to the two bedrooms and the bathroom.

And that’s when they all heard the noise that came from the bathroom—a loud crashing noise.

CHAPTER 24

Cole ran to the bathroom door. Jose was right behind him, his gun drawn. Cole pounded on the bathroom door. “Trevor!” he called out. “You okay in there?”

No answer.

“Trevor, answer me! Are you okay?”

Still no answer.

Cole tried the door handle. It wasn’t locked, but it seemed like the door was stuck. “Trevor! Trevor, open the door!”

Trevor wasn’t answering them.

Cole looked at Jose who stood next to him, his gun in his hand. “I’m going to break the door down. You get ready to shoot if you have to.”

Jose nodded—he was ready.

“But be careful,” Cole told Jose. “Let’s see what’s going on before you start blasting away.”

“Yeah, man. I’m not going to shoot you.”

“I don’t want any accidents,” Cole said, then he turned back to face the bathroom door. “Trevor, I’m going to break this door down!”

Cole still heard nothing from inside the bathroom. He backed up a step and slammed his shoulder into the door and it almost caved in immediately. Cole backed up another step, ready to ram it again with his shoulder. He had played high school football, strong safety position, and he knew how to hit with his shoulder. He rammed the door again with his shoulder, and this time it flew open and slammed against the wall.

The bathroom was empty. Trevor was gone.

Cole entered the bathroom, looking around in shock. Everything looked the same in the bathroom except for two things: Trevor wasn’t there and the bathroom window was wide open and damaged around the edges. Cole walked towards the damaged window, the toilet to the right of the window. The toilet lid was up and Trevor’s gun was on the toilet tank lid.

“Look,” Jose whispered from behind Cole. “Look at the window.”

The freezing air from outside invaded the bathroom through the busted and damaged window.

Cole hurried to the window.

“What the fuck?” Jose said from behind Cole as he followed him. “You think Trevor went out that window? You think he’s trying to run?”

Cole didn’t bother with an answer. But Trevor going out this window didn’t seem possible—it was way too small for a man to fit through. He drew his gun and pointed it at the window, moving closer and closer to it.

“Trevor!” he called. “You out there?”

No answer from outside, no sound except the freezing wind.

Cole stuck his head and arm out the window; it was as much of his body as he could comfortably fit. The sleeves of his shirt brushed against the splintered window frame and the small bits of jagged glass that were still imbedded in the wood. He aimed his gun around outside, ready to fire if he needed to, and he tried to look everywhere at once. But there were no tracks in the snow; there was no blood in the snow, no splinters of wood or broken glass anywhere outside that he could see. He looked at the trees in the distance. There was no movement in the trees, nothing out here at all except the lonely wilderness.

Trevor was gone.

“Trevor!”

No answer.

“Cole, look at the window.”

Cole pulled himself back inside and studied the splintered wood around the window. The wood was cracked in many places, almost like it had been twisted by some unimaginable force, like something too big for the window had been pulled through quickly. But what was more disturbing were what looked like claw marks grooved into the wood at the bottom of the window sill, like fingernails had tried to hold on to the wood. And then Cole found the piece of a human fingernail stuck in the groove of the window sill where the window would have come down if it was still there. It was nearly a whole fingernail with blood and a small piece of flesh stuck to the end of it, like it had snapped off completely from a finger.

Trevor’s finger.

Cole’s mind buzzed with panic. Trevor was gone. His little brother was gone. Someone had pulled his brother out through the window. And they hadn’t heard anything in the living room except the crashing of glass and snapping of wood. No screams from Trevor. No gunshots. Trevor hadn’t even gone for his gun; it was still right there on the toilet tank lid.

How was this possible?

But Cole didn’t care how, he didn’t even care why at this moment, the only thing he could think of was going outside and finding his brother. He could feel a rage building up inside of him, a rage he hadn’t felt in so long, a rage that could make him kill someone.

Cole grabbed Trevor’s gun and shoved it down in the waistband of his pants. He brushed past Jose and ran out of the bathroom.

Jose turned to follow him. “Wait a minute, Cole! Where are you going?” Jose ran after Cole who ran right past the dining room table and straight for the front door.

“Wait for me,” Jose said to Cole.

But before Cole and Jose even reached the front door, still half a dozen steps away from it, something pelted the front door from outside—a loud and wet thump.

Cole stopped in his tracks and stared at the door, his gun still in his hand.

Jose stopped, too. He was only a few steps behind Cole. They waited a split second, but it felt like an eternity until they heard the next sounds—dozens of wet thumps pelting the front door, all at the same time.

“Oh God, no,” Cole whispered, and then he ran for the door. He unlocked the deadbolt with trembling fingers, still clutching his gun in his hand.

“Wait a minute, Cole,” Jose said from behind him.

But Cole didn’t hear Jose. He didn’t hear or see anything around him; it had all faded away into a white noise. All he could think about was getting to Trevor before it was too late.

Cole twisted the small lock on the door handle and swung the door wide open.

It was too late for Trevor.

CHAPTER 25

Needles wouldn’t stop screaming. It was an insane scream. It was the screaming from someone whose mind had finally snapped. After seeing what was on the front porch, Needles’ grip on sanity was nearly gone.

Jose was still a few steps behind Cole who stood in the doorway staring down at the carnage littering the floorboards of the front porch. His body blocked much of what Jose could see, but he saw the splatters of blood on the front door of the cabin. He didn’t want to see what was out there, he didn’t want to make his feet move forward, but he had to—he had to back Cole up. He moved to the side of the doorway, nearly beside Cole, but still a few steps behind him, his gun up and ready to shoot. But his gun hand dropped back down as the strength drained out of his body when he saw what was on the front porch.

Stella let out a cry from the couch and turned David away from the gore on the porch. But she hadn’t been quick enough; she knew David had seen it, if only for a few seconds. But David let her guide his face away even though they had seen this before. They had seen many things like this at the dig site in New Mexico.

Cole stared down in horror at the pieces of Trevor’s body scattered on the floorboards of the front porch: pieces of Trevor’s arms, pieces of his legs, pieces of his flesh; some of the pieces were the size of small hams or turkeys. Most of the pieces of Trevor’s body still had clothing stuck to them, the cloth held in place by the drying and tacky blood which was so dark in some places it was almost black. A femur bone was splintered at the end of a chunk of flesh that used to be part of Trevor’s thigh; the fabric of the jeans was still wrapped around the skin of the leg. Trevor had been cut apart—no, it looked more like he’d been torn apart.

“No …” that was the only word Cole could utter. He could feel his stomach churning, the last meal and coffee he’d eaten and drank threatening to come back up.

Trevor. His brother. His little brother.

The worst part was Trevor’s head. It was right in the middle of the pieces of his body. The head was upright and the eyes were staring at him; flaps of skin from Trevor’s neck were spread out underneath his chin like lily pads. Trevor’s mouth hung open in a silent scream. His eyes were wide open, staring at Cole; perhaps those eyes were still seeing their last image on earth—some unimaginable horror that had pulled him out through the bathroom window and ripped him to pieces.

“Oh God,” Jose yelled from behind Cole. “Shut the fucking door!”

Cole stood frozen in the doorway. He wanted to look away from these pieces that used to be his brother, but he couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away.

Jose moved into action; he could see that Cole was too paralyzed with shock to move. He brushed by Cole and slammed the front door shut. He twisted the lock on the door handle and then turned the deadbolt lock.

Cole finally came alive. He turned to Jose with a hatred burning in his eyes. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Jose stood his ground. “They’re out there. We need to shut the door. Get ready to defend ourselves.”

“Trevor … he’s out there …”

“We can’t do anything for him now! He’s gone!”

Cole stared at Jose.

Needles’ screams had died down, but now he was whimpering as he cowered in his recliner, staring at the front door like he was waiting for it to crash open. “I told you, Cole,” Needles cried. “I told you it was the devil out there! I told you the devil was coming for us!”

“Shut the fuck up, Needles!” Jose screamed at him.

“I told you when we first got here that we shouldn’t go inside this cabin. I told you we couldn’t stay here. And now it’s too late. Now the devil’s here and there’s nothing we can do.”

Jose stomped across the room, his gun aimed at Needles who cowered back into the recliner even more. “I said, shut the fuck up, or I swear to God I’m going to blow your fucking head off.”

The cabin was suddenly quiet.

Stella held on to David, her body was nearly in front of his body, protecting him. She knew what was coming next.

She watched Cole who looked back at the front door like he wanted to open it again, like he wanted to see his brother one last time, but at the same time he didn’t want to see him like that.

Then Cole looked right at her.

And Stella saw the rage in his eyes. He marched across the wood floor and stood in front of her, staring down at her. She was afraid of him at this moment; afraid he would snap and kill her and David.

“Who’s out there?” he growled at her.

“I don’t know,” Stella told him.

“They killed my brother. If you don’t tell me …” Cole began.

“I swear to God I don’t know,” Stella said quickly. “That’s the truth. I don’t know what it is. How many times do I have to tell you?”

Cole stared at her.

“I already told you what I know,” Stella continued. “At the dig site in New Mexico, it was like this. Something was taking us one by one. I took David and we managed to get to my truck and get away.”

“How come your truck wasn’t destroyed there like it was here?”

Stella paused for a moment, and then she answered him. “I don’t know.”

Jose paced across the living room floor, his gun still in his hand. His eyes flicked to the front door and windows every few seconds. “I told you, Cole. I told you earlier that you were making a big mistake.”

Cole tried to tune out Jose’s voice.

“We should’ve questioned her more,” Jose went on. “We should’ve started putting bullets in that kid’s knees until she told us everything we wanted to know.”

Cole’s stomach churned at the thought of shooting a small child in the kneecaps.

“She’s just bullshitting with us,” Jose continued as he paced. “She’s just playing fucking mind games with us. There’s no monsters out there. There’s no devils. It’s just some people out there. And either Frank’s working with them or they’re making Frank work with them. I don’t know. I don’t care, but it’s just some people out there and it’s all about the money.”

“That’s enough, Jose,” Cole said.

Jose stopped pacing. They all watched him as his face scrunched in anger and hurt. “You’re still gonna stand by that bitch even after your brother was killed by those people out there, the people that she’s protecting?”

Cole turned and marched towards Jose.

Jose tensed his body, ready for a fight, but Cole walked right past him and into the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” Jose asked Cole.

Stella could feel David clinging to her arm; she could feel his quick breaths as he held on to her. He was so scared, and he had a right to be. It took a while before they wanted to kill David at the dig site in New Mexico, but here it would happen much more quickly, she was sure of that.

Cole searched through the bottom cabinets until he found what he was looking for—a box of heavy-duty black garbage bags. He turned and saw the expression on Jose’s face. “I can’t leave my brother out there like that,” was all he offered as an explanation.

Cole searched other drawers and cabinets until he found a bag of rubber dishwashing gloves. He slipped his coat and leather gloves on. Then he slid the rubber gloves on over his leather gloves. The rubber gloves were a loose fit over his hands which might interfere with his fingers when he held his gun, but he had to take that chance. He needed to do this for his brother.

Cole grabbed the box of garbage bags from the counter and walked towards the front door.

“So that’s it?” Jose said as he followed Cole to the door. “You’re just going to let that bitch and that kid sit there on the couch while those people out there pick us off one by one?”

“I’m not torturing anyone,” Cole muttered. “And that’s it.”

You don’t know what you’re going to do soon, Stella thought. You’ll do things you never thought you were capable of.

But she couldn’t tell them that. She knew that between these three men, Cole was her best chance of staying alive, the only one who seemed opposed to the idea of either torturing or killing her and David, or just leaving her and David here in the cabin while they ran.

Stella knew what Cole would see next. She wanted to warn him, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t reveal how much she knew, how much she and David had seen. Not yet, anyway. Their lives depended on it.

Cole was about to grab the door handle and open the front door, but he turned to Jose. “I’m going to get my brother off that porch and then I’m going to find those motherfuckers out there, whoever they are, and I’m going to kill them.”

Jose started to say something, but he didn’t. The look in Cole’s eyes stopped him. He wasn’t afraid of Cole, but he was wary of him. And there was a look in Cole’s eyes like he’d never seen before.

“Wait, I’ll help you,” Jose said and he rushed back into the kitchen for another pair of dishwashing gloves.

Cole opened the front door, about to walk out onto the porch. But he froze. He stood very still as he stared at the front porch.

Jose rushed up behind Cole and saw what Cole was looking at. Jose just stared. “What the hell?” he whispered.

CHAPTER 26

Trevor’s head and the pieces of his body were gone.

Cole stepped out onto the front porch, but only one step. He could hear Jose right behind him. “What the hell is this, Cole?”

Cole stared down at the floorboards of the porch. There were still puddles of blood all over the porch, some of the blood had turned a pinkish color as it mixed with the snow scattered across the floorboards. There were still splatters of blood on the front door and the front wall of the cabin where the pieces of Trevor’s body had pelted the wood from whoever had thrown them.

But those pieces were gone now.

The pieces had been here, Cole said to himself. They hadn’t been a figment of his imagination. Everyone else had seen them, too.

Jose rushed out through the doorway beside Cole. He took two more steps out onto the porch and looked around. “What the fuck?” he said. “What the fuck?!” he said a little louder. “How the hell …”

Cole looked around at the porch, then out at the snowy field and the trees in the distance. He didn’t see anyone out there.

Jose looked around, his gun gripped in his hand that was sheathed in the rubber of the dishwashing glove. “Cole, somebody was out here just a few minutes ago picking up all of these pieces.”

Cole didn’t respond to Jose.

“How the hell didn’t we hear them?”

Cole still didn’t respond.

“How the fuck did they get up on this porch and take all of those … those pieces without us hearing them? Without us knowing.”

Cole rushed over to the edge of the porch and looked over the railing. He stripped off the yellow dishwashing gloves and stuffed them into the pockets of his jacket. He dropped the box of garbage bags on the floorboards; it landed with a dull thud. He pulled his gun out of the waistband of his pants and studied the snow below the porch.

“Who the fuck are these people?” Cole heard Jose ask.

Cole walked along the edge of the porch, keeping close to the railing, his gun ready in his hand. He searched the snow all the way around the porch. When he got to the other side, he looked back at Jose. “There aren’t any tracks in the snow,” he said.

“That can’t be,” Jose said in a low voice. “How the hell can they be doing this?”

Cole walked back to the porch steps that led down into the snow.

“Cole,” Jose said. “What are you doing?”

Cole didn’t answer.

“Hey, man. Why don’t we just take the cases of money and walk out of here? We’ll leave that girl and her kid here in the cabin, and we’ll just walk on out of here. We don’t have to hurt them. We’ll tie them up and just leave them here.”

“They’ll die in there if we do that,” Cole finally answered Jose as he stood at the edge of the steps.

“So,” Jose spat out. “It’s her friends out here doing this anyway. I’m sure they’ll go inside the cabin and rescue her.”

Cole descended the steps quickly and walked a few steps out into the snow which came up to mid-calf on him. He wore calf-high boots underneath his pants legs, but he could still feel the cold on his legs, creeping through the cloth, creeping into his flesh, into his bones. It was so cold out here that his lungs ached when he took breaths.

Jose followed Cole down into the snow. “Just the two of us,” Jose said. “We don’t even need Needles to leave with us. It’s Needles’ fault we’re here in the first place.”

Cole still didn’t answer. He kept walking towards the corner of the cabin, away from the garage and Tom Gordon’s ruined pickup truck parked in front of the garage doors which were still partway open. The garage made Cole think of the snowmobile he’d seen in there. It stayed in the back of his mind. He didn’t want to tell Jose about it just yet.

You don’t trust Jose enough to tell him about the snowmobile, Cole’s mind whispered to him.

As if to prove Cole’s point, Jose continued following Cole through the snow, trying to convince him to leave. “Come on, man. Just you and me. We could split the money fifty-fifty.”

Cole stopped at the corner of the cabin and looked around at the fields of snow, at the line of trees that surrounded the fields. He didn’t see any movement, he didn’t hear anything. His eyes settled on the parting in the trees where the driveway began, the driveway that led back out to the county road.

God, it seemed like such a long time ago since they had come down that driveway in Stella’s truck.

Cole took a step and then he took another step towards the driveway.

Frank’s voice echoed in his mind: He won’t let you leave.

But Cole was going to walk to the driveway in the woods—at least that far. He had his gun ready. He was ready for these people to reveal themselves. He was ready to shoot them. He was ready to kill them. For Trevor.

Jose fell in beside Cole, matching Cole step for step through the snow as they trudged towards the driveway in the trees. Jose seemed to have given up trying to convince Cole to leave with him.

*

Inside the cabin, Stella and David sat on the couch. David was drawing again. Always drawing. She thought about the drawings she’d seen in his notebook. She had to talk to him about it, but she needed to wait for the right time. What he was drawing could be the answer to what was out there in the woods. But she didn’t dare give herself too much hope.

She looked over at the recliner, at Needles. He had been hunched forward, his cross dangling down from his neck on the thin gold necklace as he stared down at the large Native American rug on the cabin floor. Something about the patterns and colors seemed to amaze Needles. He would spend hours staring at the patterns on the rug and rubbing the small cross on his necklace over and over again.

But now Needles looked at Stella and David.

And Stella realized that they were alone in the cabin with this lunatic. How long were Cole and Jose going to stay out there? She had seen that Trevor’s body parts were gone; she had been ready for that. And now Cole and Jose were probably out there searching the woods for Trevor’s killer.

They could be out there for a while, Stella thought. Maybe for hours.

Needles stood up quickly. He was a tall and lanky man, but he was all muscle. But his eyes were the scariest part of him. They were lost, completely gone now. He had been going more and more crazy, and now he was all the way there. Stella could see that; she had seen that same look in a man’s eyes before—she’d seen it at the dig site in New Mexico.

Needles smiled at them. “I believe you,” he whispered to Stella. “They might not believe you,” Needles gestured towards the front door, “but I know that there’s something supernatural out there.”

Stella didn’t answer. She just watched Needles. She was ready to grab David and run from the couch to the front door if she needed to. The door was still ajar, letting the cold air into the cozy warmth of the cabin.

“It’s okay, Stella,” he said in a low voice, as a strange smile played at the corner of his lips. “I already know who’s out there. It’s the devil, isn’t it? The old man in the bank told me.”

Stella tensed and David stopped drawing as Needles took another step towards them with that insane smile still on his face.

Then Needles froze in mid-step when they heard the gunshots from outside.

*

Cole and Jose had only made it five more steps away from the cabin when the gunshots started. They ducked down, frozen for a moment as bullets whizzed past them and struck the logs of the cabin.

“Fuck!” Jose yelled.

They turned and ran as fast as they could through the snow as more shots were fired. Cole couldn’t tell where the shots were coming from, somewhere from the woods—he was certain of that—but he couldn’t be sure exactly from which direction.

They made it to the front porch and Cole turned and fired at the trees, trying to provide some cover for them as they climbed the slippery steps up onto the porch that was smeared with his brother’s blood.

Needles was in the doorway. He fired his gun out at the woods, providing more cover.

“You see ‘em?!” Jose shouted at Needles.

“No!” Needles yelled. He moved back into the cabin to allow Cole and Jose to rush inside as bullets pelted the thick logs of the cabin wall.

After they were all inside, Cole closed the door and locked the locks, and then he backed away from the door with his gun still in his hand. Jose hurried over to the window on the other side of the door that looked out onto the front porch.

“You see anything?” Cole asked Jose.

Jose shook his head. “Nothing.”

“What kind of gun was it?” Needles asked, but they all were pretty sure they knew. It was a sound they’d heard plenty of times before.

“I think it was a .45,” Cole said, and then he spoke all of their thoughts aloud. “It sounded like Frank’s gun.”

CHAPTER 27

Three o’clock in the morning. The half-full moon shined its light down onto the fields of snow and the endless woods. But clouds floated through the night sky, blocking the moonlight for minutes at a time, creating night shadows that slid across the trees, across the fields of snow, and across the cabin.

Cole had downed at least ten cups of coffee. He’d made the coffee strong. He’d added a lot of sugar. He wanted to make sure that he was going to stay awake tonight.

Jose had opened the bottle of whiskey earlier in the night. He’d only sipped at it, catching a little bit of a buzz, not enough to make him drunk, but enough to give him some courage. And it was making him drowsy—Cole could see that. He could also see that it was going to be up to him again to stay awake and on guard throughout the night.

David was the first one to fall asleep. He slept on top of his notebook, like he was guarding it. Stella tried to pull it out from under his body, but every time she tried to move the notebook, David’s eyes would pop open and he would stare at her with his large dark eyes.

“I’m just trying to make you more comfortable,” she whispered to him.

But David held on to his notebook of drawings and slept on top of it.

Of course Stella could rip the notebook out of the little boy’s hands if she wanted to, but she wasn’t going to do that. She would talk to him about the things he’d drawn in it when the time was right. In the meantime, her mind began to wander as she thought of the different possibilities of what David’s drawings could mean. Her archaeologist’s mind offered up different explanations, different scenarios, analyzing and studying.

Stella curled up next to David and eventually she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

Needles fell asleep next. He was curled up in an uncomfortable position on the recliner that he sat in all the time.

Cole told Needles earlier that he might wake him up in the morning to stand guard. But he wasn’t sure if he was going to do that. He couldn’t trust Needles anymore. And he wasn’t sure if he could trust Jose either. He’d never been close to these guys; they were all criminals and their trust of each other only went so far. But Cole had trusted Trevor. And now the only person he really trusted was gone, the only one who would’ve had his back. His heart ached when he thought of Trevor. And a rage burned inside of him when he thought of Trevor’s body (pieces) out there in the woods somewhere. His remains desecrated, scattered among the snow in the woods.

Cole made himself think of something else.

Jose sat next to Cole for a while at the dining room table, a small glass of whiskey in front of him. No drinking—that had always been one of Frank’s rules when they were on a job together. After the job was done and they were about to go their separate ways, it was fine, but not while they were working. But Cole didn’t say anything to Jose about it. They were way past working right now, and if a few sips of whiskey calmed Jose down, then Cole was thankful for that.

“What’s our plan?” Jose asked in a low voice. The fire in him earlier was gone now. After they were shot at, Jose’s idea of just walking out of here didn’t seem so feasible anymore.

“I don’t know yet,” Cole said and his thoughts turned once again to the snowmobile he’d seen tucked away under the blue tarp inside the free-standing garage. He could even feel the keys to the snowmobile in his pants pocket. There had to be some way he could get to it and see if it would start. There had to be some way to escape on it. But not right now. Not in the middle of the night.

“I’ll tell you something,” Jose said as he took another small sip of whiskey from his glass.

Cole didn’t respond.

“If I see Frank again,” Jose continued, “I’m going to get some answers out of him. I promise you that.”

Cole didn’t say anything.

Jose fell asleep a few hours later, stretching out on his blankets. He told Cole that he was just resting for a few minutes, but Cole heard him breathing heavily a few moments later, and then snoring lightly.

Cole sat at the dining room table and sipped his coffee. He had Trevor’s Zippo lighter in his pocket. He took it out and held it, staring at it.

God, he missed him so much already. The only light they had on was over the stove, and the rest of the cabin was hidden in murky darkness. He glanced at the clock on the wall in the kitchen—three o’clock in the morning. He’d wait until dawn before he woke Jose up to take the next watch.

*

Needles woke up on the floor beside the recliner. It was late at night, he knew that, but he didn’t know exactly what time it was. He sat up and suddenly he felt vulnerable on the floor. He couldn’t remember getting out of the chair and stretching out on the wood floor, but at some point in the night he must have.

Needles realized that something had woken him up. Some kind of noise.

He looked back at the others. Everyone else was asleep. Even Cole and Jose were stretched out on their blankets on the floor, both of them breathing heavily. He was pretty sure that one of them was supposed to be standing guard through the night. But maybe they had given up on that, maybe they had realized what he already knew—that there was nothing they could do to fight back.

What kind of noise had it been that had woken him up? He tried to remember.

A thumping noise.

His eyes darted to the kitchen and Needles held his breath as he stared at the freezer against the far wall. The noise had come from the freezer, he was sure of it now. A thumping noise.

Thump.

The freezer lid popped up for a second, then it thumped back down, like someone inside was trying to push it open.

Like Tom Gordon was trying to get out.

Needles was frozen with fear. His throat had gone instantly dry, and all of his muscles seemed like they had turned to wet spaghetti. His lips trembled. He wanted to scream out to the others, he wanted to wake them up, but the only sound that came out of his throat was a breathless wheeze.

It was silent in the cabin for a few moments and just when Needles began to think that maybe he’d been half asleep and still dreaming, the freezer lid flew open and smashed against the log wall of the cabin.

The freezer was wide open now.

Needles heard Tom Gordon before he actually saw him. He could hear the crackling sound of ice breaking, like the sound of ice cube trays being twisted to break the ice cubes free. Then Tom Gordon sat up in the freezer, he sat straight up like a vampire rising out of his coffin.

Needles pushed himself back into the side of the recliner, leaning against it, his hands clawing at the floor, searching his body and the floor for his gun. He tried to scream again, but only a whisper of sound came out. It was like being stuck in a nightmare where you tried to scream but no sound would come out, or you tried to run and the ax-wielding killer caught up anyway.

Tom Gordon turned his head to stare at Needles; the frozen flesh crackled with every move, his bluish skin sparkled with ice crystals. Even though Tom Gordon didn’t have eyes anymore, he stared right at Needles like he could still see. And then Tom Gordon smiled.

Needles shook his head no. He tried to scream again, tried to plead with this thing that used to be the owner of this cabin. But he still couldn’t utter a sound, and he still couldn’t move. And he still couldn’t find his gun.

Tom Gordon got out of the freezer faster than Needles would’ve expected. He crawled out, his bent limbs somehow cracking and straightening. It sounded like his broken bones were popping back into place.

Needles finally sprang into action. He turned back to the others. One of them had to be awake by now, one of them had to have heard the freezer lid fly open and hit the wall, one of them had to have heard all of that crackling and popping of frozen flesh and bone.

Needles found his gun underneath the chair—he wasn’t sure why it was under there and he didn’t have time to think about it right now. His fingers wrapped around the handle and he pulled it out and turned back to the kitchen.

He was suddenly face-to-face with Tom Gordon who was only inches away from him. Needles was sure that his heart was going to stop beating. He was sure that his breath was going to dry up right in his lungs from fright. He stared at the bluish skin of Tom Gordon’s face, the deep black holes where his eyes used to be. Tom Gordon’s mouth opened into a yawning black maw lined with jagged, yellow teeth. His breath came out in a plume of frost as he whispered to Needles. “You know what to do. You know what needs to be done.”

Needles brought his gun up and fired. He squeezed the trigger over and over again, just shooting and shooting. He was on his feet without realizing it, holding his gun in both hands, trying to still his trembling arms as he squeezed off more rounds. He was screaming continuously without being aware of it.

The others woke up and jumped to their feet.

Cole was the first one at Needles’ side, and Cole had his own gun in his hand, ready to shoot. “What is it?” Cole yelled at Needles. “What’s going on?”

Needles pulled the trigger again and again, but the gun only clicked. He was out of ammo.

Cole aimed his gun into the kitchen where Needles had been shooting. There were bullet holes in the logs of the far wall and three bullet holes in the freezer. But Cole didn’t see anyone in the kitchen; he didn’t see what Needles had been shooting at. “What was it?” he asked Needles.

“It was the guy from the freezer,” Needles finally whispered in a trembling voice.

“Tom Gordon?”

“Yeah,” Needles answered. “He got out of the freezer.”

CHAPTER 28

“Needles,” Cole said in a gentle voice. “Put your gun down.”

Needles kept his gun aimed at the kitchen even though there were no more bullets in the clip. His arms trembled as he aimed his gun at the freezer. “I saw him, Cole. I saw him get out of that freezer.”

“Needles, lower your gun. Let me take it. We don’t want any accidents.”

Needles did not lower his gun.

Stella and David sat up on the couch. Jose stood on his bedroll, his gun down at his side; his eyes were puffy, and he swayed just a bit from the buzz of the whiskey he’d drank a few hours earlier, and from exhaustion. He looked into the kitchen; he looked at the bullet holes on the wall and at the three bullet holes in the freezer, which was now leaking water from underneath it. Jose looked back at Cole and Needles.

“Needles,” Cole said again, his voice lower and firmer. “Lower your weapon.”

Needles finally lowered his gun, but it was more out of sheer exhaustion than from Cole’s orders. He looked at Cole with red-rimmed eyes. Tears slipped out of the corners of his eyes. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“I didn’t say that, Needles. Let me see your gun. We don’t want another accident. Remember the old man in the bank?”

Needles nodded as he let out a shuddering breath. He handed his gun to Cole.

Cole took the gun and shoved it into the waistband of his pants. He felt a little relieved now that Needles didn’t have a weapon. He planned on getting all of the extra clips Needles had for the gun, but not right now.

Needles looked back at the kitchen and wiped at the snot and tears on his face. “Go look, Cole,” he said as he stared at the freezer. “Go look and see if that guy’s still in there.”

“It was just a nightmare,” Cole said in a soothing voice. “We’re all scared and tired. Stressed out. You just had a—”

“No, Cole!” Needles screamed at him, and then he looked at him with wide, frightened eyes. “It wasn’t a fucking nightmare. I know what I saw. It was that guy, Tom Gordon. He sat up in the freezer. I saw him get out and walk towards me.”

“Maybe you were still half asleep,” Cole offered, trying to keep his cool. “Maybe your eyes were open, but you were still dreaming. That happens. Especially when people are very tired and stressed out.”

Needles shook his head no. “I know what I saw.”

Cole looked at Jose and gestured for Jose to check out the freezer.

As Jose went to the kitchen, Cole looked at Stella and David. “You two see anything?”

They both shook their heads no.

“Nothing to say?” Cole asked Stella.

Stella shook her head no.

Jose stood in front of the freezer, his gun still in his hand. He opened the freezer lid and looked down inside.

“Is he still in there?” Needles asked Jose with panic in his voice and on the verge of more tears.

Jose looked back at Cole. “Cole, come over here.”

“Is he in there?!” Needles screamed.

“Yes, damn it!” Jose yelled at Needles, but he looked at Cole. “Cole?”

Cole hurried across the wood floor to the kitchen. He still had his gun in his hand, and he could feel the heat from Needles’ pistol shoved down in the waistband of his pants. He stood beside Jose and looked down at Tom Gordon’s body. He was still in the freezer, but his body looked different. It looked like he was in a different position, and the ice that had covered his body before looked cracked and shattered now.

Cole and Jose looked at each other, but they didn’t say anything out loud and Cole was thankful for that, he didn’t want to hear Needles ranting and raving again. Something seemed strange about this, but Cole was a rational man who didn’t believe in the supernatural. His mind was already coming up with possibilities. Maybe they had forgotten exactly what position Tom Gordon had been in when they saw him the first time. Maybe the bullets from Needles’ gun had shattered the ice all over Tom Gordon’s body. It had to be something like that, Cole thought, something rational.

Jose shut the lid. They glanced at each other but didn’t say anything. Cole noticed a gash in the log wall above the freezer; it looked like it was from the freezer lid being slammed into the wall. But it could’ve been there before and he just noticed it now.

Cole looked down at the kitchen floor and noticed ice chips and crystals all over the floor, but the water leaking from the freezer was flowing out towards the ice chips and melting them. Cole looked away.

Needles was having a waking nightmare, Cole thought. That’s all. He woke up from a nightmare and panicked, and then he started shooting. Cole had taken Needles’ gun, and that was the right thing to do for now.

Cole turned back to the others. “Tom Gordon’s still in the freezer. Needles just had a nightmare.”

“It wasn’t a fucking nightmare,” Needles mumbled to himself as he crawled back into the safety of his recliner.

Cole glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was almost sunup.

*

As the sun climbed high into the sky over the tops of the trees and shed its light across the blankets of snow on the ground, Cole sat at the dining room table. He’d made more coffee. He made it even stronger. He added even more sugar.

The others had stayed awake for a little bit in the early morning, but then one by one they had fallen back asleep from pure exhaustion.

Except Stella.

She walked into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. She sat down in a chair diagonally from Cole, her back to the others who slept in the living room.

Cole glanced at her, but he didn’t feel like questioning her. She wasn’t going to answer him anyway, and he didn’t know when she was telling the truth or not. He was tired of the game. He was tired of being here. His nerves were fried and he was just tired.

He had his brother’s Zippo lighter out again and he was turning it over and over again slowly in his fingers.

“I’m sorry,” Stella whispered to Cole as she glanced down at the lighter in his hand and then met his eyes.

He just looked at her.

“About Trevor,” she said. “I didn’t know he was your brother at first. I should’ve seen the resemblance. I’m sorry about what happened to him.”

Cole nodded. She seemed sincere, but he couldn’t be sure about her anymore.

“I don’t know what’s out there,” she told him. “I swear to you, that’s the truth.”

Cole just stared at her.

“What did you see in that freezer?” she asked in a low voice, almost a whisper. She turned and looked into the living room at the others for just a moment, and then she looked at Cole again.

“Tom Gordon’s in that freezer,” Cole told her. “That’s where he’s been the whole time. Needles had a nightmare and freaked out.”

Stella stared at Cole for a long moment and then she just nodded.

“Why won’t you tell me everything that happened down at that dig site in New Mexico?”

Stella thought it over for a moment. “I want to trust you. But I don’t know if I can.”

Cole just stared at Stella for a long moment. There was nothing he could do or say to make her trust him now. She had been right earlier when she asked how he could ask for her help after carjacking her and David and pointing a weapon at their faces.

“Frank will be back,” Stella whispered, catching Cole off guard a little. He stared at her.

“He’s going to ask for something else,” Stella continued, “and you have to give him what he asks for, no matter what it is, or someone else will be taken.”

A sudden anger flared up inside of Cole. “And you’re just telling me this now? Why didn’t you tell us this before, when Frank asked for the money? If we would’ve known to put the money out there, then maybe Trevor would still be alive.”

“You wouldn’t have believed me if I would’ve told you before, and you know it,” Stella answered Cole through clenched teeth. Her eyes burned into Cole’s eyes.

Cole sighed, whether he wanted to admit it to her or not, he knew she was right.

“He still wants the money?” Cole asked Stella in a whisper.

“He doesn’t want the money. It doesn’t have anything to do with the money. It never did. He wants things and you have to give them to him no matter what they are.”

Cole stared at Stella. “What is he going to ask for next?”

Stella stared back, but she didn’t answer.

“You know, don’t you?” Cole whispered. “You know what he’s going to ask for next.”

Stella jumped as someone touched the back of her neck. She whirled around in her chair and she was face-to-face with David. She hadn’t even heard him walk up behind her from the living room.

And Cole hadn’t seen David walk up behind Stella.

David stared at Stella and Cole. “He’s outside again. He’s calling you.”

CHAPTER 29

Cole woke Jose and Needles up. Jose jumped to his feet and claimed he’d only been asleep for a few minutes. Cole didn’t want to argue with him.

“What time is it?” Jose asked as he struggled to come fully awake.

“About ten o’clock,” Cole answered as he slipped on his leather gloves.

Cole put his coat on and zipped it up. He checked his gun.

Needles jumped up from his recliner. “I’m not going out there again,” he said. He looked at Cole. “I want my gun back.”

“Not right now, Needles,” Cole said and looked at Stella. “Get your coat on, I want you out there with us this time.”

Stella stared at Cole. “I’ll get David’s coat.”

“Leave him inside this time. Needles will keep an eye on him.”

“I’d rather not let David out of my sight,” Stella said.

Cole didn’t say anything—he wasn’t giving her a suggestion.

“I’ll watch him,” Needles said and then he glanced at the front door. He seemed to be trying to be helpful, but Stella could see something else in Needles’ eyes, something sinister buried deep inside them.

Jose’s words from last night echoed through Cole’s mind: If I see Frank again, I’m going to get some answers out of him. I promise you that. Cole didn’t want David outside if Jose started shooting at Frank, and Frank, or whoever else was out there in the woods, decided to shoot back. But he didn’t want to go into a long explanation about that right now with Stella. He just wanted her to listen to him.

Stella got her coat on and she walked over to David who sat rigidly on the couch with his spiral notebook on his lap. She crouched down in front of him and smoothed his long hair back. She looked into his dark eyes. She could see the fear in those eyes.

“You sit right here,” she whispered to David. “Don’t come outside no matter what you hear. Okay?”

David just nodded.

“We’ll only be out there for a few minutes.”

Again David nodded.

Stella hugged him, and then she stood up and looked at Needles. She didn’t have a good feeling about leaving David in here with him, but she could be back inside in a few seconds if she needed to. At least Needles didn’t have his gun with him anymore.

Cole, Jose, and Stella gathered at the front door, bracing themselves for a moment before Cole unlocked and opened the door. Cole and Jose checked their guns again, making sure they had full clips and making sure a bullet was chambered and ready. Cole had reloaded Needles’ gun and he had it stuck into the back of the waistband of his pants. He also had Trevor’s gun in his coat pocket.

Cole glanced at Stella. She had been about to tell him a few minutes ago what Frank was going to ask for—but now he was going to find out for himself.

Cole unlocked the door. He opened it and stepped out onto the front porch. Jose and Stella followed him, and the three of them stood close to each other on the porch. Stella closed the door, but she left it open just a crack. She didn’t want to shut the door all the way, and she wanted to be close to the door.

The three of them stared out at Frank who stood in the same spot in the snow as before. He looked the same: the same blue flannel shirt, same pants, same unanimated face, his head cocked to the side at an odd angle. He looked like a puppet waiting for his strings to be pulled.

Frank came alive, and that creepy smile was on his face in an instant. “Hi, everyone!” he shouted and gave them a mechanical-like wave of his hand.

“What did you do with Trevor?” Cole shouted.

Frank’s smile drooped and his face dropped in an exaggerated frown. “Oh, that was unfortunate,” he told them.

“What did you do with his body?” Cole yelled.

“You have to give him what he wants!” Frank said with the frown still on his face. “You have to give him exactly what he wants or bad things will happen.”

“We’re not giving you anything until you tell me what you did with Trevor!”

Frank stood motionless in the snow, his head cocked to the side, almost like he was listening to something no one else could hear. “You really want to see Trevor again?” Frank asked.

“Yes, right now! Where is he?”

Frank barely nodded. “Then you will see him again real soon.”

“Who is doing this? Why doesn’t this person come out and show himself?” Cole yelled; he could feel the rage building up inside of him again, he felt like he was going to snap at any second. “I want to see him!”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Frank said. “It has to be this way.”

“I want to speak to this person directly!” Cole said.

“You are,” Frank answered. “Through me.”

Cole could tell that Jose was getting antsy beside him, fidgeting, ready to go for his gun. “This is bullshit,” Jose whispered. “Let’s just rush him. Make him talk.”

Stella’s words echoed in Cole’s mind: He wants things and you have to give them to him no matter what they are.

“What is it that you want?” Cole yelled out to Frank

Frank stood motionless in the snow, impervious to the freezing weather even though he only wore pants and a flannel shirt. “He wants two human eyeballs on the front porch by sundown,” Frank told them.

*

Inside the cabin, Needles sat at the edge of his recliner, his elbows on his knees, ready to pop up onto his feet at any second. He felt jumpy, like he needed to get up and move, like he had something important he needed to do very soon.

And he did have something important to do.

What he’d seen last night had been no nightmare—it had been real. And he’d been given instructions. He knew what he needed to do. Maybe if he did what the devil told him to do, then the devil would let him go.

David sat on the couch, his notebook beside him. He wasn’t drawing right now; he was watching every move that Needles made.

Needles glanced at the front door. He could see that it was still slightly ajar. He thought about getting up and closing the door, and then locking it. He could lock them outside with the devil that they didn’t believe in.

Needles jumped to his feet. He only had a short time to accomplish his task and he couldn’t waste time running for the door, it might spook the kid and then he would run for the door or run to the back of the cabin or just scream. Or Cole and Jose would hear the lock being engaged and blow the door handle off with their guns.

Instead of walking to the door, Needles walked into the kitchen. He glanced at the freezer for a second. He could imagine Tom Gordon’s body thawing inside the leaking freezer.

A thought occurred to Needles: Maybe Tom Gordon wasn’t a demon. Maybe he had been sent by God to give Needles a message. Maybe Needles was the only one who could see. Maybe Needles was the only one who could carry out God’s plan. God had given Needles a warning through the old man in the bank, and Needles hadn’t meant to shoot the old man; he was truly sorry about that, he didn’t even remember pulling the trigger.

But now maybe Needles was getting a second chance. God was giving him a second chance to carry out this mission. Maybe the demon wasn’t out there; maybe the demon had been inside with them all along—the demon was David. And Tom Gordon had been sent to tell Needles what to do, to kill this demon.

Needles rubbed the gold crucifix that hung around his neck. He opened the kitchen drawer and rummaged around until he found the biggest kitchen knife he could find.

Needles turned and walked into the living room. He watched David who stared at him. David saw the knife in his hand, Needles was sure of that, but David didn’t try to run for the front door, or even try to scream. That had to mean David was a demon, and that was proof enough for Needles.

Thank you, God, Needles whispered in his mind. Thank you for giving me this chance to carry out your wishes.

So crafty the devil was, Needles thought, hiding inside such an innocent-looking child. Nobody would ever suspect what this child really was. But Needles could tell, Needles could see. Oh yes, he could see right through David.

Needles walked towards the couch with the knife in his hand; he didn’t even bother to try to hide it now. The light from the windows winked off the long blade.

David just watched him with his large dark eyes. David knew what was coming, Needles was certain of that. And David must know that he couldn’t win. Evil couldn’t fight goodness—it was no match for it.

When Needles stepped onto the area rug, the Native American rug with its colorful patterns, David got to his feet. The boy glanced at the front door, but he didn’t run for it, he just looked back at Needles like he was frozen with fear.

Needles smiled at David. “You know what I have to do, don’t you?”

CHAPTER 30

“Eyeballs?” Jose yelled out in disgust at Frank. Jose stood on the front porch, his hand itching to draw his gun and run out into the snow and charge Frank. But he was too shocked to move, and for a few seconds he could only stare at Frank. “Eyeballs?” he spat out again. “What the fuck?”

“You have to give him what he wants,” Frank said, and that plastic smile was back on his face. “Take the eyeballs from someone while they are still alive. Have them on the porch before sundown or more bad things will happen.”

It was too much for Jose. He jumped off the porch and down into the snow; Cole didn’t even have a chance to stop him. Jose screamed with fury as he ran through the snow right at Frank.

Cole raised his gun, aiming it at Frank, ready to cover Jose.

But there were no shots fired at them from the trees.

And Frank didn’t turn to run away. He didn’t pull out his pistol. He didn’t do anything except wait patiently and motionless as Jose ran right at him.

Jose reached Frank, and he aimed his gun right at Frank’s head. If anyone was going to start firing at him from the woods, Jose thought, then he was going to make damn sure that he blew Frank’s head off first.

Frank watched Jose with no expression in his eyes and that plastic smile still on his face. Jose wanted to smash Frank’s face in with the butt of his gun; he wanted to wipe that stupid smile away forever.

“You’re coming back inside, motherfucker,” Jose growled, and he moved around to the back of Frank to march him to the cabin. “You’re going to give us some fucking answers. You’re going to …”

Jose’s words died in his throat when he got around to the back of Frank. There was nothing there—no back to Frank at all. It looked like Frank’s back had been sliced off and his torso had been scooped out: muscles, bones, organs, blood, all of it gone. He was completely hollow inside. Even part of the back of Frank’s head was gone and the inside of his head was hollow. There were only the glistening red walls of flesh inside of his hollowed-out body.

Jose couldn’t understand what he was seeing. Frank couldn’t be alive. No one could be alive like this.

*

Cole stood at the edge of the porch, his gun still aimed at Frank. He was ready for the barrage of gunfire to begin from the woods, but nothing happened, nobody was shooting. There was no wall of snow, no sudden blizzard, nothing.

But something was wrong with Jose. He had gotten behind Frank to march him back to the cabin, but then he stopped cold as he stared at Frank in horror. At what? What had he seen?

Cole heard a sharp inhale from Stella. He managed a quick glance at her and saw her body stiffen. Her eyes were on Frank. Did she know what had stopped Jose? Did she know what Jose was seeing?

Cole looked back out at Jose who still hadn’t moved a muscle.

“Jose!” Cole shouted, trying to break his paralysis.

But Jose wasn’t listening. He wasn’t answering. He wasn’t moving. He just stared at the back of Frank, his face a mask of horror.

Cole was about to jump down into the snow, but then Jose stumbled back around to the front of Frank.

*

Jose moved back around to face Frank. His gun hand had dropped down to his side, and his body had weakened so much that he barely held on to his gun. He stared at Frank’s face.

Frank was still smiling. He spoke, and when he opened his mouth Jose could now see the barest traces of light coming through his mouth from his hollowed-out head. “Go,” Frank whispered to Jose. “Go back and tell the others what you’ve seen. Tell them that they have to give him what he wants. There is no other way.”

Jose took a step back, and then another. And then another. He backed up through the snow, away from Frank, but he didn’t take his eyes off of him.

Frank just stood there in the snow, still smiling, his head still cocked to the side.

After five backwards steps through the deep snow, Jose turned and ran for the cabin. He’d never been this frightened in his life. He never knew anyone could experience terror like this. He ran in a blind panic. He ran towards the only safety left that he knew of right now—the cabin. But even in his white-hot panic, he knew that the cabin wasn’t safe anymore. Nowhere was safe anymore.

Jose stumbled up the porch steps, gibbering, not even sure what he was saying, not sure what he was thinking, everything was just a blur of white panic. It was like his brain had seen something so horrible and unimaginable that it was beginning to shut down.

Cole helped Jose up the steps. Jose’s gun slipped from his fingers and clunked down onto the floorboards of the porch. Cole picked up the gun while still holding on to Jose.

“What’s wrong, Jose?” Cole asked. He could hear the panic in his own voice. “What did you see?”

“He … he … he’s not …” Jose stammered. He couldn’t get the words out. “Insides …” he whispered.

Just then they heard a scream from inside the cabin—David’s scream.

“David!” Stella yelled and she bolted for the front door.

CHAPTER 31

Stella rushed inside to see Needles chasing David with a gigantic kitchen knife. Needles sliced the knife down through the air, stabbing at David. But David was too quick; he managed to duck out of the way of the deadly swing just in time.

Stella didn’t even think about it, she rushed right at Needles and slammed into him.

Needles was thrown off balance from both surprise and because Stella had hit him that hard.

“NOOO!!!” Stella screamed as she tackled Needles and drove him back into his recliner. They both fell over the recliner and Stella heard the satisfactory sound of the knife clattering to the floor.

Cole was inside the cabin right after Stella. He saw Needles try to stab David with the knife, but Stella had reacted a split second before Cole had, and he watched her tackle Needles over the recliner. Both of them fell to a heap on the floor on the other side of the recliner and Cole was sure at least one of them had fallen on the knife, but then he heard it drop on the floor

Jose stumbled inside the cabin and shut the door. He fumbled with the lock with his shaking hands. He knew the locks wouldn’t hold back whatever was out there, but he locked the door anyway. He stumbled over to the dining room table, oblivious to the fight in the living room between Stella and Needles. Jose plopped down in one of the dining room chairs as his mind replayed what he’d seen out there in the snow—Frank’s hollowed-out body.

On the floor beside the recliner, Needles kicked Stella off of him. He had been surprised by her strength, caught off guard for a moment, but Needles was stronger than she was and his kick sent her through the air where she landed on the Native American rug in the center of the room. Needles rolled over in a quick movement and grabbed the knife from the floor.

As Stella struggled back to her feet, Cole shot across her field of vision like a blur of movement. She watched Cole punch Needles in the jaw as he tried to stand up. In less than two seconds Cole hit Needles again and again in the face until he dropped the knife.

Cole tackled Needles, who was already woozy from the punches to his face, and then he drove him into the wall. They both slid down the wall to the floor as pictures crashed from the wall to the floor all around them. Needles fell over onto his stomach, and before Needles had a chance to turn over, Cole crawled on top of his back like an MMA fighter; he held him face-down as he wrenched one of Needles’ arms behind his back and held it there. Needles wailed out in pain.

“Get me something to tie his hands with!” Cole yelled at Jose.

But Jose wasn’t listening. He stared down at the table, his mind tuning out everything around him. He kept seeing Frank’s body in his mind’s eye, his hollow body, the red and glistening walls of flesh inside of his torso and head.

Stella jumped up from the floor. Her stomach hurt from where Needles had kicked her, but she could tell there was no serious damage. She ran to the kitchen counter and grabbed the balled-up telephone cord Cole had tossed there what seemed like so long ago. She grabbed it and ran back to Cole.

“Tie it around his wrist!” Cole screamed at Stella.

Needles tried to fight back, but he couldn’t buck Cole off of his back. Cole had a handful of Needles’ hair in his other hand and he slammed Needles’ face down onto the wood floor, nearly knocking him out, definitely dazing him for a moment.

Stella tied the cord tightly around Needles’ wrist, a double knot.

“Hold the cord,” Cole told her as he grabbed Needles’ other arm. Needles tried to struggle, but he was too dazed and Cole was too strong. Cole brought Needles’ wrists together and he didn’t even have to tell Stella what to do—she wrapped the cord around both wrists several times and tied it tight.

Cole tested the bonds and after he was satisfied that they were tight, he sat back on his butt on the floor as Needles writhed beside him and worked his way up into a sitting position, his back and bound hands against the wall.

There were tears in Needles’ eyes and blood trickled from his nose down into his mouth. “You don’t understand,” he told Cole. “I had to do it. I had to.”

“Shut up,” Cole said as he exhaled a long breath.

“David,” Stella whispered. She ran over to the couch but David wasn’t there. “David!” she called out. She went to the end of the couch and found David crouched down beside the end of it, hiding from Needles. He looked up at her with his dark eyes full of fear.

She dropped down to her knees and reached out for him. “It’s okay,” she told him. “He’s tied up now. He won’t get you.”

David jumped into her arms and hugged her.

Stella cried as David held on to her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry I left you in here with him. I should’ve known.”

David pulled away from Stella and he nodded at her. “It’s okay,” he told her in a soft voice. He smiled. “I’m okay now.”

Stella let out a laugh even though she was still crying a little bit. She wiped away at her tears. She looked him over quickly even though he told her he was okay; she didn’t see any wounds of any kind on him. “You’re not hurt anywhere, are you?”

“No. I’m okay.”

Stella exhaled a deep breath. “Thank God.”

Cole watched Stella and David for a moment, and then he looked at Needles who was still sitting against the wall.

Needles looked at Cole with his tear-streaked and bloody face. “You don’t understand what’s going on here, Cole. That kid’s a demon. He’s doing all of this on his own. He’s not a child, he’s a monster.”

“Shut up, Needles.”

“He’s the devil. He’s the one you should be afraid of, not me.”

“I swear to God, Needles, if you don’t shut the fuck up …” Cole let his words trail off.

Needles became very quiet and suddenly calm. A strange smile appeared on his blood-splattered face. “You’ll see,” he whispered to Cole. “You’ll see soon enough.”

Cole walked away from Needles—he had to get away from him or he was afraid he was going to hit him again. Besides, Cole had another concern at this moment—Jose.

He walked over to Jose and stared at him.

Jose sat in the dining room table chair, his body slouched, his eyes distant, his head hung down.

“Jose,” Cole said in a soft voice. He pulled out a chair and moved it over so that he sat down right in front of Jose.

Jose didn’t respond.

“Jose!” Cole said a little louder.

Jose looked at Cole. “We have to give him what he wants,” Jose said in an emotionless voice. “We have to give him anything he asks for.”

“What’s wrong?” Cole asked. “What did you see out there?”

“Frank’s not real,” Jose said, and then he thought for a moment. “He’s not alive. He can’t be.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s nothing inside of Frank anymore.”

“Nothing inside?”

“He’s been hollowed out,” Jose said quickly. “He’s like some … some kind of puppet. His back has been torn off and something scooped out all of his insides. Everything’s gone. There’s nothing in there.”

“Then how—”

“I don’t know!” Jose snapped. He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he repeated in a softer voice. “He’s just a puppet for whatever’s out there.”

Cole glanced at Stella; she had taken David to the couch and sat him down. David grabbed his notebook and pen right away, he held them protectively on his lap. They both looked back at Cole and Jose.

Jose startled Cole by grabbing his arm hard, Jose’s fingers dug into Cole’s flesh.

But Cole didn’t pull away; he stared into Jose’s unblinking eyes of terror.

“We have to give him the eyeballs,” Jose said. “We have to give them to him.”

CHAPTER 32

“It can do anything it wants to,” Jose continued as he stared into Cole’s eyes.

“No it can’t,” Cole answered him, “or we’d all be dead already. If this thing can come in here anytime it wants to and take all of us, then why hasn’t this … this thing done that yet?”

Jose startled Cole by jumping to his feet. He paced around for a few seconds, like he wasn’t sure where he was going to go or what he was going to do. He was like a caged animal that knew it couldn’t escape but couldn’t help running around the cage and searching for a way out. Jose dashed to the kitchen and grabbed the bottle of whiskey off the counter. He spun the lid off and drank down a few long swallows of the bourbon, something to numb him from the horrors that waited outside for them.

Cole watched Jose for a few seconds, but he knew he wasn’t going to be able to get through to Jose right now—he was too frightened by whatever he’d seen out there.

By Frank’s hollowed-out body?

No, Cole couldn’t believe that. He couldn’t wrap his mind around that. It had to be a mistake. Jose had to have misunderstood what he’d seen out there. There was no way that could be possible.

Cole looked at Stella, and then he walked towards her. “Why eyeballs?” he asked her. “If all this … this thing that’s supposed to be out there wants is eyeballs, then why doesn’t it take Frank’s eyeballs?” Cole hesitated for a second before finishing the rest of his sentence, like it was too painful to get the words out. “Or Trevor’s.”

Stella stared at him with unwavering eyes. “Because it wants us to do it.”

“Why? Why would someone want us to do this?”

Stella didn’t answer, and Cole could see that she wasn’t going to answer. She was guarding some of the information, Cole could see that now. And in a way, he couldn’t blame her. But he didn’t think she was hiding things because she was a part of what was going on out there, more like she knew who was out there and she was strategizing to save David and herself.

Cole sighed. Eyeballs. They couldn’t just take someone’s eyeballs, could they? And whose eyeballs? Cole wasn’t going to volunteer. Neither was Jose. Cole would not allow them to take Stella or David’s eyes. That only left one possibility.

Cole looked at Needles.

For a moment he thought about Tom Gordon in the freezer—they could take his eyeballs. But his eyes were already gone. It was like this thing was one step ahead of them, like it had taken Tom Gordon’s eyeballs so they couldn’t use them now.

They all heard a sound on the front porch.

All of them stared at the front door.

Outside, on the front porch, there were heavy footsteps walking across the wood floorboards to the front door.

The footsteps stopped.

Three loud knocks on the front door.

Cole whipped out his gun and glanced at Stella. “Who is it?” he whispered.

Stella shook her head no, indicating that she didn’t know who it was.

“Frank?” Cole whispered.

This time Stella shook her head no—her eyes said that it wasn’t Frank.

Jose set the bottle of whiskey down on the edge of the counter; he almost let it tip over and fall to the floor, but he slid it back slowly from the edge so it wouldn’t fall, he did all of this without looking at the bottle, still staring at the front door the whole time. Jose didn’t go for his gun. He didn’t move towards the door, either. He was frozen with fear; he just stared at the front door with wide eyes.

Needles squirmed against the wall, trying to work his way closer to the recliner, he was almost behind the recliner now, trying to hide behind it, but he still peeked at the door from behind the piece of furniture. He was whimpering.

Three more knocks at the door. The door seemed to shake in its frame from each knock.

“You have to untie me, Cole,” Needles hissed. “You can’t leave me like this.”

Cole ignored Needles; he took a step towards the door with his gun gripped in his hand.

“Cole, please …” Needles begged, beginning to cry.

The door handle rattled like whoever was on the other side was jiggling it and trying to get inside.

Cole walked towards the door, his gun ready. He was close now, about to reach out and open the door.

The jiggling of the door handle stopped—there was only silence from the other side of the door for a moment.

“Cole, wait,” Jose said with a tremor in his voice. Jose still hadn’t moved from his spot by the kitchen counter.

Then Cole heard the person speak from behind the door.

“Cole …”

The voice sounded deep and guttural, yet Cole still recognized it. His little brother’s voice—Trevor’s voice.

Trevor was out there. But that couldn’t be. Trevor was dead. He’d seen the pieces of his body and he’d seen his decapitated head sitting in the middle of the porch like a trophy.

Cole’s mind jumped back to his conversation with Frank only moments ago. Frank’s words echoed in his mind: You really want to see Trevor again? Then you will see him again real soon.

“Help me, Cole,” Trevor whispered from the other side of the door.

Maybe he hadn’t really seen the pieces of Trevor’s body, his mind whispered. Maybe it hadn’t been real. Maybe all of this is some kind of nightmare that he couldn’t wake up from.

Without thinking about it, Cole unlocked the deadbolt and then he unlocked the door handle. He grabbed the door handle which wasn’t rattling anymore, like the person (Trevor) on the other side, was waiting for him to open it, waiting for Cole to invite him in.

“Cole …” Stella whispered.

But Cole didn’t hear her.

Cole opened the door and screamed without realizing it when he saw what stood on the front porch.

CHAPTER 33

Trevor stood on the front porch. The pieces of his body had been put back together; stacked back up into what resembled a human body again. But the pieces did not fit together too well, not quite lining up with each other anymore. In the deep lines where the pieces met each other, tatters of bloody clothing hung in ragged strips.

Trevor’s head sat on his neck at a cocked angle. His face was slack, his eyes glassy, his skin pale. His yawning mouth moved, and the jaw muscles creaked as he tried to work his mouth closed and then open again, trying to speak, trying to utter out words through vocal chords that must have been severed.

“Give him what he wants, Cole,” the monstrosity that used to be Trevor grunted out.

Cole had screamed when he’d first seen this thing that used to be his brother—it had been a short cry of shock and rage and despair all rolled into one. And now he stood only a few feet away from this impossibility and he couldn’t move for a moment. He was frozen with fear, with awe, with confusion. His mind reeled and everything faded away around him for a moment. He had been aware for a few seconds that Needles was screaming from behind him somewhere. And Jose was shouting something at him, maybe to shut the door or shoot. But Cole couldn’t be sure because everything was fading away into darkness all around him.

And the darkness was closing in—he could feel his mind slowing, his chest heaving, his muscles weakening.

He was very close to passing out.

Trevor took a step forward; the pieces of his legs that had been stacked back together shifted and moved, and there was not only the creaking sound of stiff muscles trying to work together, but the wet pulpy sound of meat squishing against meat.

This isn’t possible, Cole’s mind whispered. There’s no way this thing should be able to move. This thing should fall apart, and the pieces should topple back down to the floor.

Trevor’s mouth hung open impossibly wide like his jaw had been dislocated and then shoved back into his face, and now the jaw was off-center. His mouth opened and then snapped shut again and then opened once more, like he was trying to say something else. “Cole …”

Cole couldn’t listen to anything else this thing had to say.

This wasn’t his brother anymore.

This wasn’t Trevor.

This thing that used to be Cole’s brother stumbled forward, trying to cross the threshold of the doorway, trying to reach out for him.

Cole aimed his gun at the monstrosity. He pulled the trigger over and over again. Five shots into the head and torso of that thing. The bullets knocked the reanimated thing back out onto the porch a few steps and tore large chunks out of what used to be Trevor.

Cole screamed again as he kicked the door shut and lunged for the door. He locked the door handle with trembling fingers, and then the deadbolt. He backed away from the door, staring at it.

Needles was still screaming: “It can get inside! It can get inside anytime it wants to! It can do anything it wants to us!”

Cole turned and stared at Needles with dead eyes—eyes that had seen too much horror now. “Shut up,” he told Needles in a soft voice.

Needles snapped his mouth shut as he stared at Cole from the floor beside the recliner where he cowered.

Jose stood in the same spot right next to the counter—he hadn’t moved an inch the whole time. He watched Cole. “That wasn’t Trevor anymore, Cole.”

Cole walked towards Jose with slow, deliberate steps.

“You know that, right, Cole? That wasn’t Trevor anymore, just like that’s not Frank anymore out there.”

Cole walked right up to Jose, his gun still gripped in his right hand.

“Cole, put the gun away,” Jose said in a low voice. He reached behind him without looking and grabbed the bottle of whiskey from off the counter. He handed the bottle to Cole with a trembling hand. “Here, take a sip, man.”

Cole stood very still for a second, his eyes still dead, his breathing still shallow, his face slack with shock. Then he shoved his gun down into his waistband and took the bottle of whiskey from Jose. He took two long swallows of the fiery liquid.

Jose glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall, and then he looked back at Cole who still gripped the whiskey bottle by the neck. “It’s getting late, man. Maybe only a few hours before sundown.”

Cole just nodded—Jose didn’t need to explain what he meant. They only had a short amount of time to decide what they were going to do. He glanced at Stella and David who sat on the couch, both sitting up ramrod straight, like they might bolt at any second. But where would they go? Where could they go?

Stella stared at Cole, and she slowly nodded her head. “It will keep coming back,” she said.

Cole took one more swig of the whiskey, and then he screwed the lid back on. He handed the bottle back to Jose as he stared at Stella. “I want you and David to go into Tom Gordon’s bedroom. I don’t want David out here when we do this.”

Needles pushed himself away from the recliner, his eyes were bugging out. He shook his head no, his arms struggling behind his back, trying to wriggle out of his bonds, but they were tied too tightly.

“No, Cole, please.”

Cole ignored Needles. He’d made his decision. Needles had killed the old man at the bank, which was the reason they were here at this cabin. And then Needles tried to kill David. If they had to take someone’s eyeballs, then it had to be Needles.

Needles kicked his legs wildly on the floor, beginning to cry and scream. “Please, Cole. We don’t have to do this! We can think of something else!”

Cole didn’t look at Needles. He looked at Stella and David and nodded at them, gesturing at them to go to the bedroom.

Stella stood up and took David’s hand. David had the notebook tucked under his arm like a schoolbook. They walked across the living room and gave Needles a wide berth. Stella glanced at Needles who had thrashed his way away from the recliner and more towards the middle of the living room, onto the Native American rug that he had stared at for such long periods of time. His face was wet with tears, his skin red from the exertion of thrashing, his eyes wild with fear as he looked around at the cabin like it was the last thing in the world that he would ever see.

Stella and David walked to the bedroom. They would be alone in the bedroom and this was going to be her chance to talk to David about what she’d seen in his notebook.

CHAPTER 34

Cole checked the windows of Tom Gordon’s bedroom as Stella and David made themselves comfortable on the lumpy, unmade bed. The windows were still locked and Cole didn’t see anything moving out there in the snow. But he wanted to check. He didn’t like the idea of leaving Stella and David by themselves in the bedroom, but he didn’t want David in the living room watching him and Jose carve out Needles’ eyeballs.

He also had a feeling that nothing was going to happen to any of them as long as they were following the instructions, as long as they were giving it what it wanted.

Cole didn’t want to dwell on the idea too long of what was out there making them do this. He just wanted to get this done and then figure things out from there.

He was about to leave the bedroom, but he hesitated in the doorway.

“We’ll be okay,” Stella said as she watched Cole. “It won’t come for us right now,” she told him, confirming what he had just been thinking.

“I don’t know how long this will take,” he told her. “We have to find some rope or tape and get him … get him ready.”

“As long as it’s done by sundown,” Stella reminded him.

Cole nodded as a wave of nausea wormed its way through his guts. He could feel bile at the back of his throat. This couldn’t be happening, he thought. But it was happening and they needed to hurry.

He left the room. He closed the door and Stella could hear him stomping down the hall.

Stella turned to David who watched the door for a moment, clutching his spiral notebook which had become a little tattered at the edges now from him sleeping with it and protecting it the whole time.

But Stella had seen what he’d been drawing and she needed to confront him about it.

“David,” she said in a soft voice.

He turned to her.

“What have you been drawing in your notebook?” she asked him, seeing if he would just tell her.

He stared at her for a long moment, and then he spoke. “You said we could run. You said it wouldn’t follow us. You said it wouldn’t find us. You promised.”

Stella felt a pang of guilt twist through her. “David, I know I told you that. And I tried.” She could feel tears threatening.

David just stared at her.

“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I’m doing the best I can.”

Finally, he nodded and gave her a small smile.

“When we found you at the dig site, David, you had blood all over you. But you weren’t hurt.”

David only nodded.

“It wasn’t your blood.”

He shook his head no slowly.

“Was the blood from your parents?”

David didn’t answer; he didn’t nod or shake his head no.

“Did that thing out there kill your parents? Did it kill your family?”

David looked away and now Stella saw tears welling up in his eyes. He didn’t want to talk about it, she could tell. He didn’t want to remember.

She tried a different approach—the notebook. “David, what have you been drawing in your notebook?” she asked him again.

He stared at her for a long moment, like he was trying to decide if he should tell her. Finally, he just shook his head no and whispered to her. “I don’t know.”

“Can I see it?” she asked.

David hesitated; again he seemed unsure of what he should do.

“You can trust me,” Stella told him. “You know that. I’m the only one here you can trust.”

David nodded and he handed her his notebook.

Stella took the notebook and she smiled at him, trying to give him her warmest smile under the circumstances. “Thank you, David. I just want to take a look.”

David nodded and he watched her as she opened the notebook.

Stella flipped from one page to the next; she flipped through page after page until she stopped where David had stopped drawing. Nearly two-thirds of the notebook had been filled with David’s drawings. She looked at him with shock in her eyes.

“How did you learn how to do this?” she asked him.

David stared at her for a long moment, and then he shook his head. “I don’t know,” he told her.

“Do you know what these things are that you’ve drawn?”

“I don’t know,” he said again.

Maybe he didn’t know what was in the notebook, Stella thought, but she definitely knew what it was. And she began to get the first far-off glimpses of hope in her mind. She dared to believe that the drawings in this notebook might be a way to fight that thing out there.

*

Cole searched through the house for the things they would need while Jose kept an eye and a gun on Needles. Cole could hear Needles pleading with Jose, but Cole knew Jose wouldn’t give in. They were all way beyond that now. Maybe they would have time to think about it later, but right now there was something out there that was impossible to fight. And with the sun setting soon, they had no choice but to do what it wanted.

For a few moments Cole was afraid he wouldn’t be able to find anything to tie Needles up with and he would have to go out to the garage and look. Even if he had to go out to the garage, he believed that the thing out there wouldn’t kill him as long as he was doing what it wanted.

But then Cole found a full roll of duct tape and lengths of rope in the bathroom cabinet underneath the sink.

He didn’t remember seeing these before when he had initially searched the bathroom.

But he didn’t let his mind think about what that meant.

Instead, he wondered what kind of being was out there in the woods. What kind of thing could bring the dead back to life? Hollow people out and put pieces of his brother back together and reanimate them, use their bodies like puppets?

Cole forced himself not to dwell on it right now. He needed to concentrate on this task.

But thinking of going out to the garage had made him think of the snowmobile for a split second. Did the snowmobile even run? Even though the thing out there had ruined the pickup truck and Stella’s Suburban, had it somehow overlooked the snowmobile?

He pushed the thought of the snowmobile from his mind. Maybe this thing could read minds. Who knew how powerful it was? And if it could read minds, then he didn’t want to give away his one slim hope of getting away.

Stella had driven away from this thing down in New Mexico (if she was telling the truth, his mind whispered). If she and David had gotten away, then maybe he could, too.

Cole placed the tape and the rope on the dining room table and he went into the kitchen to find some tools. There weren’t many tools in the cabin; he found a hammer, a screwdriver, a tin can full of different kinds of nails. But what he needed for their task, he found in the utensil drawer: various spoons and knives—and they would have to do.

Cole had already searched the cabin for some kind of painkillers, even aspirins, something to help dull the pain for Needles. But there was nothing in the kitchen or the bathroom. He’d found a bottle of Tylenol and a bottle of regular aspirins. But both of the bottles were empty. He wasn’t sure if Tom Gordon had left empty bottles behind in his cabinets, or if the bottles had been emptied somehow before they got there.

That thought caused a shiver to run down his spine.

It doesn’t want Needles to be anesthetized, his mind whispered. It wants Needles to feel the pain; it wants Needles to feel every second of his eyes being carved out of his face.

He pushed the thought away again as another wave of nausea washed over him.

Cole wanted to force some whiskey down Needles’ throat to help ease the pain, but Jose didn’t want to do that; he said it was just a waste of time and they needed to hurry. Cole agreed that they needed to hurry, but he also suspected that Jose wanted to keep the whiskey for himself as a cocoon of numbness in case he needed it when the end came.

Cole and Jose looked at each other, and then they looked at Needles.

It was time.

CHAPTER 35

Needles was tied to one of the dining room table chairs with many lengths of rope, duct tape, and two more telephone cords. Jose tied the last of the bonds as Needles struggled and screamed in the chair; the chair’s wood creaked from his struggles, and it seemed like it might tip over, but it didn’t, and the bonds held. They had spread out a few of the large black garbage bags underneath the chair before they tied him to it. And then Cole had toenailed two of the chair legs to the wood floor with a few long nails from the tin can to keep the chair in place.

Jose stood up and backed away from Needles. He glanced at Cole who looked miserable.

“I wish we could’ve given him something for the pain,” Cole muttered.

Jose’s expression had turned cold and hard; he was focused on what had to be done. “I told you, we don’t have enough time for that. We need to get this done before the sun goes down.”

Neither one of them had to look towards the windows in the kitchen or the living room to tell that the sun was setting. The waning afternoon light filtered in through the curtains that covered the windows, casting a warm and yellowish light on the gruesome act that they were about to perform.

Cole had asked earlier if they should kill Needles before they took his eyes out and at least spare him that pain. But Jose was adamant about keeping Needles alive; he reminded Cole that the thing out there wanted this done to Needles while he was still alive. And Cole didn’t argue with him about it anymore.

Needles struggled in his chair, but then he gave up as he breathed heavily—the bonds were too strong, and there were too many of them crisscrossed around his body; there was no hope of him escaping and he realized that now. He looked around, his eyes wild with panic. He glanced at Jose, but he knew that there was no bargaining with him. His only chance would be with Cole.

“You’re making a big mistake, Cole” Needles said, trying to keep his voice as calm and reasonable-sounding as possible. “That kid, he’s doing all of this somehow. I know it.”

Cole looked away.

“Listen to me, please. You need to kill that kid. That kid is doing all of this. He’s the demon. The devil. He’s going to get all of you in the end if you don’t kill him first.”

Jose stood by the table and inspected the “tools” that Cole had laid out: various spoons, a few different kinds of kitchen knives, a bowl, some rags and a roll of gauze for cleaning up. The duct tape was near the tools. He picked up the roll of duct tape and tossed it to Cole. “Shut him up, will you?”

Cole caught the roll of tape.

Needles’ eyes followed the tape and he stared at Cole, pleading with him. “No, wait! You have to listen to me! I’m not crazy! I know what’s going on here! It’s that kid!”

Cole wrapped the duct tape around Needles’ mouth, wrapping it around his head several times, covering the lower half of his face with the tape.

Needles screamed into the tape and struggled again. Tears flowed from his eyes as he sobbed into the tape.

Jose picked up a small, serrated kitchen knife and stood in front of Needles. He looked at Cole who stood behind Needles. “You ready?” he asked Cole.

Cole managed a small nod as he swallowed hard. “I guess.”

“Hold him still,” Jose said.

Cole grabbed each side of Needles’ head and held him as still as he could. He pried Needles’ left eyelid open with his fingers as he held him.

Jose brought the tip of the knife close to Needles’ left eye which was bulging with fear. The eye couldn’t look away; it couldn’t help but watch the tip of the knife as it got closer and closer. The knife shook a little in Jose’s unsteady hand.

Just as Jose was about to sink the tip of the blade into the side of Needles’ eyeball, Needles jerked and Jose jabbed Needles in the cheek just below the eye. The wound began to bleed immediately. Blood ran down his cheek and down the tape, then it dripped down onto the cross hanging outside of his thermal shirt.

Jose backed away, suddenly angry. “Shit, man. You’ve got to hold him still.”

Cole dropped his hands away from Needles’ head and backed away. “I’m trying. He’s struggling too much.”

Jose sighed and set the knife back on the table. He pulled his gun out from the waistband of his pants and he walked around to the back of Needles.

“Struggling too much?” Jose asked, and then he wacked Needles on the back of the head with the butt of his gun, knocking Needles out instantly.

Needles’ head slumped forward and his breathing was even and steady out of his nose.

Jose stuffed his gun back into his pants and walked back to the table. He picked up the knife and a spoon. He looked at Cole. “Hold his eyelids open. I’m sure it doesn’t want these eyeballs damaged.”

Cole shuddered, but he moved in beside Jose. He pried Needles’ left eye open and the eyeball stared back at them, lifeless and unconscious.

“I’m going to cut it out and you get the bowl ready to put it in.”

“Just hurry,” Cole said.

*

Thirty minutes later Cole and Jose sat at the dining room table, both of them exhausted. Needles was still unconscious and tied to the dining room table chair, his bloody head hung forward, blood-stained gauze and duct tape were wrapped around his face where his eyes used to be, but the tape was off of his mouth now to allow him to breathe more easily.

Stella and David were still in the bedroom. Cole was about to go and get them. He and Jose had cleaned up the mess around Needles as best as they could. They put his eyeballs in a bowl and left them out on the front porch—a gift for that monster out there.

Suddenly, Needles woke up. He lifted his head up and screamed. “My eyes! You took my eyes!”

Cole jumped to his feet and ran over to Needles. “Just try to calm down, Needles.” His own words sounded surreal to his ears, this whole situation seemed unreal to him.

“It hurts!” Needles howled. “It hurts so bad! Why did you do this to me, Cole?”

“You deserved it, you sick son of a bitch,” Jose said. He was still seated at the dining room table a few feet away from Needles. “If you hadn’t shot that old man in the bank, we wouldn’t even be here.”

Needles wouldn’t stop moaning and screaming. “Oh, God, where are you, Cole?” Needles rocked his head back and forth like he was trying to look around the room with eyes he didn’t have anymore.

“I’m right here,” Cole said from right beside Needles. Tears brimmed in his eyes as he looked at Needles, once his friend, now tied to a chair with his eyes carved out. What had he done? Cole asked himself. What had he become?

Needles still looked around as he moaned, like he couldn’t quite place where Cole was. “It hurts so bad!! I can’t take the pain!”

“Shut the fuck up!” Jose screamed at Needles, and then he got to his feet beside the table and glanced at Cole. “Shut him up again, please.” Jose paced away from the table, into the hallway, he needed to be away from Needles, he couldn’t take the crying anymore, but even in here he could still hear Needles screaming and moaning.

“Please, Cole!” Needles screamed. “I can’t take the pain anymore. I … I can’t take—”

Needles’ last words were cut off by a booming gunshot in the cabin.

Jose rushed back out from the hallway to see Cole standing behind Needles; Cole had his gun in his hand, still aimed at the back of Needles’ head. Needles was slumped forward in the chair as far as the rope and tape would allow him. His head was pitched forward and blood drained from the large wound in his forehead where the bullet had exploded out of his face. The gauze and tape over his eyes was stained dark red already, and a puddle of blood was forming on the garbage bag underneath the chair.

Jose stared at Cole in shock. “What the fuck did you do?”

Cole shook his head no as he stared at Jose with a vacant look in his eyes. “I couldn’t leave him suffering like that. I couldn’t let him keep feeling that kind of pain.”

Jose paced around the living room, a rage building in him quickly. He ran his hand through his dark hair several times. “Did you stop to think that the thing outside didn’t want him dead?”

Cole watched Jose. “I don’t care. I wasn’t going to let him keep on suffering.”

Jose punched his fist at the air a few times in frustration, and then he turned to Cole. “Fuck! We needed Needles! What are we supposed to do if that thing out there wants another body part? We could’ve used Needles over and over again.”

Cole felt that now familiar wave of nausea washing over him again, but this time it was Jose that nauseated him. He could feel his own rage building up inside of him, that rage that had been just beneath the surface of him the whole time he’d been in this cabin. “Let’s get Needles out on the front porch, and then it can have all the body parts it wants.”

CHAPTER 36

As the sun dipped down below the forest of trees in the west and the winter sky darkened in the east, Needles’ body lay on the floorboards of the front porch not too far away from his eyeballs which were offered up in one of Tom Gordon’s plastic cereal bowls. Both eyeballs faced the woods like they were looking at them. The freezing wind had picked up a little and the trees swayed, but there wasn’t any snow falling yet.

Inside the cabin, Cole, Jose, and Stella sat at the dining room table. The area in the dining room had been cleaned up as much as possible, but the chair that Needles had been tied to was still stained with blood and it was pushed in at the table, the back facing the hallway. The wood floor still had dark smears of blood stained into it from where Cole and Jose had dragged Needles’ body outside. The coils of bloody rope and telephone cords were piled up near the freezer, and the duct tape and gauze that had been wrapped around Needles’ head and body was now in the trash can.

David sat on the couch and watched the three as they sat at the table. He had his spiral notebook near him, but he wasn’t drawing in it now—it seemed like he was done with the things he had drawn. Every few minutes David glanced at the front door like he was expecting someone to come to the door.

Jose sat at the table with his hands curled around the whiskey bottle. He sipped from the bottle every few minutes and he was beginning to get a little drunk. He was beginning to lose his control just a little. But he didn’t care; he needed the numbness that the whiskey brought with it, even if just for a little while.

Cole and Stella sat close to each other at the table. The cabin was silent; the only sound that could be heard was the whistling winter wind outside whipping around the eaves. In the silence, Stella spoke.

“I’m an archaeologist,” she said, and then she looked at Cole.

Cole nodded; she’d already told him that before. He was tired now, beyond exhaustion. He wasn’t sure how many nights he’d stayed awake, but he was pretty sure he’d had less than eight hours of sleep in the last few days.

“I specialize in the cultures of the Southwest Native Americans,” Stella continued, and it seemed like she was leading somewhere this time, like there was something she finally wanted to tell them, something she finally wanted to reveal. “Especially the Anasazi. The Anasazi were a group of people who lived in that region hundreds of years ago. They built massive cities all over the region. They built kivas and they constructed roads that went on for miles and miles. They built some of their cities right into the sides of cliffs, massive cities carved right into the solid rock. The only way to get up to the city was by ladders or hand and toe holds carved right into the rock.”

Stella sipped her coffee. She glanced at David who watched her, and then she looked at Cole who was listening to her. “These cities, and some of their other cities, were highly defensible, like they were constantly at war and constantly defending themselves, like they were constantly afraid of something. Some scientists speculate that they were afraid of other tribes of Indians. But at that time, the Anasazi were the most advanced tribe in that area, maybe even in all of North America. Who would they need to be afraid of?”

Jose sipped his bottle of whiskey. “Is this going somewhere?” he asked her, his words slurring just slightly.

“About seven hundred years ago the Anasazi vanished,” Stella continued, undaunted by Jose’s remark.

“Like many groups of people in North and South America, the Anasazi built massive cities and roads, they built an entire civilization, and then they abandoned them, like they just walked away. Recent findings at some Anasazi sites have uncovered mass graves of murder victims and evidence of cannibalism.”

“The history lesson is fascinating …” Jose said and let his words trail off as he sipped more whiskey.

Stella ignored Jose as she went on. “I got a call from a colleague, a man named Jake. He told me that he’d made an amazing discovery, the greatest of his life. Maybe one of the most amazing and important discoveries in archaeological history, and he asked for my help. He needed my expertise of the Anasazi history.”

Stella paused for a moment, sipped more coffee, and then she continued. “Jake wanted everything kept quiet until we were sure what we’d really found. I drove there and met him at the dig site. It was amazing. Jake had found a hidden cave system, and inside the cave were the ruins of a civilization. An Anasazi civilization, I was sure of it.”

Cole stared at Stella. “And that’s where this happened to you and David? Like what’s happening here.”

“Yes. That’s where I found David. He was bloody, but not hurt. But he couldn’t remember what had happened. He wouldn’t even talk to any of us at first. He was afraid of everyone. Except me.”

Stella looked at David to gauge his reaction. He just stared back at her with his dark eyes, eyes that were almost black. He sat motionless on the couch.

“Not long after we found David, everything started to go wrong. Jake suggested that one of us take David to the nearest Navajo village and get some help for him. But …” Stella glanced at David again.

David watched her and then he looked at the front door.

“But our vehicles wouldn’t start. There was nothing wrong with them, they just wouldn’t start. Like all of the batteries had died at the same time.”

David’s breathing grew quicker as he watched the door.

“Then the first person went missing. Jim Whitefeather, a friend of mine. He left in the middle of the night like he just walked off into the desert. Or into the cave.”

“But then he came back,” Cole finished for her.

Stella nodded.

“What did he ask for?” Cole asked.

“It was like this. He asked for body parts.”

“And you guys gave him what he asked for?”

“Not at first,” Stella answered quickly. “We tried to run. Tried to escape. Tried to fight back. But it wouldn’t let us go. It made an example out of one of us.”

Cole stared at her.

“An example like Trevor,” she explained.

Cole flinched at his brother’s name. Cole looked away, thinking for a moment as he pushed the thought of his brother out of his mind. Then he looked back at Stella as a thought occurred to him. “So this thing just took you guys one by one, and then asked for body parts? And you don’t know why.”

“It was making us do things. Trying to scare us so badly that we’d do anything it wanted, anything it asked us to do no matter what it was.”

“Because it was leading up to something,” Cole said.

Stella saw a movement out of the corner of her eye. She glanced over at David and saw that he was frightened now as he stared at the front door. He was up on his feet, standing next to the couch. She looked back at Cole as he asked his next question.

“It was leading up to something specific,” Cole told her. “Wasn’t it?”

Stella didn’t answer. Cole had figured it out. A quick glance at Jose told her that Jose was getting drunk now and not really listening to them anymore, his eyes were nearly closed, pure exhaustion taking over his body.

“It’s leading up to something specific here, too,” Cole said, staring at her with an expression that seemed accusatory and victorious at the same time. “You know what it wants, don’t you?” he asked, his voice getting louder. It was even beginning to rouse Jose from his drunken slumber.

Stella looked over at David. He took a step towards the front door, then another, almost like he was in a trance.

Cole turned in his chair and looked at David, and then he turned back and looked at Stella. “You know what it’s going to ask for next,” he said even louder. “You know what it wants.”

“He’s out there,” David said from the living room.

This brought Jose fully awake. He jumped up from his chair and spun around on his feet and stared at David. Then he looked at Cole and Stella, the fear was back in his eyes now.

David took another two steps towards the door, and then he stopped and looked at Cole. “He’s calling you.”

CHAPTER 37

Jose didn’t waste any time. He grabbed his coat and walked right to the front door on legs that were a little unsteady from the amount of whiskey he’d drank in a short amount of time.

“Jose, wait,” Cole said a low voice.

Jose turned and looked at Cole through red-rimmed and terrified eyes. “No, we need to go out there. We can’t keep it waiting. We have to do whatever it wants.”

Jose turned and marched towards the front door.

Cole and Stella exchanged glances. Stella nodded and Cole followed Jose to the door. Jose was already unlocking the deadbolt. Stella took David’s hand and they both followed Cole and Jose outside onto the porch.

The four gathered together outside on the porch, a few steps away from the door. Stella was closest to the door. She closed the door almost all the way, leaving it open just a crack. The yellowish light from inside the cabin could be seen through the crack in the doorway. Outside, the world was growing dark very quickly. And it was getting colder.

Frank stood in the same spot as before—thirty yards away from the cabin. The snow was up to his calves and he wore the same clothes. He stood very still, no movement at all, almost a shadow himself in the pitch-black darkness that was descending on the land as the night moved in.

Cole stared at Frank, and he thought of what Jose had said about Frank’s body being hollowed out. Yet here Frank stood. Cole hadn’t believed Jose before, but now after seeing his own brother’s pieces put back together into a walking and talking body, he believed him.

Frank stared at them with a blank expression; there were no fake smiles from him anymore, no need to pretend any longer. They knew Frank was just a hollowed-out corpse now, just a meat puppet with some all-powerful, invisible force pulling his strings. Frank spoke in a loud, guttural voice. “He is very pleased so far. He believes you are ready for your final task.”

The four waited on the porch. None of them moved or said anything. They didn’t shout back at Frank like they had done before; they didn’t challenge him, or threaten him. What else could they do but listen to his demand?

“When you give him this one last thing he wants,” Frank continued, “then he will let you walk out of here untouched. You will be allowed to keep your money and leave.”

They were silent for a long moment, and then Cole finally spoke up. “What does he want?”

Stella held her breath. Cole had been right earlier in the cabin; she knew what Frank was going to ask for. She knew all along what this was leading up to—one final task, one final request from this thing. She looked at David. She still held his hand and she squeezed it a little harder. They braced themselves as Frank answered Cole.

“He wants you to kill the boy.”

They were all silent, not sure how to react.

Cole and Jose both looked behind them at Stella and David. It was just a brief glance from both of them, but Frank’s voice turned them back around.

“Kill the boy and leave his body on the front porch. Then all of this will be over.”

Cole shook his head no. This was too much. He had helped carve out his friend’s eyeballs earlier today, but this was going way too far now. How much more could he do? Where was the line? He couldn’t kill a little kid.

“No,” Cole said loudly as his breath plumed up in front of his mouth from the cold.

No reaction yet from Jose, Stella, or David.

No reaction from Frank.

“We can’t do that!” Cole yelled out to Frank.

Frank still didn’t answer. He began to glide back towards the trees but his legs didn’t move; it was like some invisible string was pulling him back to the dark mass of trees, or like he was on some kind of conveyer belt hidden underneath the snow. But he wasn’t answering Cole. He wasn’t arguing with Cole. He wasn’t threatening Cole. He didn’t need to—it didn’t need to. They all knew what it could do now.

“We can’t do that!” Cole yelled louder as he stepped to the edge of the porch.

Jose stepped away from Cole. He turned around and looked at Stella and David, keeping an eye on them as they stood near the front door. He spoke to Cole, but he kept his eyes on Stella and David, making sure that they weren’t going to dart back inside and try to lock them out here. “Cole, listen to me for a second.”

Cole turned and looked at Jose. “Jose, no …”

“Just think about it for a second,” Jose continued in a very calm tone, his voice soft and reasonable. “It’s asking for one life to spare the rest of us. One life for three, and then we can leave.”

“You think that thing’s going to let us leave?” Cole asked Jose.

“It doesn’t matter!” Jose snapped. His reasonable voice was suddenly gone now. “We have to do what it wants! I’m not going to end up like Frank. Or Trevor!”

Hearing his brother’s name stung Cole for a moment, he looked away, his defenses down.

Jose pulled out his pistol from his coat pocket and aimed it at Cole, but his eyes kept darting back to Stella and David.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Cole asked Jose.

“Stay right there,” Jose warned. He looked at Stella and David. “You two don’t move.”

“Let’s think about this, Jose,” Cole begged.

“Put your hands up,” Jose told Cole.

“Jose, we can’t do this.”

“We’ll just put a bullet in that kid’s head,” Jose said. “That’s all. You don’t have to do it. I’ll do it. He’ll never feel a thing. He’ll never see it coming.”

“We can’t do that.”

Jose held his gun steady on Cole even though he’d drank a lot of whiskey earlier. His eyes kept darting back to Stella and David. But then he looked at Cole when he said his next words.

“You might as well tell Stella the truth,” Jose told Cole.

CHAPTER 38

“Tell her the truth!” Jose repeated to Cole.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Stella watched Cole and Jose. She was ready to bolt inside with David, but she couldn’t take a chance on Jose shooting at them; they’d never make it inside—she had to wait for the right time.

“Jose, why don’t you put the gun down?” Cole said. “We can discuss this.”

“There’s nothing to discuss!” Jose said. He looked at Stella and David. “We were going to kill you two anyway. That’s the truth. We couldn’t leave two witnesses alive.”

“That’s a lie!” Cole said. “We never discussed anything like that.”

“Nobody discussed anything with you, Cole. You weren’t part of the team anymore. You just did this job to help your brother, to get him out of debt with Frank. Nobody trusted you anymore. Me and Frank didn’t trust either one of you anymore.”

“That’s a fucking lie!” Cole said, but there wasn’t as much force in his words now. He was beginning to see what may have really been going on. Frank and Jose were discussing things behind their backs. Were they going to kill him and Trevor after they killed Stella and David? Split the money up between the three of them? Or maybe they were going to kill Needles, too. There was a lot of money at stake this time, and perhaps they had been ready to kill for it.

Jose looked at Stella again, and he gave her his best and most reassuring smile in the darkness. “But listen, Stella,” he said. He was calling her by her name now. “We don’t have to kill you now. We just have to kill David.”

“We’re not killing that kid,” Cole said. “We have to think of another way.” Cole’s mind was spinning as he realized that Frank and Jose had been planning on killing everyone involved. If they had made it back to the warehouse to split the money up, he and Trevor would’ve been dead.

“There is no other way!” Jose snapped.

Cole noticed Jose’s body swaying just a bit. He was still a little unsteady on his feet from all the whiskey he had drank. His hand holding the gun was beginning to tremble.

This is my only chance, Cole thought. Jose isn’t going to wait much longer out here in the cold before he shoots David. Or all three of us.

“Just listen to me for a second, Jose,” Cole said, trying to stall for time, trying to wait for exactly the right time to charge.

Jose was about to explode with rage again—he was only a few seconds away from shooting, Cole was sure of that. But then Jose’s attention was distracted for a second by David opening the front door of the cabin.

Jose turned his gun on David.

Stella stepped in front of David, ready to take a bullet for him.

But Jose didn’t care—he’d shoot through Stella to get to that kid if he needed to.

Stella squeezed her eyes shut.

This was Cole’s only chance. He rushed at Jose and tackled him just as Jose’s finger pulled the trigger. The gun fired, but Cole had knocked Jose’s arm away just enough, and the bullet whizzed past Stella and struck the log wall of the cabin.

Cole slammed Jose into the side of the cabin. He heard a grunt as the breath left Jose’s lungs for a moment.

“Get inside!” Cole yelled at Stella and David.

Stella grabbed David and pushed at him, but David was already a step ahead of her. They hurried inside and slammed the door shut. Stella looked down at the door handle. She looked at the lock on the door handle. She looked at the deadbolt.

She couldn’t take a chance.

She locked the door.

*

Outside on the porch, Cole and Jose wrestled. Cole had a grip on Jose’s wrist, keeping the gun pointed down at the floorboards of the front porch. They wrestled on their feet for a moment, but with one violent twist of his body, Cole swung Jose over him in a Judo flip and they both landed on the floorboards of the front porch with Cole on top of Jose.

The gun went off.

The shot was loud in the eerie silence of the dark night all around the cabin. It echoed across the snowy fields.

*

Inside the cabin, Stella and David watched the door. They had heard the gunshot.

Who was shot?

Was it Cole?

Jose?

Both of them?

*

Cole got up off of Jose and his hands went to his own abdomen, afraid he’d been shot and didn’t feel the pain yet. But his bare hands came away dry. No blood on him. He looked down at Jose who wasn’t moving. Even in the darkness, Cole could see the darker stain spreading across Jose’s shirt underneath his open coat. Cole didn’t even remember shooting; he wasn’t even sure how it had happened.

It had happened so fast.

Cole picked up Jose’s gun from the porch and he aimed it down at Jose.

Jose stared up at Cole with wide eyes. He opened his mouth to speak and he coughed up a chunk of pulpy blood and then gasped for air.

Cole backed away from Jose, he moved closer to the front door of the cabin.

Jose’s body trembled as he sat up and scooted across the floorboards to the log wall of the cabin. He pushed himself up into a sitting position with his back against the cabin wall. He gritted his teeth and moaned in pain; his hands flew to his abdomen, holding on to it, trying in vain to stop the flow of blood.

Cole turned and looked out at the snowy field. “We left you a bonus!!” he screamed out at the woods. Then he turned to walk to the front door and Jose’s hand grabbed Cole’s pants leg, stopping him for a second.

Jose stared up at Cole with wide, terrified eyes. “Please, Cole. Don’t leave me out here for that thing.”

Cole stared down at Jose for a moment, and then he ripped his pants leg out of Jose’s grasp. He walked to the front door of the cabin and turned the door handle but it wouldn’t open—it was locked.

He beat on the door. “Let me in!” He screamed at the door. “Stella, it’s me! It’s Cole! Jose is shot! He’s not coming inside with me!”

No answer from inside.

Cole could hear Jose chuckling from the darkness. That chuckle turned into a laugh. “Now who’s been double-crossed?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Cole said.

“We’ll just both have to wait out here now,” Jose said. “We’ll both have to see what comes for us out of the darkness.”

There was a sound from the dark woods at the edge of the snowy field, a loud sound, like something very big was crashing through the trees. Cole turned and stared at the darkness. Nearly all of the light from the setting sun was gone now and the world around them was blanketed in almost pure darkness. And there was something in the woods, coming closer.

Cole turned back to the front door and pounded on it. “Let me in! There’s something in the woods, I can hear it!”

CHAPTER 39

Stella and David stared at the front door. Cole beat on the door, pleading to be let inside. Cole claimed it was only him and that Jose had been shot.

But could she believe him?

David touched Stella’s hand. He nodded his head yes.

Stella nodded back at David, and she took a deep breath. She moved close to the door and talked through it. “It’s only you, Cole?” she asked.

“Yes,” Cole answered, and there was panic in his voice. “You have to hurry. I can hear something out in the trees. Something big.”

Stella looked back at David one more time, making sure. Then she opened the door and Cole rushed inside.

Stella closed and locked the door. She twisted the knob for the deadbolt and then she backed away as she watched Cole.

Cole stood only a few feet away from Stella, closer to the kitchen. He looked very cold even though he was only outside for a few minutes, but he didn’t have his coat, hat, or gloves. He stood very still and stared at her.

Stella began to wonder if she’d made the wrong decision by letting him in.

“You were going to leave me out there?” Cole asked Stella in a strangely calm voice. “Leave me out there in the cold? Out there with that thing?”

“I … I had to be sure,” she told him.

“I just killed another friend of mine to save you and David. How is that not enough?”

“You’ve seen now what that thing can do,” Stella answered quickly, a sudden anger in her voice. “I had to be sure it was really you.”

Cole walked away from Stella and let out a long breath. He inhaled deeply, trying to calm himself down, trying to think rationally. But he’d been through so much in the last few days; he’d seen things he never thought were possible. He hadn’t had much sleep or food, and now thinking rationally was a little more difficult than it used to be.

He grabbed the bottle of whiskey and took a sip, letting the fiery liquid relax him a little. He turned and looked at Stella who stood in the same spot in the living room, staring at him. He had frightened her, but at least she was trying to trust him.

She had trusted him enough to let him back inside, and he needed to trust her, too.

“This is what it’s been leading up to the whole time, isn’t it?” he asked Stella.

She nodded yes.

“This is the same thing that it led up to at the dig site, isn’t it?”

Stella glanced at David, and then she looked back at Cole. She sighed heavily and nodded. “Yes.”

“Why does it want us to kill David? He’s just a kid. Why doesn’t it just come in here and do it?”

Stella hesitated for a moment, staring at Cole. “I don’t think it can,” she finally said. “I think it’s afraid of David for some reason. I don’t think it’s able to kill David so it needs others to do it. It tries to scare others so badly that they will do anything it wants—even kill a little boy.”

There was a pounding on the front door.

They all jumped.

From the other side of the door, they heard Jose’s voice. “Cole, let me in! I’m not dead yet!”

They all stood very still and stared at the door.

“I need help,” Jose continued from out on the porch. He beat on the door again. “Please, I’m bleeding bad, man. Please don’t leave me out here!” They could hear that Jose was beginning to cry. “Please don’t leave me out here with this thing!”

Cole took a step towards the door. He rested his hand on top of the butt of his gun that stuck up from the waistband of his pants.

“I won’t hurt David,” Jose said from behind the door. “I promise. Just let me in.”

Cole took another step closer to the door. He stared at it. It couldn’t be Jose. He had to be dead by now. Or taken by that thing out there.

“We’ll think of another way,” Jose said from the other side of the door. “Like you said, we’ll think of something else. We won’t kill David.”

As Cole stared at the door and took another step towards it, David jumped off the couch and ran to Cole. He grabbed Cole’s hand and took it in his own, like a son would grab his father’s hand. Cole looked down at David who stared up at him.

“It’s not him anymore,” David told Cole in a soft voice.

Cole nodded down at David. “I know,” he told him.

There was a sudden flurry of poundings on the door. Jose screamed at them from the other side of the door, and his voice was no longer pleading; now it was angry. “You’re going to be very sorry, Cole! It will get you just like it got me! It won’t let you die. You just go on and on. Just like Frank! Just like Trevor!”

Jose’s voice turned deeper as he continued shouting, his voice became more guttural, more demonic. “Kill the boy, or it’s going to be bad. So bad. Worse than you can possibly imagine!”

There was a rush of wind from outside and the door shook and rattled in its frame.

And then everything was deathly quiet.

Cole looked down at David who still held his hand and stared up at him.

Cole knelt down and got on the same eye level as David. “Don’t worry, David. We’re not going to hurt you. We’re not going to give you to that thing outside. We’ll find a way out of here. I promise.”

David stared at Cole for a moment, then he jumped at Cole and hugged him, squeezing him tightly, his eyes shut with a few tears slipping out.

Cole was a little shocked by David’s sudden hug. He glanced at Stella who watched them. She wiped away her own tears.

David let Cole go and he ran back to the couch.

Cole got back up to his feet and he looked at Stella. “We have to try and run,” he told her.

Stella just stared at him.

“But we can’t run at night,” Cole went on. “We need to get through tonight and leave in the morning.”

Cole pulled Jose’s gun out of the waistband of his pants from under the back of his shirt. He held it by the barrel and walked over to Stella. He handed it to her.

Stella took Jose’s gun.

“Do you know how to use one of these?” Cole asked her.

Stella looked down at the gun in her hand, and then in a blur of motion, she expertly checked the clip for bullets, then popped the clip back in. She racked a bullet into the chamber, and then checked to make sure the safety was on.

Cole stared at her in amazement.

Stella gave Cole a small smile. “I taught myself how to use guns a few years ago. A girl by herself at remote dig sites can be a little unnerving.”

Cole smiled. “You’re full of surprises.”

He looked at the front door. “Since we’re going to be stuck here for the night, I think it’s a good idea to barricade the front door and windows.”

CHAPTER 40

The night was eerily quiet and calm. There was no winter wind whistling around the eaves of the cabin. There were no sounds of Frank or Jose calling out to them from the snow. No sounds of footsteps on the front porch. Everything was just … quiet.

Earlier in the night Cole had barricaded the front windows and doors as best as he could. He managed to tear apart the dining room table and chairs so he could use the wood for the barricades. He used the hammer and various nails he’d found earlier in the cabinet underneath the sink. He used slats from underneath the beds and nailed the pieces of wood over the back door and the front windows that looked out onto the porch. They shoved Needles’ recliner against the front door; it wasn’t much of a barricade, but they didn’t want to use the couch as a barricade because none of them wanted to sit in the chair that Needles had occupied for so much of the time he was in the cabin. They upended the dining room table and shoved it against the entrance to the hallway. It closed off the bathroom to them, but they would just have to make do.

None of them wanted to go into the bathroom anyway after what happened to Trevor.

It was late, nearly two o’clock in the morning. David fell asleep on the couch. Cole and Stella sat on the floor in front of the couch, like they were guarding David.

Stella had Jose’s gun beside her on the floor. She stifled a yawn, trying to stay awake.

Cole looked at her. “I just wanted you to know that this was supposed to be my last bank job.”

Stella looked at him for a moment. “You guys seemed like an experienced group.”

“I used to be a part of Frank’s crew. Then I quit. But then Trevor got involved with them. He ended up owing Frank some money—a lot of money—and I needed to help them with one last job to help Trevor pay him back.”

Stella nodded.

“I don’t expect you to believe me; I just wanted to tell you that this was going to be my last time.” Cole thought for a moment. “I was really trying to change. I just wished I would’ve changed a little sooner. Before I got Trevor involved …”

“I’m sorry,” Stella said in a soft voice. “I’m an only child. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to lose a brother.”

They were quiet for a long moment in the murky cabin. They had turned all the lights off except for the one over the stove.

“How did you get away from that dig site in New Mexico?” Cole asked Stella.

Stella looked at Cole, trying to determine if there was any accusation in his eyes or in the tone of his voice.

“You said your vehicles wouldn’t start,” Cole continued. “And then you said that the thing out there was taking your friends one by one.”

Stella sighed. “Even before I realized that the thing out there wanted David, I began to suspect that there was something … something special about him.” Stella stole a quick glance at David—he was still sleeping peacefully. “When the thing asked the few of us who remained to kill David, I began to believe that it needed us to kill David because it couldn’t do it by itself.”

“So David is …” Cole thought for a moment, trying to find the right words. “He’s special. Like powerful. Like you think he has powers?”

“I think so,” Stella answered. “There were only a few of us left,” Stella continued in a low voice, looking away from Cole. “And Jake, my friend, he hadn’t been taken yet. But Jake and the others wanted to kill David. They felt like it was their only way out. I tried to convince them that once we gave it what it wanted, it wouldn’t let us go. It would just kill all of us because it wouldn’t need us anymore. But I couldn’t convince them; they had their minds made up. They wanted to kill David. So I took him and I ran to my truck.”

“And you knew it would start?”

“Yeah, I had a feeling it would,” Stella answered him. “I had a feeling that David would help it start whether he realized it or not. It was a big gamble, but it was the only choice I had left.” Stella didn’t mention to Cole that she had watched Jake slit his own throat rather than let that thing take him alive.

They were quiet for a moment.

Stella thought of the things David had drawn in his notebook. She needed to take another chance right now, she needed to trust Cole.

“I want to show you something else,” Stella said. “I want to trust you. And I want you to trust me even though I know you don’t have any reason to since I’ve hidden so much from you until now …”

“You had to,” Cole said quickly. “I understand why you did it.” Cole thought of her trusting him, and then he thought of the secret he’d kept to himself all this time—the snowmobile in the garage. But who knew if it would even work. The snowmobile could be old or damaged. Or maybe that thing out there knew it was there. Maybe that thing could read minds and had learned of the snowmobile from Cole’s thoughts.

Cole pushed the thought of the snowmobile out of his mind as Stella turned and carefully pulled the spiral notebook out from under David. She opened the notebook and showed Cole what was inside.

He took the notebook and flipped through page after page of what looked like some kind of symbols. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but it seemed like some kind of ancient language.

He looked at her, not really understanding what he was looking at.

“It’s the Anasazi language,” she told him in an awed voice.

Cole shook his head a little. “David’s been writing in this language?” Cole shrugged his shoulders like it shouldn’t be a big deal. “Isn’t David Native American?”

“Yes. I’m pretty sure he’s Navajo; most likely full-blooded. But he’s never told me much about himself.”

“But this Ana … ana …”

“Anasazi. Like I told you before, they lived hundreds of years ago and then they vanished. No one knows where they went to. Some say they intermingled with other tribes, or even became other tribes. Some say they left the area. Others even speculated that the Anasazi were the remnants of the Maya who also built massive cities and then abandoned them. But no one knows for sure.”

Cole nodded.

“The Anasazi, like many ancient peoples of North and South America, had no written language, or at least no significant evidence had ever been found.”

It was beginning to sink in a little to Cole.

“There have been bits and pieces of Anasazi symbols found, but not much, not enough to get a clear overview of any kind of language. It’s sort of like Egyptian hieroglyphics.”

Cole nodded; he’d heard of Egyptian hieroglyphics before.

“I asked David how he learned how to write all of this, but he said he didn’t know.”

Cole glanced down at the notebook which was filled with page after page of symbols. All this time in the cabin David had been scribbling down these symbols, one after the other.

He looked at Stella. “Can you read it?”

“I can recognize some of the symbols, enough to know that it’s from the Anasazi culture, but I can’t make enough of it out to understand any of it.”

Cole sighed, thinking this over.

Stella sat up a little more, becoming a little excited, her eyes lit up in the darkness of the cabin. “The word Anasazi is a Navajo word,” she continued. “A lot of times the word is translated as Ancient Ones. But a more accurate translation is Ancient Enemy.”

“So the Navajo called the Anasazi their ancient enemies?” Cole asked.

“That’s what most scholars believe. But I have a different theory.”

Cole waited for Stella to continue. He could tell that she was excited, archaeology was definitely her passion.

“I believe that Anasazi wasn’t a word that the Navajo used to name the tribe, I believe it’s a word they used to describe the beings that took the Anasazi and caused them to vanish.”

CHAPTER 41

“Like I told you before,” Stella went on, “the Anasazi were a very advanced culture at that time, about seven to eight hundred years ago; they were the most advanced culture in North America. They had no one to fear, yet they built these massive cities right into the sides of cliffs. Why go through all of that work if they were the strongest and most advanced tribe?”

Cole didn’t answer. He knew he couldn’t keep up with Stella on this level of conversation. He just let her continue.

“All these years, archaeologists have always wondered what the Anasazi were defending themselves from. What were they so afraid of? And after all of that work, what would make them suddenly leave these cities? Or the Maya. Or the Olmecs. Or the Inca. Something drove all of them out of their cities. Some say it was because of drought or shortage of food supplies, but other tribes stayed in the same regions.”

Stella took a breath; she had been talking so fast, her voice getting louder. She glanced at David to make sure she hadn’t disturbed him. “There are many legends in Native American cultures about demons that would come in the night and take people. Sometimes these demons would ask for things, offerings. And if these offerings weren’t given to them, then they would take people. And supposedly the only people who could see these demons were the shamans. Like witch doctors.”

Cole nodded to indicate that he understood what a shaman was.

“What if David can see that thing out there? What if the reason it wants to kill David is because he’s a shaman—a natural-born shaman?”

Cole just stared at her.

“Many believe that shamans were people who may have been born with some kind of psychic or telekinetic abilities. And they used these … these skills to wield power over their tribe.”

“So you think David is a natural shaman? You think he’s psychic or telekinetic?”

“I think he might be, even though he doesn’t know it yet.”

Stella looked at the front door with the recliner in front of it. She looked back at Cole.

“I don’t know what that thing is out there. A demon? I don’t know. The Native American legends of demons predate Christianity. An alien? Who knows? There are many theories of visitations by aliens to cultures in North, Central, and South America. The Nazca Plains. The Hopi Indian rituals. The sacrifices at the temples in the Maya culture may have not been religious ceremonies to their gods. What if they were offerings to that thing out there through the years? Maybe that thing out there only comes around every few hundred years. What if a day to it is a hundred years to us, and a night of sleeping to it is a hundred years?” Stella had been talking so fast, she stopped and stared into Cole’s eyes where she could see doubt and confusion.

“So you think that thing out there might be an alien? Like from outer space? Like from a UFO?”

“Maybe they’ve been here for a long, long time,” she said quickly. “Even before human civilization. I know it sounds far-fetched, but look around you. You’ve seen what that thing can do.”

Cole nodded.

“I think that thing out there may roam the earth, unseen and unfelt by most. But then every once in a while someone like David comes along; someone who can see it, feel it, maybe even fight it.”

Suddenly, Cole became a little excited. He could see a glimmer of hope, a small dot of light at the end of this long horrible tunnel they were in. “So you’re saying that we can get David to kill this thing?”

“I don’t know if it’s that easy.”

“What do you mean?”

“David may be a natural-born shaman, but he’s still just a boy. He’s had no training. He may not even know what to do.”

“Great,” Cole said and sighed. “Then I guess we’re back to square one. We try and run in the morning.”

“It may be all we can do for now,” Stella told him. “But we need to protect David. That’s the most important thing.”

Cole leaned back against the couch and let out another long sigh. He looked at Stella who yawned again. “Why don’t you get an hour’s rest? I know you need it. I’ll stand guard for a little while.”

Stella nodded. “I’ll try. Wake me up if you hear anything.”

“I will. Just try to get some rest. Tomorrow morning may be very stressful.”

*

Almost three hours later everything was still quiet outside. Cole hadn’t heard a single sound from out there, not even the wind.

He sat near the kitchen in the only dining room chair that they hadn’t broken apart and used as wood for the barricades over the windows. He watched Stella and David. Both of them were asleep, both of them breathing heavily.

Cole watched them for a while. He needed to make sure they were asleep.

He got to his feet, being as quiet as he could.

He looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. It would be dawn very soon.

He knew what he needed to do now.

CHAPTER 42

Cole opened the refrigerator. He had rummaged around in here for some food earlier. They had eaten a lot of it so far. But he had seen something earlier that he thought he could use—a can of soda in the bottom drawer underneath a head of wilted lettuce. He took out the can of soda from the crisper drawer and set it on the counter next to the stove. It was a cheap brand of cola. But it didn’t matter to him because he wasn’t going to drink it.

He peeked into the living room.

Stella and David were both still asleep.

Cole looked back at the stove. It was a gas stove. He lifted up the top and blew out the pilot light. He lowered the lid carefully, trying not to make a sound. Once the lid was back down, he turned on all of the burners and the oven. He could already smell the rotten egg smell of gas coming out of the burners.

He grabbed the can of soda from the counter and shook it up. Then he opened the microwave oven and set the can inside. He closed the door and set the timer on the microwave for thirty minutes. The digital numbers began counting down from twenty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds. Fifty-eight seconds. Fifty-seven seconds. After thirty minutes the microwave oven would start and heat up the can of soda. The numbers counted down like a ticking time bomb in a movie.

Because this was a bomb.

Cole looked into the living room; he watched Stella and David as they slept while he slipped his coat on. He could feel the stacks of money in his coat pockets that he’d stuffed earlier; the metal case of money, now about half full, still sat on the floor in front of his chair. He had also stuffed some packs of money into his socks and a few in his pants pockets. There was no way he could carry all of the money, but he guessed he must’ve had close to a hundred thousand dollars on him.

This is my share of the money, his mind whispered. And Trevor’s. This was our starting over money.

At least he hoped he would have a chance to start over.

But first he needed to get out of this place alive.

Cole slid his hands into his thin leather gloves and he glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was almost six o’clock in the morning.

Frank and the others hadn’t even tried to attack yet. Why? What were they waiting for?

They are waiting for me, his mind whispered to him again. They are waiting to see what I will do, waiting to see if I will follow instructions and kill the boy.

Cole grabbed the flashlight he had set on the counter earlier and he walked as quietly as he could to the front door. He unlocked the deadbolt and the clicking noise sounded loud in the silent night, but he didn’t even bother to turn around and look at Stella and David to see if they were waking up now. What could he do now? He didn’t have the time to explain his actions or motives now because the clock was already ticking down to zero—down to detonation.

He slid the recliner out of the way and unlocked the door handle. He opened the door up to the freezing air, and then he slipped out into the pre-dawn darkness and closed the door behind him.

*

Stella opened her eyes and she watched Cole slip outside and close the door. It was a surreal moment for her as her mind drifted back to a similar scenario for her when she had slipped out into the night from the trailer at the dig site in New Mexico and ran outside for David.

She turned and looked at David. She thought about waking him up, but she didn’t. Let him sleep some more. He needed his rest. He needed to be at his strongest in a little while when they made their escape.

She had read Cole wrong, she realized that now. She had believed that he was really going to stick around and help them. But she should’ve known better. He was a criminal and no matter how much he said he was going to change, he couldn’t do it. He was still just a criminal.

She looked into the kitchen at the single dining room chair that was left. Cole had been sitting in it, she guessed, because one of the metal cases of money was on the floor. It was open, and even from here in the living room she could see that some of the stacks of money were gone.

She thought about taking some of that money. A pack or two could help her and David get far away from all of this.

She had decided not to go to her aunt’s house if they got out of this cabin. What would she do if this thing followed them up there? What would she do if it took her aunt and then sent her aunt back as a hollowed-out husk that asked for things in a gravelly voice?

Or maybe this thing would try a different approach next time. Maybe it would tear her aunt apart piece by piece; her aunt would scream and beg Stella to help her, to kill David so this thing would stop hurting her.

Stella closed her eyes for a moment and tried to push the terrible vision out of her mind. No, she couldn’t risk hurting her aunt or anyone else that she knew. She needed some of that stolen money so they could run and find somewhere safe.

She got up and hurried through the murky cabin. She crouched down in front of the open case of money. So many stacks of money inside—one hundred dollar bills collected into a brick of money wrapped in plastic. Stacks and stacks of the plastic bricks of money. She was about to grab one of them, and then she thought of the old man who had been killed in the bank robbery. The one Cole said Needles had killed. This was blood money. A man had died for this money.

And many had died since then.

But she couldn’t let that get to her, she needed to protect David, and she needed some of this money to take him somewhere safe, a place where he could grow up and become strong. Maybe she could find someone who could help them, a shaman or Medicine man who could train David to harness his powers.

That might mean going back to the Navajo reservation, back to where they had come from, back to where all of this had started.

But what else could she do?

She rolled up her pants legs and grabbed a few stacks of the money. She stuffed the money down into her socks and then rolled her pants legs back down to her hiking boots. She stuffed more stacks of money into the waistband of her pants. She took a few more stacks so she could stuff them into her coat pockets.

And then she glanced into the kitchen and saw the numbers on the microwave oven that sat on the counter. The numbers were moving; counting down.

Now she could smell the odor of gas coming from the stove.

And that’s when she heard the thump from the freezer.

She jumped up to her feet and stared into the kitchen at the freezer against the far wall. The lid bumped again; it opened just a bit and then thumped back down.

“Oh God,” Stella whispered.

CHAPTER 43

Cole stepped off the porch and his boots sank down into the snow. He had his gun in his coat pocket, but he didn’t take it out; he wasn’t even sure it would do any good anymore, yet he still felt better knowing that it was there.

He watched the snowy field and the dark blob of trees, but he couldn’t see much in the darkness. The moon was already setting low in the sky behind the trees, but even with the scattering of clouds across the night sky, he could see a little bit into the darkness. He didn’t turn on the flashlight yet, he would wait until he was inside the garage to use it. He didn’t know if using the flashlight would attract this thing out here, but he had a feeling that it didn’t matter either way—this thing knew he was out here now, he was sure of it; he could practically feel it watching him, waiting to see what he was going to do.

Waiting to see if he would follow instructions.

As long as Cole was following instructions, he felt sure that he was relatively safe for the moment.

Cole trudged through the snow towards the hulking black shape in the darkness that was the garage. He walked past Tom Gordon’s pickup truck and it blocked the freezing wind a little. Already his face felt numb and his fingers were turning into ice blocks underneath his thin leather gloves. He paused for a moment at the end of the pickup and looked around one more time—nobody moving in the darkness. He looked back at Frank’s spot in the snow, but Frank wasn’t there. He looked back at the cabin which was dark except for the yellowish glow of the kitchen light in the windows. He didn’t see any movement inside and the door wasn’t open with Stella watching him from the doorway.

He turned back to the garage. He needed to hurry; he could see the digital numbers from the microwave oven (bomb) counting down in his mind.

He hurried through the snow to the garage doors which were already partway open from when he’d entered the garage days ago. But he would need to push the doors open even wider to drive the snowmobile out.

And what if it doesn’t start? What if the battery is dead? What if that thing has known about the snowmobile the whole time and destroyed it already? What if it has known about my plans the whole time?

Cole pushed these thoughts away. He had to try. What else could he do?

He pushed at the other wooden door with his hands and immediately he felt the sting of the cold through his gloves. He pushed against the door, but it wasn’t budging. He leaned into it more, driving with his legs, trying to find some traction in the scattering of snow on the concrete of the garage and the gravel of the driveway in front of the doorway. One last push, and he nearly screamed with effort as …

… the door broke free with a crackling of ice. The garage door let out a wail of protest into the freezing air as he slid it all the way open until it thumped to a stop.

That might have awakened Stella, he thought.

He hurried into the darkness of the garage. It was like entering the mouth of a cave. He thought about looking for a light switch somewhere on the wall; if the electricity worked in the cabin, then it must work out here. But he didn’t want to waste time with a search for the switch; he had to hurry. The flashlight should be enough to light his way. Besides, he knew exactly where he was going in the garage.

He turned on the flashlight, its beam knifed through the darkness and he could see the clouds of his quick breaths in front of his face. He moved forward through the pathways of boxes, crates, shelves, and junk. He came to the tarp over the snowmobile—it was just how he had left it, with a few boxes toppled down on top of the blue tarp.

Cole set the flashlight on a nearby shelf, and he tried his best to angle the light beam down onto the tarp. He pushed the boxes to the side and he ripped the tarp away; it made a loud crinkling noise when he stuffed it down between some boxes. He could see tiny ice crystals and dust floating in the air through the light beam.

And right where he’d seen it before was the snowmobile. He checked it over quickly, it was an older model, maybe ten years old he guessed, but it looked well-maintained. Living out here in the woods and mountains, this snowmobile would be someone’s (Tom Gordon’s) lifeline if a blizzard hit, and that person would take care of it; the snowmobile would need to be operable at all times.

He shoved his hand into his pants pocket and even though his fingers were beginning to go numb, he could feel the keys to the snowmobile. He grabbed the key and stuck it into the ignition. He twisted the key gently, he didn’t want to start the snowmobile, he just wanted to see if the electrical system still worked and he wanted to see how much fuel was in it.

The lights of the snowmobile lit up when he twisted the key, and he could see the fuel gauge—almost full. He twisted the key to the off position, took it out of the ignition and pocketed it. He didn’t want to start the snowmobile yet—there was something else he needed to do, the other reason he was in the garage.

He grabbed the nearly full gas can from the floor and ran for the open garage doors. The open doorway looked like a dark blue square against the pitch-black garage wall. He almost expected Frank or Jose to step into that dark blue square. He could see Frank’s head cocked to the side in his mind; he could see that plastic smile. “Where are you going, Cole?” Frank would ask in his pleasant but gurgling and grave-cold voice.

Or maybe Trevor would step into the doorway, the jagged pieces of his remade body silhouetted in the doorway.

Cole pushed the thought of Trevor away.

No one stepped into the doorway and Cole ran out of the garage and right to the cabin.

Frank and the others would be coming now, Cole thought. They would be coming when they saw what he was doing.

You’re not following instructions, his mind whispered.

Fuck the instructions, Cole thought.

He ran as fast as he could and the gas in the plastic can sloshed as he stomped through the snow. His lungs were burning and his muscles were already aching from the run. He ran right up to the corner of the cabin, the same corner where Trevor had hopped over the porch railing down into the snow to check the back of the cabin the first day they were here—it seemed so long ago now.

Cole pulled off the plastic cap on the nozzle of the gas can and he tossed it away. He wouldn’t need it anymore; he was going to use every bit of this gasoline. He sloshed the gas all over the logs of the cabin. He ran down the side of the cabin, drenching the logs as he went.

He hurried around to the back of the cabin and he continued to douse the wood with the gas. Then he ran over to Stella’s Chevy Suburban and splashed gas all over the vehicle. He was about to run back to the cabin and finish the job, but he saw something moving around in the dark field.

Two figures stumbled through the snowy back field, getting closer and closer to the cabin. It was difficult to make out the details of the figures, but just by the awkward way one of them moved through the snow, like the pieces of his body were shifting against each other, and the tatters of clothing were hanging from the frame, he could tell it was Trevor.

Cole didn’t watch them approach; he had to keep his mind on what he was doing, on the task at hand. The digital numbers were counting down in his mind. He ran back to the cabin and continued dousing the logs with the gas.

He rounded the corner of the cabin and ran as fast as he could through the snow, still dousing the logs on this side of the cabin with the gas he had left. He was afraid Needles and Trevor would catch up to him. He was afraid that he would feel cold dead fingers grabbing the back of his neck soon, afraid that he would hear his brother’s now-raspy voice.

The gas in the plastic container was almost gone when Cole got to the front corner of the cabin by the porch. He looked back behind him; he could see his tracks through the snow, but he didn’t see the two figures anymore.

You know who they were, his mind whispered to him. They were Needles and Trevor. You know that; don’t try to pretend that you don’t know who they were.

Cole ignored the whisperings in his mind that seemed to be getting louder and louder. He splashed what little gas he had left all over the logs and then he threw the gas can into the snow. He climbed up onto the railing, clamored over it, and then dropped down onto the floorboards with a thud as snow flaked off of his pants legs and boots. He got to his feet and he was about to bolt to the front door, but a voice stopped him in his tracks. It was Frank’s voice—this monster’s mouthpiece.

“What are you doing, Cole?”

Cole looked out at the field and he saw Frank standing in the snow. He was standing in the same spot as before. Same Frank. Same clothes. Same smile. Same hollowed-out body.

Only this time Frank had someone else with him—Jose. And Jose held an ax.

“You need to kill the boy, Cole,” Frank said.

Cole took a step towards the front door, and then another, yet he still kept his eyes on Frank and Jose.

As Cole took a step closer to the front door, Jose took a step closer to the cabin.

Cole couldn’t see Jose all that well in the darkness, but even from what he could make out, he could tell that there was something wrong with the way Jose looked, something very wrong with his body, his neck, and his face.

Cole took another step towards the front door; he was only about six or seven long strides away from it.

And now Jose started running towards the cabin through the snow. He raised the ax up in his hands which were way too thin—almost skeletal.

Cole ran for the front door. His boots clomped down on the floorboards and snow flaked off of his pants and coat. He reached his hands out for the door handle as a thought raced through his mind.

What if Stella was awake now? What if she’d seen him leave? What if she had locked the door?

CHAPTER 44

Stella hadn’t locked the door; she hadn’t even made it to the door yet. She still stared at the freezer in the kitchen. She was on her feet now and she backed away from the nearly empty case of money and from the dining room table chair. She backed away from the kitchen with its microwave oven that she could see was clearly counting down numbers. She backed away from the smell of gas.

She backed away from the freezer.

The lid continued bumping up and down, and then the lid finally crashed open and slammed into the log wall. It was held there against the wall by a thin arm with a spider-like hand.

Oh God, Stella thought. They had forgotten about Tom Gordon in the freezer. They had been so worried about barricading the doors and windows, that they forgot that the owner of the cabin was still stowed away inside the cabin this whole time.

Why hadn’t they thought to strap the lid down somehow? At least with strips of tape.

But it was too late to worry about that now.

Stella had backed all the way up into the living room, in front of the couch where David still slept. But she didn’t look at David; she kept her eyes on the freezer where Tom Gordon sat straight up. His movements were jerky as he climbed out of the freezer, and his limbs, which seemed like they were at odd angles, popped back into place with loud snapping sounds as he moved. Tom Gordon’s body wasn’t completely thawed yet and the ice crystals still twinkled on his bluish skin. He stared right at Stella with his eyeless face.

And then he smiled.

“No,” Stella whispered.

She finally turned to David. He was still sleeping on the couch, but his arms were straight up in the air and his hands moved like he was still drawing the symbols in his notebook, still writing an ancient language that he couldn’t possibly know.

“David!” she screamed. “Wake up!”

David’s eyes moved back and forth underneath his closed eyelids. Back and forth. Back and forth. But he wasn’t opening his eyes, he wasn’t waking up. His hands moved in the air as he drew the imaginary symbols.

“David!”

She shook him. “You have to wake up!”

A slamming noise startled Stella. She looked back at Tom Gordon who stood in front of the freezer on unsteady legs. But she realized the slamming noise hadn’t come from the kitchen. It had come from …

… the front door.

*

Cole burst through the front door and then he slammed it shut. He locked the deadbolt, but he knew they were going to have to get out of this cabin very soon—it was a ticking time bomb.

“Cole!” he heard Stella scream at him.

He turned and saw Stella in front of the couch where David slept, but David had his arms raised up in the air and his hands were moving. But to Cole it didn’t seem like his hands were drawing an ancient language in the air, to Cole it looked more like David was a puppeteer pulling on imaginary strings.

Cole saw Stella’s eyes dart to the kitchen.

He followed her stare and saw Tom Gordon by the freezer, he watched him take a step away from the freezer, a step towards them.

“Where’d you go, Cole?” Stella asked in a cracking voice; she seemed close to tears.

Cole ran to Stella. “I’ve got us a way out of here,” he told her. “Get David! We need to go!”

Just then something slammed into the front door—an ax. Cole snapped his eyes to the front door and he could see the tip of the ax poking through the wood of the front door. The ax blade wiggled out and it left a gash in the wood. A few seconds later the ax slammed into the door again.

Stella was watching the door as Cole grabbed her. “Get David up!”

“I’ve tried! He’s not waking up!”

“I’ll carry David,” he told her. He saw that she had Jose’s gun in her hand. “You need to put that gun down. You can’t shoot that gun in here no matter what happens.”

She nodded; she knew what the gas smell in the cabin meant. She dropped her gun on the floor, it landed with a thud.

Cole turned to bend down and scoop David up off the couch, but he never got the chance to pick him up.

“Where are we going?” Stella asked him

“We’ll go out the back,” he said, but even as Cole uttered the words he could hear the splintering of wood from down the hall, like something incredibly strong was tearing the back door off of its hinges.

They were trapped. They were surrounded.

It was never going to let me get out, Cole’s mind whispered. It knew about my plans all along and it was always one step ahead of me. I was never going to outsmart it—it has been around a long, long time.

Tom Gordon stumbled towards them and he nearly fell over because of his unsteady legs, but he kept on coming. He kept stumbling towards them, impossibly seeing through the black holes where his eyes used to be. And he opened his mouth and bared his teeth in a rictus smile.

The ax hit the front door again and again. It had already nearly split the door right down the middle; the door was barely hanging in the doorway by the door handle and the hinges.

From the hallway, behind the flimsy barricade of the dining room table, Cole heard two more bodies stumbling forward through the darkness.

Needles and Trevor, his mind whispered at him. Needles with his eyeless face and the gory exit wound in his forehead that would now be like another dark hole in his face.

And Trevor. Cole didn’t want to think about seeing Trevor again.

Stella shook David again and again. She screamed at him to wake up. But he wouldn’t wake up.

Jose split the front door apart with one last powerful strike from his ax. He stepped through into the cabin, into the light, and Cole could see Jose now.

The flesh from Jose’s neck and throat were nearly gone; only a thin shaft of spine and a few spindly tendons held his head up, like some kind of flesh balloon being held aloft by a string of bone.

Jose’s face had been peeled away in many places, revealing shiny white bone. On one side of his face, a large section of his teeth were visible now that the flesh was gone; his tongue flicked over the white teeth like a giant red slug.

Jose took a step towards Cole and Stella; he held the ax in hands that were skeletal, nearly all of the flesh had been torn away from his hands.

Cole and Stella huddled together.

Frank stood in the doorway and watched them. The thing out there was seeing through Frank’s eyes, and it spoke through Frank’s mouth. “Last chance,” it said through Frank’s mouth. “Kill the boy and we’ll let you go.”

Cole knew that he needed to get Stella and David out of the cabin now, in a few minutes the microwave was going to count down to zero and then it was going to start. The can of soda was going to heat up and then it was going to spark and explode. And that was going to ignite the gas from the stove. And that was going to spread to the gas-soaked logs of the cabin outside. This place was going to become an inferno. He had to get David out of here; he couldn’t let David die or all of his preparations would be for nothing. David would die. He and Stella would die. And maybe this thing wouldn’t die—maybe it would go on living. David would be dead and that creature, that thing out there, whatever it was, would have won.

Cole couldn’t let that happen.

Cole aimed his gun at Tom Gordon, then at Jose. But then he lowered his gun—it wouldn’t do any good, one shot could ignite this whole cabin. Instead, he pointed his gun at himself; he shoved the barrel under his chin and laid his finger on the trigger, ready to shoot. He smiled at Frank.

“Move aside, Frank,” Cole said. “You let Stella and David go or I’ll kill myself.”

There was a crashing noise from the hallway. Stella looked over and saw the dining room table thrown aside from the doorway to the hall. She saw Needles and Trevor stumble out from the darkness.

Cole wouldn’t allow himself to look at Trevor or Needles—he kept his eyes on Frank. “Last chance, Frank,” he said.

No answer from Frank for a moment, and then he cocked his head the other way and smiled at Cole. “Pull the trigger, Cole. Die. And then we’ll all tear Stella apart with our fingers and teeth right in front of the boy. And you will help us.”

Cole hesitated. He knew if he pulled the trigger there might be enough gas lingering in the room to cause an explosion. He couldn’t risk it.

Something bumped into Stella from the couch behind her. She whirled around and saw that David was still asleep, but his body was levitating, floating up into the air; his body was already up to her shoulders. His legs hung down in the air, but his arms were still straight up, his hands were still moving frantically, still frantically writing.

Then the microwave dinged—the timer had counted down to zero. The microwave turned on and began heating the can of soda that rotated inside.

It was too late.

All of the dead men rushed towards Cole and Stella, even Frank. Their mouths were wide open; their hands were like claws now. Whatever parts the monster out there had taken from their bodies, it had always left their teeth—their gnashing teeth that could bite and tear at flesh.

Stella kept her eyes on David’s levitating body as the tears rolled out of her eyes. “David,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I tried my best to protect you.”

David’s eyes popped open. His mouth opened wide, and he screamed.

“NOOO!! YOU CAN’T HAVE THEM!!!”

Sparks shot off the can of soda inside the microwave.

The dead men ran across the wooden floor of the cabin, they were almost on top of Cole and Stella. Cole kept his gun pointed under his chin, his finger still on the trigger. He’d rather die in the explosion than from their teeth.

There was a blinding flash of light.

A rushing of wind …

CHAPTER 45

Cole opened his eyes and saw a dark blue sky above him that was just beginning to lighten up from a rising sun somewhere still on the horizon in the east. But there was a light coming from somewhere else, a flickering light, a reddish-orange light. And the light was warm. A lovely warmth in the freezing cold.

But he couldn’t hear anything except a high-pitched whine in his ears. Everything else seemed to be muffled.

He felt confused, unsure for a moment where he was, where he had been. He realized he was looking up at the early morning sky. He realized he was lying in the snow. And he realized that something near him was on fire.

The cabin.

The cabin was on fire.

Cole’s sluggish mind struggled to remember as his hands and legs moved in the snow. He could feel the cold wetness of the snow saturating his clothes.

He sat up quickly and he saw Stella. She was only about ten feet away from him; she was sitting up in the snow. She might have been saying something to him, yelling at him, but he couldn’t hear her.

But he could see the expression on her face. He knew that expression well now—pure terror.

Stella got to her feet and stumbled over to a small dark shape slumped in the snow.

It was David.

Cole forced himself to stand up and the high-pitched whine in his ears died away. He could now hear the crackling fire from the blazing cabin. He could hear Stella screaming for David.

He rushed through the snow and he dropped down to his knees beside Stella as she shook David’s body. She was crying, the tears spilling down her cheeks and glistening on her skin.

“Is he …” Cole asked.

David turned over in the snow and his eyes fluttered, and then they opened.

Stella burst into sobs and she hugged David. “Are you okay?” she asked.

He nodded and she picked him up into a sitting position on the snow. He smiled at her and he wiped away at her tears.

Cole looked back at the burning cabin.

In the doorway and on the front porch were the burning bodies of what used to be his brother and the bank robbing crew. The bodies were being reduced to ash and bone very quickly in the blaze. A few of the bodies, now almost indistinguishable from each other, writhed and tried to move, but they were too badly damaged to escape now.

He could see something inside of the bodies—inside each one of them. They each looked like some kind of gigantic spider or insect, dark and leggy. The things slithered through each one of their ribcages and then escaped the burning bodies. The things joined each other, clinging together and forming a kind of a spidery creature that didn’t make sense to Cole’s mind; it resembled some kind of giant sea creature in the flames, like an octopus maybe, but the tentacles were jointed like a crab. And then there were what looked like wings for a moment. It seemed to be constantly changing form.

And then it scuttle/slithered deeper into the cabin, deeper into the fire.

Was it dying? Would the fire kill it?

Cole looked back at David who stared at him. “Did you get us out of the cabin?” he asked David. “Did you save us?”

David didn’t answer, he only stared at Cole.

“Yes,” Stella answered for David. “He saved us.”

Cole stared at David. “That thing … is it dying in there?” he asked.

David didn’t answer.

*

Ten minutes later Cole had the snowmobile running. He drove it out of the garage, drove it past Tom Gordon’s pickup truck, and then he came to a stop by Stella and David who waited for him. They needed to hurry—the smoke from the cabin was going to draw emergency vehicles eventually. And cops.

Stella got on the snowmobile behind Cole, and then she scooted back so David could climb onto the snowmobile in between them. She put her arms around David to protect him as they got ready to take off for the driveway that wound through the trees and joined the county road a half mile away.

She knew they were going to get away from this place, but she didn’t know what Cole’s plans were after that. She knew that she needed to get David to a safe place; she needed to find someone who could help David train, someone who could help David harness his powers.

Because that monster didn’t die in the fire—she felt certain of that. Maybe it was hurt, but it wasn’t defeated totally. And those things that had crawled out of the burning bodies were only a small part of it, she thought. There was a much larger part somewhere else in the woods.

And it would come back for David again, and this time he needed to be ready for it.

Cole gunned the engine and they drove forward through the snow. Cole drove slowly, trying to be careful with all three of them on the snowmobile yet he still felt an overwhelming urge to get away from the burning cabin and whatever that monster was inside of it.

Stella held on to David as he turned around for one last look at the burning cabin.

Stella didn’t see the small and mysterious smile on David’s face as he watched the cabin burn.

PROLOGUE

Saturday

CHAPTER 1

Navajo Reservation—dig site

Randy Tahoma sat on his horse at the edge of the ridge, staring down at the dig site on the canyon floor below. He had ridden by this dig site several times in the past few weeks, stopping for a few minutes to watch the scientists below as they hurried around like ants on little missions. He wondered why they were so intent on digging up the land, digging up the bones of the ancient people. They should let those old ghosts lie in peace. Nothing good could come from digging around down there; Randy was sure of that.

In the many times he had sat up here on this ridge watching the scientists, he hadn’t gone down there to greet them. What they were doing wasn’t any of his business. Many other Navajo in the area were openly critical of the archaeologists and this dig site, but Randy tried to mind his own business and keep to himself. Besides, if he went down there they would probably bombard him with questions about ancient stories and local legends. White people thought every Navajo could recount their people’s entire history at a moment’s notice. It wasn’t worth the hassle. He was content to sit up here on his horse and just watch for a while.

Randy was “retired” now … more like forced into it. His sons and grandsons had taken over the sheepherding chores on his property. He still felt like he could work, but they insisted that he take it easy in the years he had left. But now his days were filled with aimless wandering, and that aimless wandering had taken him here to the dig site today.

But he noticed that the camp was different today. Everything was still and silent, no movement anywhere, no sounds drifting up to the ridge where he sat, no smoke from a campfire. He waited at the top of the ridge for almost thirty minutes, bundled up in his heavy coat as he watched the two trailers and tents below. He also watched the line of trucks and SUVs farther away from the camp, all of them parked in a line near a stand of juniper bushes and cottonwood trees.

The mouth of the cave looked like a slit in the rock wall from way up here, but he knew it was far bigger than it looked from where he sat. When someone entered or left the cave, he could see that two people could easily stand side by side in the mouth of the cave if they wanted to. The opening was wider at the bottom and it narrowed to a crack thirty feet above the canyon floor. The mouth looked like it had been hidden before by shrubbery and plants for a long time, and now those shrubs were cut away and drying up in heaps on the desert floor.

Something felt wrong down there. Every time he’d been here before he had seen at least one person walking back and forth from their camp to the mouth of the cave. He had heard the clicking sounds of hammers tapping on rocks, music playing from somebody’s battery-powered radio, a bark of laughter, the words of a conversation floating up to him. He had seen the lights shining in the two trailers and he’d seen the lights burning on the string of electrical cords that ran from the generator into the mouth of the cave.

But today was different: no activity, no noise.

He decided to ride his horse down a barely perceptible trail towards the canyon floor below. He sensed the nervousness in his horse well before he reached the trailers.

“Whoa …” he cooed at his horse. But he felt as nervous as his horse did.

It was late afternoon now. As the sun dipped lower to the west, the shadows stretched all the way across the canyon floor. There were no lights on in either one of the trailers. The generator that sat close to the mouth of the cave was silent.

“Hello?” Randy called out.

No answer.

He rode his horse over to a cottonwood tree and got off. He tied the rope around a low-hanging tree limb and then patted his horse for a moment. His horse snorted and stared at him with wild eyes, shifting his weight nervously.

“It’s okay,” Randy whispered to the horse. “I just want to have a look around. Make sure everyone’s okay.”

Randy walked over to the trailer and knocked on the flimsy aluminum door. He waited for a moment, listening.

No one answered. No one was coming to the door—he would’ve heard their footsteps inside the trailer if someone was approaching.

He knocked again. “Hello?”

Still no answer.

The thought of entering the trailer crossed his mind, but it was rude to enter someone’s home—even if it was a temporary trailer—without their permission. Navajo prized privacy.

He looked at the next trailer beyond this one and thought about knocking on that door. No lights had come on in either trailer since he had been pounding on the door. He glanced over at the line of vehicles a hundred yards away, past a field of juniper and sagebrush that dotted the sand and hard-packed dirt. There were four vehicles parked there, all trucks of some kind. There seemed to be a space where a truck had been parked before, but now it was gone. Maybe all of the scientists had left.

In one vehicle? And with their generator and a lot of other equipment left behind?

That didn’t make any sense.

Randy looked at the second trailer again. He walked towards that door and knocked on it. Still no answer. No lights coming on inside.

He was about to walk back to his horse, but then he froze when he saw something in the dirt about thirty yards away near the edge of the brush. He walked over there and stood still for a moment, staring down at a large dark stain on the sand. It was dried blood. A lot of it.

Something had happened here … something bad.

Randy hurried back to his horse and pulled his flashlight out of his saddle bag. He turned the flashlight on and shined it back at the two dark trailers. The sky was still blue above him, but the shadows seemed to have darkened even more down here on the canyon floor. He pointed the flashlight beam towards the crack in the canyon wall … at the mouth of the cave.

Don’t go in there, his mind whispered, but Randy started walking towards the mouth of the cave.

Maybe somebody was hurt.

He stopped beside the generator for a moment and placed a hand on the muffler. It was ice-cold. He shivered as the wind sliced down from the ridge towards him. He thought about starting the generator up, but he didn’t want to disturb anything. He aimed his flashlight into the mouth of the cave, and then stepped right up to it. The light beam only shined so far into the tunnel, revealing claustrophobic rock walls on both sides, a hard-packed dirt floor, and the lines of electric cords with the construction lights every fifty feet or so that disappeared into the darkness.

“Hello?” Randy called into the mouth of the cave, his voice echoing back at him. “Are you okay in there?”

No answer.

He couldn’t believe he was doing this, but he entered the cave. He had been in caves many times in his life … more than he could remember. He knew his way around caves, and with the string of lights in this cave, there was no chance of getting lost. He would just venture inside a little ways, just far enough to make sure no one was injured and needed help.

“Hello?” he called out as he walked deeper into the cave. His flashlight beam looked like a laser beam of light stabbing into the total darkness. He moved slowly, his work boots scuffling along the dirt floor, kicking at the small rocks in the way. The path through the rock seemed to narrow slightly the deeper he went, the walls closing in slowly. He’d never been claustrophobic—he’d never been scared of much in his life—but something was frightening him badly now. Something felt bad here … very bad.

And a moment later he smelled the unmistakable coppery scent of blood … the odor of death and decay. Something was dead in this cave farther ahead in the darkness. Something big. Or maybe more than one dead thing.

I should just turn around right now, Randy told himself. Turn around and get back on my horse. Ride home and call the police. Something isn’t right here.

But he didn’t turn around.

He ventured deeper into the cave.

And finally the path through the walls of rock opened up to a gigantic cavern. He felt like he could breathe again now that the walls of rock weren’t pressing in on him, but the smell of rot and decay was so strong now that it was hard to breathe. He held his nostrils closed with one hand, breathing in and out through his mouth, while his other hand that clutched his flashlight trembled slightly, shaking the flashlight beam in front of him.

He panned the light beam around the large cavern, and then he shined his light on the most horrifying thing he’d ever seen.

“Oh … no … no …”

The big flashlight nearly slipped out of his hand as he stared at the sight in the darkness fifty feet in front of him, something that shouldn’t be possible.

Then he turned and ran.

He ran back down the claustrophobic tunnel through the solid rock, his footsteps and ragged breaths echoing all around him. He felt like he was being followed, like something was chasing him through the darkness, about to grab him and pull him back …

Moments later Randy was out of the cave and vomiting in the bushes. It seemed so much darker out here now, the night coming so quickly. He wiped the spittle from his mouth with the back of his hand, and then he exhaled, his breath clouding up in front of him in the cold air. His horse was whinnying now and reeling against the rope, threatening to snap it.

But Randy kept his eyes on the mouth of the cave, sure that some demon or monstrosity, some creature of ancient legend, was going to come crawling out of that cave after him. He backed up towards his horse, his eyes on the cave the entire time.

“It’s okay,” he lied to his horse, touching him, calming him down only slightly. Maybe his horse could smell the death all the way out here.

Randy slipped his flashlight back into his saddle bag and then untied the rope from the limb of the tree. He mounted his horse and rode towards the trail that led up to the ridge, both of them glad to be leaving.

CHAPTER 2

Navajo Reservation—dig site

“I’m not going back in that cave,” Randy told Captain Begay.

Begay stared at Randy. “I’m not asking you to go in there.”

Randy had raced his horse home and called Captain Begay of the Navajo Tribal Police. He knew Begay well and he had the man’s private number. It was early evening by the time Begay and two of his officers drove way out here to the dig site. Randy had ridden back to the dig site to meet them there, but he hadn’t ventured down onto the canyon floor until Begay and his officers had arrived. He didn’t want to be down there alone.

The officers had come in three vehicles; two of the vehicles were Dodge Durangos painted olive green with the Navajo Police shield among the wide green and yellow stripes down the side. Whipcord antennas poked up from the backs of the vehicles, and they both had large meaty tires and extra gas cans strapped to the back. The other vehicle was an older jacked-up Ford Bronco with faded brown paint and oversized tires, a gas-guzzling dinosaur of a vehicle that rumbled with power.

All three men got out of their vehicles. The two officers who drove the Durangos both wore bulky green jackets over their khaki uniforms with the Navajo Tribal Police patch on the shoulders of their coats. One officer was tall and lean, his long hair tied back in a loose ponytail. The other man was an inch shorter and a little heavier, his black hair cropped short. Randy was glad to see that they both had a sidearm on their hips.

Captain Begay was dressed casually in jeans, a button-down shirt, and a well-worn pair of cowboy boots. He wore the same type of bulky green jacket over his clothes like his two officers. He was a bear of a man with a fleshy face and slicked-back dark hair that didn’t show a strand of gray even though he had to be close to fifty years old. He walked towards Randy, who was tying his horse to the same cottonwood tree he had tied him to before. Begay didn’t seem to be bothered by the cold.

“You sure about what you saw in there?” Begay asked when he was in front of Randy.

“I would not bring you out here in the darkness if I was not sure about this,” Randy told him.

Begay waited a moment like he was studying Randy and then he finally nodded. He had a large flashlight in his hand, it looked a lot like the one Randy had used when he had entered the cave only hours ago. The officer with the long hair had an even bigger flashlight with him that he held by a pistol grip handle.

Begay turned to his officers. “Let’s go check it out.”

They walked to the mouth of the cave. Begay stopped at the generator. He looked back at Randy who hadn’t moved too far away from his horse. “You try this generator?” Begay asked Randy.

“I did not touch anything.”

Begay looked back at the generator, studying it for a moment. He slipped on a pair of latex gloves, stretching them over his big hands. He pressed the start button a few times but nothing happened. He checked the gas tank. “Full of gas,” he muttered.

He tried the button a few more times, but the generator didn’t even try to start. “I guess it’s not going to work.” He sighed and turned his flashlight on. He looked at the officer with the big flashlight. “Lead the way with the light.”

Randy watched the officer with the biggest flashlight lead the men into the cave. Begay was right behind him and the other officer was the last man in. And then the mouth of the cave swallowed the men up in its darkness.

The minutes seemed to drag by as Randy waited by the cottonwood tree. His horse wasn’t too happy about coming back here. He fed his horse a treat to try to keep him calm, but he was still jumpy. But he seemed a little calmer with more people around.

Fifteen minutes later the three officers hurried out of the cave. Their tan faces seemed to have grown a few shades paler, and their eyes were wide with shock. One of the officers had his pistol in his hand like he might have to use it at any second. He scanned the ridges around them for any activity. Captain Begay rushed towards his Ford Bronco.

“What do you think happened in there?” Randy asked as he hurried over to catch up with Begay.

“This is an FBI matter now,” Begay grumbled. “I’m afraid you’re going to need to leave.”

Randy didn’t like the abrupt shove off from Begay, but at the same time he was happy to leave this place.

PART 1

SUNDAY

CHAPTER 3

Denver, Colorado

Special Agent Palmer knew the day was going to be a bad one as soon as his eyes popped open in the darkness.

It was the dream … the terrible dream.

For a few seconds, Palmer didn’t know where he was, but then he realized that he was in his condo, in his bedroom, in his bed. It was still dark—either it was still the middle of the night or very early in the morning. Fragments of the nightmare clung to him, but the images were fading fast into the depths of his subconscious, never to be retrieved again.

His heart was beating fast … racing, thumping hard against his breastbone. He was a little shaky. Something had frightened him terribly in the dream, causing him to wake up.

But what had it been?

He couldn’t remember.

This wasn’t a typical experience for him. He usually didn’t remember dreaming at all, and he could probably count on one hand the nightmares that he’d had in his life. And he’d never woken up from a dream and felt like … like this. A feeling of overwhelming dread and despair.

He lay there very still in his bed for a moment longer, trying to get his breathing and his heartrate back to normal. For a split second he wondered if he was having a heart attack. He was lean and in decent shape for a forty-six-year-old man, but he also drank too much and he’d smoked cigarettes for years.

It wasn’t a heart attack. He dismissed that wild thought immediately. There was no pain in his chest, arm, or anywhere else in his body. His heart was just beating fast, like he’d been running at a full sprint. And he was scared … he couldn’t deny that. He’d known fear many times in his life as an FBI agent: he’d had guns pointed at him, he’d been attacked by criminals, attack dogs, and he’d been in car chases, so he knew what fear felt like. And he was afraid now. Afraid of something he’d seen in his dream … something he’d felt.

He tried to remember the dream before it dissolved away into nothingness. In the dream he’d been inside some kind of building … an unfamiliar place. The building was huge, a maze of hallways and rooms that seemed to go on forever. He was walking down one of the wide halls with his service pistol gripped in his hand. The floor was striped with lines of sunlight that shined out of the open doors of each of the rooms. He looked into each room as he passed by, glancing in through the open doorway. Each room had beds, chairs, rugs, and other furniture … normal stuff. But there seemed to be something that was slightly off about each room. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was, like the room was slightly out of square, or the furniture was placed at odd angles, like everything was just out of kilter somehow.

But why was he so afraid in the dream?

He seemed to think that he’d been following someone through the building, searching for someone, an invisible enemy that he couldn’t find, someone extremely dangerous, and he knew he needed to be careful.

The hallway morphed into a gigantic warehouse that was filled with different kinds of furniture and appliances for as far as he could see; a lot of it so close together there weren’t even aisles to walk through. The layout of the furniture and appliances didn’t make any sense to him. In the distance he saw the doorways to the other rooms that he’d been passing by, but they were so much farther away now that he was suddenly in the middle of this vast room.

He heard a voice calling to him from another direction. It was a man’s voice, and the man was alarmed, yelling at him.

Palmer turned towards the other side of the room where the voice was coming from. He saw a man in another room at the far end, maybe forty yards away across the sea of furniture. The man was dressed in some kind of dark pants and a white dress shirt and tie. He was leaning back in an office chair in front of the desk so he could stare out through the open doorway. He stared at Palmer with wide eyes of shock, his mouth hung open.

“What are you doing?” the man yelled as he stared at him in terror.

Palmer didn’t recognize the man, and he didn’t understand what the man was asking?

“Why are you doing that?” the man screeched, and his eyes dropped down just a bit—like he was looking down at something in Palmer’s hands.

Palmer looked down at his own hands in the dream. He didn’t have his gun anymore, even though he didn’t remember holstering it. He stood in front of a gigantic metal sink that he didn’t remember seeing before in this room. A tall curved faucet hung over the sink, which was big enough to wash a large dog inside of it. The water from the faucet was running. He had something in his hands down inside the sink, washing it in the water. He saw the blood running down his hands, carried away by the running water, the blood turning pink from the dilution of the water.

In his hands was a piece of flesh the size of a softball, part of an organ torn from a person’s body. It was soft and it was still warm.

And then his mind went blank. He couldn’t remember anymore. That must’ve been when he’d woken up with his heart jackhammering in his chest and his breath caught in his throat.

But there was more to the dream, he felt sure of it. Something else had happened after he was at the metal sink washing off that piece of flesh, something he couldn’t remember now … something he didn’t want to remember.

This wasn’t like him. He never had nightmares like this. He never woke up from sleep, caught in the middle of a panic attack.

He sat on the edge of his bed and swung his bare feet over the edge of it. He was cold even though he knew the heat was on. He still felt shaky and his heartbeat and breathing still hadn’t slowed down to a normal rate yet.

What time was it?

A glance at the alarm clock next to his bed told him it was three o’clock in the morning.

He craved a drink but he tried to fight the urge. He should try to get back to sleep, but he thought sleep might be nearly impossible now. Maybe he would make some coffee.

He jumped when his cell phone rang. He grabbed it from the cluttered end table next to his bed and looked at the number. It was Cardenelli, his supervisor.

What was he doing calling in the middle of the night?

An emergency of some kind. Had to be.

It was always something bad when Cardenelli called him in the middle of the night.

CHAPTER 4

Denver, Colorado

“Yes, sir,” Palmer said into his cell phone.

“Palmer,” Cardenelli barked. “I need you to get to the airport right now.”

“Where am I going?”

“Down to New Mexico. Small town called Farmington. I’ll have a rental car ready for you there. It’s a long drive from there to the dig site.”

“Dig site?”

“It’s on the Navajo Reservation. Some bodies were found at an archaeological dig site.”

Palmer sighed. “Why me? Isn’t there someone down there who could—”

“Agent Klein will meet you there. But I need you down there with him on this one. This one is … it’s a little strange.”

Palmer didn’t say anything. Strange was his area of expertise.

“A captain of the Navajo Tribal Police in that area, a man named Begay, will be there, too. He’s the one who called it in. The Tribal Police are the only ones besides us involved in this right now—no county or state police.”

“Well, it’s Navajo land,” Palmer said. “It’s their bodies …”

“FBI handles murders on Indian Reservations. And these bodies aren’t all Navajo.”

Again Palmer didn’t respond.

“It’s a group of archaeologists, maybe some grad students. Ten of them in all.”

“Ten bodies?” Palmer asked, a little surprised.

“Yeah. We’re going to try and get some info from the universities in the area, see if we can get some IDs on these people. See if any has been reported missing.”

“How were they killed? Shot?”

“That’s the strange part,” Cardenelli said. “From the way Captain Begay described things … well, it’s just a little hard to believe.”

“What do you mean?”

“He said some of the bodies were … cut up … or torn apart …”

“Maybe an animal—”

“No, I already asked him that. He was adamant that it wasn’t any kind of animal attack.”

“Then someone murdered all of these scientists at the dig site? All ten of them?”

“That’s what you’re going down there to find out. I’ll send you all the info I have so far. You can read it on the plane. A forensics team will be there by the afternoon. They’re driving over from the Albuquerque office, so they’ll be several hours behind you. I’ll get Debbie to get any other info that you need.”

“Okay.”

“Palmer, I want you to keep those Tribal Police away from the scene when you get down there. Who knows how badly they’ve already corrupted it? When you get down there, talk with them, see what they know, but then I want you to take over.”

“What about Klein?”

“Agent Klein is … well, let’s just say that the very best agents aren’t sent to Indian Reservations.”

Palmer had heard of that before. It was a well-known punishment in the Bureau to be sent to Indian Reservations.

“Captain Begay asked for our assistance, and it’s going to be our case now. You’re in charge when you get down there. You make sure you let them know that.”

“Got it.”

Cardenelli hung up without a good-bye, and Palmer hung up and set his phone down on the nightstand next to his service pistol. He switched on the lamp and saw the nearly-empty pint of vodka next to the lamp; it was perched close to the edge of the table. He was craving that drink even more right now. He’d drunk too much vodka last night, not anticipating going to work today. Maybe a few nips with his coffee would take the edge off of the hangover.

Palmer hated going out of town nowadays. He used to love it when he’d been a younger agent and full of adventure and energy. Now he was just counting down the days until retirement. And when he retired he was going to get as far away from the horrors he’d seen on this job. Maybe he’d go somewhere way up in Wyoming or Montana. Somewhere far away from people.

Ten dead bodies. Torn apart? By what?

But there was more to it than that. Cardenelli wouldn’t be calling him and involving him in this case if there wasn’t something odd about these deaths.

An image of his dream flashed through his mind; he saw the piece of flesh he’d been carefully washing in the metal sink. He could hear the man’s panicked voice in the dream coming from the office as he stared at him in horror: “What are you doing?” the man had screamed at him. “Why are you doing that?”

And then Palmer had looked down at his hands in the sink, he’d seen what he was doing, and he couldn’t answer the man’s question. Why had he been doing that? Why was he washing a piece of flesh off in a sink? Whose flesh had it been? What had it been?

He pushed the thought away as a chill crept over his skin, giving him the shivers. It was just a bad dream. Dreams didn’t have to make sense.

Before he even realized what he was doing, he twisted off the cap of the vodka bottle and took a small sip. He winced as he swallowed the liquid down. A few sips of alcohol should push the fragments of the nightmare all the way away.

He got up and walked over to the sliding glass door that led out to the balcony. He slid the door open and the bitterly cold Colorado air stung his exposed skin as soon as he stepped out onto the balcony. But he ignored the cold, his mind already on the job, on the mystery he would be asked to solve.

Palmer had been with the FBI for nearly twenty years now. He’d trained at Quantico and started out in the Baltimore office for a few years. But when an opportunity came up to join the Behavioral Science team, which specialized in serial killers, he jumped on it. He passed the rigorous tests and exams, and he was finally enrolled in the training program. A year later he was working on the worst murder cases in the Maryland, D.C., and Virginia areas. Sometimes he worked as far south as Miami and as far north as Boston. He was called in on the bizarre cases, the hardest ones to crack.

Five years later an opening came up in the Denver office, and he requested the transfer. He had grown up on the east coast his whole life, and the idea of the west had always appealed to him: the clean and dry air, the rugged mountains, the desolate and wide-open spaces. He thought the crime out west would be less heinous compared to the cities of America’s east coast … but crime was the same nearly everywhere now.

So he and his wife Teresa and their daughter packed their bags and moved to Denver.

That was twelve years ago.

Teresa left him a little over a year ago. Their daughter was in college now. At least Teresa had waited until their daughter moved out before she left him. She kept the house in the suburbs they’d bought, and she magically had a boyfriend as soon as Palmer packed his stuff and moved to this condo, which was closer to the downtown office.

He’d been in this condo well over a year now, and he still hadn’t even fully unpacked yet—half of his stuff was still in boxes stacked up in the spare room. The place was a mess; it lacked a woman’s touch, a woman’s organization. It also lacked the feel of human interaction; it still looked like what Palmer had thought it would be at the time: just a temporary place to live until he and Teresa got back together. But they hadn’t gotten back together, and now this condo was a cave where Palmer hid away in the darkness when he wasn’t out chasing down the worst criminals America had to offer.

He had become the cop cliché. His wife couldn’t handle his brooding; she couldn’t handle his silent focus on the horrors of his day. She couldn’t handle his drinking, his mood swings, his depression, his cynical views of the world. She wanted someone happier, someone who was “there” with her. He couldn’t be that man for her so she’d found a replacement as soon as their daughter was gone (or even before their daughter had left for college, he suspected).

Teresa was a good woman and she deserved better than him. He hoped she was happy with Gary.

Palmer came back inside and shut the sliding glass door. He went to the kitchen to start the coffee maker. He needed to get dressed and get to the airport.

CHAPTER 5

Farmington, New Mexico

Special Agent Palmer landed at the small airport in Farmington, New Mexico an hour before dawn. A man in a white button-down shirt with a black suitcoat slung casually over one shoulder sauntered up to him as soon as he was off the plane.

“Special Agent Palmer?” the man asked.

“Yeah,” Palmer answered.

“Agent Klein,” he said and offered a hand in greeting.

Palmer shook the man’s hand. Klein’s hair was buzzed short and he wore glasses with dark frames. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing a Marine Corp tattoo on one muscled forearm. The man was a few inches shorter than Palmer and he had a slight build, but Palmer could tell that Klein was the kind of man who went out of his way to compensate for his height and build.

“I was supposed to have a rental car waiting for me,” Palmer said as Agent Klein rolled down his shirt sleeves and buttoned them.

“We got one for you. It’s at the office. I’m going to drive you there.”

Palmer just nodded as the man shrugged into his black suitcoat.

“No bags?” Klein asked as they walked towards the exit doors.

“Just my carry-on.” Palmer lifted up the duffel bag he carried in his hand. He had an extra change of clothes inside along with his laptop computer. He also had a small travel bag with his toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash, and other bathroom supplies inside. And of course he’d brought along two pints of vodka in plastic bottles.

They left the airport and stepped out into the frigid air. Klein was a fast walker; he was a man of pent-up energy, Palmer could tell.

They got in Klein’s car and he started it.

“You want to stop for some coffee? There’s a McDonald’s along the way. It’s open twenty-four hours.”

“Yeah, sounds good,” Palmer said. A few sips from his bottle of vodka sounded better, but he would take the coffee for now.

Ten minutes later Klein pulled up to the drive-through window and paid for their coffees. Palmer dumped two creams and five sugars into his. He had a feeling this was going to be one very long day.

*

As he rode in Klein’s car down the ribbon of blacktop that split the sleepy town of Farmington, Palmer had time to reflect on what he’d read on the plane, the preliminary report downloaded to his phone from Debbie.

These were the details that they had for him so far about the murder case on the Navajo reservation: a group of archaeologists had received permission to excavate some kind of cave in a remote corner of Navajo land, where these scientists believed a small Anasazi settlement may have stood seven hundred years ago. And now they were all dead.

Along with the sparse specifics of the case, Debbie had sent him some background information on the Anasazi. They were a large group of Native Americans who had lived in the southwestern United States from about 1100 to 1400. Supposedly they had migrated north from what is now Central America and Mexico. The Anasazi seemed to have been a very advanced culture compared to other tribes in that area at the time. They were masters of pottery, farming, and they built large cities and wide roads, while most other Native American tribes at the time were more nomadic, hunting and gathering, following food sources from place to place. Some of the cities the Anasazi built were incredible (and Debbie had supplied a few photos in the report), and the remnants of some of these cities had stood the test of time, many of them still standing today.

But eventually the Anasazi seemed to have abandoned the cities and the roads they had built in New Mexico and Arizona, moving north into southern Colorado and southern Utah, where they built more cities, some of them carved right into the sides of sheer rock cliffs or in the mouths of giant caves. These cities were marvels of architecture for their time.

Not long after the Anasazi built these highly-defensible cities, they seemed to have just walked away from them, much like they had done before when they’d been farther south. They left behind their pottery, many of their weapons, their buried dead. Archaeologists have found evidence of battles at these northern cities, and even signs of cannibalism. Some scientists and historians believe that the Anasazi were driven away from these cities by other tribes, and others believe that weather conditions such as drought caused them to flee, while other scientists believe that there was internal strife among the Anasazi that led to infighting. But most scholars agree that the Anasazi migrated south again, and either intermingled with or became the Hopi and/or the Pueblo Indians. But no one really knew for sure.

Apparently this group of archaeologists, led by a man named Jake Phillips, had discovered a new Anasazi settlement inside the mouth of a cave that had been hidden for hundreds of years.

And now all of these archaeologists at this dig site were dead. All of them slaughtered.

There were five scientists, four grad students, and a Navajo guide in the list of victims Debbie had sent to him. The report included their names and a brief background of their careers. This group had been working with grant money supplied by the University of New Mexico. Jake Phillips had also reached out to another archaeologist, a woman named Stella Weaver who worked out of Arizona State University at the moment; she was an expert on the Anasazi culture with some wild theories about their possible extinction that didn’t seem to be sitting too well with most of academia. In the report Palmer had read about her, it was claimed that she was fueling conspiracy theories just to get published.

So, Palmer thought as he rode in the passenger seat and stared at the city buildings as they passed them, we have the archaeologists and grad students, and then we have Stella Weaver. There was also the Navajo guide with them—a man named Jim Whitefeather. He was fifty-four years old, an expert tracker and survivalist. That was eleven people altogether. But there were ten dead, according to the report.

Klein glanced at Palmer as he drove. “We’ll get your car at the office. Then you can follow me out to the dig site.”

Palmer didn’t say anything.

“There’ll be a few officers from the Tribal Police waiting for us,” Klein continued even though Palmer hadn’t answered him. “One of them, a man named Captain Begay, he’s a real piece of work.”

Palmer just sipped his coffee. He didn’t know what “a real piece of work” meant and Klein didn’t bother expounding on it. Palmer couldn’t wait to be alone again.

“We can refill our coffees at the office,” Klein said.

Palmer could tell that Klein wanted to ask questions about what had happened at the dig site; he was itching to ask why a specialist like Palmer had been sent down from Denver to Farmington in the middle of the night.

“What kind of details did they give you about this case?” Klein finally asked.

“Ten dead. Five archaeologists, four student assistants, and one Navajo guide.”

“All of them dead?” Klein asked and chuckled like he couldn’t believe it. “How?”

“They weren’t perfectly clear on the cause of death,” Palmer said. “We’ll know more when we get there.”

Klein just nodded as he pulled into the parking lot of a non-descript, one story building. “Here we are.”

CHAPTER 6

FBI Branch Office—Farmington, New Mexico

After a quick trip to the bathroom and a refill of his coffee, Palmer got into his rental car and started it. He waited for Agent Klein to pull out of the FBI office parking lot first, and then he followed him. They drove through the town of Farmington, which was waking up a little more as the sun peeked up above the horizon to the east. And fifteen minutes later they were traveling through the desert.

They traveled west on U.S. Highway 64 for a while, and then they eventually turned south on U.S. 491. The scenery was amazing. Palmer had pictured a desert in his mind before coming down here—and this place could be called a desert, but it was teeming with vegetation and so many colors. The rising sun drove back the darkness and the layers of rock brightened up with the morning light, seeming to subtly change colors as the sun rose higher.

As he drove, Palmer took a few sips from his pint of vodka he had slipped out of his duffel bag. He stayed pretty far behind Klein’s car to make sure the agent couldn’t see him stealing nips from the bottle. The alcohol helped him relax.

After well over an hour they pulled onto something called Indian Road 96 and drove down the two lane road for a ways until Klein’s car slowed down and pulled onto what looked to Palmer like a dirt trail down into the canyons. The road was bumpy, and Palmer had to navigate around pot holes and washouts. Rock walls rose up on both sides of him for much of the drive, but eventually those walls opened up to a gigantic canyon. Small rocks and sand pelted the undercarriage of his rental car as he drove. This was definitely truck country, but so far his sedan was doing okay. They drove around a bend and then Palmer saw the dig site in the distance. Closer to the dirt road was a line of vehicles parked down a sharp decline near a large stand of trees and gigantic bushes. They drove past the vehicles lined up below them and continued on around to the canyon floor, down a less steep decline, and then the trail meandered back towards the group of vehicles.

Beyond a sea of brush and rocks, Palmer saw three vehicles parked in a tight group right in front of the two temporary trailers. Two of the three trucks were obviously Navajo Tribal Police vehicles, and the other one was an old Ford Bronco. The three men all stood in front of the Ford Bronco, all of them watching Palmer and Klein as they drove towards them.

Palmer glanced over at the line of trucks near the stand of trees as he drove past the trail that led to the parking area. There was a Ford 350 with a camper on back, a heavy-duty Dodge Ram, a Ford Expedition with oversized tires, and a rusty Chevy van. The line of vehicles seemed undisturbed, except that two of the trucks had their hoods up in the universal sign of a broken-down vehicle. He also noticed that there was a large space in between two of the trucks where another vehicle must have been parked before. There was what looked like gouges in the dirt where a pair of back tires had peeled out in the sand until they caught traction. It looked like the vehicle might have driven right up the steep incline and onto the dirt road that led out of here. Eleven people had been listed as being here at this dig site, but only ten dead bodies were reported. Maybe the eleventh person, the possible killer, drove away in one of these trucks.

He filed these bits of information away in his mind as he drove the sedan over the bumpy trail through the scrub brush that led to the two trailers, which sat end to end. Both trailers resembled motor homes, both about thirty-five to forty feet long. A tent with one canvas wall rolled up had been erected not too far away from the trailers—closer to a rock canyon wall in the distance that rose up to the sky, its jagged peaks a dark contrast against the peaceful blue morning sky.

Palmer parked his car farther back from the three police vehicles, right beside Klein’s black sedan, and then he cut the engine. He got out and pocketed his keys and then grabbed his coat from the back seat. After slipping his coat on, he stuffed his hands into a pair of black leather gloves. He checked his coat pockets to make sure he had his cell phone, some plastic baggies, and a few pairs of blue nitrile gloves with him.

“Captain Begay,” Agent Klein said as he walked towards the big man. He wasn’t exactly trying to hide his distaste for the captain.

“Agent Klein,” the big man answered and nodded slightly. Neither man offered a hand in greeting. The large man’s narrow eyes shifted to Palmer.

“Special Agent Palmer,” Palmer said and pulled out his ID and badge. He flipped the leather wallet open in a practiced motion, showing his credentials to Captain Begay.

“Begay,” the large man said and extended a gloveless brown hand to Palmer.

Palmer shook the man’s hand and it felt like his hand had been squeezed in a piece of machinery for a second.

Begay was a big man, easily three or four inches taller than Palmer’s five foot eleven inches, and he outweighed Palmer by over a hundred pounds. He had a wide face that had been tanned and wrinkled by the relentless desert sun. His mane of dark hair was tied back in a ponytail. He wore plain clothes, but he had a police belt with a sidearm, walkie-talkie, and a leather pouch for a pair of handcuffs. Over his plain clothes he wore the same kind of green coat that the other two officers wore. They all had Navajo Tribal Police patches on their shoulders and a small nameplate on the right front pockets of their coats.

The other two officers were both tall and much younger and leaner than Begay. They stared at Palmer, both of them closer to the Bronco, which Palmer guessed was Begay’s vehicle. The two officers didn’t stare at him with the animosity that Palmer had expected. Instead, he saw shock and fear in their dark eyes.

They had seen something bad here.

Palmer looked around for a few seconds, taking in the landscape. He noticed that what he’d thought had been a sheer rock wall in the distance actually had a vertical slit in it that was the mouth to some kind of cave. Another canvas tent, this one without walls, had been set up near the mouth with a generator underneath it. Piles of shrubbery and brush that had been cut away from the mouth of the cave were piled up on each side of the entrance to the cave, well out of the way.

“Thanks for coming,” Begay told Palmer in a low, grumbling voice; it sounded like a hollow platitude.

Palmer looked back at Begay and saw the same fear and shock in the man’s coal-black eyes. He nodded at him.

“Agent Palmer is a … a specialist in these matters,” Klein said.

Palmer wished Klein would stop talking.

“What we’ve got here,” Begay said, ignoring Klein completely, “it’s not like anything we’ve ever dealt with before.”

Palmer nodded. “Ten dead bodies.”

Begay shrugged. “Maybe. Can’t really tell.”

So, there could be more than ten? Palmer wondered. Less than ten?

“What do you mean you can’t really tell?” Klein asked.

Begay looked at Klein with a hard stare. “You’ll see.”

Palmer looked over at the two trailers. “They in there?”

Begay shook his head no. “It might have started in there … there’s blood everywhere inside the first trailer and a big bloodstain in the dirt over there.” He looked back at the mouth of the cave in the distance. “But all of the bodies are in there.”

“What about the other trailer?” Klein said. “Blood in the second trailer?”

“It looks clean,” Begay answered.

Palmer didn’t say anything.

“Looks to me like a lot of these scientists were holed up in the first trailer,” Begay said, offering his opinion. “Maybe they were trying to hide from whatever was out here.”

“Yeah, thanks for your take on things,” Klein said. “But we’ll take it from here.”

“You mean the scientists were trying to hide in the trailer from the killers?” Palmer asked, ignoring Klein.

“I don’t know what it was,” Begay answered.

“You think this could’ve been some kind of animal attack?” Palmer asked him.

“Forensics will decide that,” Klein snapped at both of them.

Begay shook his head no at Palmer’s question and began to walk towards the first trailer. He shot a glance back at his men as if telepathically telling them to stay put.

The two officers didn’t seem to mind staying right where they were.

Palmer and Klein fell in step beside the big man as they marched towards the trailer, their breaths clouding up in front of their faces in the freezing air. Begay spoke again when they were out of earshot of his men. “My guys are a little spooked.”

Palmer nodded like he understood. He wondered how many murder scenes they had investigated over the years. Couldn’t be that many, he guessed. And probably nothing like this.

Begay stopped at the foot of the portable steps that led up to the door of the first trailer. “It wasn’t an animal that did this.”

“The report I got says the bodies were torn apart,” Palmer said. “Maybe a bear—”

“Bears are hibernating this time of the year. And we don’t see many around these parts anyway. They stay more to the north.”

Palmer nodded. “So you’re saying it was a man?”

“A man didn’t do all of this.”

“More than one killer?” Klein said.

Again, Begay shook his head no. A deep scowl lined his face. He looked down at the frozen dirt for a moment, and then he locked eyes with the FBI agents. “I don’t know what did all of this.”

“Okay,” Palmer breathed out, creating his own cloud of breath in front of his face. “Let’s go inside. See what’s going on.”

“You’re the experts,” Begay said. “That’s why I call you guys.”

Palmer thought he heard sarcasm in Begay’s voice. The big man had the expression of a man who knew a terrible secret—a secret that he was going to let Palmer and Klein discover for themselves very soon.

“A forensics team is on the way from Albuquerque,” Klein told Begay, still not making a move towards the trailer door. “I don’t want anything around here disturbed any more than it probably already has been.”

Begay stared at Klein. “We haven’t touched anything.”

Palmer slipped off his leather gloves and pocketed them in one of his coat pockets. The cold bit at his exposed skin right away. From another pocket he fished out a pair of wadded-up blue nitrile gloves and slid his hands into them. These gloves offered little protection from the freezing air. He looked at the trailer door as he adjusted his gloves, waiting a moment before entering. He wasn’t sure why he was hesitating. He’d been to a thousand crime scenes before, he’d seen hundreds and hundreds of dead bodies, some mutilated beyond recognition. There wasn’t anything here that was going to shock or surprise him.

Yet he wasn’t sure why he was feeling a little nervous right now.

Maybe it was the look in the eyes of these Navajo policemen that was spooking him. These were tough and strong men, and they had seen something here that had scared them badly.

Klein slipped on a pair of latex gloves, and he wasted no time butting in front of Palmer. He climbed the portable wooden steps to the trailer door and entered.

CHAPTER 7

Navajo Reservation—dig site

The first thing Palmer noticed when he entered the trailer was the blood. The room he stood in seemed to take up almost half of the front of the trailer. There were two couches on opposite walls and a small recliner in a corner. Most likely some of the archaeologists had slept on these pieces of furniture for the night while on this dig-site, perhaps taking turns between the couches and the bedroom. To his right, towards the very front of the trailer, there were fold-up tables and a small desk in the corner that looked like something a student might have in his or her dorm room.

Palmer stepped towards the front of the trailer. The desk had a laptop computer on it next to a collection of scientific equipment that he couldn’t name; he thought one of the pieces might’ve been some kind of a microscope. He stared at the laptop and noticed that the edges of the plastic seemed to have been melted, the laptop destroyed. He gently lifted the screen up and saw that it was cracked, the screen dark.

Leaving the laptop open, Palmer walked over to the two tables where collections of labeled pottery and stone fragments were laid out. It looked like it had been a neat display at one time, but now it was a cluttered mess, some of the artifacts on the floor around the table.

Had there been a fight in here? Palmer wondered. Maybe one of these scientists had flipped out and attacked the others, then fled the scene.

Palmer stood next to one of the tables for a long moment, just staring down at the pottery fragments, letting his mind wander. He liked to be the only one at the crime scene, especially when he was the first agent there, but he was here with Klein and the Tribal Police officer. When he was alone, he liked to try to piece together what had happened, let the clues speak to him. He would never go so far as to call it a psychic ability, but if he was quiet and if he just let his mind reach out, it was almost like the murder scene and the dead spoke to him, like they told him a story.

And it felt like this story was beginning to come together in his mind. Maybe it was a disgruntled scientist. Or one of them had had a mental breakdown, like some kind of cabin fever. This person had attacked one of the scientists, maybe killed him in a fit of rage. That’s why there was all the blood on the walls and soaked into the carpet. Knowing he was in trouble, the attacker tried to cover his tracks by killing the others in the cave.

Palmer slid his gloved hand into his suitcoat pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He took some photos of the pottery fragments and the destroyed laptop on the desk. The forensics team would take many more photos, but Palmer liked to have his own to study. He took photos of the smears of blood on the corners of the plastic tables. He took a photo of the spray of blood across the artifacts with their neat little white tags tied to them, labeled with numbers, some kind of filing system.

He walked through the rest of the living room area, his footsteps thudding on the floor and making him sound heavier than he was. The cold wood flooring underneath the thin carpet cracked and popped with each step he took.

Begay waited by the front door. Klein had a digital camera that he was using to take photos. Palmer ignored both of them, delving deeper into the clues before him.

The cheap plastic blinds that covered the windows were torn and bent in many places. One of the blinds hung askew over the window behind one of the couches, a splatter of blood dotting the blinds.

Hit with a blunt object, Palmer thought. Blood spray from the wound, most likely from the victim’s head.

The living room opened up to a small kitchen and dining area. The appliances were trailer-small: a mini-fridge, a two-burner stovetop, a tiny oven, a row of small cabinets built over the one-basin sink.

There were more signs of disturbance in the kitchen/dining area, more bloodstains, more evidence of violence. Palmer checked the refrigerator. It was dark and warm. The generator that provided electricity for this trailer had been off for a few days at least.

The kitchen had a built-in seating area that looked like it could barely squeeze three people around the table. The kitchen led to a small hallway with doorways to two small bedrooms and a bathroom. He would’ve expected to find some bodies back here, but Begay had already told him that they were all in the cave.

Klein followed Palmer back to the two bedrooms. There was more blood back here, splashes of it in both rooms. Signs of struggle. Signs of panic.

“You getting any ideas about this?” Klein asked him.

Palmer just nodded and snapped more photos with his phone, each one making that cute little click-click sound that he loved but couldn’t explain why.

Klein huffed a little at his question being ignored, but Palmer walked away from him, walking back to the living room. Begay opened the door and stepped outside like he knew Palmer was done.

It felt good to be back outside even though it was freezing. The inside of the trailer had been stuffy with the stifling heat of violence, a sensation he’d experienced many times before.

Palmer looked over at the line of vehicles in the distance, over a hundred yards away. “Looks like one of those vehicles is missing. Like it sped out of here. Drove right up the embankment onto the dirt road.”

Begay nodded like he’d already figured out those details for himself.

“Might be our killer,” Klein said. “Either he took his own vehicle or stole someone else’s.”

Begay didn’t say anything—Palmer thought the man seemed to be holding some clues of his own close to his chest.

“You check out those other vehicles already?” Klein asked Begay. Klein’s voice seemed accusatory every time he spoke to the captain.

“Yes. They’re all inoperable.”

“Inoperable?” Klein asked.

“That means they don’t work.”

Palmer couldn’t help the bark of laughter that erupted from him. He couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed.

“Yeah, thanks,” Klein said, his voice seeping with venom. “I know what inoperable means.”

“What exactly makes them inoperable?” Palmer asked as he stared at the two vehicles with their hoods up.

“The batteries have been ripped out of two of them. The other two still have batteries, but they’re dead. The keys are in all of the vehicles. We tried them … they won’t start.”

“You’re not supposed to be touching anything!” Klein yelled at Begay.

Begay pulled out a pair of crumpled latex gloves. “We know what we’re doing.”

Palmer didn’t like the fact that the captain and his deputies’ hands (even if they were gloved) had been all over the vehicles, but he didn’t say anything. He had the feeling that Begay knew something about all of this and he wanted to find out what that was. Yelling at him like Klein was doing wasn’t going to get them anywhere. He could sense the frustration these men had built up with each other over the years.

“Was there any blood in the vehicles?” Palmer asked. “Any signs of struggle?”

Begay shook his head. “No. Nothing we could see.”

Klein just snorted out a sarcastic chuckle.

Palmer kept looking at the line of vehicles in the distance. “Blood all over the place inside the trailer. But none in the vehicles. If they were being attacked, then why wouldn’t they have run for their vehicles?”

“Because the batteries were dead?” Klein offered.

“All of the batteries died at the same time?” Palmer asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.” He looked at Begay. “If these people were attacked or even killed in the trailer, but their bodies are in the cave, then why isn’t there blood all over the place out here? Why isn’t there drag marks in the dirt?”

“There’s that one area of blood over near the second trailer I told you about,” Begay said, pointing at a spot a few yards away from the middle of the second trailer.

The three of them walked over to the area. Palmer stared down at the large dark spot in the sand. “This is the only place you’ve found blood out here?”

Begay nodded.

“There should be more blood than this,” Palmer said and looked around like he might spot it.

“Maybe the killers cleaned up the blood out here,” Klein said. He obviously was onboard with the multiple-killers-theory. “They could’ve kicked sand over the blood, brushed branches over any drag marks in the sand to cover their tracks.”

Palmer nodded like that could be a possibility. “Why would they go to all of that trouble to clean up the evidence out here but leave blood all over the place inside the trailer?”

Klein didn’t have an answer for him.

“And why would they be so meticulous about the drag marks but overlook this large pile of blood right here?”

Klein just shrugged.

Things were beginning to get strange.

Begay watched Palmer carefully like this was previously-covered ground in his mind—but he was no closer to answers than Palmer was.

“Alright,” Palmer told Begay. “Let’s go into the cave and see the bodies.”

Palmer had a feeling that things were about to get much worse.

CHAPTER 8

The cave

Begay instructed the police officer with the ponytail to grab the large battery-powered searchlight with the pistol grip handle and hand it to Klein. The officer looked relieved that he wouldn’t have to go back into the cave.

Palmer, Begay, and Klein walked towards the mouth of the cave. They stopped at the generator underneath the small tent near the entrance, the whole area shielded by a scrub of junipers.

“It doesn’t work,” Begay said.

“Does it have gas in it?” Klein asked him.

“Full tank.” Begay looked right at Palmer. “It just won’t start.”

Palmer thought about the batteries in the vehicles, the laptop inside the trailer, and now the generator. It was like nothing electrical was working around here. He made a mental note to call the Albuquerque office and let them know that the forensics team would need to bring a generator and some gas with them.

As they stepped inside the crack in the canyon wall, the mouth of the cave, Palmer felt a little nervous. His breakfast sandwich and the coffee from earlier (along with the few sips of vodka) had settled like a small stone inside his stomach. He didn’t have too many phobias—you couldn’t really have a lot of them in his line of work—but he’d never been fond of enclosed spaces. Basements he could handle, man-made structures he trusted … there was always a way out. But nature didn’t always work like that, nature was random, and sometimes you could just walk and walk and you couldn’t find a way back out.

A flash of last night’s dream ran through his mind: the rooms in the building that seemed to go on forever, the maze of appliances and furniture in the impossibly large room where he’d been standing in front of the metal sink and washing a piece of flesh off in the water …

He pushed the memory of the dream away and pulled his phone out, taking some photos of the generator and the junipers near it. Taking the photos helped him feel detached from the situation a little, like he was more in control of it somehow.

As soon as they stepped inside the cave, Agent Klein turned on the spotlight. He took the lead with the light and seemed to revel in the importance of his job, although his hand trembled slightly which caused the light guiding their way to waver a little. But at least the light was strong and bright.

The three men followed the electrical cords laid out end-to-end along the dirt floor of the cave that led deeper and deeper into the darkness. The mouth of the cave closed in quickly to a narrow passageway after the first fifty feet. Walls of sheer, smooth rock closed in suddenly as they walked single file into the deeper darkness, Klein in front, shining their way with the spotlight. Palmer was right behind Klein and Begay was a few steps behind him.

No one spoke as they made their way slowly through the crevice of rock. The walls seemed to be closing in and Palmer felt like something heavy was pushing on his chest, making it difficult for him to inhale enough air. He felt a wave of panic wanting to take over.

Fight it, he told himself.

The sounds of their boots and shoes were loud in the numbing silence inside this rock tomb. Their breaths sounded labored and louder inside the mountain, each exhale echoing back at them.

To distract himself, Palmer shined his cell phone flashlight at the rock walls as he walked past them.

The walls were definitely closing in, the path getting narrower with each step they took—he was sure of that.

Palmer looked for traces of blood on the walls as they walked past them, but he didn’t see any at all. He shined the light beam from his phone down at the hard-packed dirt floor, expecting to see smears of blood and drag marks from the bodies. But there was nothing—only a fine, powdery dust and small rocks kicked to the base of the rock walls after countless trips back and forth through this passageway by the archaeologists. He saw that the construction lamps had been set on the floor every hundred feet or so, connected together by the electrical cords. He wished those lights were on right now.

A thought occurred to Palmer, and once it popped into his mind he couldn’t get rid of it: What if the spotlight Klein was using went out? What if Begay’s flashlight went out, too? What if the batteries died? All of the other electrical equipment around here seemed to have malfunctioned before. What if the same thing happened to their flashlights right now?

What was wrong with him? He’d never been this nervous before. It was a straight shot out of the cave; there was no way they could lose their way. Besides, there was the string of lanterns and electrical cords to follow like a trail of breadcrumbs.

He knew once the forensics team got here they would get another generator running and get these lights working again.

“How far inside the cave are these bodies?” Palmer asked, his words bouncing off the smooth rock walls right back to him. He hoped he didn’t sound nervous.

“This passageway opens up to a big cavern,” Begay said from the darkness behind him. His voice was so low and deep, the echoes made his words a little difficult to understand.

“Why would the killer have brought these bodies all the way back here?” Klein asked more to himself than to Begay or Palmer. “To hide them?”

Neither Begay nor Palmer responded to Klein’s question, but to Palmer it seemed like hiding the bodies way back here in the cave was a lot of trouble to go through. He had to agree with Klein on his multiple killer theory—there had to be more than one killer working here. It was hard to believe one man could’ve pulled all of this off. Now he was beginning to rethink his earlier theory, coming up with a new scenario. What if it wasn’t one of the scientists who’d done this?

Then who? Robbers?

Maybe some of the artifacts the archaeologists had dug out of this cave were worth a lot of money. Palmer didn’t know for sure. He felt certain they had to be worth something. Maybe a band of robbers had staked out the dig site and waited for the right time to attack and steal the artifacts.

But if that scenario was true, then why were there so many artifacts left behind inside the trailer? Maybe the robbers had been looking for gold. Would some of the artifacts have been made out of precious metals? Palmer couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t an expert on archaeology, but it was something to consider.

Another thought came to him: What if some kind of activists had killed these archaeologists, some kind of eco-terrorists who felt that these archaeologists were destroying the environment or harming Mother Earth?

It wasn’t so far-fetched. Maybe they weren’t everyday big news, but eco-terrorists were real. Maybe they weren’t such a big deal back east, but they could be a force to contend with in the west. Eco-terrorists had amassed more property damage than all other terrorists combined in the United States. But they didn’t usually kill people—especially not purposely.

Then another thought occurred to him. What if some of the local Native Americans, the Navajo, were displeased with this archaeological expedition? What if, even though Navajo officials had given this group permission to excavate here, there was a small fringe group that hated seeing these scientists dig up their ancestors or disturb spirits or whatever they believed in. What if Begay and his officers already suspected that? What if they even had an idea who was behind this? It started to make sense to Palmer now. Maybe these murders were a message to the scientists, to the white man: Stop digging on our land. But maybe the activists had gone too far this time and killed one of the archaeologists, and then they had to cover everything up. They tried to hide the bodies, and then they staged a half-baked scene. And maybe halfway through this mess, they just panicked and ran.

“I don’t think they were trying to hide the bodies,” Begay finally answered Klein’s question from right behind Palmer, making him jump a little. He seemed much closer than Palmer thought he was.

Palmer turned a little towards the large man in the darkness behind him, his shoulder brushing against the rock wall as he walked. “What makes you say that?”

“You’ll see.”

Finally, the narrow passageway through the rock walls opened up into a cavern. Klein’s spotlight knifed into the darkness, but it only seemed to shine so far, like a spotlight trying to work deep underwater.

“Holy shit,” Klein whispered. “That stinks.”

Palmer smelled it now as the narrow rock passageway opened up. The smell hit him like an invisible wall.

It was still claustrophobic inside the cave to Palmer, but he felt a little better now that the rock walls weren’t squeezing in on him like they had in the passageway. He shined the meager light from his cell phone around at the cavernous room, but the light only illuminated a few feet in front of him, leaving him in a weak sphere of light that tried to push back the crushing darkness.

It was much warmer deep inside the cave, and the air tasted moist on his tongue. He also tasted something else in the air, a taste his tongue knew well after all these years—the coppery taste of blood that went along with the overpowering stench of rot and decay.

“It’s not too much further,” Begay said, shining his flashlight into the darkness like a lightsaber down next to his leg.

“Yeah, I think we can smell that,” Klein said, but he kept moving forward into the darkness.

Klein followed the electrical cord of lamps with the light from his spotlight, and then they came to another wall at the far end of the cavern. They followed the wall, walking next to more electrical cords and lights. The walls were covered with pitted tool marks, like the room had been carved out of the rock a long time ago.

The electric cords ended in a big junction box where more electric cords ran off into the darkness, connected to spotlights rigged on top of metal stands that stood about five feet high. Klein raised his spotlight’s beam up from the floor and shined it on the objects piled together forty feet away from them.

“Holy … holy hell,” Klein whispered. His voice was pinched off because he had his hand cupped over his nostrils, closing them off.

Palmer stared at the grotesque display in front of them, and for a moment all of his thoughts stopped.

CHAPTER 9

The Cave

Palmer couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Agent Klein shined the spotlight on the collection of body parts piled up together in front of what looked like some kind of city of adobe stone walls that ran far back into the cave, disappearing into the darkness. In front of the grotesque display of body parts was a line of stone tablets laid out with what looked like some kind of ancient writing carved into them. Klein’s hand was shaking more noticeably now, the light shimmering from his tremors, giving a slight strobe-light effect on the carnage in front of Palmer.

“What …?” Klein whispered. “How …?”

“That’s what I was trying to explain,” Captain Begay said.

Palmer stared in disbelief. His legs felt suddenly shaky, his muscles rubbery, the strength draining a little from his body. He felt like a rookie on his first assignment.

“It doesn’t seem like one person could’ve done all of this,” Begay said, but his grumbling voice sounded so far away to Palmer’s ears now, like maybe the large man was slowly backing away into the darkness, backing up from the light that exposed this pile of horrors. “It doesn’t even seem like people did this,” he added.

But it had to be people, Palmer thought. What else could do something like this? Arrange things this way?

Palmer got his breathing back under control. He was certain Begay and Klein had noticed his sudden shock, his quick attack of panic, but he didn’t care. It would be a normal reaction from anyone after seeing something like this.

You’ve got a job to do, he told himself. Calm down and do your job!

Begay was silent, looming behind Klein and Palmer. And even Klein was at a loss for words as he let the beam from his spotlight slowly pan over the horrifying structure built out of human body parts.

Ten people, Agent Palmer thought. Maybe even eleven of them in that pile. Five archaeologists led by Jake Phillips, four grad students, a Navajo guide named Jim Whitefeather, and the expert on the Anasazi that Jake had called in to help him with this dig site—Stella Weaver. All of those people were here in this cave now, tangled together in a mass of limbs, torsos, chunks of flesh, severed heads. Were all ten of them here in this pile, or were more of their parts somewhere inside those city walls that disappeared into the darkness? It was hard to tell.

The people in the pile had been torn apart, like some giant beast had pulled them apart as easily as a boiled chicken. A man’s head sat cradled in the crook of an arm that had been pulled off near the shoulder, the rest of the arm gone from halfway down his forearm. Shredded pieces of the sleeve of the man’s shirt were still stuck to the pale flesh from the dark, matted blood. Two severed fingers had been stuck into the man’s eyes, the torn ends of the fingers protruding out like stubby little cigars. The man’s mouth was wrenched wide open and his jaw was twisted slightly to the side, jagged pieces of broken teeth that looked like shattered remnants of white tile shined from inside of his mouth.

That was only one grisly sight among the heap of rotting human flesh. A foot stuck up from behind a man’s head, the skin purplish and swollen, the toes almost black with rot. Many of the armless, headless, and legless torsos formed the bottom layer of the human sculpture, huge holes in some of the torsos where organs had been removed. One torso had two fractured pieces of ribs poking out like springs from an old mattress.

The spotlight’s beam suddenly jerked away from the pile of horrors, the darkness hiding the grisly sight again as Klein bent over, retching.

Palmer shined the weak light from his cell phone at Klein. “Are you going to be sick? Go over there if you are. This is a crime scene.”

Klein remained bent over, his spotlight shining down at the cave floor. A string of spittle hung down from his mouth, but it didn’t look like he had vomited yet. He nodded his head and grunted: “I’ll be okay. It’s just … just the smell … and the …” He let his words trail off.

Palmer felt the same nauseous feelings in his stomach, but he steeled himself and pointed the light from his cell phone at the pile of human parts. Begay aimed his flashlight in the same direction as Palmer, adding their beams of light together.

You’ve got a job to do, Palmer said to himself.

He still had his blue nitrile gloves on, but he didn’t dare touch the bodies—there were so many parts precariously balanced on top of each other that it looked the slightest pressure could knock them loose; some of the pieces were held together by gummed-up layers of dried blood, like mortar between bricks. A few of the body parts had sticks and tree branches rammed through them, holding the parts together like a matrix. He pressed the camera app button on his cell phone and took some photos. The flash went off and the phone made its cute little click-click noise as he captured the horror in front of him on his phone, storing it away safely.

Flash! Click-click. A photo of two heads back-to-back, their heads smashed together so forcefully that they looked like conjoined twins.

Flash! Click-click. A female head—her dark hair thick with matted blood, shiny with it, like it had been coated in polyurethane. Her jaw had been removed and her tongue flopped out onto the section of human leg that her head was balanced on top of. Another man’s face had been partially skinned, the cuts so fine and intricate compared to the seemingly frenzied tears and rips of the other pieces, like the killer took his time with this one.

Flash! Click-click. Another photo of a torso stuck on a thick and sharp tree branch.

Flash! Click-click. Another photo of a piece of an arm, the flesh disappearing away into the darkness in a spray of gore across the hard-packed dirt; it looked like a piece of roadkill.

Flash! Click-click. Another photo of a mutilated head sitting delicately on two hands (that seemed to be from two different people) that were splayed out to cradle the head like a dish holding a candle.

Flash! Click-click. A photo of the line of tablets.

Flash! Click-click. A close-up photo of the ancient writing carved into the tablets.

Eleven people in all.

Were all of them here in this tangled mess? Captain Begay was right—it was hard to tell. Palmer tried to count heads, arms, legs, and torsos, but he lost count. He had counted seven heads so far, but he was fairly certain that pieces of maybe two other heads and faces were buried down in the middle of the tangled body parts with the torsos; one piece of a head might even be stuffed inside the cavity of one of the torsos.

Forensics was going to have to sort all of this out.

“What are those tablets?” Palmer asked Begay. “Is that Navajo writing?”

Begay walked closer to the tablets, his white handkerchief up to his nose and mouth. He studied the tablets for a moment, aiming his flashlight beam down at them. He shook his head no and turned back to Palmer. “That’s not Navajo. Nothing I’ve ever seen before. I would guess that it might be Anasazi writing.”

“The people who built this city in here?” Palmer looked at the adobe walls of the buildings that stood like ghosts in the darkness a few dozen yards beyond the pile of body parts.

Begay nodded. “But the strange thing is that no Anasazi writing has ever been found before.”

Maybe that made these discoveries valuable, Palmer thought. But if the killers were after valuable objects, maybe even objects priceless enough to kill for, why leave them behind? Why leave them displayed in front of the dead bodies like they were? Was it some kind of message?

Palmer felt a sudden overwhelming urge to run. He needed to get out of here. He had his photos. He’d seen enough, but he sure as hell didn’t have any answers. Now he needed some fresh air; he needed to get away from the overpowering stink of rotting flesh. As cold as the weather was outside this cave, Palmer couldn’t wait to breathe in that icy air.

“You see what I was trying to tell you guys?” Begay said.

Palmer nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak right now, afraid his breakfast sandwich and coffee (and let’s not forget the few nips of vodka) might come rolling up out of him whether he wanted them to or not.

“There’s no way a man did all of this,” Begay continued. “Those limbs, they look torn apart, not cut.”

Palmer nodded. “Let’s get some air.”

“Amen,” Klein said.

Begay nodded in agreement. He turned to head back towards the narrow passageway through the rock. Klein hurried in front of the two men so he could light their way back with the spotlight.

They hurried back through the tunnel of rock, the same way they had entered, Klein in the lead with his handheld spotlight shining the way for them. Palmer walked behind Klein with the pathetic light from his phone helping a little, and Begay brought up the rear with his own flashlight. The scurrying sounds of their footsteps, their breathing, and the rustling of their clothing all blended together into haunting echoes that bounced back at them from the darkness.

For a moment Palmer swore he heard another rustling sound from farther behind them. He swore it was the shifting sound of the body parts, like something buried inside of the mass of flesh was pulling itself out. He squeezed his mind shut against that thought. It wasn’t real. He was just spooked, that’s all.

He’d never seen anything like that before, not in his twenty years as an agent specializing in serial and mass killings. He’d seen ritualistic murders before, mass executions by madmen with assault rifles. He’d seen what could be done to the human body. But this was a mixture of both: the raw power of rage exhibited by the tearing of the limbs away from the torsos, and then the delicate precision, almost artistic placement of the pieces, like some kind of horrible sculpture.

No, whoever had done this hadn’t been trying to hide the bodies … they had displayed them.

They finally reached the mouth of the cave, the bright sunlight pouring into the sliver of the entrance, the colder air hitting them like an invisible punch. But at least it was fresh air.

“One person didn’t do all of that,” Begay said as soon as they were outside the cave and walking towards his Ford Bronco. Klein shut off his spotlight and handed it back to the officer who still stood in front of Begay’s Bronco.

“That’s not any kind of animal attack,” Klein said. “That’s for sure.”

“But those people were torn apart,” Palmer said. “Like Captain Begay said.”

Klein looked down at his cell phone. “Can’t ever get a signal out here,” he mumbled like he was purposely ignoring Palmer’s statement.

Palmer shoved his own cell phone down into his coat pocket. He felt his leather gloves in the pocket and pulled them out. He pulled the gloves on over the thin blue nitrile gloves and his hands felt a little warmer.

“Not an animal exactly,” Begay said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Klein snapped at him.

Begay didn’t say anything, but Palmer had an idea of what the big man was getting at—some kind of Native American legend or something, some mythical monster that attacked humans and tore them apart. But Palmer wasn’t going to say anything and let Klein ridicule the captain in front of his own men.

Begay still didn’t seem ready to expound on his statement, and at least Klein dismissed it.

“Look,” Palmer said to Begay, “I know this seems impossible, but I assure you a person did this. More likely a group of people.” Palmer thought back to his theory of a group of Navajo radicals who wanted to send a message to other scientists who might want to come and dig up their land. It seemed like an extreme theory, but it was all Palmer had to go on right now.

“I know this seems … seems impossible,” Agent Palmer continued. “But when the forensics team gets here, they’ll figure it all out. It might take a while, but they will figure all of this out.”

Begay didn’t say anything, he seemed to be choosing his statements carefully, but Palmer could see the doubt in the man’s dark eyes.

Palmer couldn’t blame Begay. What they’d just seen inside that cave was hard for any person to wrap their mind around. He had heard of cases that were nearly as gruesome as the display in the cave: cult killings, sadistic tortures. He remembered reading about World War II soldiers who had invaded Hitler’s death camps at the end of the war and saw horrors beyond belief, atrocities beyond understanding, things that haunted their dreams. Palmer knew that humans had the will and the power to do unspeakably terrible things to each other.

“There’s no blood in the cave,” Begay finally spoke, staring right at Klein, and then at Palmer.

“What do you mean no blood?” Klein asked and looked at Palmer.

Palmer nodded; he’d noticed the same thing when they had walked through the cave. “I didn’t see any blood on the dirt floor, none smeared on the rock walls, no drag marks from the bodies to speak of.”

Klein looked a little embarrassed that he hadn’t noticed that.

“Not much blood out here either,” Begay said. “Nothing except for that one spot over there by the second trailer. But there’s blood all over the place inside that first trailer. How did this person, or these people, take blood-soaked bodies, all of those pieces of their bodies, from the trailer to the cave without spilling a drop of it?”

“I don’t know. It’s strange, but we’re going to get it all figured out.” Palmer said and then looked over at the line of trucks in the distance near the stand of cottonwoods. He thought about going over there and looking them over.

But before Palmer started walking towards the trucks, the radios from inside both of the Dodge Durangos squawked—an incoherent voice called out through a burst of static from the dashboard radios. The officer with the longer dark hair bolted to his vehicle and snatched the mic up out of his truck. He talked into it for a moment, but Palmer couldn’t make out all of what he was saying—some of the words sounded like they might have been Navajo. After the officer finished the conversation on the radio, he threw the mic back into his vehicle onto the driver’s seat and hurried over to Begay.

Agent Palmer watched the young officer, but the man’s eyes were on his captain.

“There’s been another murder,” the officer told Begay. “Two more bodies discovered.”

CHAPTER 10

Navajo Reservation—the dig site

“We’re going with you,” Agent Klein told Captain Begay as he walked towards his Ford Bronco. “It could be connected to what happened here.”

Begay stopped walking and looked at both of the agents like he was thinking something over. He let out a slow sigh. “It’s not too far from here. I’ll leave my men here to wait for your forensics team.”

“Sounds good,” Agent Palmer said. He looked at Klein. “I’ll follow you.”

As Palmer walked quickly to his rental sedan, Begay gave his orders to his two officers. Palmer got in his car and closed the door on the freezing air. He watched the reactions from the two men as Begay told them to wait behind—they didn’t look very happy about staying here at the dig site.

Palmer tore off his gloves and thrust his hands in front of the heating vents, waiting for the air to warm up. Klein was already in his black sedan, the motor running, smoke pluming up from the tailpipe.

Begay got into his Bronco and started it up. He drove away from the other two Durangos and idled down the trail through the brush that led up to the dirt road that cut through the rock canyon. Klein followed Begay, and Palmer followed Klein. Palmer hoped Captain Begay would drive a little slower over this rough terrain until they got back on paved roads.

*

Once they were out of the canyons and onto paved roads, Palmer checked his cell phone. He had one bar of signal strength, so he dialed the Albuquerque office.

“This is Special Agent Palmer,” he said into the phone. “I’m in the field at a dig site on the Navajo Reservation, and I was wondering how far away the forensics team is.”

He waited for a moment, following Klein’s sedan along the desert road. In the distance jagged mountains and mesas lined the horizon with a sea of brush leading up to them.

“They should be there in the next few hours,” the dispatch told him.

“Can you let them know that they need to bring a generator with them? And some extra gas.”

“A generator,” the woman said. She seemed to be writing it down. “A generator and some gas,” she repeated.

“I’m going with Agent Klein to another crime scene that might be related to this one. We might not be back to the dig site when the forensics team gets there, but there will be two Navajo Tribal officers waiting for them.”

Again it seemed like she was writing instructions down. “I’ll let them know.”

“Okay, thanks,” Palmer said into the phone and hung up.

*

Thirty minutes later Palmer followed Klein and Begay into the small town of Iron Springs. The town was spread out among the dusty hills. They passed a convenience store, a small church, two lines of commercial buildings lining each side of the main street, a fire station/police department, a Mexican restaurant. Beyond the buildings was a water tower rising up into the clear blue sky. Some of the roads branched off from the main road and led to areas of houses or plots of land with trailers on them. They took one of these side roads, heading back out into the barren desert again.

Dotting the tops of the hills in the distance were several trailers, some inside fenced acres of land where groups of sheep, cows, or goats grazed. Once they were past these homesteads, they rounded a curve where the hills rose up sharply on one side, then flattened out again as they descended down into a valley. On the left side of the road were some small, squat houses set far back from the road, and each home sat on at least an acre of land. They drove to the last house and Palmer followed Klein and Captain Begay, pulling over onto the side of the road in the front yard. This house looked neat, the front yard decorated with carefully planted desert fauna in a gravel bed. The house looked recently painted and the metal roof looked newer.

A Tribal Police vehicle, another Dodge Durango, was already parked in the driveway. A police officer with the now-familiar green coat on stood beside his vehicle, waiting for them. A compact car was parked in front of the cop’s car, tucked away and protected underneath a metal awning that was connected to the side of the home. A mid-nineties Chevy pickup truck with a king cab was parked in the patchy grass beside the carport.

Palmer and Klein got out of their vehicles at the same time. They walked with Begay towards the waiting police officer. The officer was young and slightly overweight. His dark hair was cut short, with a neat part on one side.

“What’ve you got?” Begay asked the officer.

The officer didn’t answer. Palmer couldn’t tell for sure because of the mirrored sunglasses the man was wearing, but he would bet a week’s pay that the man’s eyes had darted to him and Klein in suspicion, spotting two outsiders.

Begay picked up on it immediately. “It’s okay to talk in front of them. This is Special Agent Palmer with the FBI, and you’ve probably met Agent Klein before.”

The introduction didn’t seem to set the officer at ease.

“What have you got?” Begay asked again, and his tone was unmistakably more forceful.

“Man and a woman,” the officer said. “Both dead.” He hesitated for a moment like he wasn’t sure if he should say the rest, but then he added: “It’s John and Deena.”

Begay was silent for a moment and very still. Palmer guessed that the news wasn’t a shock to Begay, he apparently knew this house and he knew the people who lived here. “What about David?”

“He’s not in there.” The officer sighed; it was practically a shudder. “It’s bad in there. I’ve … I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“You put out an APB on David?”

“Yes, sir … regional and statewide. I’ve also got John’s sister, Awenita, calling around about David.”

“Who’s David?” Klein asked.

“He’s their son. He’s only nine years old. He might’ve been taken,” Begay said.

Or worse, Palmer thought, but he didn’t want to voice their deepest fears.

The officer turned and led the three of them to the front door of the house.

Palmer pulled out another pair of blue nitrile gloves and shoved his hands into them. He followed the Navajo police officers and Agent Klein into the small house.

The place was neat inside, tastefully decorated in southwestern décor. But it didn’t look immaculate; it looked lived in, a real family’s home.

“Who called this in?” Begay asked as they stood in the middle of the living room.

“Awenita,” the officer answered. “She wasn’t getting a hold of them for a few days. Said she wanted to drive over here to make sure they were okay. She said she was getting a bad feeling. She rang the doorbell and knocked on the door, but they weren’t answering, even though both of their vehicles were parked outside. She has a spare set of keys, so she let herself in. She found them back there in the bedroom.” He gestured at a short hallway.

Begay walked down the hall to the last bedroom. Palmer and Klein followed him. They all entered the bedroom. Begay moved to the side to allow the two agents inside.

Palmer could already smell the decaying bodies before he even stepped foot inside the bedroom—it was the same smell from the cave, the smell of death that seemed to get trapped inside his nose for a few days afterwards. He smelled the rot, the urine, and the feces. The stench wasn’t quite as overpowering as the cave had been, but it was close. These two bodies had been closed up in this bedroom for at least two days now, he guessed. Maybe three days.

“Holy shit,” Klein said.

Palmer had his cell phone out, ready to snap some photos.

It was a little hard to tell who was who because of the mutilations, but judging from their clothing, the man they called John was sprawled out on the bed, face-down. He was partially clothed, one foot had a sock on it and the other was bare. It seemed like half of his shirt and part of his jeans had been torn away. The blankets underneath his body were soaked with blood, especially underneath his head, which had been stripped completely of skin and hair.

His wife was a short and portly woman. She was face-down on the floor, the carpet soaked with blood that had turned dark over time. She too was clothed, but it looked like parts of her clothing had been torn away from her body. She didn’t have her shoes on and her feet were purplish in color, one of them more purplish than the other because it looked like it had been twisted around in the wrong direction, her toes pointing up even though she was face-down. Like her husband, the woman’s head was completely skinned; all of the skin and hair gone, leaving only the red glistening meat behind.

Palmer felt another wave of nausea wash over him as he snapped a few photos. The little click-click sound from his phone when he snapped a photo was beginning to get on his nerves now. He wished he’d taken that drink in the car on the way here.

“They’ve been scalped,” Klein said.

“Rounded,” Begay corrected. He pulled a white handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and held it over his nose and mouth. There were already a few flies buzzing around the corpses, some of them bouncing off the glass of the bedroom window that was mostly covered with a sheer curtain.

“Rounded?” Palmer asked.

“Instead of scalping, some tribes used to skin the whole head and scalp, all at the same time. It was called ‘rounding.’”

“Navajos did that?” Klein asked, and his words seemed to drip with accusation.

“No,” Begay answered, staring at him.

Palmer sighed. “Why don’t you go check the other rooms?” Palmer told Klein.

Klein hesitated, and Palmer thought the agent was going to buck him, but then he left the room without another word.

“This isn’t a robbery,” Begay said in a low voice.

“I know,” Palmer answered. “This doesn’t make sense,” he whispered more to himself than to Begay. He took more photos and moved closer to the woman on the floor, crouching down beside her. He looked at Begay. “Did your officer find their faces anywhere? Their scalps?”

“I’ll check,” Begay said from behind his handkerchief. He left the bedroom.

Palmer studied the bodies for a moment, waiting for Begay to return.

Klein came back and stood in the doorway. “Nothing else in the house,” he said. “I checked all of the other rooms. No blood anywhere else.”

Palmer nodded. “I need to call the forensics team and let them know they’ve got another crime scene.”

Begay came back into the bedroom. “The officer didn’t find anything else,” he said.

“I need some of your guys posted here until forensics gets here,” Palmer told Begay.

The captain nodded. “I’ll leave someone here as long as they are needed.”

Palmer sighed. “I think we better get back to the dig site,” he told Klein.

“You can follow me back there,” Begay said, already walking back down the hall towards the living room and not waiting for an answer. It seemed like Begay was going back to the dig site whether Palmer wanted him there or not.

CHAPTER 11

Navajo Reservation—the dig site

An hour later Special Agent Palmer and Agent Klein got back to the dig site and met the forensics team. The team was already set up and working. Another generator sat close to the other one at the mouth of the cave and it was running, illuminating the string of construction lights that led into the cave. Three other members of the forensics team were combing over the line of abandoned vehicles. They must’ve drawn the long straws, Palmer thought, to not have to work inside that cave.

Palmer and Klein walked over towards the line of vehicles. Begay had parked his Bronco next to the two Durangos, and he was talking with his officers, the three of them keeping out of the way of the Feds, but their eyes darted over to Palmer and Klein as they walked away.

Palmer stopped a hundred yards away from the closest vehicle in the line, a Ford F-350 with a camper top on the back. The three members of the forensics team were all working on that vehicle: dusting it for prints, taking measurements, bagging any evidence they found and labeling it.

Klein stood beside Palmer and watched the activity for a moment, and then he looked at the agent. “What do you think we’re dealing with here? I mean, you got any theories yet?”

Palmer watched the men and women work on the truck for a moment, not even glancing at Klein. They were out of earshot of the team members, but all three of them looked so involved in their work that they probably wouldn’t have heard them even if they were closer.

“At first I thought one of the archaeologists went nuts and killed one of the other people here,” Palmer finally said. “And then I figured that person might have killed the others to cover everything up. But after we went in the cave, I changed my mind. I don’t think one person did all of this.”

“I don’t either,” Klein responded. “I think a group of people killed these people and put their body parts in that cave. Maybe four or five killers at least.”

Palmer could tell that the agent couldn’t wait to talk about his own theories, to compare his ideas with a legendary serial killer hunter.

“Might be true,” Palmer answered. “Hard to tell if all ten people are in that … that arrangement in the cave. If they’re all there, then one of them wasn’t the killer.”

“Looks like they’re all there in that cave,” Klein said, making up his mind already. “There’s too many body parts in there … has to be all of them. So that means other people killed these scientists. We already know that much.”

Palmer was sure Klein had some suspects in mind already. “I thought of robbers,” Palmer said. “Maybe a group of people trying to steal the artifacts these guys dug up. Maybe some gold trinkets or something. But then when Captain Begay told us that Anasazi writing had never been discovered before, I thought that those tablets in that cave might’ve been valuable. But if that’s the case, then why leave all of those tablets behind, displayed like that in front of the body parts?”

Klein nodded, like he could see that possibility, but Palmer could tell that he already had his mind made up about who he suspected, and he couldn’t wait to tell him about it.

“And it doesn’t seem like any of the artifacts in the trailer were taken,” Palmer added.

“I noticed that, too,” Klein said.

Palmer thought it might be a lie.

“So then I thought it might be a group of eco-terrorists that did this,” Palmer continued. “Or possibly some local Navajo extremists who were opposed to this dig site on their land. I figured maybe they were trying to send a message and … and then maybe things went too far.”

Klein smiled at Palmer, staring at him and nodding. “That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking the whole time. But not tree huggers. I don’t think they would do something like this. But I could see a group of Navajo radicals sneaking down here and slaughtering these people. A warning for others to stay off their land, just like you said.”

“But the lack of blood in the cave and between the trailer and the cave bothers me,” Palmer said.

“Yeah, it’s a puzzle,” Klein agreed excitedly. “But I think they set this up to look like a mystery.” He lowered his voice a little. “You heard what Captain Begay said earlier, something about it not being people or animals that did this.”

So Begay’s words hadn’t slipped past Klein after all.

“I think these guys set this up to look like one of their mythical monsters did this,” Klein said. “There are still a lot of people around here who believe in witches and skinwalkers and corpse sickness, all of that kind of bullshit.” He looked away and shook his head. “You don’t know the kind of crap I have to put up with here.”

Palmer didn’t respond. It seemed like Captain Begay wasn’t completely ruling out the possibility of some kind of supernatural force at work here. Palmer didn’t believe in that kind of stuff. He sided with Klein’s idea, but that didn’t mean they should ridicule Captain Begay and his men because the clues to this case were most likely going to come from Begay and locals like him.

“There are a couple of other odd things,” Palmer said. He nodded towards the line of vehicles a hundred yards away. “The dead batteries in those vehicles.”

“These people have been dead for two or three days at least. Maybe longer. It’s been freezing. Not impossible that the batteries in their vehicles died.”

“And the generator wouldn’t start,” Palmer reminded him. “And the laptop in the trailer was destroyed. What about the radio equipment in the trailer?”

Klein just shrugged.

Palmer was sure Klein hadn’t even looked at the radio closely.

“If these guys were attacked, then why didn’t they use the radios to contact someone right away?” Palmer asked. “Maybe the radio wasn’t working. Just like all of the batteries were dead in their trucks? But if they couldn’t call for help, then why didn’t some of them run out into the desert? How come some of them didn’t get away?”

“We can figure out the why later,” Klein said. “Right now I think we should concentrate on the who first.”

“What about the bodies in town?” Palmer said, looking at Klein. “You want to pin that on Navajo activists, too?”

“I’m not pinning anything on anybody,” Klein snapped. “I’m just exploring theories that make the most sense.”

Palmer waited patiently for Klein to answer the question.

He sighed. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “Could be another murder altogether that happened around the same time as this one. Husband could’ve killed his wife, and then killed himself.”

“And then skinned his own face off?” Palmer asked.

Klein didn’t respond.

“Or those two murders could have something to do with the slaughter here, and we just don’t know what the connection is yet,” Palmer said. “You have to admit that the display of their bodies seems a little similar to those body parts in that cave.”

“They weren’t torn apart,” Klein said. “They weren’t displayed like the bodies in the cave.”

“Yeah, but they were mutilated. Rounded, as the captain said.”

Klein just nodded.

Palmer looked at the line of trucks again. “One of those vehicles is gone. Looks like it drove right up that embankment onto the dirt road. In quite a hurry to leave.”

Klein nodded. “Yeah, looks that way.”

“Why would Navajo radicals come here, do this, and then steal one of the vehicles?”

Klein didn’t have an answer for him.

“Forensics will get a tire tread sample,” Palmer said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky. DMV is working on whose vehicle belongs to who among these archaeologists.”

Klein just nodded again.

Palmer started walking towards the vehicles. Klein hurried to catch up with him. A forensics tech dressed in a white bodysuit and gloves over his clothes stood at the back of the pickup truck, the camper top open and the tailgate down. He looked Palmer’s way as he approached.

“What’ve you got so far?” Palmer asked the tech.

He shook his head. “This is the most bizarre crime scene I’ve ever been to.”

Palmer waited for the forensics tech to go on.

“It looks like someone changed the battery in this truck. There’s a battery back here.” He pointed inside the back of the truck.

Palmer and Klein stared at the battery.

“It’s dead, just like the one in the front,” the tech said.

“What are the chances the backup battery would be dead, too?” Palmer asked Klein.

Klein didn’t answer.

Palmer turned around and looked back at the cave. The sun was dipping down lower towards the western horizon behind the jagged mountain tops. The shadows from the ridge had stretched completely across the canyon floor now, the temperature dropping even lower. “Who’s in charge here?” Palmer asked while still looking at the mouth of the cave where a short, heavy man in a white suit had just come out of.

“That’s him over there,” the tech said. “Dr. Alonzo Johnson.”

“Thanks,” Palmer said. He started marching towards the cave without waiting for Klein.

Both agents met up with Dr. Johnson, who stood beside a large cooler, drinking a cold bottle of soda even though it was freezing in the canyon.

“Dr. Johnson?” Palmer called out as he approached.

The older man looked at Palmer and Klein. His wiry hair was pure white and he had a roadmap of wrinkles etched deep into his dark face. He looked shell-shocked and exhausted from his time in the cave. “Please call me Alonzo.”

“I’m special agent Palmer, and this is Agent Klein.”

The older man nodded at both of them like a weariness was pressing down on him.

“You got any ideas yet about what’s going on here?” Palmer asked Alonzo.

Alonzo took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with fingers that were wrinkled like prunes from wearing latex gloves for too long. He sighed and seemed so tired it looked like he might fall over at any moment. The generator was humming along twenty yards in the background, and he walked away from the noise of it. Palmer and Klein fell in step beside him.

“We haven’t run many tests yet,” Alonzo said. “We’re still trying to figure out what we’re dealing with in there.”

Palmer nodded.

“The pieces of the bodies … they don’t look cut apart. They look like they were torn apart. The flesh is ragged with tears, bones pulled right out of the sockets, some of the bones snapped in half like someone would snap a twig. I haven’t really found any signs of tools or weapons used at all. No knife cuts or ax marks in the bone or on the flesh so far. Nothing.”

Alonzo stopped walking and stood near the twisted trunk of tree. Palmer and Klein watched him—he seemed like he had more to say.

“Of course, these are just preliminary investigations. We need to get the bodies … I mean the parts … back to the lab in Albuquerque. We’ll be able to run a lot more tests there. Right now we’re just doing a lot of bagging and tagging. We’re going to be working all night and well into tomorrow. We’ve got some ice trucks coming tomorrow afternoon to start transporting the … the evidence back to lab.”

“Who do you think could do something like this?” Palmer asked Alonzo. “Tearing people apart like that. Snapping bones.”

The older man shook his head slowly in frustration, sighing again, his breath misting up in front of him in the quickly-dropping temperature. “I don’t really know. I don’t believe a human could’ve done damage like that with his bare hands. Nobody could be that strong.”

“So what are you saying?” Palmer asked.

Alonzo shrugged. “I don’t know. I just don’t have any answers right now.”

“What about the other crime scene?” Palmer asked. “The one in town?”

“I sent Susan Dorsett over there. The chief of police here,” Alonzo looked around like he might spot the large man somewhere.

“Captain Begay,” Klein corrected.

“Yes, Captain Begay. Sorry. He told me that he would have a twenty-four hour guard on duty outside the home while Susan was there.”

Palmer looked towards the Navajo police vehicles; all three of them were grouped together and parked the farthest away, closest to the dirt trail that led out of this canyon. The three Navajo police officers stood together in a small group watching everything in silence. “Captain Begay seems to be trying to help as much as he can,” Palmer said and looked back at Alonzo.

“Sorry, guys,” Alonzo said. “This one’s going to take a while before we can find anything useful. And speaking of that, I need to get back to work.”

The doctor finished his bottle of soda in a few swallows. Then he turned to head back to the mouth of the cave, the interior lit up in the darkening afternoon now that the construction lights were on.

“You guys working through the night?” Palmer asked Dr. Johnson.

“Yeah,” Johnson said, turning back around to them. “Some of us might try to catch an hour or two of sleep in one of the vans. Sleeping in shifts.” He paused for a moment and then added: “It’s going to be a long night.” He nodded and walked away.

Palmer looked at Klein. “What about you? Are you working through the night?”

“I’m going to stay for a little while, but there isn’t much to do until forensics comes up with some more evidence or the DMV comes back with whose vehicles are still here and which one might be gone.”

“You got some people you can talk to about your Navajo radicals theory?”

“Yeah,” Klein said. “And remember, it’s your theory too.”

Palmer didn’t want to argue with him.

“I’m staying at a motel in town,” Klein said. “There’s plenty of other rooms there.”

Palmer nodded. “Thanks, but Captain Begay asked me to stay the night at his place.”

Klein looked shocked. “He did? Lucky you.”

“We’re going to grab a bite to eat in town. He said he wants to tell me some things.”

Klein nodded and pretended to not look intrigued.

“I think he knows more about what’s going on here than he’s letting on,” Palmer said.

CHAPTER 12

Captain Begay left one officer at the dig site and worked out a schedule so there would always be one police officer there near the edge of the dig site, watching over things. Palmer told Begay that he didn’t need to do that, but the captain insisted and Palmer thanked him for all of his help so far.

Fifteen minutes later Palmer was following Begay’s Bronco as the afternoon quickly turned to evening. And forty-five minutes later they were back in the small town of Iron Springs. Begay pulled into a diagonal parking space in front of the Mexican restaurant. Palmer parked his rental car a few spaces down from Begay’s Bronco and he got out. He met the captain at the front door of the restaurant.

“The food’s good here,” Begay told him.

Palmer nodded—he believed him.

They entered the restaurant. It was bigger than it looked from the outside. The place was about half-full and looked like it could seat a hundred people at full capacity.

A plump waitress met the captain before he was barely inside. “Captain,” she called out, and then she escorted him and Palmer to a table in the back that must’ve been “Captain Begay’s table.”

Palmer sat down at the table so he could face the door; an old habit of his. He had noticed the patrons nod and greet the captain as they walked by, and he noticed the lingering stares directed his way. He was wearing his FBI “uniform,” a dark suit and tie with black sunglasses. But it was more than that, people just seemed to get a feeling that he was the law, the authority, and most people tensed up around him whether they realized it or not.

Palmer took his sunglasses off and tucked them away inside his suit coat as the waitress laid down a simple-looking menu in front of him. No menu for Begay, Palmer noticed.

“I’ll have an iced tea,” Begay told the waitress.

Palmer glanced down at his menu, turning it over to where the alcohol would usually be listed. He was pretty sure that liquor wasn’t served here on the Navajo Reservation, but even a few beers would be okay right now.

“Sorry, no alcohol served here on the Rez,” Begay told Palmer with a smile.

Palmer locked eyes with the man, and then opened his menu. The captain was sharper and more perceptive than he had given him credit for.

“It’s been a tough day,” Palmer grumbled, using that as his excuse for searching for something to drink.

Begay nodded in agreement. “Eat something if you’re hungry. I told my wife we would stop by here and pick something up. I’m going to grab a to-go box for her.”

Again, Palmer nodded and then studied the menu again.

“Enchiladas are good here,” Begay offered.

Palmer just nodded. He wasn’t a connoisseur of food, especially since his wife had left him. He just ate these days to satisfy his hunger, and only that much, which often amounted to only a small meal or two a day. He didn’t have favorites or cravings. His freezer in his condo was packed with frozen dinners, his pantry with cans and boxes of convenient foods. A lot of times he would just pick something up, a hamburger or some kind of sandwich, whatever was easy. He didn’t need anything to interfere with the only thing he even cared about in his life anymore: his work and catching these monsters who roamed in the darkness, monsters that many citizens never even knew about. His life now was made up of mere functions to serve the higher purpose of his work. So, yeah, the enchiladas would be fine. They would provide the calories and the nutrients that his body needed to keep going. What he really craved right now was a few sips from one of the pints of vodka in his duffel bag, which was now locked in his car.

“Enchiladas sound great,” Palmer said and closed the menu and pushed it towards the edge of the table. He looked around and caught the stares of a few of the citizens of this small town. Most of the people seemed to be Native Americans, but it seemed that there was a healthy mix of whites and Hispanics in the group as well. The eyes that looked back at him were eyes of shock, suspicion, fear, and curiosity.

“I guess everyone in town has heard about the murders,” Palmer said in a low voice when he looked back at Begay.

“News like that travels fast in a small town. Cops talk. People talk.”

Palmer nodded. He was sure that in the homes of people in this town guns were being loaded, threats and promises were being made to loved ones to protect them from the killers lurking out there in the darkness.

“John and Deena were good people. Now they’re dead … slaughtered. And their son is missing.”

The waitress came back for their order. Begay ordered two enchilada plates and a sweet iced tea for Palmer. He also asked the waitress if she could have an enchilada plate ready to go for his wife when they left. It seemed like a common request from Begay.

Palmer felt suddenly anxious and fidgety. He usually liked the challenge of solving a puzzle, but this puzzle felt so different. For the first time in his life Palmer felt like he was out of his league, like he was dealing with someone (or something) much more cunning and dangerous than he was used to. There were too many things that didn’t make sense about these murders.

The food came fifteen minutes later and Palmer was happy with the distraction. He commented that the food was good; it was something he always said to be polite. They made some small talk as they ate.

“Married?” Begay asked Palmer.

“Divorced.”

“Kids?”

“One,” Palmer told him. “My daughter Eliza. She’s at college.” He thought about adding that they didn’t stay in touch with each other much since the divorce, but decided not to.

It turned out that Begay had two kids away at college; there would be no following in their father’s footsteps into law enforcement. Maybe they were the kind of kids who couldn’t wait to escape this small desert town and explore the world, Palmer thought.

Begay seemed to have reached his quota of small talk for the night, and talk turned to the murder case. “What do you think? You got any theories yet?”

Palmer pushed the pieces of his second enchilada around on his plate with his fork, dragging it through the salty red sauce it was drenched in. He didn’t have to tell Captain Begay anything; he really wasn’t supposed to discuss anything about the case with him now that the FBI had taken over, but Begay’s query seemed innocent enough, just curiosity for curiosity’s sake. And it also seemed like Begay had some ideas of his own, ideas that Palmer would like to find out about. Begay had already proven himself to be a very perceptive man, and he was a worried cop because thirteen people had been slaughtered in his county under his watch.

Palmer shrugged as he stared at Begay. “Not really. No theories yet. I’m going to check in with the forensics team tomorrow morning. See what they’ve come up with.”

Begay seemed like he wanted to say something, like he was wrestling with how to phrase it. But before he could speak, he was interrupted by a high-pitched screeching noise.

A tiny woman, who could’ve easily been a hundred years old, rushed up to their table, her dark eyes wide with fear, her nearly toothless mouth opened in a scream. Her hair was wild, her clothes a little disheveled. She was screaming something to Begay in Navajo, pointing a crooked finger right at Palmer.

Captain Begay stood up and laid a gentle but firm hand on the woman’s bony shoulder. Another woman rushed up to them and tried to escort the ancient woman back outside, but the old woman didn’t want to leave. She kept shouting at Begay.

Eventually the younger woman got the old lady calmed down enough to get her to leave.

“What was that all about?” Palmer asked him.

Begay leaned in closer to Palmer and spoke in almost a whisper. “She says she knows who the killer is.”

Palmer didn’t expect that. “Who did she say it is?”

“Come on back with me to the house,” Begay said. “You can sleep in one of the kids’ rooms.”

Palmer waited for an answer to his question.

“We’ll talk about it at my house,” Begay said in an even lower voice. “You can bring your bottle of vodka inside if you want to.”

That sounded good to Palmer. He stood up and grabbed for his wallet, but Begay waved him off. “It’s already been taken care of.”

Palmer nodded, but he opened his wallet and left a generous tip for the waitress.

CHAPTER 13

Captain Begay’s home

Special Agent Palmer followed Captain Begay to his house. They drove farther down the main street, leaving the buildings and streetlights of the town behind them. Without the streetlights the world was so dark. An amazing display of stars glittered above the desert landscape. The buildings of downtown gave way to houses of different types and styles. The homes looked shut up tight, doors and windows locked and then double-checked now that a killer was on the loose.

She says she knows who the killer is. Begay’s words echoed in Palmer’s mind as he drove. Begay promised to explain the woman’s words when they got to his house, once they were out of earshot of the curious patrons all around them in the restaurant.

Begay’s home was about two miles outside of town, down a side road. It was a modest block and stucco structure with a clay tile roof. It looked neat and well-kept with rock and cactus gardens in the front—much like Joe and Deena’s house had looked. Begay parked his Bronco in the gravel driveway off to the left of the home, its oversized tires crunching over the pea-rock driveway. A small car was parked on the concrete driveway and pulled up under an awning. Palmer parked his rented sedan right behind Begay’s Bronco. He shifted into park, turned off the headlights, and cut the engine. He grabbed his duffel bag and got out. He locked the doors and pocketed the keys.

The front door of the house opened up as Palmer walked towards the walkway that led to the front porch. A thin woman stood silhouetted in the doorway with a small dog yapping away behind her.

Begay joined Palmer on the walkway, holding the Styrofoam takeout box in one of his big hands. “Come on inside.”

Palmer followed Begay to the doorway. Begay gave his wife a peck on the cheek and handed her the takeout box. A little mutt of a dog jumped at the captain’s leg, pawing at him for attention.

“Welcome,” Begay’s wife said to Palmer, smiling warmly at him. She was surprisingly beautiful, but it was a natural and healthful beauty.

After Begay gave his dog a few pats, the dog ran over to Palmer, jumping at him, showing no fear of a stranger in the house, only excitement.

“He’s our attack dog,” Begay’s wife said.

“I can see that,” Palmer said.

“Get down off of him,” the captain grumbled at the dog, but the dog wasn’t listening to him.

“It’s okay,” Palmer assured Begay, and he bent down to ruffle the dog’s fur. He stood back up and glanced around at the house. It was as neat inside as it was outside. The smell of something sweet, sugary, and recently baked filled the air. The furnishings were simple and comfortable, overstuffed couches and a recliner in front of a big TV. There were some small cacti in pots on the shelves. Native American art hung alongside modern art on the walls.

“You expecting a teepee?” Begay asked Palmer and smiled.

Palmer didn’t respond, suddenly feeling a little exposed and embarrassed. He had to admit that he hadn’t been expecting the modern amenities and décor. He’d always heard stories about Native Americans sticking to their old ways and abhorring any American culture, but this house seemed like it could be any other house in a modern southwestern town.

“Don’t listen to him,” Begay’s wife told Palmer. She gave him another warm smile. “My name’s Angie.”

“Pleased to meet you, Angie,” Palmer said and shook her delicate hand. She seemed to be the opposite of Begay in so many ways: small to his large, soft to his hard, warm to his cold.

“I made some cookies,” Angie told Palmer. “Would you like to try a few?”

“I would,” Begay said.

Angie laughed. “I know you do. I was asking our guest.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you. That would be great.”

Palmer followed Angie to the kitchen, and he was handed more cookies on a plate than he wanted to eat.

“Special Agent Palmer’s going to spend the night in Elise’s room,” Begay told his wife.

Angie nodded. “I’ve got the bed turned back. Fresh sheets and a pillow.” Everything seemed to have been planned ahead, probably from a phone call to Angie earlier, warning her that he was bringing a guest home with him.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” Palmer told Angie around a mouthful of cookie. “These … these cookies are really good.”

“My pleasure,” she told him.

“We need to talk some shop,” Begay told his wife.

Palmer handed the plate of cookies back to Angie, keeping one for the road. He picked up his duffel bag from the floor that the little dog had been sniffing at and he followed Begay through the kitchen to a family room at the back of the house that seemed to have been added on to the original structure sometime in the past. It was some kind of man-cave: large TV, stereo system, mounted hunting trophies on the wall, assortments of displayed rifles and bows and arrows, framed photos of outdoor adventures. In a corner was a small clay fire pit, and above that was a metal hood and flue that ran up to the ceiling. In another corner there was a desk with a computer on top of it and two battered filing cabinets beside it—Begay’s office, Palmer supposed. The whole room was dark and cozy.

Begay unclipped his police belt and hung it on a hook on the wall. He took off his green coat and slung it over the back of a leather chair.

Palmer did the same, folding his coat neatly. He set his duffel bag down beside the other chair, keeping it close. He left his gun and holster attached to his belt. He would take them off later when he went to bed—his gun was always on him until he went to bed; it was an old habit from his training days at Quantico.

Begay glanced down at Palmer’s duffel bag and then met his eyes. “It’s okay if you want to drink.”

Palmer wasted no time pulling out his bottle of vodka.

Begay was busy at the small sink behind the bar. He filled a small glass with ice cubes and brought it over to Palmer. “For your firewater?” Begay offered as he handed the glass to Palmer.

Again, Palmer felt a little embarrassed, not sure what the politically correct response should be.

“I’m just messing around with you,” Begay said, and his smile seemed genuine enough. “You want anything else with it? Soda? Juice?”

“No thanks.”

Begay nodded like he’d already figured that.

Palmer accepted the glass of ice and he poured some of the vodka into it. He drank all of it down in a few gulps. Then he looked at Begay and lifted the bottle a little in the universal gesture of: Want some?

“No thanks,” Begay said. “I don’t drink. I’ve seen what it does to people. What it does to their lives.”

But you’ve got a bar in your man-cave, Palmer thought, but didn’t say anything. He wondered if Begay used to drink. He wondered if he was tempting him as he poured another two fingers of vodka into his glass of ice.

Begay gestured towards one of the leather chairs situated in front of a massive stone fireplace. The captain sat down in the chair he had draped his coat over like he’d been marking his territory, claiming “his” chair.

Palmer drank a few more sips of his vodka, the ice cubes clinking a little. He sat down in the leather chair a few feet away from Begay’s chair, a wood table in between them littered with magazines and a dog-eared paperback western novel.

Palmer was ready to have his question answered. He could tell that Begay was drawing this out, perhaps even enjoying the suspense he was wielding over him. But enough was enough. It had been a long day of horrors like he’d never seen before, and he was exhausted. No more games.

“Who did that old lady in the restaurant say the killer was?” Palmer asked again.

Begay sipped a can of soda and looked at the cold fireplace; he seemed to be crafting his answer.

It felt to Palmer like he had interrupted some kind of ritual that Begay took part in at the end of his working day, like he was rushing him right now when he needed time to sit down and decompress from the day.

“I’m not supposed to be drinking these,” Begay said, glancing down at the can of soda that was practically swallowed up by his hand. “Angie won’t be happy, but this is like a special circumstance.”

Palmer guessed Begay was either pre-diabetic or he already had the disease. To each their own poison, he wanted to say but didn’t.

“Who’s the murderer?” Palmer asked again, staring at Begay, waiting for an answer.

Captain Begay stared at the dark fireplace like he was collecting his thoughts. “I don’t think you’re going to like what that old woman had to say.”

“Try me.”

“She says the Ancient Enemy killed John and Deena.”

“What’s that? Some kind of Native American legend?”

“It’s a monster. The words she was using tonight actually translate more as skinwalkers or shapeshifters, but the words still equate to roughly the same thing.”

Palmer didn’t say anything—he had learned a long time ago when to stay quiet and listen. He waited for the captain to continue.

Begay took another sip of his soda and then spoke. “I know this Ancient Enemy legend is something that you’re not going to believe, but you asked me what the old lady said so I told you.”

Palmer still didn’t respond. He had a bunch of dead bodies now in two different locations with varying degrees of mutilation, no obvious clues left behind by the killers so far, and seemingly no motive, so he was open to hearing any theories right now. Even one as far-fetched as this Native American legend might be. A clue still might somehow surface from it, some random piece of information that might send Palmer in a different direction. His earlier theory of Navajo protestors came back to him. If that theory was true, and things had gotten out of hand, then maybe these people would cover up their crimes with some Ancient Enemy or skinwalker legend, like Klein had suggested. Maybe the pieces were beginning to fall into place. And maybe it was time to play his cards with Begay.

“Do you know of any people or a group of people living around here who might protest something like the archaeological dig site?” Palmer asked.

Begay’s eyes narrowed even more as he studied Palmer for a moment. “What do you mean?”

“Maybe some of the local people wanted to protest the archaeologists. Maybe things turned violent. Things went too far.”

Begay didn’t answer. He finished the rest of his can of soda down in a few quick swallows. Then he got up and went behind the bar. He grabbed another can of soda out of the small refrigerator and took his time walking back to his leather chair.

“So, that’s your theory?” Begay finally asked after he sat down in the chair, the springs creaking, the leather crackling. “You’re thinking that some Navajo radicals did this?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m just throwing ideas around.”

Begay didn’t look like he believed that.

“I need to explore all possibilities,” Palmer added.

Begay nodded like that was perfectly reasonable. “There are some who oppose the excavation of artifacts … of our ancestors … on our land. They protest sometimes, and they make their views clear. But they know that the choice is up to the council. I’ve never seen any real violence, though. Maybe some property damage here and there, some theft … but murder? And brutal murders and mutilations like these?”

“Maybe whoever did this is trying to send a stronger message.”

“But there wasn’t a clear message left behind,” Begay said.

“Maybe ‘don’t come here anymore’ was the message left behind.”

“There were no clues left behind,” Begay reminded Palmer. “These guys would have to be master criminals to leave no clues behind.”

“No clues that we know of yet. Our guys will find some clues eventually.”

Begay sighed in frustration. “You have to admit that this is not a normal crime scene. You saw those bodies, the way they were arranged together, forced together. The skin peeled off carefully in some places. Bones and muscles literally torn from the body. You saw that John and Deena’s faces were peeled away.”

“There’s an answer to all of that,” Palmer said.

“You think protestors did all of this to send a message?”

“Our guys will find the clues,” Palmer said again and then realized how accusatory his voice sounded.

Begay’s eyes shifted to the doorway.

Palmer turned around in his chair, expecting to see Begay’s wife standing there. But she wasn’t there.

“It’s late,” Begay said, dismissing the conversation for the night. “I’ll show you to your room.”

“Look,” Palmer told him. “I don’t want to argue with you or upset you, but I don’t want to jump to conclusions either. Let me talk to the forensics guys in the morning and see what they’ve got. Then we’ll take it from there.”

“Agreed,” Begay said.

Moments later Begay showed Palmer to the guest bedroom down the hall and then left him alone.

Palmer entered the bedroom, which had been turned into a “cute” guestroom. It was homey with homemade blankets and local art on the walls. No TV or phone, but that was okay—he was ready to close his eyes for a few hours. He could still see the touches of their daughter’s presence in the bedroom: some old photos of her on the walls, a collection of horse-riding trophies and ribbons on top of the dresser.

He took off his suitcoat and laid it over the back of an antique chair. He unclipped his belt and laid that over his suitcoat, but he brought his service pistol to the end table and set it down next to the lamp. He removed his tie and unbuttoned his shirt, stripped it off. He found an extra hanger in the small closet and hung his button-down shirt and pants up on it. Only in his T-shirt, boxer-briefs, and socks now, he dug his pint of vodka out of his duffel bag and took a sip. His mind had been going a hundred miles an hour all day, and now it was time to let his thoughts wander. Sometimes when he quit focusing so closely on a case for a few hours, new angles of looking at things would come to him.

After a few more nips from his bottle of vodka, Palmer screwed the cap back on and set it down next to his gun. He made sure the bedroom door was locked, turned off the lamp and crawled into bed. The sheets smelled fresh, the blanket was warm.

He lay there for a moment staring at the dark ceiling, thinking about his conversation with Captain Begay. It was true that things weren’t adding up with these murders, but he wasn’t ready to blame these atrocities on some Native American ghost story just yet.

PART 2

MONDAY

CHAPTER 14

Colorado—the cabin

Stella held onto Cole’s jacket as he drove the snowmobile down the lonely snow-covered road that wound through the seemingly never-ending woods. David was tucked in between them. It wasn’t a comfortable ride, but necessary. They were heading south, back to Cody’s Pass. Heading south probably wasn’t the best of ideas, going right back to the town where Cole had robbed the bank and a man was killed, but they needed to get away from that cabin and the horrors that were there.

But it would follow them. The Ancient Enemy would never give up until David was dead and David’s threat to that thing’s existence was eliminated.

Stella’s hands were freezing even though she had gloves on. Her fingers were starting to cramp up from holding on to Cole’s coat for so long now. Cole had told her before they left to beat on one of his shoulders if she needed to stop. But she didn’t want to stop—she wanted to put as much distance between them and that thing as possible.

David seemed okay. He held on to Cole, his arms around Cole’s waist. He had the hood of his coat up over his head, the drawstring cinched, but he was blocked from most of the freezing wind by Cole and Stella’s bodies.

There wasn’t anyone else on this road; the snow was too deep for most vehicles. This was the same road Stella and David had been driving on a few days ago when the blizzard hit, when Cole and his band of criminals had run her Suburban off the road and then carjacked it.

That seemed like such a long time ago.

The events of the past few days swam through her mind even though she wanted to forget them. She and David had fled from the archaeological dig site in New Mexico, driving farther and farther up into these snowy mountains in Colorado. A massive snowstorm moved in and the blizzard got much worse as Stella drove up this mountain road. And then Cole had run out in front of her Chevy Suburban and she ran off the road so she wouldn’t run him over. Cole and his band of bank robbers took over her truck, and all of them continued up the road. But her truck’s radiator had been damaged and the engine started to overheat. They had no choice but to take refuge somewhere. The first place they found was a driveway that led through the woods to Tom Gordon’s cabin in the middle of a giant clearing.

Tom Gordon’s cabin. She remembered Jose and the other bank robbers finding the owner of the cabin stuffed down inside the large freezer in the kitchen, his eyes torn out without a trace of blood left behind. That cabin where all the other horrors had happened, where the rest of Cole’s crew had been killed one by one and taken over by that thing out there, the Ancient Enemy that had followed her and David from New Mexico.

Stella couldn’t explain exactly what that thing was—the Ancient Enemy. But she’d begun to form some theories; these were theories she hadn’t even shared with Cole yet.

But she knew two things right now as they sped down the snow-covered road.

One: that thing, the Ancient Enemy, whatever it really was—it would be coming after them again, even if it was injured somehow (which she wasn’t sure of and David didn’t seem to know, either). It wasn’t dead; she was certain of that. And she was sure that it would come after them … after David. It still needed someone to kill David before he became too powerful to fight it, before he gained enough knowledge to fight back.

And that led to number two: they needed to get back down to the Navajo lands. If David was a true shaman like he seemed to be, then he needed some kind of training before that thing caught up to him. She never should’ve taken him away from the Navajo lands, but she hadn’t known of David’s true power at the time. She couldn’t have known it until she’d seen the Anasazi writings and symbols he had scribbled down inside the notebook in the cabin. When they got back down to Navajo lands, Stella would find an old man she’d heard stories about—a man named Joe Blackhorn. Supposedly he lived alone in a remote corner of the Reservation. She’d never met the man before, and she had no idea if he was even still alive, but she’d heard the rumors about him. They had to try to find him; they didn’t have any other choice.

What if Joe Blackhorn didn’t want to help them? What if they would be putting the old man in danger just by trying to find him?

But what choice did she have? She had to help David, not just for his own sake, but for everyone’s sake. This monster wouldn’t stop after David was dead; it would just keep killing and killing, and there would be no way to stop it once David was dead.

This was their only option, and that meant traveling south. And since this road was the only one that led south around here, they had no choice but to go right through the town of Cody’s Pass again.

It seemed likely that cops in this county would still be on the lookout for the bank robbers, but maybe they would be widening their search now, figuring that the criminals were already long gone from the area. But she and Cole still needed to be careful; they needed to be smart.

It would probably be better to drive right on through Cody’s Pass, but the roads were still so bad and they needed to find a vehicle they could drive out of the town; they couldn’t use this snowmobile all the way to the next town with the three of them on it. And they desperately needed a few hours to rest, and they needed some food.

Stella’s face was cold, but at least Cole was blocking a lot of the wind with his body as he drove the snowmobile. He drove fast, the trees and hills of snow flying past them in a blur. They had grabbed Frank’s hat and gloves for David while they were boarding up the windows last night in their preparations to leave the cabin. They’d also found another hat and pair of thick gloves in Tom Gordon’s bedroom for her. But even with the extra gloves and hats, it still didn’t feel like enough protection against the biting wind as they raced down the road.

She watched Cole’s wide back, his gloved hands gripping the handlebar grips, and her thoughts turned to him. What was his next move? How long was he going to stay with them? She suspected his primary goal had been escaping the cabin and the terror that had stalked them. Now that they were away from the cabin, what would he do? He had a good share of the stolen money shoved down into his socks and coat pockets. Would he just ditch them now or would he travel with them part of the way? He also still had his gun. Would he hurt them? Would he demand the money back that she had stuffed into her own coat pockets and socks? He seemed like a good man deep down inside … he hadn’t turned on her and David in the cabin when he’d had so many chances to. But she had to remind herself that he was a career criminal, and she would have to be wary of him. She would have to be ready for anything.

She didn’t really expect Cole to go all the way down to New Mexico with them. This wasn’t his fight. Yeah, he’d lost his little brother at the cabin, but this monster was too big to fight. Too dangerous. But she also didn’t expect him to ditch them just yet. At the very least, she figured that she and David were good cover for him to get out of this area of Colorado. Once they were farther south, he might leave them, but she would make damn sure that he didn’t hurt them. She hadn’t gone through everything that she and David had gone through just to have Cole put a bullet in their heads once he felt he was safe.

She didn’t really have any other choice than to trust Cole for now, but she needed to think of things from his point of view. He was a man wanted for robbery and murder. She’d seen his face, she knew his name, she knew details about the bank robbery. He would ultimately be a suspect in the pile of burnt bodies left behind at the cabin. It was only a matter of time before the police got to the burning cabin, discovered the bodies and realized that at least one of the criminals was still at large in the area. It was only a matter of time before the local police, the state police, and maybe even the FBI, were combing the area for him. And that would make Cole a desperate man … and desperate men were dangerous.

She would hold onto the gun Cole had given her back in the cabin, and she would hold onto some of the money stuffed down into her socks. If Cole wanted to leave, then fine. But she wasn’t going to be stranded with David. She wasn’t going to let that happen to them ever again.

CHAPTER 15

Cody’s Pass, Colorado

Cole pulled the snowmobile up into some trees off from the side of the road and drove the vehicle farther into the woods, whipping around the trees at a nerve-racking speed, but also with expertise. They traveled through the trees for ten minutes until they came to a ridge. He slowed the snowmobile down and stopped it right at the edge of the ridge. He cut the motor and the only sound they heard was the freezing wind whipping through the tree branches.

Stella pried her cramped fingers off of Cole’s arms and got off the snowmobile. Her boots sank down into the snow up to her calves. She flexed her fingers inside her gloves, and then shook her hands, trying to force the blood back into them. Her muscles were sore, and she was running on fumes now, running on the last reserves of adrenaline that she had.

Cole got off the snowmobile and lifted up the pair of goggles from his eyes. He’d swiped them from Tom Gordon’s garage this morning before they left. He walked over to the edge of the small ridge and stood beside a pine tree. He stared down the hill and then looked back at Stella and motioned for her to join him.

Stella stuffed her hands down into her coat pockets. She closed her fingers around the gun’s handle nestled in the right front pocket. Her gloves were bulky, but she would try like hell to shoot Cole if he tried anything. He might try to push her down this ridge, or club her with the butt of his pistol, or even shoot her right here in the woods.

“The town’s down there,” Cole told her as she walked towards him. He watched her. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said as she got closer to him, seemingly reading her mind.

When Stella stood beside Cole she saw that what she’d thought was a ridge was really just the sharp crest of a hill that sloped gently down into a massive clearing below. The town of Cody’s Pass was nestled down in that clearing between the mountains.

“I’m not going to hurt you or David,” Cole said again. “I wish you would believe that. If I wanted to hurt you two, I would’ve done it back at the cabin, or at any point between there and here.”

Stella nodded, but she wouldn’t let herself become too relaxed around him. He could be lying just so she and David would go along with him and provide cover until they were far enough south where he could get rid of them. He was a thief and possibly a murderer, so lying wouldn’t be out of the question for him.

“We’ve got a few options here,” Cole said. “After we robbed the bank we stashed our snowmobiles a few miles back in the woods, about a mile or so off the road.”

“I don’t know how to ride one of those things,” Stella said right away, lying to Cole.

He stared at her for a few seconds, and she could tell that he didn’t believe her. But he didn’t challenge her on it. He looked back down at the town below them. “It’s too risky, anyway. Those snowmobiles might’ve been discovered by now. Cops might even be watching them.”

Stella looked down at the town. Even though the town of Cody’s Pass was in a clearing, a lot of the suburbs were built on the foothills of the mountains surrounding it. Roads wound up into those foothills, meandering through the buildings and houses where lights burned in a lot of the windows. The traffic lights blinked from green to yellow to red and then back to green along the main road through the town and on several of the major cross streets. Apparently the storm hadn’t knocked out the electricity to the town, or the power had already been restored.

“We need some kind of vehicle to get out of here,” Cole said. “Preferably some kind of truck, since the roads still look pretty bad. Looks like some plowing has been done on the main roads down there.”

Stella just nodded.

“We need a place to stay for the afternoon. Maybe even the night.”

“There’s a motel in town,” Stella said. “You can’t see it from here, but it’s way down that main road a ways. I stopped there for a few hours on my way into town. We slept in my truck for a few hours until it got too cold for us.”

Cole seemed to consider the idea. “Motel could be kind of risky. Maybe we could find an empty house.”

Stella didn’t think any of the houses were going to be empty.

Cole thought it over for a moment. “A motel could work if you and David checked in by yourselves, and then I could sneak in later.”

Stella just nodded again.

“We’ll ride down closer to the town and stash the snowmobile in those bushes over there.” He pointed at a stand of brush and trees far off in the distance. “Then we’ll walk to this motel you’re talking about. Use the cash you have on you for the room. But first we’ll stop at a store, pick up a few things. We need some food and water. And we need some rest. And lastly, we need some information. I need to see what the weather’s going to be like and find out what the cops know about us so far. Then we’ll work on getting a vehicle and moving south again.”

Stella didn’t ask how Cole planned on procuring a vehicle. Maybe he would pay cash for one at a car lot, or buy one for sale in someone’s yard. But it seemed more likely that he would steal one. Or maybe even carjack one, like he’d done to her and David.

If they could make it to the motel without the police stopping them, maybe they would have a few hours to rest, clean up, eat, and make some plans. But they couldn’t wait too long. The police were going to ramp up their search in the next few hours when they got to the burnt cabin and saw the dead bodies inside of it.

And they couldn’t forget about the Ancient Enemy chasing them.

No, they could never forget about that.

CHAPTER 16

Outside Cody’s Pass, Colorado

Something woke Nora up out of a sound sleep this morning, something that she could’ve sworn sounded like some kind of explosion. It was far enough away to sound like a muffled thump in the distance, but she felt the explosion rumbling through her house, along the floor, rattling the old bones of her home. She got up and wrapped herself in her heavy robe and slipped her socked feet into her favorite slippers.

She’d always been an early riser, so she would’ve normally been awake an hour later anyway. It was almost dawn and the sky was beginning to lighten up in the east. She walked through her house, turning on a few lights along the way, still trying to be quiet because her teenage son and daughter were probably still sleeping. She walked through the kitchen to the sliding glass doors that led out onto the wraparound wooden deck outside the house.

Nora looked out the sliding glass doors and saw the smoke rising up over the trees towards the northeastern end of her property. The smoke was black, but she could still make it out against the dark sky that was rapidly lightening with the rising sun.

“What are you looking at?”

Nora jumped and turned around. Her daughter Nicole stood right behind her. She was dressed in wool PJs and her hair was messed up from sleep.

“I heard something,” Nora told her. “I was just checking to see what it was.”

“I heard it, too,” Nicole said, knuckling sleep from one eye. She was fifteen years old, but Nora still thought of her as her little girl. “What was it?”

“I don’t know, but there’s something on fire a few miles away.”

Nicole moved closer to look out the sliding glass doors, getting close to the cold glass so she could see the smoke in the sky just out of the edge of her vision.

Nora hadn’t been sleeping too well these last few nights, not with news that dangerous criminals were still on the loose—the bank robbers who had killed poor old Jed.

Poor Jed. She hadn’t been great friends with the old man, but her husband had known him. And now both Jed and her husband were gone.

She thought of her husband, dead six months now. But at least she didn’t live here alone—she still had her children with her. She had Nicole, and she still had Travis, her son, who was nineteen years old now. He hadn’t gone into the military or off to college, he seemed content to work part-time at the Olsen’s farm. He didn’t really seem like he knew what he wanted to do with his life, and she wasn’t going to push him. Travis wasn’t like Nicole, who already had her life mapped out. She made straight A’s in school (another difference between her and Travis), and she wanted to get a scholarship to go to a good college. She wanted to be a psychiatrist.

Nora was proud of her daughter. But she was proud of Travis, too. She was sure he would find his way in life soon enough. She was in no hurry for Travis to leave. Now that her husband was gone, it was comforting having a man in the house still. She loved having her son around. She felt safer with him here. She knew the day would come when he would leave, and the day would come when Nicole went off to college. It wouldn’t be fair to hold either one of them back, but she dreaded the thought of being all alone in this house deep in the Colorado woods. She had loved it here when her husband was still alive, but these last six months since he’d been gone had been miserable for her. Every room, every stick of furniture, every TV show, every tool in the garage, his truck (that Travis drove now)—they were all reminders of him, constant and painful reminders. Maybe it was time to think about selling the place. She knew that Travis had hoped to have the property handed down to him one day, so she would need to discuss it with him. Maybe if he agreed to keep living here with her …

Normally she would’ve started a pot of coffee as soon as she’d gotten up, and then she would’ve turned on the TV, maybe to the local news or Fox News. Maybe she would’ve even got some breakfast going by now. But instead, she walked to the front door in the living room and grabbed her heavy coat from the old-fashioned coat rack. She also kicked off her slippers and slid her feet down into a pair of tall rubber boots that were three sizes too big for her … her husband’s old rubber boots that she couldn’t bear to throw out.

“What are you doing?” Nicole asked.

“I want to get a better look at it,” Nora answered as she walked back across the room to the sliding glass door.

Nicole didn’t even grab a coat; she just hugged her arms and followed her mother out onto the deck.

It was freezing outside. Two back-to-back snowstorms had passed through in the last few days, dumping several feet of snow on the ground and grinding life in these parts to a halt. At least her electricity hadn’t gone out—thank God for that.

They stood on the wood deck and stared at the ever-lightening sky. The smoke continued to drift up into the sky over the tree line.

“Something’s wrong,” Nora muttered.

“I think someone’s house might be on fire,” Nicole said.

Nora nodded. She was thinking the same thing. Could’ve started from a grease fire, or even Christmas decorations. But people were usually very careful in these parts, and she couldn’t help thinking that this fire had sinister origins.

And that led her to think of the criminals on the run. She glanced around at the woods all around them, listening for any sounds of movement out here in the quiet morning. The deck around her home was covered by the edge of the roof, but some snow had managed to drift onto the floorboards. The rest of the world was blanketed with snow … so much snow, more snow than she could ever remember seeing since they’d lived here. It was beautiful, but she knew it was also dangerous.

A cracking sound in the woods to her left demanded her attention. It sounded like something big was moving around in there. She stared at the woods for a moment, and she was convinced that she saw a blur of movement in the darkness between the trees.

“You hear that?” Nora asked her daughter.

“It was probably just an animal. Maybe a deer or something.”

“I don’t know,” Nora said, still staring at the thick woods.

“Don’t worry, Mom, those bank robbers are long gone by now.”

Nora nodded, but she wasn’t convinced. She looked back at the smoke in the sky. She was sure that those bank robbers were behind that fire somehow. The fire was maybe five or ten miles north of them, she guessed—somewhere between her property and the town of Destin. She tried to remember the names of the distant neighbors around here. Her husband could’ve recalled the names immediately and listed them off to her, but she couldn’t remember any of them.

“That might be Tom Gordon’s place,” Nicole said. “It’s in that direction.”

“What about Tom Gordon’s place?” a male voice asked.

Nora and Nicole spun around and looked at the open sliding glass door where Travis stood.

“Travis,” Nora breathed out and then smiled. “You scared the bejesus out of me.”

“What are you two doing out here?” he said as he stepped out onto the deck, but then he saw the smoke drifting up above the tree line in the distance. “Oh shit.”

“We think Tom Gordon’s cabin might be on fire,” Nicole said. “Either that or he woke up before dawn and decided that he wanted to start one hell of a bonfire.”

Travis wore only a pair of long john pants and a thick, long-sleeved shirt, but the cold didn’t seem to bother him.

Just like his father.

Oh, to be young again, Nora thought. Young enough when the cold didn’t bite into her bones and sting her flesh.

Travis bolted back inside their home.

“What are you doing?” Nora asked as she followed her son back inside the house.

“Probably going to check it out, I’m sure,” Nicole muttered, but her mother wasn’t paying attention to what she was saying. She closed the sliding glass door and then slid the vertical blinds shut in front of it.

Travis ran back to his bedroom, yelling over his shoulder at her: “I’m gonna get dressed and check on Tom. You call the sheriff’s office; let them know someone’s house might be on fire.”

Nora turned to head for the kitchen but Nicole already had the cordless phone in her hand, offering it to her mother. She took the phone from her daughter and dialed some numbers. She didn’t dial 911. When there was an emergency out here, they called the sheriff’s line to his office.

“Sheriff’s office,” a woman answered in a cheerful voice. “Deputy Burnette speaking.”

“Hi, Deputy Burnette,” Nora said into the phone. She watched as Nicole started the coffee machine. She knew she probably shouldn’t let Nicole drink coffee, but she enjoyed sharing a cup of coffee with her in the morning. It couldn’t be that bad for her. Had to be better than a can of Coke in the morning like Travis usually had. “I think there might be a fire,” Nora said. “There’s smoke in the sky about five or ten miles northeast of my house. I believe it might be on Tom Gordon’s property.”

She thought about telling the deputy that her son was going to check it out and make sure Tom Gordon was okay, but she decided against it. The deputy might order her not to let her son go, and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to keep him home.

“Yes, ma’am,” the deputy said, her voice suddenly all-business. “I’ll contact the fire department. Many of the roads outside Destin haven’t been plowed yet so it may take some time.”

“Oh yes,” Nora said. “I understand that.”

“Thanks for calling us.”

“Of course,” Nora said.

“Just stay inside and keep your doors and windows locked.”

Nora inhaled sharply, a surge of fear fluttering through her body. “You guys haven’t caught those bank robbers yet?”

The deputy hesitated like she was selecting her words carefully. “Just stay inside and keep your doors and windows locked.”

“I will. Thanks.” Nora pressed the OFF button on the cordless phone and Nicole took it from her and hung it back up on the wall.

Travis burst out of his bedroom dressed in warmer clothing, a hat, and gloves. He was out the front door in a flash. A moment later Nora heard his snowmobile starting up outside as Nicole prepared two cups of coffee for them.

Nora walked over to the front windows in the living room and watched Travis as he rode his snowmobile towards their driveway that ran through the woods and then out to the county road.

“He’ll be okay,” Nicole said and handed the cup of coffee to her mother. “He just wants to make sure Tom’s okay.”

Nora nodded, but she didn’t feel okay. She still felt nervous. Her stomach fluttered with fear and she didn’t know why. Something didn’t feel right.

Nicole sipped her coffee and walked back to the kitchen. Nora followed her and she almost dropped her cup of coffee when they heard someone knocking at the sliding glass door.

CHAPTER 17

Near Cody’s Pass, Colorado

Travis sped down the snowy road on his snowmobile. He knew his mom didn’t want him riding around out here. It wasn’t the fire that bothered her; it was the fact that those bank robbers hadn’t been caught yet. They’d never had a bank robbery in their town before that he’d ever heard of, and certainly not a murder. But she didn’t have to worry because Travis brought along a little protection of his own just in case he ran across one of those criminals—his dad’s pistol. If he saw one of those murdering bastards, he wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in that man’s head. He practiced with the gun all the time in the woods behind their house and he was an expert shot now.

The first thing Travis noticed when he got out onto the county road from their driveway was the snowmobile tracks on the road. He stopped his snowmobile for a moment and studied them. The tracks went both north and south, up and down the road. For a moment he thought someone else might have headed to Tom Gordon’s property to check out the fire, but on closer inspection of the tracks he realized that they were heading south. Someone had been riding away from the fire.

He thought about riding south and following the tracks, but he knew that the right thing to do was to go to Tom Gordon’s cabin and make sure he was okay.

Making his decision, Travis drove down the narrow road that wound through the army of evergreens, pines, and firs—all of their branches burdened with snow. The roads were bad, worse than he’d ever seen them before, but it wasn’t anything his snowmobile couldn’t handle.

Everything was quiet out here, and the drone of his snowmobile’s motor was the only sound in the silence. Normally he loved the solitude and silence of the woods, but today he was feeling a little creeped out. Maybe all of his mother’s worrying about these bandits was getting to him a little. He loved his mom to death, but she had always been a worrywart.

He knew she was worried about him leaving home (because they both knew that Nicole was heading off to college as soon as she graduated high school—which would be a year earlier than normal because of her grades). He had told his mom plenty of times that she didn’t have a reason to worry about him leaving right away. He surely hadn’t gotten a scholarship to go to college and he definitely wasn’t signing up for the military, even though his father and uncle had both served. And Travis didn’t have any serious relationships in his life right now. He’d dated Jenny a few times, but she seemed more into partying and dating other guys than he could tolerate. She wanted an “open” relationship, and Travis didn’t really care for that. He tried to end things with her, but whenever she got drunk and she hadn’t hooked up with anyone else for the night, she would call him. And he would always go running to her when she called. Even though they had some good times, he knew their relationship wasn’t going anywhere. He was looking to stay right here in Cody’s Pass, and she was set on finding a rich guy and getting swept away from this small-town life.

So he wasn’t going anywhere any time soon, and he’d told his mother that many times. But she still worried about it.

These thoughts ran through Travis’ mind as he drove carefully down Tom Gordon’s long and winding driveway through the trees. He tried to hurry, but he needed to be careful—he didn’t want to hit a rock or stump or shrub on the side of the driveway that might be hidden in the snow, and wreck his snowmobile. The smell of the smoke was heavy in the air now.

He had followed the snowmobile tracks the whole way down County Road 217 to the driveway, and he’d stayed far enough away from them so he wouldn’t disturb them. It was a little more difficult not to disturb the tracks in the narrow driveway, but he did his best.

But there was no denying it—someone had driven a snowmobile away from Tom Gordon’s burning cabin and headed south. Was it Tom? Had he gone for help? But why wouldn’t he have called the sheriff’s office himself? His mother’s call seemed like the first one the sheriff’s office had received about the fire. Maybe Tom couldn’t get back inside his house to use his phone. Cell phone? They didn’t work too well out here, and he was pretty sure Tom didn’t have a cell phone anyway.

Travis wasn’t sure what was going on, but it was something strange. His heart was already racing with excitement.

He emerged from the driveway through the woods, driving out into the front field of Mr. Gordon’s property—and there it was, exactly what Travis had suspected all along, the cabin was on fire.

The walls of the cabin still stood strong even though part of the roof had collapsed near the back of the cabin and the front porch was ablaze. It would take forever for the fire to burn through those log walls. Part of the porch had fallen in on itself, but Travis saw what looked like bodies on the floorboards near the open front door—twisted and burnt bodies.

Tom Gordon lived here alone. Why would there be so many bodies on the front porch?

Could those bodies be some of the bank robbers?

It had to be.

Travis drove his snowmobile past the front of the cabin, staying far away from the other snowmobile tracks. He had to be very careful now; this wasn’t just a fire anymore, now this was most likely a crime scene.

He drove towards Tom Gordon’s pickup truck, and then he idled past it towards the open door of the free-standing garage beyond the truck. He slowed down to a stop, his headlight shining into the darkness of the garage. Off to his left the fire crackled and popped, and he could feel the heat all the way over here.

“Hello?” he called out at the open garage door.

No answer from inside the garage.

He was pretty sure there was no one alive left in the cabin. But maybe Tom had gone to the garage for safety. But no, that didn’t seem right either. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something terrible had happened here … something terrible had happened to Tom Gordon, too.

He should probably sit right here and wait for the fire and police. Or better yet, he should ride back home. But what if there was still a small chance that Mr. Gordon, or even someone else, needed his help?

Besides, Travis was reasonably sure that if the bank robbers had been here, if they had burned this cabin, and burned those bodies on the front porch, then they were gone now—one or two of them escaping on the snowmobile. A shiver ran through him—if he would’ve left his home moments earlier, he might’ve come face to face with them on the county road as they drove south and he drove north.

Travis cut off the engine of his snowmobile and got off the vehicle, his eyes darting around, his hand itching to grab his father’s gun tucked inside his jacket.

He walked towards the wide-open garage door and stood at the threshold.

“Hello?”

No answer from the darkness.

He hesitated a moment, starting to feel like this might not be a good idea. It was murky inside the garage, but his eyes were already beginning to grow accustomed to it. He ventured inside the garage, his hand still ready to draw his gun if he needed to.

“Mr. Gordon? You in here? It’s Travis from down the road. I saw the fire.”

No answer. Only silence.

“We already called the police!” Travis added. He didn’t like the shakiness in his voice, but he was trembling and he couldn’t help it. The cold, the fear, and the excitement were all getting to him. “The fire department’s on the way, too!”

Still no answer. After a deeper search, Travis was sure that no one was hiding in the garage. He found where the snowmobile had been parked, and he saw the crumpled up blue tarp that had covered it.

Travis left the garage and decided to walk around the cabin, keeping at least twenty-five to thirty feet away from the burning cabin. As he walked down the side of the cabin, he kept looking at the woods. He’d grown up around these woods all of his life—he’d hunted in these woods, hiked in them for years, camped out in them—nothing in these woods scared him, but he still couldn’t help feeling like something … or somebody … was watching him.

When he got far enough past the cabin, he saw a vehicle burning in the back—it was parked a few car lengths away from the back of the cabin. It looked like some kind of SUV, and he was pretty sure that Tom Gordon didn’t own a vehicle like this.

Travis ran back to the garage and searched through the tools until he found a snow shovel and a fire extinguisher. He ran back to the vehicles and used the fire extinguisher on the vehicle, smothering a lot of the flames out. Then he went to work with the shovel, smothering the rest of the flames with snow. It was hot next to the vehicle and Travis had built up a sheen of sweat underneath his clothes from the exertion.

He stared at the charred vehicle after the fire was out. Most of the fire damage was in the back of the SUV, where the fire had started. He walked to the front and peered in through the window. Nobody in the truck, and the tires on the front hadn’t melted yet from the heat. This couldn’t be Mr. Gordon’s truck; he didn’t own a vehicle like this, and when he saw the license plate on front he was even more certain—it was a New Mexico license plate.

What was this truck doing here? It seemed like somebody had purposely set the back of this vehicle on fire, because it didn’t seem like the fire could have jumped all the way from the back of the cabin to the truck. But he wasn’t an expert. The firefighters would know for sure.

Travis had a feeling that this was the bank robbers’ vehicle. Obviously they must have come from New Mexico to rob the bank here. And then they had ditched the getaway vehicle and escaped on Tom Gordon’s snowmobile.

But not all of them.

They had left some of their crew behind, their bodies burning on the front porch. And Mr. Gordon was probably among those bodies. It was a sad thing to think about, but it was most likely a reality.

Travis continued his investigation around the house to the other side. He saw a discarded gas can. This fire had been deliberately set, yet it didn’t seem like the criminals were trying to hide the evidence.

He had an overwhelming feeling that he should go back home now and protect his mom and his sister. He wasn’t sure why this feeling was so strong. He’d seen the snowmobile tracks on the road beyond their driveway and they had continued south along the road. Whoever had been on that snowmobile was probably down in Cody’s Pass by now, trying to find a way to escape, perhaps trying to find another vehicle.

No, he decided he would wait for the sheriff and the fire department to get here.

CHAPTER 18

Cody’s Pass, Colorado—Nora’s house

“Who’s knocking at the door?” Nicole said. She walked straight to the sliding glass door that led out onto the deck that they’d both been standing on only ten minutes ago. Nora had pulled the vertical blinds back over the glass doors after they had come back inside and they couldn’t see who was knocking.

Fear gripped Nora so badly that she couldn’t speak for a moment. She wanted to warn her daughter not to go to that sliding glass door, but her words were frozen in her throat, her muscles paralyzed with fear. There was something bad out there, she was sure of it … something very bad. It was the way the person was knocking on the glass door … three loud and steady knocks … impatient knocks.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

It was one of the bank robbers, Nora was sure of that. One of those animals had been in the woods earlier when they’d been outside watching the smoke drift above the trees. He must have waited until Travis left and then he climbed up onto the back deck and now he was at her sliding glass door. Maybe there was more than one of them.

For a split second Nora thought maybe it might be Travis at the sliding glass door. But she dismissed that idea instantly for a few reasons. For one thing, Travis wouldn’t knock—he had a key to the front door. And she hadn’t heard his snowmobile come back. But even if he’d broken down in the driveway and had to walk back, he would’ve come in through the front door.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Nicole was at the vertical blinds now, about to pull them aside so she could open the door for the person who was knocking.

Nora lunged for the cordless phone on the wall in the kitchen. She grabbed the phone and it nearly slipped out of her hand. She pushed the TALK button with a trembling finger. She was going to call the sheriff’s office and tell them to get out here right now.

There was no dial tone.

She tried all the numbers on the phone, jabbing at them furiously.

Nothing.

The phone had just been working a few moments ago.

They had cut the phone lines.

Then another thought occurred to Nora. Had she locked the sliding glass door when they had come back inside? She hadn’t heeded Deputy Burnette’s advice on the phone earlier and locked all the windows and doors, but maybe she had locked the sliding glass door … but she was pretty sure she’d left it unlocked.

Nora plucked the biggest kitchen knife out of the wood block on the counter and she ran into the dining room.

“Don’t open that door!” Nora screamed at her daughter, finally finding her voice.

Nicole seemed to be ignoring her—almost like she was in a trance. She slid the vertical blinds to the side and then she stood there, paralyzed for a moment as she stared at the person on the other side of the glass. She seemed frightened but also confused, like she was trying to figure out exactly what she was looking at.

Nora wished Travis was still here. He would know what to do.

“Nora,” a voice said from outside the glass door, a voice that seemed to somehow float into the house through the glass, a voice that sounded so clear to her.

Her heart stopped in her chest for a moment. The person standing outside knew her name. Maybe it was a neighbor or someone from town checking on them. But then again, why wouldn’t they have come to the front door and ring the bell? And why would Nicole be so frightened and shocked by who was on the other side of the glass?

“Nora …” the man said again. The voice was louder. Her name sounded garbled in the man’s mouth, like he was having difficulty speaking, like he might be injured.

There was something familiar about the man’s voice, something familiar in the way he said her name. She knew this man’s voice from somewhere; she could feel it in her bones.

“Nora … I’m home. I’ve come back home.”

Nora knew who it was now … but it couldn’t be. She bolted from the end of the dining room towards the sliding glass door with the knife clenched in her hand.

Nicole was already sliding the door open for their visitor, her face shiny with tears as she stared at the man in the doorway.

“Don’t open that door!” Nora screamed at her daughter.

But it was too late now.

Nora stopped in her tracks a few feet away from the door as Nicole backed up to let the visitor inside. Now Nora could clearly see who was on the other side of the sliding glass door. She froze in shock and fear just like Nicole had done, her mind trying to understand what she was seeing. The knife slipped out of her fingers and dropped down to the floor with a thud.

The sound of heavy footsteps thumped through the house as the man entered their home from the deck.

“Daddy?” Nicole said as she backed up away from the dead man standing just inside the sliding glass door. His skin was gray and mottled. The suit he’d been buried in was nearly shredded with rot. Clumps of dirt hung in his hair. More dirt was smeared all over his clothes and exposed skin.

“Yessss …” he whispered. “Daddy’s home.”

CHAPTER 19

Destin, Colorado

George Joekel was the snowplow driver for the town of Destin, Colorado. He’d been very busy these last two nights plowing the streets of the city and the roads of the suburban neighborhoods. He was a private contractor and he used a heavy-duty plow hooked up to the front of his massive Ford F350, which was equipped with giant snow tires. He was nowhere near done with the work of plowing the streets of Destin, and he’d only managed to catch about six hours of sleep in the last two days, but Sheriff Hadley had called him and told him to stop what he was doing and get on up to Route 217; he wanted him to start plowing south from Destin to an address he’d given to him—the address of a man named Tom Gordon. The sheriff also wanted George to plow the man’s driveway so emergency vehicles could get to a house fire.

George was on it.

He turned his F350 around and headed east towards Route 217, a county road that led down to the town of Cody’s Pass—the same town where the bank robbery had taken place. People had stayed indoors because of these massive storms, but also because of the news that these criminals were still on the run. And with how severe the weather had been in the last few days, it wasn’t that far-fetched to think that those criminals might still be here in the area, maybe holed up inside someone’s home and holding them hostage.

Maybe they were even at this Tom Gordon fella’s place that Sheriff Hadley wanted plowed so suddenly.

Route 217 was a winding pass through mountainous terrain—a strip of two lane road that stretched through the never-ending forest, and now it was completely covered with two and a half feet of snow. George hadn’t seen a snowstorm like this in decades.

It’s all because of this damn global warming, George liked to grumble to the other patrons at the bar, but his worn-out joke didn’t seem to amuse anyone anymore.

George made his living as a landscaper (among many other odd jobs) through the spring and summer, and he had a small crew of helpers. But when the first snows hit, his guys took unemployment from the state for the next few months and George went to work with his truck and plow. He was a one-man operation and he worked very hard to keep it that way. Keeping up with the demand always worried him; he felt sure that the county would eventually elect to hire a plow service from one of the neighboring counties, but he would try to hold on to this gig for as long as possible.

So that meant when Sheriff Hadley wanted a particular job done, George was on it. He still had three quarters of a tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, a thermos of black coffee, and the radio was blasting heavy metal rock n’ roll.

By the time he had plowed a decent path down the winding, remote road, he saw flashing lights in the misty white distance behind him. The cop cars and emergency vehicles planned on following him right to the source of this emergency.

And now he could see the spiral of smoke rising up above the trees ahead of him. George was betting the fire had started from either a Christmas tree or a space heater. He muttered a quick prayer that no one had been caught in the fire.

He slowed down as his older Garmin GPS unit that was stuck to his windshield with a suction cup told him he was approaching Tom Gordon’s driveway.

The driveway was much narrower than the county road. Tree branches scraped at the sides of his truck in some places as he pushed the snow to the sides of the driveway with his plow. The powerful motor in his truck growled and smoke poured out of the dual exhaust, clouding up behind him.

The driveway plowed just as easily as the road … no rocks or large tree branches in the way, thank God. Fallen tree branches snapping off from the wind or weight of the snow were pretty common in his line of work. He emerged out of the woods into a field that had to be at least ten acres … and there was the cabin in the middle of the field. It was still on fire. The front porch was partially collapsed and part of the roof was caved in near the back of the cabin. A free-standing garage with a pickup truck parked in front of it was far enough away to have escaped the flames, but much of the snow on the garage and nearly all of the snow on the pickup truck had melted away from the heat of the fire.

George hadn’t expected to see a young man sitting on a snowmobile in front of the garage waiting for them. But what surprised him even more were the burnt bodies on the front porch—two on the floorboards, and one in the doorway to the home.

But he kept on with his job; he kept plowing a path for the sheriff’s car and the fire truck and the ambulance, creating a large area so the vehicles could park, even getting as close to the front of the cabin as he could so the fire truck could pull right up in front of it.

The emergency vehicles pulled up in front of the cabin as George continued making pass after pass, creating an impromptu parking lot for them in the front field.

When he was done, he pulled up near the sheriff’s car. The sheriff was already rolling down his window.

“You need me to plow some more here?” George asked him.

“No, I think that’s good for now, George.”

“You want me to keep on plowing down Route 217 to Cody’s Pass? I mean I can do that, but I still got a lot of neighborhoods in town to do.”

“I know. Don’t worry about the rest of 217. Freddie’s got some guys plowing the streets in Cody’s Pass. I’m sure they’ll get on up here eventually. Go ahead and get back to town. Make sure you make the pass wider on the way back so these vehicles have an easier time getting back to town.”

“You got it, Sheriff.”

The sheriff got out of his car, but George hadn’t pulled away just yet, hesitating for a moment. He was still leaning out of his truck window, the motor of his truck rumbling. “Are those bodies on the front porch?” he asked. “I thought I saw—”

“I haven’t had a chance to look at things yet,” the sheriff said. “I’m sure you got a lot of work to do.”

George knew when he was being brushed off. He rolled up his window and turned his truck around, heading back for the driveway.

CHAPTER 20

Tom Gordon’s Cabin

Sheriff Hadley watched George leave. He was sure the man would be spinning some yarns at the bar tonight for sure.

The firefighters already had their hoses out and they were blasting the flames with water. The sheriff decided to stay out of their way for now. He headed over to the kid who waited patiently on his snowmobile by the open door of the garage. The walking was pretty smooth across the “parking area” that George had created for them, but he had to step over mounds of snow at the edge of the cleared area and then trudge through the knee-high snow to get to the kid, who had gotten off his snowmobile to meet him halfway.

“Travis Conrad,” the kid said like he could see the sheriff was struggling to recall his name. “I played football with your son in high school.”

The sheriff nodded. “You called this in?”

“My mom did. She saw the smoke in the sky and I came down here to check it out in case someone needed help.”

“I appreciate that,” the sheriff said as he glanced over at the firefighters blasting the burning logs with the fire hoses. It already looked like they were getting a lot of the fire under control.

Deputy Ann Burnette, who had followed the sheriff up here, walked up to them from her squad car. She stood a few feet behind the sheriff, just listening.

“There are some dead bodies on the front porch,” Travis said, turning the sheriff’s attention back to him.

“I saw them when I drove in,” the sheriff said.

Travis nodded. “It was easier to see them before more of that porch roof collapsed. I saw three bodies. Maybe even four.”

While you were trampling around the crime scene, Sheriff Hadley thought as he looked at the obvious foot traffic through the snow in front of the garage and down the side of the house through the snow.

Travis followed the sheriff’s eyes. “I wanted to make sure nobody was around,” he explained. “I checked the garage. Checked the back of the cabin. There’s a vehicle back there. It was on fire, but I …” He hesitated like he didn’t want to incriminate himself.

“It’s okay, son. Tell me what you did.”

“I found a fire extinguisher in the garage and I put the fire out. Shoveled some snow on it, too. But I tried to stay clear of the cabin. I didn’t want to mess up any of the other tracks.”

“There were other tracks in the snow when you got here?”

“Oh yeah. All over the place.”

The sheriff looked back at the massive parking lot George had created and was now regretting that he had okayed it. He and Deputy Burnette glanced at each other for a moment.

“There were all kinds of footprints all around the house,” Travis continued. “Like someone had walked all the way around it. And someone drove a snowmobile out of here.”

This snapped the sheriff’s attention back to Travis.

“I checked the garage,” Travis continued. “You could tell there was a snowmobile in there. There’s a tarp on the floor.”

“You saw the tracks the snowmobile made?” Sheriff Hadley asked. The tracks in the driveway would be wiped out now from the plow and all of their vehicles.

“Yes, sir,” Travis answered.

“You saw them beyond the driveway?”

“Yes, sir. They go south.”

The sheriff thought about that for a moment.

“And that vehicle around back, I don’t think it’s Mr. Gordon’s truck. If it is, he must’ve just bought it. It’s an SUV. A Chevy Suburban. White. I can tell because the front of it didn’t get burnt yet. There’s a New Mexico plate on the front.”

The sheriff turned to his deputy. “I need you to get on the horn. Get Ronnie up here with a truck and his snowmobile.”

“Right away, Sheriff,” she said and hurried back to her car.

The road down to Cody’s Pass was too bad to follow the snowmobile tracks in his car. He thought about turning George Joekel around, but he would wipe out the snowmobile tracks with his plow. No, he would wait for Ronnie to get up here with the snowmobile so he could follow the tracks down to Cody’s Pass. When she came back, he would tell Deputy Burnette to call Freddie down in Cody’s Pass and make sure he and his men kept an eye out for possible suspects on a snowmobile.

The sheriff turned back to Travis. “The snowmobile tracks on 217 … you didn’t drive over them on your way here, did you?”

“No, of course not.” Travis managed to look a little offended at the sheriff’s question and possible assumption.

Sheriff Hadley sighed. “Okay. Let’s go see this truck around back that you’re talking about.”

They walked along the same beaten-down path through the snow that Travis had made in his several trips back and forth from the back of the cabin to the garage. The walking was a little easier now that there was a path and their boots crunched along the packed-down snow. A few moments later Sheriff Hadley saw the half-burnt Chevy Suburban.

“I’m sorry, sheriff, if I did something wrong,” Travis said.

“No, you did okay, Travis. You might’ve actually saved some evidence by putting that fire out.”

Travis couldn’t help beaming with pride.

Deputy Ann Burnette hurried up to them through the snow. “Ronnie’s on his way.”

“Good. I need you to get some photos of this vehicle.”

Deputy Burnette pulled out her digital camera from a coat pocket and started snapping pictures.

The sheriff walked several yards out in front of the burnt Suburban to keep out of the overspray of water from the firefighters. Travis followed him.

“I think it’s the bank robbers’ vehicle,” Travis said in an excited voice.

The sheriff could tell Travis had been busy working on his theory while waiting for him and the firefighters to arrive. The boy seemed like he couldn’t wait to tell someone all about it.

“I think they ditched their getaway car here,” Travis continued on. “Then I think they stole Mr. Gordon’s snowmobile and headed south. I think one or two of them killed the others, took all the money and ran.”

The sheriff didn’t answer Travis.

“Deputy,” the sheriff said to Ann Burnette. “Run these plates on the truck. Then get on the horn again and alert Freddie down in Cody’s Pass to be on the lookout for these guys.”

As the deputy hurried back to her car, the sheriff wondered why these bank robbers would head right back to the same town where they’d committed their crime.

CHAPTER 21

Iron Springs, New Mexico

Palmer slept in a little later than he usually did; daylight was already filtering in around through the drapes over the windows. He jumped up and grabbed his cell phone to see what time it was. After putting on his pants, he slid his shoes on and laced them up quickly. He opened the bedroom door and listened for a moment.

The house was dark and quiet.

He slipped out into the hall and used the bathroom out there.

Fifteen minutes later he was dressed and had his duffel bag with him. This time when he stepped out into the hallway the smell of coffee hit him right away and he saw the glow of light coming from down the hall.

He walked down the hall, crossed the living room and stepped into the kitchen. Captain Begay and his wife Angie sat at the kitchen table sipping coffee. Begay was already dressed in his “uniform,” which consisted of faded blue jeans and a thick flannel shirt.

“I made some toast,” Angie told Palmer. “There’s butter on the table. We have peanut butter and jelly if you want some.”

“Thank you.”

“I can fry up a few eggs if you’d like,” she offered.

“No, please … don’t go to all that trouble. Toast and coffee will be just fine.”

Palmer sat down at the table and ate two pieces of toast topped with what seemed like some kind of homemade jam and butter. He washed it down with two cups of strong black coffee.

After Palmer finished eating, Angie filled his thermos with coffee for the road.

“Thank you,” he told her.

She smiled at him and nodded.

Palmer looked at Begay. “I should get going.”

A moment later Palmer grabbed his duffel bag and thermos, and then he went outside. He walked across the driveway and opened the passenger door of his rental car and set his bag and thermos inside, then he took his cell phone out of his pocket and walked down the driveway a little. He dialed Alonzo Johnson’s number, the lead forensics investigator at the dig site. Alonzo had nothing new to report. He gave Palmer Susan Dorsett’s number—she was still working at the crime scene in town.

He dialed Susan’s number and told her he would be there soon to meet with her.

“We’ve found some … some very puzzling things,” she told him.

“What kind of things?”

“It’s kind of hard to explain,” she said. “It would be easier to show you.”

“Okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Probably within the hour.”

Palmer hung up and turned around. Captain Begay was standing right behind him. Palmer hadn’t even heard the big man sneak up behind him. Begay had a stoic expression on his face, but Palmer could’ve sworn he saw some kind of vindication on the man’s face, like he already knew that more strange facts about this case were going to surface soon.

“I’d like to go with you to John and Deena’s house,” Begay told him. It didn’t sound like a request.

Palmer was going to tell him no, but he hesitated.

“I know we had to ask you guys here for the bodies in the cave, but John and Deena were our people. They were my responsibility.”

“I think their case is going to fall under the same one as the cave,” Palmer told him. “It seems like it might be the same killers.”

Begay didn’t say anything—he just stared at Palmer, waiting for an answer.

“Okay,” Palmer said. “Just you. None of your other men right now.”

Begay nodded like that was good enough for him.

“I’ll follow you to the house,” Palmer told him.

CHAPTER 22

John and Deena’s house

Palmer pulled his black rental car in behind the captain’s Bronco at the side of the road across the street from John and Deena’s house, just like he had done yesterday. A Navajo Tribal Police vehicle was parked on the side of the road in front of the house, not too far from the driveway, and a forensics van was parked in the driveway.

Palmer got out of his car into the cold morning air. The sun was peeking up over the mesas in the east, providing light but not much warmth. Palmer shrugged into his coat and slipped his hands into a pair of blue nitrile gloves. Begay, seemingly impervious to the cold, walked up to him. They walked to the house together; one of Begay’s officers waited for them by the front door. The officer nodded at them as they entered the house.

“Ms. Dorsett?” Palmer called out when he stepped into the living room.

“Back here,” the woman replied. “In the bedroom.”

Palmer and Begay started to walk towards the hallway that led back to the bedrooms, but Susan was already hurrying down the hall. She met them at the end of it. She was a small, thin woman with straight hair dyed bleach-blond. She wore a pair of thin-framed glasses on her angular face. She looked stern, her thin lips pressed together in a line. She looked like someone who might run triathlons, Palmer thought. She seemed like she was disciplined, all business, not much of a sense of humor. But then again, the line of work she and he were in could sap a person’s sense of humor after a while.

“Special Agent Palmer,” he introduced himself to Susan Dorsett. “And this is Captain Begay of the Navajo Tribal Police.”

She nodded at them. “Please, call me Susan.” She didn’t offer them a hand in greeting, and neither did they.

“You said on the phone that you found some puzzling things,” Palmer reminded her.

“Yes. We’re going to do a lot more tests, but from preliminary onsite exams … well, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’ve been doing this for nearly twenty years now, and I’ve never seen anything like this before. I don’t know if I can even believe it.”

Palmer and Begay waited for her to continue.

“Come on back here,” she said, not waiting for them. She headed down the hall to the master bedroom.

The three of them entered the bedroom. Palmer and Begay stayed close to the walls, careful to stay away from the body of the woman on the carpet. Everything still looked the same, and the smell seemed a little better now because one of the windows was open. There were a few air freshener sticks on top of the dresser. Yellow plastic markers with numbers on them were distributed around the room next to the bodies and beside other spots of blood staining the carpet. Some of the dried blood was so dark it almost looked black now.

“Well, okay,” Susan said. “Here it goes. One of the bodies, the body of the woman on the floor … she was dead at least one day longer than the man over there … her husband. Maybe even two days before him. Yet it still looks like she was the one who killed her husband.”

Palmer felt like everything around him had just come to an abrupt stop, and somehow he’d just missed something important. “Wait … what? What do you mean by that?”

“I know. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Like I said, we’ll do more tests when we eventually get their bodies to the lab, but I’m pretty sure those tests are going to come back just like I stated.”

“But that can’t be possible. If she was dead longer than he was, then how could she have killed him?”

“I don’t know.” She let out a sigh. “As far as I can tell, it looks like she ripped his face off and scalped him.”

“With what?”

“There doesn’t seem to be any weapon or tool marks. The only weapons I can identify are her fingers. She must’ve used her teeth, too. We found three pieces of broken teeth from her mouth embedded deep into his face.

“But it looks like her face … I mean her face looked …” Palmer stepped closer to the woman’s body and crouched down, staring at her head, which was now covered with a clear plastic bag. Her hands were bagged too. Even with the bag on her head, the woman’s face still seemed like it was mashed down into the carpet.

“Skinned, too?” Susan offered, completing Palmer’s unfinished sentence. “I know. I don’t understand this.”

Palmer just nodded numbly. He pulled his cell phone out of his jacket pocket. “I … I took some photos.”

Susan nodded. “Yes, we took a lot of photos, too.”

“Did you find the pieces of their face or hair anywhere on them?” Palmer asked. “Or maybe … inside of them?”

“Obviously I haven’t investigated their stomach contents yet … we’ll do that when we get to the lab … but I haven’t found any evidence of their skin or hair in the room anywhere.”

“So the killer might have taken their faces and hair with him. But why?” Palmer felt suddenly sick to his stomach. “There has to be some kind of mistake here. If she was injured that badly, how in the world could she have killed her husband?”

Susan shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Palmer changed the subject. “What about their kid?”

“David,” Captain Begay said. “His name is David.”

“Yeah, David. Did you find any evidence of him in … in all of this?” Palmer gestured at the gory mess all over the bedroom.

“No. No other traces of blood except these two. Maybe the kid ran away.”

“Or somebody took him,” Palmer said.

Susan didn’t comment.

“What about the cave?” Palmer asked Susan. “Have you been out there?”

She swallowed hard and nodded. The look in her eyes told Palmer that she had been in the cave and seen the body parts on display. “I talked to Alonzo. What we’ve got in there is just as strange as this. It’s actually worse.”

Palmer glanced at Begay who stood impassively near the corner of the bedroom. Palmer looked back at Susan, bracing himself as Susan continued.

“From what Alonzo said, we’ve got the same problems there as we do here. Some of the bodies were dead longer than the others. Maybe as long as two or three days, in some cases.”

“So the perps killed them one by one,” Palmer offered. But why didn’t the others run or call for help? he wondered. Their satellite phones and radios were all dead so they couldn’t call for help. The batteries in the vehicles were all dead so they couldn’t drive away. No one could drain all of those batteries purposely, could they? Maybe all of the headlights were left on at the same time. But even though the vehicles were inoperable, the people still could have run away on foot into the desert. Surely the thought of freezing in the desert had to be better than whatever was happening to the others there at the dig site.

This case was beginning to give him a headache. He needed another drink.

“We’ve got the pieces of the people in piles at the cave now,” Susan said. “And from the ten heads we’ve found, we’re already beginning to make IDs from their wallets and from the photos and background info that the university sent to us.”

“Ten people?” Palmer asked. “There should be eleven of them.”

Susan pulled out her phone and scrolled down the screen for a moment with a practiced flick of her thumb. “No,” she finally said, shaking her head. “There were only seven men and three women. One man was definitely Navajo, and he must be the man named Jim Whitefeather. One man was ID’d as Jake Phillips. One man we believe is a grad student named Robert Coggins. A woman named Patty LaFontaine, a woman named Julie Warner, and another grad student named Phil Carson. And the other woman has been identified as Wendy Rhinehardt. The other three males are so … fragmented, their faces destroyed so badly, that we’ll have to rely on dental records … hopefully.”

“Three women?” Palmer said. “There should have been four. There was another woman with them, a woman that Jake Phillips called from Arizona State University. She was an expert on the … on the …”

“The Anasazi,” Begay helped.

“Yeah.”

“You’re taking about a woman named Stella Weaver,” Susan said, glancing down at her phone. “We haven’t found her head, and we’re trying to get matches of the legs, arms, and torsos. Right now we’re sure these body parts are from only ten people.”

Palmer thought for a moment. This woman Stella Weaver was summoned to the dig site by Jake Phillips, and now she’s the only one missing. He wondered if she’d ever made it to the dig site at all.

But at least it was something to go on, somewhere to start.

“Excuse me a moment,” Palmer told Susan and stepped out of the bedroom. He walked back to the living room with his phone in his hand. He dialed Debbie’s number back at the Denver office.

“Hi, Debbie.”

“How’s it going down there?” she asked.

“This is a strange one. Listen, I need a favor.”

“Name it.”

“Can you find out any information on a woman named Stella Weaver? She’s an archaeologist working out of Arizona State University, but she was supposed to be heading to this dig site. Check her DMV records too while you’re at it. See what kind of vehicle she owned.” Palmer thought of the missing vehicle in the line of trucks at the dig site near the dirt trail.

“I’m on it. I’ll call you back as soon as I get any info.”

“Thanks, Debbie. You’re the best.”

“I know.”

Palmer hung up and slid his phone back into his jacket pocket. If Stella never made it to the dig site, that was one thing. But if she made it to the site and now she wasn’t among the missing bodies … what did that mean? And if that missing vehicle was hers ... Could the killers have taken her truck? Could they have taken her? Could they have taken David, too?

Palmer turned around to walk back to the bedroom, but Captain Begay was right behind him. He hadn’t even heard the man approach. “You gotta stop sneaking up on me like that.”

“You got any theories yet?” he asked.

“Not yet. I need to get back out to the dig site.”

“I’ll show you the way. Just follow me.”

*

Palmer followed Begay out of town, the landscape turning to desert wilderness in no time at all. He allowed himself a small nip from his bottle of vodka as he drove.

He was only halfway to the dig site when his cell phone rang. It was Debbie.

“Hey, Debbie. What did you find?”

“We found Stella’s vehicle.”

“Great,” Palmer said.

“It’s at a crime scene in Colorado. A remote area between the towns of Destin and Cody’s Pass.”

“A crime scene?”

“A cabin was set on fire and there were multiple bodies inside. Her SUV was found behind the cabin, the vehicle partially burned.”

“Shit. Can you get me a flight back up there?”

“Of course. You’ll leave out of the same airport in Farmington you came in at. You’ll fly into a town called Destin. We’ll have a car waiting for you there. From there you’ll need to drive south on Route 217. I’ll send the directions to your phone.”

“As quick as you can, Debbie.”

He hung up and thought about calling his SAC, Cardenelli, and telling him that he was leaving the crime scene down here in Agent Klein’s hands and heading to Destin, Colorado.

But then again, maybe he would wait on that phone call for a little while.

CHAPTER 23

Near Cody’s Pass, Colorado

Travis drove his snowmobile down the snowy road back to his house. He wanted to stick around at the crime scene, but Sheriff Hadley wouldn’t allow it. Travis offered to lead Deputy Ronnie, who was on his way there with a police snowmobile, but the sheriff told him that Ronnie was perfectly capable of following the tracks all by himself.

Travis was a little dejected about not being allowed to help, but it had still been an exciting day. He even thought he might want to pursue some kind of law enforcement career someday. He figured he had pieced together the clues pretty quickly on his own; he’d done a pretty good investigation of the crime scene. He wasn’t much of a reader, but he decided that he would start reading true crime books and watch some documentaries, start studying up on this kind of stuff. He couldn’t believe it—he’d been looking for a path in his life for so long now, and now he might have finally found it.

He was excited. He couldn’t wait to tell his mother about his idea for a career. Of course she would be happy for him, but she would also be secretly sad and frightened that he would be leaving her someday. If she could have her way, neither he nor his sister would ever leave home.

As he neared the driveway that led through the woods to their property, Travis slowed his snowmobile down to a stop. He sat there for a moment with the motor running. He stared at the snowmobile tracks that continued south down the snowy road. He thought about ignoring the sheriff’s command to go home and keep watch over his mother and sister … he thought about following those tracks. He just wanted to help, and if he could spot one of those bank robbers …

But he decided not to. Maybe the sheriff was right; he should go home and protect his mother and sister. It wasn’t unbelievable that the bank robber (or maybe the two robbers) had only ridden half a mile down the road and then escaped into the woods only to circle back through the trees to find his house. It wasn’t that unbelievable to think that they might already be at his house, holding his family hostage.

A chill ran through him as flashes of desperate men aiming guns at his mother and sister ran through his mind.

He revved the motor and turned down the driveway through the trees. Moments later he pulled up to his house, driving through the same tracks he’d created when he’d left. He drove his snowmobile around the house to the large, free-standing garage and parked it next to the wood and metal awning where his mother’s SUV was parked. He cut the motor and got off his snowmobile. He trudged back through the calf-high snow to the front of the house. He climbed the steps up to the wood deck and kicked the snow off of his boots. He unlocked the front door and entered. He closed and locked the front door, and then he kicked off his rubber boots onto the small tiled entryway. He was sure his mother and sister couldn’t wait to hear what he’d found.

Travis was about to rush into the living room, but he stopped suddenly.

The first thing he noticed was the overpowering stench inside the house, the smell of something rotten … something dead.

The next thing he noticed was the silence. His mom should’ve had the local news blaring on the TV by now. Breakfast should be cooking in the kitchen.

His heart skipped a beat. He’d thought only moments earlier that it wasn’t unfathomable that the fleeing criminals could stop at their house, but now he felt certain that it had happened. His skin felt tingly, his mouth went instantly dry, and his muscles felt a little weak and rubbery.

“Mom!” Travis called out.

No answer.

“Nicole?”

Still no answer.

Oh God, something had happened to them. They were still here because his mom’s SUV was parked underneath the awning. But why weren’t they answering him? Why was the house so quiet? And where was that terrible smell coming from?

This was his time to be a hero, to fight for his family. He yanked his father’s pistol out of the waistband of his pants and he rushed into the living room.

And then he froze in his tracks.

His mom and his sister sat rigidly in two dining room chairs that had been moved into the living room. There was nothing binding them to the chairs, but they were frozen like they were too afraid to flinch or to even call out to him. Their skin was pasty white with fear and their eyes were large circles of shock, rimmed in redness and tears.

They were afraid.

And Travis saw why.

The thing that stood near them in the shadowy living room couldn’t be possible … it couldn’t be real. It was his dead father.

Travis’s dad had died of a sudden heart attack six months ago. He had been buried in the cemetery behind the New Hope church in the southeastern part of Destin.

“What … how …” Travis croaked.

“Shut up,” the monstrosity growled at Travis. The decaying thing looked like his father. He was dressed in the black suit he’d been buried in, but now the clothing was filthy with dirt, some areas torn and hanging in tatters. His grayish face was sunken, his mouth pulled back in a rictus smile that revealed jagged yellow teeth. His eyes were bulging, his gray hair wild and dirty. Loose black stitches hung from the corners of his mouth and eyes.

“You’re … you’re dead,” Travis breathed out. His leg muscles felt like jelly and he was afraid he was going to collapse. He had never believed people could faint or go into shock, but he could believe it now.

Travis realized that his mother was cradling an injured hand in the other. Blood was seeping out of a rag she held around her hand.

He looked back at his dead father. “What did you do to her?”

“I took one of her fingers off,” his dead father said and his smile widened. He lifted up the pale white severed finger clutched in his hand, the end of the finger a gory and ragged mess.

Zombie … that’s what Travis thought of. It was the only explanation. Either that or he was in the middle of a very realistic nightmare. Or he had wrecked his snowmobile and he was trapped inside a coma.

“I assure you this is real, my boy,” his dad said like he’d read Travis’ mind.

Travis looked down at the gun in his hand like he’d just remembered he was holding it. He raised it up and aimed it at the thing that looked like his father. He could shoot it, but he needed to put a bullet through its brain—that was the only way you could kill a zombie, everyone knew that.

His father smiled.

“I don’t know what you are,” Travis said. He was suddenly brave with the pistol clenched in his trembling hand. He glanced at his sister and saw hope in her eyes. That was enough to spur him on. He was going to save his sister and his mother from whatever this thing was. “I don’t know what you are, but you’re going back to where you came from.”

Travis was a good shot. He practiced all the time. From this far away, he knew he could put a bullet right through his father’s forehead, but his trembling hand was the problem right now. But as soon as he squeezed the trigger it was like the alpha waves of his brain kicked in at the last second and his hand steadied just long enough for him to shoot.

The bullet hit his father dead square in the forehead. It rocked his head back, but then his head snapped forward again, the smile never leaving his father’s ghoulish face. A stream of grayish fluid blew out of the back of his father’s head with the bullet, splattering the wall behind him, part of it spraying across a painting, the grayish goo dripping off the frame. More of the same grayish fluid dripped out of the neat hole in his dad’s forehead.

But Travis’s father didn’t collapse. He wasn’t even knocked off balance by the gunshot. He just stared at Travis with the bullet hole in his face now.

“You can’t kill me,” Travis’s father said in a guttural voice. “I’m already dead. Now I’m going to take your mother and sister apart, piece by piece, if you don’t do what I want.”

“What … wait,” Travis croaked.

“I took your mother’s finger off,” his father continued. “I broke the bone and then twisted it around and around until I could pull it off.”

Nora looked on the verge of vomiting on herself. Her skin was so white, her body trembling so badly. She looked like she was on the verge of shock.

“I could take another finger off,” his dad said.

“No … wait! Don’t! What do you want?”

“Put the gun away,” his dead father growled at him. “You will need it soon.”

Travis bent down and laid the gun down at his feet.

“There’s a boy named David,” his dead father said. “He’s with a man and a woman named Cole and Stella. They have traveled south to a town called Cody’s Pass. I think you have seen their snowmobile tracks in the snow.”

Travis nodded slightly.

“Kill the boy and I will not harm your mother or sister any further. But you must do it quickly. For every hour that you do not kill the boy, I will take a piece of them. A finger. A toe. An eyeball. A tongue.”

“Kill a kid?” Travis asked, his voice squeaking with panic. “I can’t just … just kill some kid I don’t even know.”

Travis looked at his sister, then at his mother.

Nora shook her head no. “Don’t do it, Travis,” she whispered. “Please …”

Travis’s dead father took a step over to the table next to the couch. He picked up the bloodstained kitchen knife. “Have you ever seen someone skinned alive?” he asked as he walked over to Nora. He raised the blade up to her face and pressed the point of the knife gently into her fleshy cheek. “I could take her face off in one whole piece and put it on your sister like a Halloween mask.”

“I’ll kill you first!” Travis roared as helpless tears streamed out of his eyes. “Whatever the hell you are!”

“You want to see what I am?” Travis’s dead father asked. He dropped the knife to the carpet. His body began to bulge suddenly in some places, the fabric of his dirty clothing pushing out. His suitcoat and shirt tore open; a long, segmented leg pushed out through his rotted flesh. Grayish goo was stuck to the thing’s giant insect-like leg. But then it wasn’t an insect leg anymore, it morphed into a rubbery tentacle, like a snake.

Travis’s mother screamed and nearly fell out of her chair, trying to lean as far away from the monstrosity next to her as possible. She still held her bloody hand cradled in the stained rag.

“I’m ancient …” Travis’s dead father said. “I’ve been here a long, long time. I am much more than you could ever understand. I am more powerful than you could ever imagine. If you will not kill the boy, I will have some fun with all three of you, and then I will find the next family to kill the boy. And then the next one. I won’t stop. If you want to save your mother and your sister, all you have to do is kill the boy.”

“Okay!” Travis screamed. His eyesight was blurry with tears now. This was all going too fast. He just wanted everything to slow down so he could think for a minute. But the thing that had somehow gotten inside of his dead father’s body wasn’t going to give him a chance.

“Kill the boy,” his dead father said again as the segmented and rubbery thing retracted back inside his father’s body. “It’s that simple. Use your gun and put a bullet in the boy’s brain. He won’t feel a thing. Do it, and then all of this will be over. If not, I can promise you that you cannot imagine the things I can do to them.”

“I’ll do it,” Travis said as tears spilled out of his eyes. “Just please … please don’t hurt them anymore.”

CHAPTER 24

Cody’s Pass, Colorado

After they rode the snowmobile down the hill and towards the edge of town, Cole stashed it in the brush and covered it with some broken branches. There was nothing they could do about the tracks leading up to the brush … eventually the snowmobile would be found.

They walked the next mile to the nearest buildings at the edge of Cody’s Pass. As they walked down the sidewalks and the plowed streets of the town, they tried to act normally, and with David’s long black hair hidden underneath the hood of his coat, they just looked like a family walking down the road.

There weren’t a lot of people out walking around, even though the storm had passed by hours ago. The sky was blue and cloudless. A lot of the businesses were still closed up, but there were a few people driving around, some driving large pickups, many with plows attached to the front of the trucks.

Stella heard a snowmobile in the distance and turned around to look. It was a teenager racing across a field of snow in the distance behind some houses. All of this snow must be a dream for him, she thought, but a nightmare for others.

After a few more miles were behind them, they spotted a convenience store that was open for business. They walked down to the side of the building and huddled together in the cold.

“Can you go in there and get us some food and drinks?” Cole asked Stella. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to go anywhere where there are cameras right now.”

“Yeah. What do you want?”

“I don’t care. I’m so hungry right now I’d eat anything.” He smiled at her.

She couldn’t trust that smile, she told herself.

“Maybe you should go alone,” Cole offered. “I could keep David with me.”

“No,” Stella answered a little too sharply. “David stays with me.”

“Of course. I understand.”

Cole dug a pack of cash out from the waistband of his pants and peeled off some twenty dollar bills. He handed them to her. “Money might be traceable, but it will take some time. We really don’t have any other options right now.”

Stella nodded.

Cole stared at her for a moment. “You could go in there and tell them about me. You could tell them that you’re with one of the guys that robbed the bank.”

Stella didn’t answer, she just held Cole’s gaze.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” Cole said and she thought he almost looked relieved at the idea of it. He would be taken away from this nightmare and placed into police custody, locked away in a cell and protected from this ancient thing that roamed out here. He would be away from her and David, no longer a threat to the thing. She even wondered if the thought hadn’t crossed his mind already, if he might not be weighing his options and waiting for the perfect time to ditch them. He might just be using them for cover right now.

But Stella knew that if she turned Cole in to the police, they would have a lot of questions for her—questions she would have a difficult time answering. And they would take David away. He would be vulnerable to the Ancient Enemy without her. Before long, the Ancient Enemy would find others and force them into action with unspeakable horrors. It could find others who weren’t as strong as she was, others who weren’t willing to sacrifice themselves to save this boy, others who would kill David in a heartbeat to save themselves.

And of course Cole had already thought all of this through. He had run the different scenarios through his mind as he’d driven the snowmobile and on their walk through town.

He knew she wasn’t going to turn him in—she had too much to lose. David had too much to lose.

“I’ll go with you,” Cole said. For a moment she thought he was talking about the supermarket. “I’ll go with you all the way down there to find this shaman. I want to help stop this thing before it kills others like … like it killed my brother.”

Stella nodded. It felt like they had both come to the realization that their futures were bleak at best, like two gunfighters on the run and being chased by the law. It could only end badly. Even if by some miracle they survived all of this and there was a shaman who could help David, what then? Cole could always stay on the run, but eventually Stella would have to go back to her own life. She would have to face the authorities eventually, face their questions. She would either be charged with crimes like aiding and abetting a criminal or be thrown into the nuthouse. Her career was definitely over now and her life would be over after this.

But why dwell on that? The chances that they would live through all of this were pretty slim anyway.

She took David’s hand and he gave her hand a squeeze. He looked up at her and smiled. She couldn’t let anything happen to him.

“You ready to go to the store?” she asked him.

He nodded and they went.

*

Stella entered the convenience store with David, and they headed right for the restrooms to wash up. A sense of déjà vu blanketed her, and her mind swam back to that night at the dig site when they had escaped the Ancient Enemy. They had driven the rest of the night up into Colorado and stopped here in this town, parked in the motel parking lot for a few hours of rest. And then they had gone to a gas station to clean up in the bathroom and stock up on some food and drinks.

And here they were again, on the run and going into a restroom to clean up. Only they weren’t in a gas station this time, they were in a small supermarket.

Stella took David with her into the women’s restroom. He went to the bathroom in one of the stalls while she cleaned the dirt and grime from her face and hands at one of the sinks. Thankfully the restroom was empty. She stared at herself in the mirror for a moment and her thoughts drifted back to a few mornings ago when she had stood in front of a mirror at that gas station. She remembered being surprised at how gaunt and haunted her reflection had looked. Now, a few days later, she still had that same gaunt and haunted look. It wasn’t quite the shock to her now as it had been then.

After they cleaned up, Stella told David to keep the hood of his coat up over his hair while they were inside the store. Nobody might remember a mother and her son shopping, but they might remember a blond woman with a Native American child.

David was fine with the hood being over his head—he didn’t fight her about it. He was such a good kid. And she believed that he knew that her only mission in life right now was to protect him and keep him safe.

He smiled at her and took her hand. He still wasn’t talking much, but with the horrors he had experienced, she couldn’t really blame him. If they survived all of this somehow, who knew how long it would take for him to recover? If ever.

“We’re going to shop for a few things,” she told him.

He nodded at her.

“I want you to pick out anything you want to eat. Okay?”

Again, he nodded.

“Just a few things. Just what we can carry in a few bags.”

He seemed to understand. He was ready to start shopping.

But Stella hesitated before leaving the restroom. “Listen, David. I want you to be careful around Cole. Okay? I know he seems nice, and he seems like he wants to help us and protect us, but we can’t trust him. Okay?”

“Okay,” David whispered.

“I don’t want you going anywhere with him without me. Do you understand?”

He nodded.

“I mean it, David.”

“I know,” he whispered.

After they were out of the bathroom, Stella grabbed a shopping cart and they went down each aisle, trying not to hurry. She kept her selection small and light, foods in boxes or cans that could be eaten cold: packages of crackers, cans of tuna, a few pre-packaged meals that could go in the microwave, a box of Pop-Tarts, a package of energy bars, packs of nuts, a small bag of sugar, and Kool-Aid packets. She only bought one cold drink for each of them, figuring there would be vending machines at the motel. The motel would also have soap, shampoo, and other bathroom needs. She bought three toothbrushes and a travel-size tube of toothpaste, a can of spray deodorant, and a big bottle of aspirin.

They checked out at the cash register and the weight of her pistol inside her coat pocket felt so heavy; she felt like it was obvious to the young cashier that she was packing a weapon. She thought the cashier might have been taking a little too long studying her grocery choices, and then scrutinizing the twenty dollar bills that she’d given her. But maybe it was her imagination. The cashier gave Stella the change and bagged the groceries into plastic bags.

Stella asked David to carry one of the bags, and she carried the other three. They walked out through the automatic doors, and a moment later they were back out in the freezing cold air again.

Cole met up with them about a block down the street as they had agreed earlier. The walk to the motel was a long one, at least another forty-five minutes. They didn’t talk much as they walked, and they tried not to glance around too much at anyone out on the street.

*

When they got to the Mountainside Inn, Cole waited around the side with the bags of groceries while Stella and David went to check in at the front desk. She wasn’t going to let David out of her sight, and Cole couldn’t blame her for that.

He found a little alcove near the dumpster at the side of the building to hide in. There were no cameras on this side of the building (he hadn’t spotted any security cameras at all so far) and virtually no traffic in the parking lot—foot or vehicle. The motel seemed mostly empty right now, but there were a few cars and trucks scattered around, pulled up tight to the two-story building. Maybe some of these patrons were skiers, Cole thought; or maybe a salesman or family members who had gotten caught in the snowstorm while on their way to sales meetings or family visits.

Cole leaned against the wood-sided wall inside the little alcove, protected from view and the wind. He finally had a chance to breathe easily for a few minutes. He’d been so preoccupied with the police that he hadn’t even thought much about the Ancient Enemy (as Stella called it) until now that he was alone on this deserted side of the motel. The tree line was only a hundred yards away across a field of snow that was probably an area of tall grasses in the summertime.

He could imagine another dead person stumbling out of those woods, another hollowed-out puppet controlled by that thing. He could see that person in his mind stumbling forward through the snow, an unstoppable zombie on a persistent mission, a puppet with that strange and crooked smile hung on its face and that glazed look of the dead in its eyes.

But no one came.

Cole had begun to wonder about this Ancient Enemy. A theory had popped into his mind, a theory he had expressed last night when they’d been hunkered down in the cabin, waiting for the dead to come back.

What if David was doing this? Even if he wasn’t aware of it, what if he was somehow causing this to happen?

Of course Stella discounted his theory immediately. And maybe she was right, but maybe she wasn’t. Cole had to look at all possibilities through a detached filter, and as improbable as everything had been so far, the idea of David somehow manifesting all of this, even if it was subconsciously, couldn’t be discarded so quickly. He’d heard of children being born with strong telepathic and telekinetic abilities that faded away as they got older. He wasn’t sure where he’d read or seen this—possibly some horror movies—but he couldn’t rule it out right now. He couldn’t afford to rule anything out.

If David was doing this, even if he was unaware of it, then he was very dangerous. And Cole needed to be ready for that.

CHAPTER 25

The Mountainside Inn

Stella and David entered the lobby of the Mountainside Inn through the double doors set in a wall of glass panels. A chandelier hung in the middle of the lobby ceiling two stories above them. Two sets of wide, carpeted stairs led up to the hallways and to more motel rooms. Massive potted plants decorated the corners and stood next to sofas and smaller couches arranged in the middle of the vast room with tables nearby, spreads of magazines fanned out on the table tops. Stella had expected more of a lodgy feel to the motel, something targeted more towards skiers, but this seemed like a much fancier motel for such a small town.

She guided David across the empty lobby towards the long wood counter to their left where a clerk stood behind the counter, dressed in a burgundy vest over a crisp white long-sleeved shirt. He was a little overweight and his dark hair was slicked down and parted severely on one side. He had a neat and trim mustache and wire rim glasses. He smiled at them as they approached.

“Welcome to the Mountainside Inn,” the clerk said.

“Thanks,” Stella answered and smiled at the man. “We’d like to get a room for the night.”

“I think we can arrange that,” the clerk said, typing away at the computer hidden underneath the high counter.

Stella glanced beyond the clerk at the neat counters behind him. There was a chair in the corner even though the clerk chose to stand. A TV was on the counter, but the sound was turned all the way down. It looked like some kind of basketball game was on the screen. There were displays on the countertop advertising ski lodges, mountain tours, horseback riding, restaurants, a spa, and an Old West museum.

“Name?” the clerk asked.

“Molly Reed,” Stella said without hesitating. She had already come up with the fake name on the way there, the name of one of her professors when she was a student at Arizona State.

“Just the two of you?”

“Yes.”

“I can put you upstairs in Room 237. It has a balcony view.”

Yeah, I really want to hang out on the balcony in sub-zero temperatures, Stella thought. “That would be great,” she said and smiled at him.

He placed a piece of paper on the counter for her and a pen. “Just fill out your vehicle information.”

As Stella filled out a fake address and vehicle information, the clerk worked on getting the key cards ready, running them through a small machine. He placed them in a small paper sleeve with the motel’s logo on them and handed them to her with a smile.

“Do you have vending machines here?” Stella asked.

“Of course. You go up that set of stairs over there, take a right, and to the left you will see a small lobby area with vending machines, an ice machine, and even a few video games.” He gave David a wink. “There’s also a change machine there if you need it.”

“That sounds great, thanks.”

“Checkout is at eleven thirty, and we have a small continental breakfast from seven to ten o’clock. Just some coffee and juice, sweet rolls, fruit, cold cereal, toast, stuff like that.”

Stella’s stomach rumbled with hunger just from the clerk’s description of the food and she was afraid he might have heard it. She smiled at him again. “We might take you up on that.” She put her arm around David, pulling him close to her. “Right?” she asked David. He looked up at her and smiled and then nodded.

“Okay,” the clerk said. “If there’s anything I can help you with, just call down here to the desk. The instructions are on the phone, but it’s pretty easy … just dial zero on the phone.”

“Got it.” Stella was ready to go.

“You guys just passing through?” the clerk asked.

This guy was either nosy or lonely. Either way, Stella didn’t want to get into a long conversation with the guy. “Yeah. On my way up to see my aunt.”

“There are some great things to do around here. And if you’re looking for some suggestions for dinner, there’s a great pizza place just down the road. They deliver, too.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Stella said. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but my son needs to use the bathroom.”

“Oh,” the clerk said, his smile disappearing. “Of course. Sorry. I hope you enjoy your stay here.”

“I’m sure we will,” Stella said. She ushered David away quickly.

They walked up the set of wide steps that were carpeted in the same garish carpeting that covered part of the lobby. What was it with hotels and their ugly carpeting?

A moment later they found the vending machines exactly where the clerk said they would be. They had left the bags of food with Cole, but Stella decided to stock up on a few cans of soda and water before going to their room.

“Pick out what you want,” she told David.

He pointed at the Coke button.

Stella found two five-dollar bills in her purse, smoothed them out, and then fed them into the change machine. Quarters plunked down into the metal basket and she used them to get two cans of Coke, two cans of Sprite, and two bottles of water. Hot coffee sounded good, but she could come back for that later.

“Someone’s thirsty!” a man roared from behind them.

Stella whirled around, expecting the see the clerk for some reason, thinking he had followed them up here.

But it wasn’t the clerk who had bellowed at them. A tall, fat man stood there grinning at them. He was nearly bald and his face was red with a splash of broken capillary veins across his cheeks. His gut pushed out the white button-down dress shirt tucked into the waistband of his black pants. He wore a necktie that was only slightly less loud than the pattern and colors of the motel carpeting.

For a moment she thought the large man could be a puppet controlled by the Ancient Enemy, but she dismissed that thought in the next few seconds. It was something about the way he stood, the way he looked at them, but most of all it was the way his voice sounded—he didn’t have that monotone guttural growl.

Salesman, Stella thought. It was the way he was dressed, the wide smile plastered on his face, the exuberance in his voice; a vibe came from him that was probably so ingrained in his personality from decades of sales work that he couldn’t turn it off anymore.

“Uh …” Stella tried to think of a good reason for all the drinks.

“Great mixers,” the man said and gave Stella an exaggerated wink.

She forced a smile on her face. “Yeah,” she agreed.

“Name’s Bruce Goldman,” the man said. His voice was so loud, and he seemed to fill up the small vending-machine area with both his personality and sheer mass.

David was eyeing the video games, apparently already bored with Bruce’s conversation.

“Hi, Bruce,” Stella said. She didn’t offer their names, hoping the man would get the hint.

“Heck of a storm we had, huh?”

“Uh, yeah. We just got here.”

“Oh, you missed a doozy. I haven’t seen a snowstorm like that since I was a kid.”

“It was nice to meet you,” Stella said, practically pushing David out of the room towards the hallway.

Wow, people sure were friendly around here.

Stella and David walked down the hall and found Room 237. She saw that there was an exit to a set of outside stairs at the other end of the hall, a great place to sneak Cole up here. She was sure there were cameras around … she just had to hope that the clerk wasn’t studying them.

*

Cole still waited in the alcove. It had been at least twenty minutes now and he was beginning to get a little worried. He looked back at the trees covered with snow in the distance, and then he looked at the small drive leading out of the parking lot down to the road below, the road that led south.

The road that led away from here … away from this nightmare.

“Cole,” Stella hissed from around the corner.

Cole jumped. He’d drawn his gun without even realizing it. He shoved it back down into the waistband of his pants and pulled his coat back down over it before she and David came around the corner and saw him with his gun in his hand. He didn’t want them to see a wild-eyed man pointing a gun at them.

“Right here,” Cole said. He grabbed the plastic bags of groceries down by his feet and stepped out from the alcove. He trudged through the snow to her and David, who waited by the back of the building.

*

They climbed the set of concrete steps outside the building at the far end and entered through a metal-framed glass door. Even this area was fancy, with two chairs and a table positioned next to a picture window that looked out onto the mountains. A potted plant stood in the corner. The heat was blasting down from the air ducts, an immediate relief from the cold.

Stella and David led Cole down the hall, passing door after door as they walked along the garish carpeting made up of strange geometric designs in muted reds, oranges, and purples. Cole whispered to her that he didn’t really like being upstairs, but what could they do about it? It wasn’t like they could complain to the manager about it.

Stella stopped in front of Room 237 and slipped the card key into the slot above the metal doorhandle. The little light in the shiny metal plate turned green and she opened the door and hurried inside.

Cole was the last one to enter the room. He closed the door and then engaged the deadbolt lock with a flip of his thumb. The lock thunked into place and the door seemed sturdy.

For the first time Stella felt somewhat safe. For the first time she felt like she could exhale a full breath. She took off her coat and laid it over one of the chairs on the other side of the room, spreading it out so the snow would melt and the coat could dry. She helped Cole unpack the groceries from the bags and she put one of the prepared dinners into the small microwave that was on a counter in the area near the door and the bathroom.

She looked at Cole, who also seemed a little less tense now.

“We wait here for a few hours,” he told her as if she had asked a question. “We get cleaned up, eat, and then we can sleep for a few hours in shifts.”

CHAPTER 26

Route 217—Cody’s Pass, Colorado

Travis drove his snowmobile down the snow-covered road that wound down through the mountains, down into the valley where Cody’s Pass was nestled. He needed to get to the motel at the other end of town, the Mountainside Inn; it was the only motel he could think of. That’s where this kid David would be, that’s what the thing inside of his dead father had told him. Travis wasn’t sure how that thing knew exactly where this kid was, or why that thing just didn’t kill the kid itself, but he couldn’t think about things like that; he had to do what it wanted or it was going to tear his mother and sister apart. He had to do this, he didn’t have a choice. It was just a bullet in the kid’s head. Lights out. He wouldn’t feel any pain at all.

As he drove into town, trying to stick to the unplowed roads as much as possible, he saw more cop cars patrolling than he’d ever seen before. They must be looking for the escaped criminals. He hadn’t even thought about the bank robbers. Being at Tom Gordon’s burnt cabin this morning seemed like such a long time ago—a lifetime ago. Everything had changed since then.

He was tempted to stop one of the cops and plead for help. But what could he do, tell them that his dead father had dug himself out of his frozen grave and was now holding his sister and mother hostage, tearing pieces of their bodies off one by one? They would lock him up and then there would be no chance of saving his family. The police couldn’t kill that thing … they couldn’t kill whatever the hell was inside of his dead father.

And Travis was sure that the thing inside his dead father—that spidery, slithering thing—would know somehow if he didn’t accomplish his mission. Maybe that thing and this boy it wanted killed had some kind of psychic connection and that thing would know immediately when that link was broken.

What was that thing? Was it an alien? A demon of some kind? Travis even tried to rationalize that he had imagined the whole thing … and the farther away he rode from the madness the more his mind tried to convince him of that possibility.

Except that his mother’s severed finger was tucked down inside his shirt pocket.

“Put it in your pocket,” the thing that used to be his father had growled at Travis as it stood right in front of him, its breath smelling like moist earth and rotting meat.

Travis had almost retched as that thing stood right in front of him, but he took the bloody finger from the dead man’s hand. His father’s flesh was cold, but his mother’s finger was still warm and moist with blood.

Being so close to his dead father, Travis saw the bullet hole he had created when he’d shot him in the forehead. He saw the wink of daylight through the bullet hole—straight through to the back of his head, which had exploded open from the gunshot wound, leaving behind shattered, jagged pieces of skull that stuck out of the edges of the gunshot wound like broken teeth. His salt and pepper hair was matted down with that grayish goo that had been inside of his embalmed body. The mortician’s stitches dangled from the inside of his father’s lips and eyelids, tiny black strings hanging down, torn from his eyelids and mouth after he had forced them open, after he had crawled out of his grave.

“For every hour you don’t come back, I take a piece of them,” his dead father had whispered.

Travis had nodded, afraid if he spoke that he might vomit. The room seemed like it was spinning around him in his peripheral vision.

“Go,” his dead father had whispered. And then he had smiled—it was like invisible strings had just yanked up the corners of his mouth violently, a forced smile underneath the dead, white-glazed eyes.

Travis had stumbled back away from his father and then raced outside. He had puked in the snow before even reaching his snowmobile, throwing up a yellowish streak across the pristine snow. His stomach was emptied, but he didn’t feel any better.

And now he pulled his snowmobile up to the edge of the motel parking lot. They were in there somewhere—the man, the woman, and the boy. He wasn’t sure if he could do this … but he had to. Had an hour passed by already? Was that thing twisting off another one of his mother’s fingers, or cutting a slice of flesh off with the kitchen knife? Travis felt his stomach lurch again; he felt like he was going to throw up again, but he didn’t have anything left to purge from his stomach.

He touched the bulge in his coat; his gun was stuffed inside a pocket. He sat on his snowmobile, staring at the motel in the distance.

Just do it, he told himself. Just get it over with.

CHAPTER 27

Cody’s Pass, Colorado

The commuter jet Special Agent Palmer flew in landed at a small airstrip right outside of Destin, Colorado. The snow on the airstrip looked like it had been plowed away recently, but it still looked dangerously slippery to land on. Palmer wasn’t usually afraid of flying, but looking out the small plane’s windshield at that runway made him nervous. The pilot assured him that they would be fine, but Palmer had gripped the armrests of his seat anyway, bracing for impact.

The landing went smoothly just like the pilot said it would. And a rental car was waiting for him just like Debbie had promised. The rental was another black sedan, similar to the one he’d driven in New Mexico. It was most likely a different make and model, but it still looked like a cookie-cutter car to Palmer.

He got in the car and turned his phone on. Debbie had sent him the address and he’d already programmed it into the GPS app on his phone while he was on the plane. She’d also told him that the road to the address, Route 217, had already been plowed a little earlier.

He was ready to go.

As Palmer drove up into the mountains, following the commands of the female and slightly robotic voice giving him turn-by-turn directions from his phone, he wondered how badly the crime scene had already been compromised.

Debbie had explained as much as she knew about the crime scene while Palmer was still in the air. She’d told him that a burning cabin had been discovered by the sheriff’s department with an SUV parked in back, part of the vehicle on fire. The vehicle belonged to a woman named Stella Weaver—and that’s when the FBI got involved. Debbie also told Palmer that there were five dead and burnt bodies inside the cabin—all male.

Stella wasn’t with them.

The drive seemed to take forever on the winding road that twisted its way through the mountains. Walls of snow-covered trees whipped by in a blur outside his car windows. He had his headlights on even though it was still the middle of the day, the beams of light shining onto the freshly-plowed road. Even though several feet of snow had been plowed to the side of the road, Palmer still drove carefully.

“Turn left at the next driveway,” the robot voice from his phone chimed out. “Your destination is just up ahead.”

“I don’t see a driveway,” Palmer grumbled, but he slowed the car down gently. He glanced down at the phone and saw the driveway on the screen splitting off from Route 217 and .1 miles at the top, counting down to his arrival. He looked back out the windshield and saw a lone mailbox at the left side of the road, practically buried in the hill of snow that had been plowed into it.

And there was the driveway.

Palmer drove down the twisty, narrow driveway, and after five minutes of driving, the driveway opened up to a massive field. In the middle of the field was the burnt cabin. All four log walls were still standing, but the roof was partially caved in. Part of the front porch had collapsed, but most of the debris had been removed and piled up near the front corner of the cabin. A large truck with a long bed and a crane on top was parked alongside the cabin, the crane removing the last bits of the roof from inside the cabin. A fire truck, an ambulance, the fire chief’s car and two sheriff cars were parked in a plowed area in front of the cabin. None of the lights were flashing—the vehicles had been here for a while now, the investigation going on for some time.

Palmer parked towards the back of the plowed parking area, right behind one of the sheriff’s cars. He turned his headlights off and then cut the engine. He grabbed his phone and got out. He shrugged into his coat, slipped his gloves on, and tucked his phone into his outside coat pocket.

The sheriff approached Palmer’s car. He was a tall man … a large man. He didn’t seem muscular, more like a man who’d always been big and was comfortable with it. He had a ruddy complexion and sharp little eyes set deep in his face. He walked with an air of confidence, a man who was on his home turf.

Palmer reached inside his suitcoat pocket and pulled out his FBI badge and ID. He snapped the wallet open with a flip of his wrist. “Special Agent Palmer.”

The sheriff nodded. He didn’t offer to shake hands.

“I was told there’s a vehicle here belonging to a woman named Stella Weaver.”

“Yeah,” the sheriff said. “Truck’s around back.”

Palmer followed the sheriff down a well-worn path through the snow to the back of the cabin where the charred remains of Stella’s vehicle remained.

“The fire was deliberate?” Palmer asked.

The sheriff nodded. “We found an empty gas can on the other side of the cabin.”

They didn’t try to hide the evidence, Palmer thought. Just like at the dig site.

“Our fire chief has looked through the damage already,” Sheriff Hadley told him.

“We’ve got forensics and fire specialists on the way,” Palmer responded and he could sense the sheriff tense up a little. It was like a slap in the face, like their hick specialists weren’t as good as government ones.

“I’m told there are five bodies inside the cabin,” Palmer said.

The sheriff gave a curt nod. “Yessir.”

“And the owner of this truck, Stella Weaver, she’s not one of the bodies?”

“Nosir,” the sheriff answered. It sounded like one word the way he said it. The constant use of “sir” reminded Palmer of someone who used to be in the military. “All five are male. Our medical examiner is here now and he’s already taken a look at them.”

Palmer stared hard at the sheriff.

“No tests have been done,” Hadley assured Palmer. “But the M.E. has found some strange things.”

Palmer braced himself, afraid of more strange news, but deep down he knew it was going to happen. “What kind of strange things?” he asked, trying to keep a poker face.

“The M.E., his name’s Carson. He’s right over there by the front of the cabin.”

Palmer walked with the sheriff around the ambulance and firetruck. He met Carson near the front porch as promised. The M.E. was a short man with a pot belly. His gray hair was wild and a little long. He had a pair of oversized glasses on his face that magnified his eyes. He was bundled up in a thick coat and he still had a pair of latex gloves on his hands. The gloves looked fresh. Palmer figured the gloves the M.E. had worn to do a cursory examination, the ones that would have had charred marks all over them from the burnt bodies, were discarded by now.

Carson offered a hand in greeting and Palmer shook it, a quick shake.

“The sheriff tells me that you’ve discovered some odd things,” Palmer said.

The M.E. nodded. “I’ve been doing this for twenty-six years. You think you’ve seen everything …”

As the M.E. let his words trail off, Palmer was reminded of talking to Susan Dorsett, the forensics specialist at John and Deena’s house in New Mexico only hours ago—she had begun with the same preamble. He glanced at the front porch beyond them. The roof of the cabin had collapsed from the fire, but much of the debris had been taken away and piled up in the snow near the house by the firefighters and the crane operator. The floor of the wide front porch was more solid near the front doorway, where the door looked like it had been smashed in.

“Who’s been inside the cabin so far?” Palmer asked.

“Just the M.E., the fire chief, and the firefighters,” the sheriff answered. “And me.”

Palmer nodded. He saw that a few of the firefighters were removing the last of the burnt debris of the roof by hand, carrying it out the back door where they were creating another pile.

“I don’t want any of this debris taken away until our guys go over it,” Palmer said.

The sheriff nodded like he already knew that. “We’ve got it in piles beside the house. The fire chief’s preliminary explanation is that there was some kind of explosion inside. Most likely from the gas stove and oven.”

“So this place wasn’t only set on fire with gasoline?” Palmer asked.

“The gas was used as a propellant,” the sheriff answered. “That’s what the fire chief said. The explosion was the spark that set it all off. He found an exploded soda can in there that most likely came from the microwave oven. The can had been thrown across the kitchen in the blast.”

Palmer nodded again and turned his attention back to the M.E., who was waiting patiently.

“These three bodies were out here on the porch when I got here,” Carson said, gesturing at the three charred bodies lying on the front porch, one near the doorway on his stomach, arms reaching out towards the door like he was trying to crawl back inside. “Two more just inside the doorway there.”

The M.E. noticed Palmer staring at the body near the doorway. “Looks like he was trying to crawl back inside the house during the fire, doesn’t it?” the M.E. asked Palmer like he was seeking his opinion.

Palmer didn’t nod. He just looked back at Carson. “So that’s the strange thing about the bodies? Because one of them looks like he might’ve been crawling back inside the cabin?”

“Oh God, no,” Carson said and chuckled. “There’s a lot more than that.”

CHAPTER 28

The cabin

The M.E walked over to the edge of the front porch and pointed at the closest burnt body. His hand was trembling as he pointed and Palmer didn’t know if it was from nervousness or excitement, or both. “The flesh around this man’s neck is gone. Only the spine is remaining. And, I know it’s hard to tell now, but areas of the flesh around the mouth are gone.”

“Maybe the explosion—”

“No,” the M.E. said, cutting Palmer’s words off. “The explosion didn’t cause that. These wounds were there before the fire. He also has an ax in his hand.”

Palmer noticed that. The man’s burnt hand was skeletal and still wrapped around the handle of the charred ax.

“Why would this guy be holding an ax?” the M.E. asked. “He couldn’t have even been standing up with his neck like that; he wouldn’t have been able to hold his head up at all.”

“Maybe someone placed the ax there after the fire started,” Palmer offered, but it didn’t make a lot of sense. “One of the bank robbers who got away.” But why put an ax in the man’s hand? he wondered.

“And that guy over there,” Carson said, pointing at the next body, pretty much ignoring Palmer’s theory. “The back of his body and the back of his head have all been hollowed out.”

“The explosion …” Palmer said again, hoping it would be an explanation.

“I don’t think so. For one thing, this guy is outside here on the porch, not inside where the explosion took place.”

“And the explosion wasn’t that powerful,” the sheriff said. “Fire chief told me that.”

The M.E. nodded at Sheriff Hadley and then looked back at Palmer. “And again, those wounds look to me like they were created before the fire … before the explosion. Someone gutted this guy from the back and left him on the front porch. Took all his organs out, his muscle, bones. Everything … it’s all gone.”

The M.E. stepped up onto the porch and the sheriff followed. “Fire chief said it’s safe enough inside the house now.”

Palmer stepped around the outstretched hands of the man reaching for the door. He was reminded of photos he’d seen of people trapped in ash in Pompeii, frozen forever in their last acts on Earth, frozen in screams of agony.

“This guy,” Carson said, pointing down at the man in front of the door. “He doesn’t have any eyes. Torn out completely.”

Palmer felt that sick feeling in his stomach again. This was shaping up to be more and more like the crime scenes down in New Mexico. What the hell was going on here? Who the hell was doing this kind of shit to people? Bank robbers? That was hard to believe.

“And he’s got a wound down his side where it looks like something ripped him open.”

Palmer didn’t say anything.

“It looks like something pushed its way out of his body,” the M.E. said. “They all have similar wounds, holes and splits about a foot or so in diameter, ragged edges, the walls of burnt flesh pushed out.”

“What could do something like that?”

Carson shook his head; his big eyes magnified behind his glasses. “I can’t say for sure. But the bodies just inside the cabin here are just as strange.”

The M.E. and the sheriff entered the cabin, stepping around the man’s burnt body on the floorboards. They both walked gingerly on the floor, even though the sheriff had claimed it was safe to enter the building.

Palmer followed them inside and saw the other two bodies immediately.

“This one over here doesn’t have any eyes,” Carson told Palmer.

“Like the one on the front porch.”

“Sort of,” Carson answered. “But this guy’s eyes look like they were cut out with a lot less precision than the one on the front porch. And you’ll notice here along his side, the hole in his flesh.”

Palmer felt that sick feeling wanting to surface more forcefully, but he crouched down and took a closer look. The M.E. was right, it was like something had been inside of this man and had exploded out of him. He even saw what looked like the sharp point of a broken rib sticking out through the charred flesh, the bone gleaming white in contrast to the blackened meat and clothing.

“But the strangest one is over here.”

The M.E. walked over to the last body. “It looks like this guy had been torn apart into pieces and then fused back together somehow.”

Palmer shook his head. “What do you mean? How can you tell something like that?”

He pointed down at the deep cuts in the man’s arms and legs, the clothing melted away in the fire. “Jagged and deep cuts. Snapped bones. But it looks like they were … I don’t know any other way to say it than they were somehow fused back together.”

“Like from heat? Maybe the fire.”

“No,” the M.E. told Palmer. “I don’t think so.”

“Then how?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t have any kind of guess. Like I said, I’ve never seen anything like this in twenty-six years. Never heard of anything like this.”

Palmer’s mouth was suddenly dry and he could feel the beginning of a headache coming on. He could really use a drink right now. He wondered how he could get back to his car and sneak a nip from the bottle in his duffel bag.

What the hell was going on here? Palmer wondered. He echoed the M.E.’s sentiment—this was the strangest crime scene he’d ever seen in the years he’d been with the Bureau. They had numerous bodies with damages that seemed almost supernatural. And the only connection to the archaeologists’ bodies and these murders was Stella Weaver. Her vehicle had to have been the missing vehicle from the dig site, and now it was here. But she wasn’t here. Was she involved in this somehow? The murderers could’ve taken her and her vehicle from the dig site. They could still have her captive, or they could’ve dumped her body in the woods somewhere on the way up here.

And there was still the missing boy to consider. How did David figure into all of this? Maybe the murderers killed David’s parents first. They took David to the dig site, then killed the archaeologists and took David and Stella with them up here to Colorado. They still could’ve dumped both of their bodies along the way, or they could still have them as hostages.

“No ID’s on the bodies yet?” Palmer asked even though he was fairly sure that hadn’t happened yet with the degree of mutilation and burning done to them.

“Not really,” the sheriff said. “But we think we know who these guys might be.”

Palmer looked at him with raised eyebrows, his curiosity piqued.

“There was a bank robbery a few days ago in Cody’s Pass, a town south of here. The robbers killed one of the customers and got away with two metal cases of money.”

Palmer nodded for him to continue.

“We think the bank robbers were holed up here. We think one of these bodies is the owner of the cabin, a man named Tom Gordon. He lived here alone. We found the two metal cases they used in the robbery, same description the witnesses gave. And we found several guns. A lot of the money was still inside the cases. Not much damage from the fire because the cases were made of metal.”

They were all quiet for a moment as Palmer thought this through. “So,” Palmer finally said, “these guys rob a bank, come here in that vehicle stashed around back, then one of them kills the other four guys in his group, rigs an explosion, sets fire to the cabin, leaves most of the money behind, and …”

“There were snowmobile tracks leading away from this cabin,” Sheriff Hadley said. “The guy must’ve taken Mr. Gordon’s snowmobile from the garage out there and drove right out of here.”

Palmer glanced back out through the doorway at the front yard cluttered with vehicles.

“Not easy to see now,” the sheriff said quickly. “But the tracks were there. And Mr. Gordon’s snowmobile is gone from the garage.”

Palmer looked back at the sheriff. “Why would he kill all of his partners and not take the stolen money?”

“Well, we’re not sure he didn’t take any of the money,” Sheriff Hadley said. “Some of it might be gone.”

The sheriff walked across the debris-littered floor to the two metal cases on the floor near a destroyed couch, burnt down to the floor with metal springs poking up out of it. The cases were charred black, but open now revealing the packs of money stacked up inside. Palmer and the M.E. followed him there.

“I would guess these cases were full when they left the bank,” the sheriff said. “We’re working with the bank right now to see how much money is missing, and then we’ll count this up. But just by eyeballing it, I’d say some of it is gone.”

“But that brings us back to why the lone robber wouldn’t have taken all of the money with him. He could’ve carried the two cases with him on the snowmobile. Right?”

The sheriff shrugged. “Sure. Could’ve strapped them down to the back.”

“Why would he go through all of this trouble? Why would he mutilate the bodies of his crew like this? Seems like he would’ve just shot them and escaped with the money. I mean the fire … that’s what drew us here. Why would he create a bonfire if he was trying to escape?”

Neither the sheriff nor the M.E. had an answer for him.

“Let’s step back outside,” Palmer said, moving towards the doorway. He needed to be away from the smell of burnt flesh and charred wood.

The M.E. remained on the porch as Palmer and the sheriff walked towards the garage and the pickup truck parked there.

“That pickup truck,” Palmer said.

“It’s Tom Gordon’s truck.”

“Why would this guy take the snowmobile and not the pickup truck? I can see why he wouldn’t take the SUV, but why the snowmobile instead of a pickup?”

“Roads are bad. Route 217 out there wasn’t plowed when this guy left. It would be too hard to get this truck down the road. Maybe too dangerous.”

Palmer nodded. That made sense.

The sheriff seemed satisfied that he’d figured out something that Palmer hadn’t.

But still, there was something about the truck. Palmer stared at the front of it for a moment. “Does it look like the hood’s unlatched to you?”

The sheriff looked at the truck, his eyes widening a little. “Yessir.”

They walked over to the pickup truck. A lot of the snow had melted off the truck from the cabin fire.

“Let’s look inside,” Palmer said.

The sheriff lifted the hood up and they both stared down in shock.

“Holy shit,” the sheriff breathed out. “Looks like someone took a baseball bat to this engine.”

Or an ax, Palmer thought. And then he thought of the ax still gripped in the dead man’s hand on the porch.

Another thought occurred to Palmer. “Come on, let’s check out the SUV around back.”

They hurried down the same path through the snow to Stella’s Chevy Suburban, the packed-down snow crunching under their boots. Palmer went to the driver’s side and reached his hand through the now glassless window and pulled the latch for the hood. It thunked open easily. The sheriff lifted the hood up as Palmer got back around to the front of the vehicle.

“Same thing,” the sheriff muttered.

Palmer didn’t say anything. It was similar but not the same. Except in this vehicle the battery was gone. It looked like it had been ripped out of the vehicle.

“So they drive this vehicle here,” Palmer said more to himself than to Sheriff Hadley. “Then one of these guys destroys the vehicles, kills most of his buddies, sets the cabin on fire, takes part of the stolen money and escapes on a snowmobile.”

The sheriff shook his head like it was all beyond him.

The fire, Palmer thought as he looked back at the cabin. Thin fingers of smoke drifted up to the sky from the charred logs. “Who called this in? Someone had to have seen the smoke in the sky this morning.”

“Kid from down the road,” the sheriff answered. “Travis Conrad. Nineteen years old. Good kid. Played football with my son. He drove his snowmobile here. He’s the one who saw the snowmobile tracks in the snow. He also put the fire out on the SUV, trying to save any evidence.”

“He saw the snowmobile tracks the escapee left behind?” Palmer asked and his voice sounded sharp with accusation.

“Yessir,” the sheriff answered. “He saw them all the way down to his property. He followed them here.”

“He have any idea where the tracks were going?”

The sheriff shrugged. “Said they went south past his house.”

“South? You mean back to Cody’s Pass? Back to the place where they robbed the bank?”

Again the sheriff gave a slight shrug. “He said it seemed that way, but this guy could’ve taken the snowmobile off into the woods at any point. I’ve got one of our guys following the tracks right now on a snowmobile. I’m waiting to hear back from him.”

Palmer nodded like that made sense.

“Where’s this Travis Conrad now? The one who reported this.”

“I sent him back home.”

“I want to talk to this kid.”

CHAPTER 29

Cody’s Pass, Colorado—The Mountainside Inn

Stella had eaten a quick meal of basically snack food with David and then she took him into the bathroom with her to get a bath. She took her shower first, with David waiting for her. She kept the bathroom door locked. She didn’t want to leave David out there with Cole even for five minutes. She didn’t think Cole would take David, or even kill him. But she wasn’t going to bet on it. People changed sometimes. People cracked. They eventually broke down. She’d seen it enough times over the last week.

David took his bath next, while Stella brushed her teeth. She kept her gun on the top of the toilet tank lid, within easy reach the whole time.

While David soaked in the tub, she left the bathroom, promising him that she would be right outside the bathroom door if he needed her.

Fifteen minutes later, after David was done with his bath and dressed again, she brushed his hair and made him brush his teeth. Now that she was full, clean, and warm, she realized how tired she really was. She was suddenly a little lightheaded, and her muscles were rubbery with exhaustion.

David lay down on the bed closer to the windows that looked out onto the scenic view of the snowy mountains that the motel clerk had bragged about. He fell asleep almost immediately. Cole was in the same place where he’d been when they had gone into the bathroom … right in front of the TV, perched at the end of the other bed. He was flipping from news station to news station with the remote control.

“Anything?” she asked as she pulled the sheet up over David, who rolled over onto his side, breathing even heavier now.

“The weather’s getting better,” he told her. “All of the snowstorms have moved out of the area, and there isn’t any bad weather forecasted for the next few days.”

“What about us? Anything about us on the news?”

“Nothing about you and David, but there’s still a manhunt out for me. Nothing about the fire at the cabin yet, but I’m sure they’re keeping a lid on that until they figure out exactly what happened there. But they’ll find your vehicle. Hopefully it’s burnt enough to slow them down a little.”

Stella sat down in one of the padded chairs at a built-in writing desk against the wall. She watched Cole as he studied the TV with the remote control in his hand. “How far are you really going to go with us?” she asked, blurting it out. No sense in dancing around the issue anymore. She wasn’t sure if she could trust Cole to tell the truth, but she could at least gauge his reaction to her question.

“I already told you … I’ll go all the way with you,” he said, turning towards her. His face was expressionless, his dark eyes on her the whole time, never looking back to the TV. “I know you don’t believe me, but I want to help. I want this … whatever this is, to end. I want to at least try. See if we can find this … this person to train David …”

“Shaman,” Stella finished for him.

“Yeah, this shaman. See if he can help. If anything can be done at all. And if it can’t …”

“Then what?”

“Then we’ll figure it out from there, when we have more information.”

Stella sighed. She was so tired, the exhaustion washing over her now.

“I’m being honest with you,” Cole said. “I don’t know how many times I can say it to you. I don’t know how to make you believe me.”

Stella didn’t answer. She was ready to crawl into bed beside David and sleep for a few hours, but she couldn’t help still feeling wary with Cole in the room with them. She couldn’t make herself trust this man completely.

“Do you really think a shaman, or anyone like that, could defeat that … that thing out there, whatever it is?”

“I don’t know,” Stella said in a low voice. She glanced at David to make sure he was still asleep. “But it’s the only thing I can think of. Our only shot.”

Cole nodded. “Yeah, but what if you can’t find one of these shamans?”

“I’ve heard of a shaman down there on the Navajo Reservation. He’s supposed to be pretty powerful. A man named Joe Blackhorn.”

“And you know this guy?”

“No.”

“You know where he lives, though.”

“No. But we’ll find him. I know someone I can talk to. She’ll know someone who can find Joe Blackhorn”

Cole smiled. “Yeah.”

“I know it’s not much of a plan, but what else can we do? The only person who can fight this thing is David, and the only way he can learn to fight it is from a shaman. A real shaman.”

“Then that’s our plan,” Cole said and turned back to the TV. “Why don’t you get a few hours of sleep. Then I’ll sleep while you guys are awake.”

Stella nodded. “I need some sleep.”

“We all do,” Cole said and turned the TV off. He stood up. “I’m going to take a quick shower.”

Stella nodded at him and stretched out beside David on the bed, curling her body up around him. She heard Cole walk away and enter the bathroom. A moment later she heard the water running in the shower.

Her eyes closed for a moment and flashes of the terrors they’d seen ran through her mind and …

… she opened her eyes again. She thought she’d only closed her eyes for a few seconds, but she saw Cole coming out of the bathroom through her half-open eyes. He only had his pants on and he laid his shirts out over the two chairs by the table so they could dry. It looked like he had washed them out in the sink. She studied his body; he was lean, nothing but muscle and bone, not an ounce of fat. She had suspected that. He had a few tattoos on his back and shoulders, and a light sprinkling of hair across his chest and a line of hair down his abs.

She closed her eyes again and she was back at the dig site in New Mexico, holed up in that trailer, armed with their pathetic weapons that could do nothing against the god-like being that waited in the badlands outside for them.

The Darkwind, Jim Whitefeather had called it. The Darkwind was another name for the Ancient One, or the Ancient Enemy, or the Anasazi.

In the dream, Stella was at the mouth of the cave again, finding David for the first time. He had blood all over his hands and some smeared on his face. She was panicking at the sight of the blood, yelling for help. He was just a little kid, and his eyes were round with shock.

The other archaeologists and grad students came running to help her.

“Is he hurt?” one of them asked.

“I don’t think so,” Stella said. “I don’t think it’s his blood.”

“What happened?” Jake asked David. “Is someone hurt?”

David wouldn’t respond.

“If someone’s hurt, then you need to tell us,” Jake barked at David.

“Where are your parents?” Stella asked David.

He still wouldn’t answer. He was shivering from both fright and the cold. Jake swooped in and scooped David up. “Let’s get him inside. Get him warm.”

Inside the trailer, Stella got David cleaned up as best she could. The blood was mostly on his hands and face, and there were blood stains on the front of his shirt. She washed his hands, arms, and face, and then she gave him one of her T-shirts to wear. It was a little too big on him, but it fit well enough. She washed the few spots of blood off of his coat in the sink and then hung it over a chair so it could dry.

After talking to David for an hour, she at least got him to tell her his name, but that was about all.

Jim Whitefeather suggested that they contact the Tribal Police. They could be looking for this boy right now. They tried their radio but it wouldn’t work. Neither did the satellite phone. Jim told them that he would drive and contact the nearest neighbors, ask them to call for help, but none of the vehicles would start—all of the batteries were dead.

Jim was scared by then. Stella hadn’t known Jim Whitefeather very long, but they had formed a bond with each other. She respected his culture, and he knew it. Jim could tell that she was interested more in preserving the artifacts, the culture, and getting the history right rather than fame and fortune. She knew Jim was a strong and brave man, and the fear she saw in his dark eyes when he pulled her away from the others unnerved her. He was a seasoned scout and tracker. He’d grown up on this land as had his ancestors for generations. He knew this land; he knew its secrets, its stories, its legends … its monsters.

“Listen to me closely,” he told her in a low voice, his eyes darting around to make sure no one else was listening. “Something bad is out there.”

Stella was about to tell Jim that she feared David’s parents were hurt somewhere and David had run away to get help for them. That was the story they were all set on. But she could tell that Jim believed something else. “Yeah, his parents are probably hurt—” Stella began, but Jim cut her words off.

“No. It’s worse than that. Much worse than that.”

“What do you mean? How do you know that? Has David talked to you?”

“No. But this has happened before.”

“What has happened before?”

“I could be wrong about this, about that boy, but I’ve heard stories like this all my life.”

“What stories are you talking about?” Stella’s mind raced as she thought of all the stories she’d heard from the Navajo culture, anything that would have something to do with a small boy showing up dazed and bloody at a dig site.

Jim Whitefeather shook his head like it didn’t matter now. “We don’t have much time. I’m going out there to get some help, but I’ve got my pistol and I’m going to try to track that thing out there.”

Jim was the only one of them who carried a weapon, an old .38 revolver. “What thing?” she asked. “An animal? A bear or mountain lion?”

“You need to stay inside this trailer,” he told her, ignoring her question like he didn’t have time to explain. “Don’t go out there. All of you need to stay together. And protect the boy, Stella. He’s your only hope of staying safe.”

“Jim … this doesn’t make any sense.” Her voice was getting louder.

Jim’s eyes darted around again, and then he smiled at her. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got to try. Hopefully you’re right and he’s just a hurt child that went looking for help. But the radio isn’t working and all of the batteries in the trucks died at the same time. It’s too much of a coincidence.”

Moments later Jim Whitefeather left on foot to go for help.

Then Stella’s dream flashed forward hours later. They found Jim’s mutilated body outside the trailer, propped up against a tree like a trophy. His gun was gone. The limbs of his body were bent at strange angles, bones snapped underneath his skin and clothing. His mouth hung open way too wide and his eyes were gone, leaving behind deep black holes in his face.

And then the dream flashed forward again. A panic settled among them. They wanted to get out of there but the phones, computers, and radios still didn’t work. And none of the trucks would start. They even switched a few of the batteries for spare ones, but they were dead too.

They didn’t have any weapons. They didn’t have any way to communicate with anyone else. They were stuck way out here in the middle of the desert with a madman out there stalking them.

But they would learn soon enough that it wasn’t a person out there … it was something else, something ancient and powerful, something beyond imagination.

After Jim’s body was taken in the night, some of the people wanted to interrogate David; they were frustrated that he wasn’t telling them anything.

“He knows something,” Phil said. “I know he does. He knows who’s out there. We need to make him tell us what he knows or we’re all going to die.”

Stella was the one who stuck up for David. Jake helped her at first, but after Jim came back and called them outside, after he started asking for things, then taking another one of them away in the middle of the night, the fear started taking hold of them. Even Jake began to turn against David right at the very end. People could change; fear could change them … even the bravest, even the best of people.

But Stella wouldn’t let them hurt David.

Protect the boy, Jim had told her before he left, staring at her with that fear in his eyes.

And then Jim became a messenger for that thing, an eyeless puppet for it. Jim wanted the boy. He promised that all of this terror would end if they just killed the boy …

Stella snapped awake from the nightmare, her breath caught in her throat. She sat up in bed, looking around at the unfamiliar room. Her gaze rested on David beside her, still sleeping. Then she saw Cole sitting in the chair by the table. He had his shirt back on and he was staring at her, concerned.

“You okay?” Cole asked her.

The TV was off. The drapes were closed. The room was murky even though it was still daytime outside.

“Yeah,” Stella said, taking in some deep breaths. She looked at Cole again. He seemed to be stretched out in the chair, half-asleep. “How long have I been asleep?”

“About two hours,” Cole told her, keeping his voice low so he wouldn’t wake David up.

Stella nodded, her mind beginning to chug along again now. She was in a motel room with Cole and David, resting for the first time in such a long time. But they couldn’t stay here long. It would only be a matter of time before the Ancient Enemy found them.

“You should get some rest now,” Stella said.

“I’ve been dozing a little,” he said, but she could tell it was a lie.

“Just stretch out on the other bed,” she told him as she moved slowly to the side of the bed, trying not to disturb David. “I’ll stay awake for a few hours.”

Cole seemed like he was going to argue about it, but he surprised her by getting up and walking a few steps over to the bed. He only had his jeans, socks, and a T-shirt on. His face looked drawn, the bags heavy under his eyes. He needed sleep or he was probably going to pass out soon.

“Don’t let me sleep past dark,” he told her after he rolled over onto his side. “We should leave before it gets dark.”

Stella nodded, even though he was facing away from her, already breathing heavily. “Okay,” she said.

But she had different plans.

CHAPTER 30

Cody’s Pass, Colorado—The Mountainside Inn

Stella waited thirty minutes, making sure Cole was deep asleep. She wasn’t sure how heavy a sleeper he was, but if he was feeling even remotely safe like she had been, and if he was half as exhausted as she was, then he might be dead to the world for a few hours. This was her chance to get away from him.

He’d said that he wanted to go with them all the way down to the Navajo lands, but she wasn’t sure if she could believe him. And with the cops searching everywhere for him and his crew, she and David might do better on their own.

She got up and walked over to where she had laid her clothes out. She kept her eyes on Cole the whole time as she put her shoes on and her other heavier shirt. She shoved her pistol down into her waistband at the small of her back, and then she stuffed the packs of money back down into her socks. She still had some packs of money in her coat pockets. She collected a small bag of snacks, two bottles of water and kept them by her coat.

Cole hadn’t moved at all.

Stella got David up. He didn’t even make a sound; he just opened his eyes and stared at her. She gestured at him with hand signals, hoping he understood that she wanted him to leave with her.

She helped David get his shoes on, his heavier shirt, and then his coat.

They were ready to go. Cole was lying on his side, facing the door. He didn’t have a sheet or blanket on him. He was breathing so heavy he was practically snoring. Stella and David stood near the TV, both of them watching Cole. She glanced at David, locking eyes with him. She nodded, indicating that they were ready to go. She took David’s hand and they walked past the foot of Cole’s bed.

She had a flashback of sneaking out of the trailer at the dig site while everyone else slept, while David was outside.

As they got around the bed and stepped into the small hallway where the bathroom was, Stella kept her eyes on Cole. She expected his eyes to be wide open, a smile on his lips as he caught them in the act of leaving him. She had tried to concoct a lie, but anything she said would be transparent; Cole would see right through it, he would know what she was doing.

But Cole wasn’t awake. His mouth was partly open, and he was still breathing heavy.

The trick was going to be opening the door without waking Cole. She stood at the door and turned the deadbolt knob as slowly and carefully as she could. It slid back out of the doorframe back into the door without a sound. She pushed down on the metal handle slowly, and then pulled the door open. She was surprised that the door hadn’t made much of a noise, but they seemed like newer doors, like this motel had been remodeled recently.

One last look at Cole as they slipped out the door into the hallway … he was still sleeping.

She closed the door gently, letting it click into place as it closed. It sounded so loud to her in the silence of the hallway, but she didn’t hear anything beyond the door in their room, no shouts of alarm or stomping feet as Cole ran towards the door.

“Come on, let’s go,” Stella whispered to David.

David hesitated for a moment, staring up at her like he didn’t understand why they were leaving Cole behind.

“We have to,” she whispered. “I told you, we can’t trust him.”

David finally took her hand and they hurried down the hall.

The motel was so quiet. She knew there weren’t many guests at all, but it seemed deadly quiet. She couldn’t help feeling that this was a bad sign.

They hurried down the wide carpeted steps to the lobby. When they reached the lobby floor, Stella and David walked hand in hand, hurrying towards the large glass doors in the wall of glass.

“Going somewhere?” the clerk asked from behind his counter on the other side of the room.

Stella looked over at the man as they walked, already forcing a smile on her face. But then she stopped dead in her tracks.

There was something wrong with the clerk. He was standing in the same spot he’d been in when he had checked them in. He was wearing the same clothes, the red vest and white button-down shirt. But it was the expression on his face that had stopped her cold. She’d seen that flaccid, dead expression a few times now … she’d seen it on Jim Whitefeather’s face, and she’d seen it on Frank’s face when he had come back and asked for things.

Stella let David’s hand go and she inched her hand to her side, moving it slowly towards her back for the gun.

The clerk didn’t blink as he stared at her, his face so slack he looked dead.

“Uh …” Stella stammered. “We’re just going out for something to eat.” She felt David’s hand pawing at her; she heard the whimper in his throat.

“You can’t leave,” the clerk said, and his mouth popped up into a smile like invisible strings had just jerked the corners of his mouth up. But his eyes behind his round glasses were still cold and dead.

Stella whipped her gun out and aimed it at the clerk.

The clerk stayed right where he was, the bottom half of his body hidden behind the long wooden counter. The counter was hiding something horrible, she was sure of that. He stood very still and his smile dropped, his expression blank again, his eyes on her the whole time. “I’m going to get the boy. You can’t run forever. Sooner or later you’ll need to sleep, and that’s when I will be there, looking down at you.”

Something was moving underneath the counter. Stella could hear the squelchy sound of something wet whipping around down there. Then she saw the ends of a few whipcord tentacles poking up above the edge of the counter, black and slimy, like snakes peeking up at them. And then they disappeared back down behind the counter again.

“I want to show you something,” the clerk said, his voice lower and more guttural now. He turned to his left, but only his top half seemed to turn. Stella heard the crunching of bone, the tearing and stretching of skin, the ripping of flesh. His legs propelled him to the little wooden door at the end of the counter, and she could hear his footsteps behind the counter, which sounded like a clattering noise, like someone trying to get their footing.

I don’t want to see this.

Stella aimed her gun at the clerk as he stumbled out from the little doorway in the counter. The lower half of his body had been twisted completely around, his legs backwards, his feet poking out behind him. He walked forward, shuffling unfamiliarly on his backwards legs. The top of the clerk’s pants underneath his vest was caked with dried blood. Strings of drying intestines and gore hung down to his thighs among the ragged tatters of the bottom of his button-down shirt.

“Stay away from us!” Stella yelled. She took a step back and she still felt David clinging to her with one hand. He was still whimpering with fear.

Then the clerk stopped walking towards them. He just stood there, staring at Stella and David with that blank expression on his face. Then he suddenly smiled again and looked towards the lobby doors.

Stella couldn’t help following his gaze.

There was someone outside those doors—a young man running up to the lobby doors from the parking lot. He was wearing a brightly-colored jacket, jeans, and rubber boots. He had a knit cap on but no gloves.

And he was carrying a gun.

Travis entered the lobby through one of the glass doors. Melted snow dripped off of his pants and boots, leaving smears of water on the tiled floor.

“Get out of here!” Stella told the young man.

Travis raised his gun, but he didn’t point it at the thing that used to be the clerk. Instead, he aimed it right at her and David.

“What the hell are you doing?” Stella yelled at him.

The kid couldn’t have been older than eighteen or nineteen years old, she thought. He looked like a clean-cut kid. And now she saw that he was crying, his arm shaking as he aimed his gun at them.

“Back away from the kid, lady,” the teenager said.

Stella didn’t move. She pointed her gun at the new intruder. She knew now that he had come for David. The Ancient Enemy had done something to this young man. “You can’t do this,” she told him.

“I don’t have a choice,” he said as he cried harder.

CHAPTER 31

Cody’s Pass, Colorado—The Mountainside Inn

Cole opened his eyes as he lay on his side in the motel room bed. His dead brother Trevor stood right next to the bed, the pieces of his dismembered body stacked back up together again, the ragged cuts in his skin somehow fused together. Tattered and bloodstained strips of clothing hung off of his purplish and boated skin, which was blackened with rot at the edges of each piece. His brother smiled at him as he stared down at him, leaning over him, the puckered scar of his severed head circling his neck. “Brother,” he whispered. “You need to wake up now …”

Cole snapped awake and jumped up, ready to backpedal across the bed away from the monstrosity that used to be his brother.

But there was no one beside the bed.

He realized that he’d been dreaming. He looked around at the motel room and saw that he was alone—Stella and David were gone. For a split second he thought they might have gone back down to the vending machines to get some more sodas and snacks, but their coats were gone. Stella’s gun was gone too; their hats and gloves, the cash she’d stuffed down into her socks and coat … all of it was gone.

They’d left him.

Cole jumped up and grabbed his boots; he shoved his feet into them and laced them up quickly. He stuffed the packs of cash down into his socks and pushed his pants legs down over them. Then he grabbed his gun and stuffed it down into the waistband of his pants. The other gun was in his coat pocket with more packs of money. He pulled his knit cap down over his head and slipped his hands into his thin leather gloves. He shrugged his coat on and headed for the door.

The hallway was stone-quiet and it felt peculiar out here. There was a feeling of evil around him. He didn’t know how else to explain it. It was like a terrible storm was coming, the rumbling of thunder signaling the danger that was approaching, an electric static in the air, the taste of ozone on his tongue, like the air itself was alive with energy. A creepy-crawly fear danced along his flesh, and his hairs stood up on end, prickling his skin.

Stella and David were in trouble. He wasn’t sure why he was so certain about that, but he was. They had snuck out and now they were in danger.

The Ancient Enemy was here in this motel somewhere.

Cole crept down the wide hallway, silent as he moved past closed door after closed door. But then he saw something on the ugly carpeting in the distance … dark stains on the floor.

He hurried down the hall, and as he got closer he realized that the stains were blood and streams of gore.

Oh God, no …

His heart felt like it had stopped in his chest as he stared down at the smears of blood and meat on the carpeting. The line of gore led to an open door of a room.

Cole clenched his gun harder, an anger burning inside of him.

It got them … it had gotten one of them … maybe Stella …

He darted inside the room, his gun aimed out in front of him, his finger on the trigger ready to shoot in a millisecond. He was all the way inside of the room, looking everywhere at once. This was someone’s room. There was a suitcase at the end of the bed, clothes piled up inside of it. More clothes were draped across one of the two chairs by the table next to the wall. The TV on top of the dresser was on, but the sound was turned all the way down. It looked like a normal messy motel room … except for the splashes of blood all over the floor, walls, and across the bedspread.

But no bodies anywhere.

Cole heard a noise from behind him in the hallway … the rustling of fabric, a light footstep, and then a whisper.

“Cole …” a male voice whispered from the hallway.

For a moment Cole thought the voice was from his dead brother, the nightmare still so fresh in his mind. But he knew it wasn’t Trevor’s voice … this was the voice of that thing … the Ancient Enemy.

“Cole … come here … I need to show you something.”

Cole aimed his gun at the doorway.

The person was still out in the hallway, hidden from the view of the doorway—Cole saw the man’s strange-looking shadow falling across the threshold.

“It’s a secret, Cole,” the male voice whispered from behind the edge of the wall. “But it’s a secret that you need to hear.”

Cole backed up a step, moving deeper into the room. He glanced around him. He was trapped in here. He looked over at the sliding glass doorway that led out to the small balcony, the ground twelve feet below that. But it was his only way out. Then he saw a cell phone, wallet, and a set of car keys—all of them grouped together on the table next to the bed.

A slapping noise brought Cole’s attention back to the doorway. A hand shot out from the hallway, grabbing the doorframe. The fingers trembled as they held on to the door jamb. The ends of the fingers seemed to have been ruined, like they’d been smashed flat with a hammer, the fingernails long gone. Drops of blood dripped down from the ruined hands, running down the door jamb to the ugly carpeting. Patches of skin were missing from the man’s wrist like the pieces had been carefully peeled away.

“It hurts, Cole,” the unseen man said from out in the hallway. “It hurts so much, and it won’t ever let you go.”

A thin tentacle about the thickness of a garden hose shot out from the hallway, flapping around in the air until it slapped the other side of the doorway, the end of it flattening out and sticking there, attaching itself to the doorjamb. The black flesh of the tentacle was slick with mucus.

Cole wasn’t going to stick around to see what this thing really looked like. He darted for the keys on the table and then he jumped up on the bed, running across it in two big steps, avoiding the splashes of blood, and then he landed on the floor on the other side.

“You don’t have the kid to protect you now, Cole!” the man’s guttural voice cried out from behind him.

Cole could hear the thing coming in through the doorway, rushing inside the room. But he didn’t turn around to see what it was doing. He could imagine the thing rushing towards him, feelers and tentacles and spindly legs propelling the mutilated body forward, like some kind of giant insect or spider, getting closer and closer to him.

Two seconds later Cole was out on the balcony, the keys and his gun already shoved down into his coat pockets. He could’ve shot at the thing, but he knew from experience that it wasn’t going to do any good. He was up and over the railing in one smooth movement, gripping the spindles in the railing, letting his hands slide down them until he hung from the bottom of the balcony, his legs dangling in the cold air. His gloved hands were slipping on the cold metal of the balcony spindles, and he knew that at any second one of those feelers or tentacles was going to wrap around his hands and grab him … and then they would never let him go.

He dropped to the ground, not even looking to see where he was going to land. He felt the cushion of snow break his fall and then he hit the hard ground underneath, tumbling away down onto the parking lot. He hit something hard under the snow … it felt like it might have been the edge of the sidewalk. But he didn’t let it slow him down. He was on his feet in a second, adrenaline coursing through his veins, heating up his muscles.

Cole drew his gun and aimed it up at the balcony he had just dropped down from.

Nothing there.

It hadn’t come after him.

Why?

Well, he wasn’t going to wait for it to find him again. He yanked the set of car keys out of his coat pocket and pressed the unlock button on the key fob. He looked around the parking lot, pressing the lock and unlock buttons until he saw a white Chevy Tahoe’s headlights and taillights flashing on and off in rhythm with the push of the button.

That was their ride.

CHAPTER 32

Cody’s Pass, Colorado—The Mountainside Inn

Travis fired his gun at the ceiling as the tears streamed down his ashy pale face. “I’m not playing around, lady!”

Stella stole a glance at the clerk. He was still waiting near the counter, his face slack and his body frozen, like he was a robot that was turned off for now. Except for his eyes—they were still watching her and David.

“What’s your name?” Stella asked Travis, her eyes back on him again.

“We don’t have time for that,” he cried. “I don’t want to hurt you. I just need to kill the boy, that’s all.”

“You can’t do this,” Stella said.

“That thing … whatever it is, it’s got my sister and my mom. It’s going to tear them apart if I don’t do what it wants me to.” His words were running together as he cried harder.

Stella stared at the boy … he was really still a boy. “Listen to me. It’s already too late for them. It’s killed them already.”

The fear crossed Travis’s face, and he shook his head. “No. No, he promised that he wouldn’t hurt them anymore. He said he wouldn’t kill them if I did what he wanted.”

“That thing is a liar,” Stella said.

Travis aimed his gun at Stella now, his hand shaking. He wiped at his eyes with his other hand, trying to clear his sight to shoot.

Stella heard a noise at the top of the stairs. She saw Bruce the salesman … or what was left of his mangled body … crawling towards the steps, tentacles whipping out of him, propelling his ruined body along as it slid down the stairs. Bruce was screaming with every movement.

He couldn’t still be alive, could he?

Every exit was blocked again.

Stella looked back at the clerk; he had taken a step forward with his backwards legs, that creepy smile on his face again.

It was over, Stella thought. She and David had nowhere to run to now. This kid was going to shoot both of them, or those monsters that used to be the clerk and the salesman were going to close in on them. She looked down at David. He was their only hope now, but he looked too frightened to fight back.

“David,” she whispered as tears streamed out of her eyes. “You have to do something. You can’t let that thing win; you can’t let it get you.”

“Last chance, lady,” Travis said, bawling now, his hand shaking worse than ever.

“Do it, Travis …” the clerk uttered as it took another awkward step towards Stella and David with its backwards legs. “Do it, or I’ll take your mother and sister apart.”

Bruce was still screaming over and over again as the remnants of his torn and shredded body were propelled down the carpeted steps by the feelers, tentacles, and segmented legs.

Stella looked back at Travis. Maybe she could get through to him by using his name. “No, Travis,” she said. “You can’t shoot David. He’s just a boy. That thing lied to you. It’s already killed your mother and your sister.”

Travis looked at the clerk with tears on his face, lowering his gun a little. “Is that true?” he asked the clerk. “Did you kill them already?”

“Do it, Travis,” the clerk growled. “Do it, or you will experience things you never thought were possible.”

David looked at Travis, at the gun pointed right at him. But then Stella realized that David was looking beyond Travis … at something outside the glass doors, out in the parking area.

Something else was coming for them.

And then Stella heard the noise from outside. It was a low grumbling sound, hard to hear at first underneath Bruce’s constant screams.

Travis heard the noise from behind him outside the glass doors, but by the time he turned around, it was too late. The back end of a big white SUV crashed in through the lobby doors, knocking Travis down flat on the tiled floor, and then the vehicle drove right over top of him and skidded to a stop inside the lobby.

The driver’s door flew open as the glass and pieces of metal framing crashed down to the floor and the parking lot outside. Cole was out of the vehicle in an instant, pulling the back door open like a chauffeur. “Get in!” he yelled at Stella and David.

Stella grabbed David’s hand and they bolted across the lobby to the waiting vehicle.

Cole was still behind the open back door, using it as a shield and waiting for them. He had his gun in his hand, aimed beyond Stella and David as they ran towards him. He shot at the thing that used to be Bruce the salesman, and then he shot at the thing that used to be the clerk.

When she and David reached the back door of the SUV, Stella looked back to see if Cole had stopped either one of them with the bullets. And then she froze as she watched the monstrosities. The air seemed to warp around the clerk and Bruce as the bullets hit them, like the air was shimmering for a moment, folding in on itself, distorting anything near the two of them. And then the whipcord tentacles propelling Bruce’s mangled body forward were gone, only his mangled body was left behind. The clerk’s dead body collapsed down onto the floor like nothing was holding him up anymore. The Ancient Enemy was gone from their bodies now. It seemed like the Ancient Enemy had bent time and space around their bodies and then teleported away.

But to where?

Where would the Ancient Enemy pop up next?

David crawled inside across the back seat of the waiting vehicle.

Cole still had his gun aimed at the two dead men, ready to fire again if he needed to. “Get in!” he yelled at Stella.

Stella was sure Cole had just seen what she’d seen. That thing … those things that were inside those bodies were gone now. They had just disappeared.

She got in the back of the Chevy Tahoe and pulled the door closed.

Cole was back inside the SUV, stomping down on the gas pedal as he closed the door. Tiny diamonds of shattered glass poured off the hood and roof of the white SUV as he gunned the gas and drove out of the lobby of the motel, one of the back tires spinning on Travis’s arm for a second, smashing it flat, the skin splitting and blood jetting out.

“You okay?” Cole yelled at Stella as he jerked the steering wheel to the left, taking the curve too quickly, speeding down the parking lot exit towards the road. He hit the brakes and the truck slid the rest of the way down into the street. He turned the steering wheel the other way and the back end of the SUV fishtailed out into the middle of the road. Cole took his foot off the gas, the motor roaring with power. He didn’t touch the brakes, letting the truck slide all the way. Then he gently pressed the gas, turning the wheel the other way now to overcorrect their spin. The whole world of white snow raced by outside the windshield in a blur, but Cole finally got the truck straightened out.

Stella looked out the rear window at the Mountainside Inn, at the destruction they were leaving behind. But she didn’t see the Ancient Enemy anywhere.

Cole sped down the street, but he was slowing down a little as they came to a curve, the road climbing up into the mountains, the woods beginning to get thicker now.

David was sobbing with terror. Stella held him close as he cried. “Shh,” she told him. “It’s okay. We got away. It’s not following us.”

“Why won’t it leave me alone?” he cried.

She didn’t have an answer for him. “I won’t let it get you,” she promised him.

Cole didn’t say anything as he drove.

David’s cries stopped and he wiped at his eyes. He was still tired, she could tell.

“Lay down here,” she told David. He curled up on his side on the big back seat, drawing his legs up to him.

Stella looked down at the sea of garbage on the floorboards of the back seats. There were soda cans and bottles, crumpled up fast food bags, potato chip bags, candy wrappers. She looked behind her at the back and saw stacks of boxes of samples of whatever Bruce had been selling. She didn’t open any of the boxes.

“This is a salesman’s truck,” Stella told Cole from the back seat. “His name was Bruce. We met him at the vending machines.”

Cole just nodded. “Yeah, I met him, too. Only he wasn’t Bruce anymore.”

Stella saw a quick flash in her mind of the salesman beaming at them while they bought their cans of soda and bottles of water. He’d just wanted to talk to them and she had brushed him off. Then she saw what that monster had done to him, twisting his body up, parts of him crushed, pieces of jagged bone sticking out, yet the Ancient Enemy had kept him alive somehow so he could scream with every painful movement down those set of stairs.

“We need a map,” Cole said. “This guy’s a salesman, maybe he has a map.”

Stella brushed David’s hair back from his forehead. His eyes were closed, but he wasn’t sleeping yet. “I’m going up front to look for a map,” she told him.

David didn’t nod or even open his eyes.

Stella crawled up to the front from the back and sat down in the passenger seat. There was as much garbage on the floorboard up here as there was in the back. There were a few issues of some kind of trade magazines among the trash. In the cup holders there were two Mountain Dew bottles and a soggy McDonald’s paper cup with a lid and a straw. Obviously Bruce had lived off of sugar, fat, and caffeine.

Stella searched the center console first. She found a charger for a cell phone, two lighters, packs of mints and chewing gum, several pens, wadded up pieces of paper, self-help cassette tapes, a few CDs.

“Maybe the glove box,” Cole suggested as he drove. The sky was still clear, but it was darkening quickly, the sun was already down behind the mountains. There were hardly any other vehicles on the road, which was good, but it also made them more of a target to a passing police car.

Stella opened the glove box and found three maps among the other clutter inside the glove box, which was stuffed to capacity. One was a map of New Mexico, and two were maps of Colorado. She opened up one of the Colorado maps and refolded it until she had a square of the section they were in right now.

“We need to find the most remote roads down to New Mexico,” he told her. “The back roads.”

She nodded, following a series of roads with her finger. She found Cody’s Pass and followed 217 down the map. “In a few miles, take a right,” she told him. “It’s called Cutler Road.”

Cole nodded.

She put the map on the center console and managed to get the glove box closed. She glanced at David in the back seat; he looked like he was sleeping now.

“We need to find a place to lie low for a few hours,” Cole told her. “Rest for a bit. I don’t want to drive too much farther until it’s dark.”

She nodded.

CHAPTER 33

Cody’s Pass, Colorado—Nora’s house

Sheriff Hadley followed George Joekel in his squad car down Route 217 to Nora Conrad’s house as George plowed the road in front of them. The sheriff had called George thirty minutes ago and told him to turn around and come back; he’d changed his mind and now he wanted him to plow the road down to Cody’s Pass now that Ronnie had already taken off on the police snowmobile to follow the tracks. The sheriff still hadn’t heard anything from Ronnie yet.

Special Agent Palmer followed Sheriff Hadley’s cruiser. Palmer was on the phone as he drove, making sure the forensics team from Denver was on its way to the cabin. He wanted everything bagged and tagged, no mistakes on this one. This case was too big, too strange. Next, he checked in with Debbie: still no leads on Stella or David. No sightings of them anywhere, no credit cards or bank cards used.

Even though the road was plowed now, the back tires of Sheriff Hadley’s car kicked up snow and Palmer had to constantly use the wipers to push the scattering of snow out of the way. He dropped back a few more car lengths, and it gave him the opportunity to take another few sips from his bottle of vodka. He was pretty sure the sheriff might smell it on his breath, but he didn’t care.

Could these bank robbers be the ones who had killed all of those people down at the dig site in New Mexico? Could they have abducted Stella Weaver and David? It had to be the same killers because the deaths all seemed similar … they all seemed strange.

But something was wrong. Palmer felt like he was missing something very important, overlooking some clues that he wasn’t piecing together.

Twenty minutes later the sheriff’s car slowed down to a crawl on the slick road and parked on the side of the road near the entrance to a driveway that was hidden in a group of trees, much like the driveway to the burnt cabin had been. Palmer parked right behind him and shut the car off, getting out.

George stopped his truck a few feet ahead of the sheriff’s car and jumped out onto the snowy road. He hurried up to the sheriff, who was already out of his car. “You want me to plow that driveway for you?”

“No, that’s good enough,” Sheriff Hadley told George. “We’ll walk to the house from here.”

George nodded. “You still want me to plow all the way down to Cody’s Pass?”

“Yes,” Palmer answered for the sheriff as he walked up to the two men. “I have a feeling we’ll be going there soon.”

George didn’t nod at Palmer; he waited for an affirmation from the sheriff, showing his loyalty to him.

Sheriff Hadley looked a little annoyed at the intrusion from Palmer, but he looked back at George and nodded. “Yeah, George. Go ahead and plow all the way down there. Then come back up with another pass all the way back to Destin.”

“You got it, chief,” George said and smiled. He hurried back to his big truck, which was rumbling in the middle of the road.

Sheriff Hadley looked at the driveway full of snow in front of them. “More snowmobile tracks,” the sheriff said, pointing at the sets of tracks with a gloved finger. “Looks like he’s been in and out of here a few times today.”

Palmer didn’t say anything. He sucked on a breath mint, which made the chilly air taste even colder around his teeth. He figured the sheriff suspected the reason for his breath mint, but Palmer still didn’t care. He was probably a walking cliché in the sheriff’s mind anyway—the FBI agent with a drinking problem, but too good at his job to get fired. Why not live up to it?

They both trudged through the snow that blanketed the driveway, both of them walking in the ruts created by the snowmobile tracks, their shoes crunching the snow down as they walked. The trip to the house took a few minutes, but neither man spoke, both of them had their hands shoved down into the pockets of their jackets.

Nora’s house was a simple wood-framed, one-story structure with a wooden deck built onto the front of it that continued around the right side of it, and then to the back. The windows were dark. No smoke drifted up from the chimney.

“They might not be home,” Palmer said.

Hadley chuckled like he knew an inside joke. “Nora doesn’t go anywhere. She’s hardly been out of the house since her husband died six months ago.”

Palmer wasn’t sure if the sheriff was expecting him to express some kind of sympathy or not, so he changed the subject. “Your dispatch get a hold of any of them here?”

“Nope,” Sheriff Hadley answered. “But Nora’s truck is here, and like I said, she never goes anywhere anymore.”

Palmer thought they were there to talk to Travis, not his mother. But he didn’t say anything.

“Well, we’re here,” the sheriff said and started trudging through the snow towards the house. “Might as well knock on the door.”

They walked through the snow, the sheriff already beginning to huff and puff a little from the exertion. “I don’t see Travis’s snowmobile over there,” he said through misty breaths. “Might have to come back later to talk to him.”

Palmer thought he would head on down to the next town if Travis wasn’t here.

The sheriff waited by the wood steps that led up to the deck as Palmer climbed them. “You go ahead and knock,” the sheriff said. “I’m going to go look around back for Travis’s snowmobile.”

Palmer didn’t argue. He continued up the steps as the sheriff worked his way through the snow to the far corner of the house. Palmer approached the front door that had a glass storm door in front of it. There was some scattered snow on the deck up here, but a porch roof had kept a lot of it off of the floorboards, and it looked like some of it had been shoveled off recently. Maybe yesterday. He opened the storm door and pounded on the wood door with the edge of his balled-up fist—a police knock.

He waited a moment.

No answer. He didn’t hear any footsteps inside the house coming towards the door.

There was a window on the left side of the door, and he cupped his hands to the sides of his face and tried to look through it. No luck … drapes covering it from the inside.

He knocked again.

Still no answer.

He rang the doorbell again, holding the little button down with his gloved thumb. He waited a few seconds and pounded on the door one more time.

Giving up, Palmer let the storm door close on its pneumatic hinge. He walked down the wood deck, following it around to the side of the house. The deck was sturdy and well-built, constructed by someone who knew what they were doing. When he got to the back of the house, he saw the sheriff in the back yard, walking towards a free-standing garage that looked somewhat similar to the one on Mr. Gordon’s property. A large Soccer Mom SUV was parked in front of the garage underneath a massive wooden awning with a tin roof that was covered with snow.

“I don’t think Nora’s truck has moved since the storm came,” the sheriff called out to him from across the yard. “I don’t see Travis’s snowmobile anywhere.”

The sheriff started walking towards a set of wooden steps that led up to this back section of the deck as Palmer walked over to a set of sliding glass doors. The vertical blinds behind them were closed, but he saw that the sliding door was open about six inches.

Palmer tensed a little as he stared at the door.

Sheriff Hadley noticed Palmer’s reaction. “What’s wrong?”

“That door’s open,” Palmer told him in a low voice. He didn’t wait for Hadley; he was already on the other side of the door, his gun in his hand and ready if he needed it. Something felt wrong here. He didn’t know what it was, but after the carnage and horrors he’d already seen, it felt like something terrible lay beyond those doors.

“Nora Conrad!” Sheriff Hadley yelled at the sliding glass doors, standing at the other side of them, both men flanking the doors. “It’s Sheriff Hadley!”

No answer from Nora. No sounds from inside at all. Everything was eerily quiet around the house. Even the wind had died down to nothing.

“Ms. Conrad! Are you in there?”

No answer.

“Is it okay if we come inside?”

Still no answer.

Hadley looked at Palmer almost like he was seeking permission to enter the home. Palmer could see the concern on the sheriff’s face. The sheriff knew this area, he knew his neighbors, and, like Palmer, he knew something was wrong here.

“She’s always home,” Sheriff Hadley said for the third time.

Palmer nodded for Hadley to enter the home. He would take any flak for this decision if he had to … but right now he was going to trust his instincts. After what he’d seen at the dig site in New Mexico, and at the young couple’s house, and then at the cabin only hours earlier, he knew this wave of strange deaths wasn’t over yet.

Sheriff Hadley slid the glass door open and the warm smell of rot and death drifted out at them from between the vertical blinds, clashing with the cold air. The smell backed the sheriff up a step.

“Your door is open!” Sheriff Hadley yelled with his gun drawn, still following procedure. “We’re coming in!”

Hadley went in first, pushing the vertical blinds to the side. He stepped into the house like a man who had a familiarity with the property, like he’d been in this house many times before, maybe for coffee or a beer with Nora Conrad’s husband when he was still alive.

Palmer was right on the sheriff’s heels, his gun aimed into the murky room. They were in the dining room, and they both saw the carnage in the living room to their right.

“Clear!” Palmer said as he aimed his gun at the empty kitchen. He looked back at the sheriff.

Sheriff Hadley only walked a few steps towards the living room and then he stopped. His big shoulders were slumped, his gun loose in his hand, almost like he was going to drop it. He was frozen with shock, his mind and body shutting down.

Palmer looked past the sheriff into the living room at the body of a man on the floor and the pieces of two women spread out all over the furniture and the floor. Palmer got a sudden flashback from the dig site, the body parts stacked up on each other in the cave. But the pieces in this house were fresh, the blood still wet and glistening in the early afternoon light that flooded in from the open sliding glass door. And these pieces weren’t carefully arranged together and displayed like some twisted piece of artwork—this looked more like a temper tantrum thrown by a monster.

Even though there were differences, this still had to be the work of the same killers.

Palmer studied the man on the floor closest to them. He lay sprawled out on the hardwood floorboards about ten feet away. He was face down, his arms stretched out. His skin was gray and he wore a dark suit coat and pants that were filthy with dirt and grime. He also had a hole in the back of his head big enough for Palmer to stick his fist through. The edges of the hole were rimmed with jagged pieces of broken skull and a grayish-colored goo.

Palmer’s eyes wandered over to the pieces of the two women. Their heads were on two dining room chairs that had been set up in the living room side by side, about three feet away from each other. Both of the heads were facing towards him. One woman looked much younger, a girl really, and her eyes were closed. The other woman’s eyes were wide open, like her last moment in life was one of shock and surprise. Both of their mouths were wide open, their dull dark hair hanging down off the sides of the chair, wet with blood. A pool of sticky blood was puddled underneath the two chairs on the wood floor. Arms and legs, pieces of their torsos, and ragged strips of clothing were spread out all over the couches, chairs, and a massive wood and glass coffee table … blood smeared everywhere.

Sheriff Hadley hadn’t moved a muscle yet. Hadn’t said a word.

“That man on the floor isn’t Travis Conrad, is it?” Palmer asked in a low and even voice.

The sheriff shook his head no, his Adam’s apple bobbing furiously like he was either trying to swallow, talk, or inhale a breath.

“We need to see if Travis is still here in the house,” Palmer told him.

Sheriff Hadley just nodded. He hadn’t even looked at him yet.

“I’m going to check the rest of the house,” Palmer said in a low voice and walked away from the sheriff, giving him time to process what he was seeing in front of him. But eventually the sheriff was going to have to snap out of his fog and do his job.

Palmer walked over to the front door in the entryway. He checked the front door. Unlocked. He saw puddles of water where someone had come in and the snow from their boots had melted.

He went into the kitchen. It was cozy, decorated in a flowery country design, with geese being the main theme. There was coffee made in the coffee machine, a loaf of bread open on the counter, and frying pans on the stovetop ready to cook a meal. A normal kitchen ready for a normal day.

Palmer walked down the hallway off of the kitchen with his gun still in his hand. He checked all of the bedrooms and bathrooms, expecting to find Travis’s body back here somewhere. But Travis wasn’t back here, and there wasn’t a drop of blood or any signs of struggle.

The master bedroom was a little messy, the bed unmade, a few clothes draped over a wingback chair near the window, the closet door open. Palmer looked at a few of the photos in frames on the dresser and hanging on the walls. He saw the women from the living room at various ages, along with a young man who must be Travis. And he saw the husband who had died six months ago.

The girl’s bedroom was neat and organized, and Travis’s bedroom was the opposite, messy and cluttered. Sports posters covered the walls in Travis’s room, along with a rifle mounted on a wood rack.

Palmer hurried back into the living room. He found the sheriff still standing in the same spot. It looked like he hadn’t moved a muscle.

“It’s all clear back there,” Palmer said. “Travis isn’t in the house.”

The sheriff didn’t respond.

Palmer touched the sheriff’s shoulder gently; he didn’t want to startle him with that gun still in his hand. He spoke with authority, his words sharp and commanding. “Sheriff Hadley, I’d like you to holster your weapon.”

The sheriff finally turned and looked at Palmer, seeming to slowly come back to life. He lifted his weapon up like it weighed a ton and slid it into the holster on his belt.

“The house is clear,” Palmer said again. “Travis Conrad isn’t here.”

“Yeah,” Hadley croaked.

Palmer glanced at the pieces of the women, at their heads sitting on the two chairs. He noticed that their necks were congealed with dried blood and that the cuts were ragged, like their heads had been torn away from their bodies. It was the same thing with the pieces of limbs and torsos. He couldn’t be certain just by looking at the pieces—forensics would have to make that call—but judging by what he’d seen down in New Mexico, these murders looked very similar.

Who could do something like this? Who had that kind of strength? And why tear the women apart and just shoot the man?

Palmer couldn’t let himself get mired down in questions that he couldn’t answer at this time. He needed to compartmentalize his thoughts and focus on the things that he could solve right now.

“Who’s the man on the floor?” Palmer asked Sheriff Hadley.

Hadley looked back at the corpse on the floor like he needed to see it again to believe it. He tried to talk, his mouth moving, but no words were coming out.

“Sheriff?”

“It … it can’t be possible.” The sheriff’s words came out in a hoarse whisper.

“What can’t be possible?” Palmer heard the echoes of the forensics people he’d talked to yesterday and today in the sheriff’s words.

“That man is Nora’s husband.”

That stopped Palmer for a moment. He shook his head slightly like he hadn’t heard Sheriff Hadley correctly. “Wait a minute. I thought you said her husband was—”

“Dead. Yeah, that’s right. He’s dead. Been dead for six months.”

“But then what’s he doing here?”

“I don’t know.”

Palmer was quiet for a moment, staring down at the corpse on the floor, staring at him in a new light now. The black suit, the gray goo coming out of his brain. Why would someone bring a dead man here just to shoot him in the head?

Just then the sheriff’s shoulder mic crackled to life, making him jump a little. He grabbed it and thumbed the button. “Sheriff Hadley here.” His voice sounded much stronger than it had only seconds ago.

“Ronnie called in from Cody’s Pass,” a woman’s voice said from the mic. “There’s something strange going on at the Mountainside Inn. A car crashed into the lobby.”

“We got some more pressing matters here at the moment,” Sheriff Hadley said. “Get Freddie to—”

“There’s a lot of dead people there,” the woman on the mic squawked. “At least three so far. Mutilated. One of them is Travis Conrad, the kid you were looking for.”

Sheriff Hadley and Palmer locked eyes.

“We need to get there,” Palmer told him.

CHAPTER 34

South of Cody’s Pass, Colorado

Cole pulled the SUV off the road into a wooded area that was hidden from the road. He wanted to keep this vehicle off the road for a little while, and he needed some time to gather his thoughts.

It was dark all around them and he had the lights off. He had all the doors locked. It was getting cold, but not too uncomfortable just yet. He’d told Stella that they needed to wait a few hours before finding another vehicle, wait until it was later. He already had an idea of a place where he would find one.

David was still asleep in the back seat.

It was risky sitting here in the dark near the woods. After what they’d seen tonight, Cole knew that the thing following them, the thing Stella called the Ancient Enemy, could pop up at anytime and anywhere. But if they were spotted by police, chased by them, then it would be over. They wouldn’t be able to get David back down to the Navajo Reservation; they wouldn’t be able to get him to a shaman. Once David was in police custody, he would be a sitting duck for that thing. It would find someone to kill David, it would frighten some person badly enough with what it could do to people, and that person would snap and kill David.

He couldn’t let that happen.

*

Stella sat in the passenger seat and stared out the dark windshield. She glanced around at the side windows every few seconds. She couldn’t help being nervous out here, but Cole was right—this was better than being caught by the police. At this point the police might be shooting to kill. The keys were in the ignition, dangling there.

But maybe the vehicle wouldn’t start, she thought. Then she pushed that thought from her mind. She tried not to think about the Ancient Enemy at all. Maybe it could follow their thoughts, maybe even read them. She tried to think about something else.

They were in Bruce’s Chevy Tahoe. Bruce the salesman, who had been so friendly to them when they were standing by the vending machines, the man who had seemed so lonely, like he just wanted someone to talk to for a few minutes, the man who was dead now.

Dead because of her.

She wondered if Bruce had a family. Kids of his own. There were a few suits of clothes on hangers in the back seat, a dark blue suit and a black one. They covered one of the back windows. The rear of the SUV was filled with boxes of samples of whatever he’d been peddling.

They were quiet for a moment as they sat there. Cole had his seat leaned back, one foot up on the dash beside the steering wheel, stretching his leg out. He stared out at the darkness beyond the windshield, lost in thought. He had one of his pistols resting in his lap, ready if he needed it.

“What was that back there?” he finally said.

Stella didn’t answer.

“Are there more than one of those things?” he asked, looking at her. He kept his voice low so he wouldn’t wake David up.

“I … I don’t think so,” Stella said. “I think all those things are part of the same … the same organism.”

“What makes you say that?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems that way to me.”

“But maybe there are a lot of those things and they’re like …” He seemed to be struggling with the concept for a moment. “Like they’re all connected together through their thoughts.”

“Like some kind of hive mentality?”

“Yeah. Like bees or ants are all separate creatures, but they operate with the same goal. But this would be way more—”

“More complicated than ants or bees,” she said, nodding like she understood what he was trying to say. “It’s like the pieces of this thing can split off and do things separately, but then all the pieces can come back together as a whole any time it wants to.”

“You saw those things crawling out of Trevor, Jose, Frank, and the others at the cabin when it was burning, didn’t you?”

Stella nodded.

“They seemed to be changing … like changing their form. They were like giant insects for a minute, then like some kind of thing out of the ocean, then like something I’ve never seen before. And they crawled out of those bodies, and they joined together. And then … then they were gone.”

She nodded. She remembered.

“And today at the hotel, when I shot at them, they just … just disappeared again like they’d done at the cabin.”

“The air seemed to actually warp around them when they disappeared,” she reminded Cole. “Like it had altered the space around it, the very molecules.”

“This is like science fiction shit,” Cole said. “Something you’d see in some kind of horror movie about aliens from another planet.” He thought for a moment. “You said something about aliens before when we were at the cabin. Do you think this thing could be some kind of alien?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. It could be. Who knows? The Navajo, along with many other southwestern Native Americans, have stories of Star People that came down to Earth, supernatural beings. Some of these Star People are actually in their origin stories. And there are many who believe that cultures have been visited by aliens many times in the past.”

Cole shook his head in frustration and looked out the window. “How the hell are we supposed to fight an alien … something from another planet?”

Stella glanced into the back seat and looked at David. He was still curled up on his side and sleeping deeply. She had covered him up with one of the suits that Bruce had hanging up by the back door. She was glad to see David getting some sleep now.

She looked back at Cole who was still staring at her in the darkness. She could see his breaths fogging up in front of him. It was beginning to get pretty cold inside the vehicle. “I just wanted to say … to say thank you for saving us. You could’ve run if you wanted to back at the motel. You were already in this truck; you could’ve just kept on driving.”

“I told you I wasn’t going to run out on you.”

“Yeah. And I’m sorry we ran out on you.”

He just stared at her, waiting for an explanation.

“I was just scared,” she said.

“I know you find it hard to trust me,” Cole said. “I understand that totally. I’m a criminal. But like I told you back in the cabin, I’ve been trying to change my ways for a while now. The only reason I was at that bank was because of my brother. I wanted to do this one last job so he could pay Frank off.”

She nodded.

“I’ve been trying really hard to change my ways,” he told her. “And I’m still trying very hard.”

“I know.”

He smiled and nodded as he started the truck. “Okay. Now let’s go steal another truck.”

CHAPTER 35

Cody’s Pass, Colorado—The Mountainside Inn

Everything was turning to shit pretty quickly for Special Agent Palmer.

He stood in the lobby of the Mountainside Inn, which now had a gaping hole where the lobby doors used to be. Shattered glass and twisted pieces of aluminum framing lay scattered on the lobby floor and outside in the drop-off zone of the parking area. And right in the middle of that wreckage lay Travis Conrad’s body, twisted and run over. He had a gun near him, a gun that was registered to his dead father, a gun that had apparently been fired recently. He also had a severed finger in his shirt pocket—a finger that Palmer was willing to bet was a perfect match to the missing finger on his mother’s hand.

There were two other bodies in the lobby—the clerk whose bottom half wasn’t lining up at all with his top half, and the remains of one of the guests, a man named Bruce Goldman. It looked like Bruce had fallen into a meat grinder and then was pulled out before the machine was able to turn him completely into hamburger. Bruce’s vehicle was missing from the parking lot, a 2012 Chevy Tahoe. It was most likely the vehicle that had been used to the smash through the lobby doors and run Travis over.

There were no answers here to these murders, no reason for them, no obvious method of how two of them had been done.

And there were a few other things making all of this much worse for Special Agent Palmer.

Number one: there was a growing group of reporters, journalists, and camera operators gathering outside in the early evening beyond the police tape. Their vans were parked in the parking lot, cameras raised up on poles on top of the roofs, lights set up. Attractive male and female reporters clenched microphones in their hands with their local news station logos on them, and they all wore practiced grim expressions on their faces. Some of the reporters were from the local paper and the nearest TV station, but a few of them had come down from Denver. And there were probably a lot more of them flying in at this very moment. Palmer wasn’t sure where all of these people were going to stay because the town’s hotel was now a major crime scene.

Someone had already leaked this story to the press. Maybe it was one of the cops at the burnt cabin, or maybe even one of the firefighters, someone willing to take a few hundred dollars in exchange for this swarm of reporters invading their small town.

Number two: Sheriff Hadley was still in shock. He stood in front of Travis Conrad’s body. He wasn’t the only one who was traumatized; all of the local cops on the scene stood around with the wide-eyed look of shock in their eyes, like they were trying to navigate through a world they couldn’t understand anymore, a world they never could have imagined.

Three: Palmer had called Alonzo Johnson and Susan Dorsett, the lead forensics technicians down at the New Mexico sites. They had tested for DNA evidence, and they had plenty from the victims, but nothing from a perp. No animal or human DNA whatsoever. No blood or skin samples, no clothing fibers, not a single hair. It was like those people down there had been killed by something invisible … by something that wasn’t there.

And here was number four … his ringing cell phone. It didn’t take Cardenelli too long to hear about these murders on the news and/or an internet report. Thank God Cardenelli had only heard about the murders here in Colorado on the news and not the ones in New Mexico yet. Palmer was surprised those details hadn’t been leaked to the press yet, but he thought that maybe the Navajo didn’t want a ton of reporters and cameras trampling across their land, so they weren’t willing to sell themselves to reporters so quickly or cheaply.

Agent Palmer answered his phone. It was the third time Cardenelli had called. Cardenelli had already left two voicemails threatening bodily harm if he didn’t call him back right away … he couldn’t ignore his boss any longer.

“What the hell’s going on down there?” Cardenelli yelled as soon as Palmer answered his phone.

Hello to you, too, Palmer thought, but he didn’t think his superior would appreciate his sarcastic sense of humor right now.

“I’m not exactly sure yet,” Palmer answered Cardenelli’s question.

“What do you mean you’re not sure? I’ve got the TV on and there are reports coming in about mass killings down there in two small towns. Something about a cabin fire and missing bank robbers …”

“Yeah, I’m still trying to piece it all together.”

“I’d like to know what the hell you’re doing there in the first place. You’re supposed to be investigating the dig site in New Mexico. You know, the place I told you to go to!”

“Forensics has taken over down there, and I left Agent Klein in charge of questioning—”

“Leaving Klein in charge is like letting a dog try to hump a football.”

“These murders are all connected,” Palmer told him.

That shut Cardenelli up for a moment.

Palmer continued quickly before his SAC started yelling at him again. “A woman named Stella Weaver was the only person missing from that dig site. And a nine-year-old boy named David Bear was missing from the other murder scene in Iron Springs.”

Agent Palmer summarized what had happened in the last twenty hours, telling Cardenelli how Stella’s vehicle was found behind the burning cabin near Cody’s Pass, a cabin with more mutilated bodies inside, which included the owner of the cabin and four out of the five bank robbers who had committed the crime a few days ago in Cody’s Pass. He then explained what he and Sheriff Hadley had found at Nora Conrad’s house (he left out the part about Nora Conrad’s dead husband lying in the middle of the living room floor with a bullet hole in his head).

And now he was here at the Mountainside Inn where three more bodies lay, including Nora’s son Travis Conrad.

“Is this some kind of … of spree killing or something?” Cardenelli asked him, his tone a more reasonable speaking voice now.

“I really can’t find much of a motive to the killings down in New Mexico. Nothing seemed to have been taken except for Stella and David. If these bank robbers are the ones who killed all of those people down in New Mexico, then I don’t know why. I don’t know why they would take their time slaughtering a Navajo couple and a group of archaeologists, and then take a woman and a child and steal a vehicle, rush up here to rob a small bank in Cody’s Pass, and then kill each other at a cabin during a snowstorm and leave most of their money behind. I don’t know why the last bank robber left would kill several more people in a house, cutting two of them up, and then come here to kill three more.” He took a deep breath after the long sentence.

Cardenelli was still quiet, still listening.

“All I know now is that one of the bank robbers, Stella Weaver, and David Bear are all still unaccounted for,” Palmer said. He glanced over at the forensics team crowded around the remains of Bruce Goldman’s body like they weren’t sure where to begin with it. “We’re going to look at the security video here and question some people in town. Somebody has to have seen one of these people. One man couldn’t have done all of this here,” he said in a low voice.

“Listen,” Cardenelli said. “I want you to keep a lid on this.”

“Got it,” he answered, but he had another idea.

“Get this under control down there before those reporters run away with this story.”

“Yeah.”

Palmer hung up his phone. He stood there and watched the forensics team and the cops in the large lobby for a moment. He ran through what he’d just said to Cardenelli in his mind. And no matter how many times he ran different scenarios in his mind, nothing made much sense. It was like he was missing major pieces of the puzzle.

A monster.

Captain Begay’s voice popped into his mind. Skinwalkers and ancient enemies. Palmer knew that those kinds of stories and legends were part of Begay’s culture, but Begay was also a cop and he needed to look for a logical explanation for what had happened.

And there had to be a logical explanation. People wanted to believe in monsters because they didn’t want to believe that their fellow human beings were often the true monsters, the real bogeymen that crept along in the darkness and hunted their own species, the creatures that did unspeakable things to their fellow humans just for the pleasure of it.

Palmer took the pack of breath mints out of his suitcoat pocket and popped one into his mouth. It had been several hours since he’d taken a sip of vodka, but he couldn’t take a chance that any of the reporters might catch the scent of it on his breath. Cops would keep his secret among themselves, they might resent Palmer for his weakness, but they would uphold the blue code of honor and not rat on one of their own. Reporters were another matter altogether.

He walked out of the lobby towards the police tape and barricades in the distance. They had set the barriers so far away purposely because the lobby was well-lit and now visible at night to the high-powered cameras the press had brought with them. At least the emergency vehicles and forensics vans were blocking much of the glass wall of the lobby now.

As Palmer approached them, the reporters crowded towards the barriers like dogs excited about a possible treat.

“I want to make a quick statement,” Palmer said as cameras were aimed at him, lights were shined in his direction, and microphones were thrusted towards where he stood a few feet away from the stretch of police tape. Two police officers were nearby in case this mob got out of control.

“I’m not taking any questions right now,” Palmer said as cameras flashed. “I just want to let you know that right up front.”

Palmer knew Cardenelli was not going to be happy about him talking to press right now, but he was out of options. He wanted to get the word out about Stella and David.

“We’re looking for two people of interest,” he told the reporters. “They are not suspects at this time, just people we want to talk to. I don’t have any photos of them with me, but I will get some sent to you soon. One of these persons of interest is a woman named Stella Weaver. She’s twenty-nine years old. She’s an archaeologist who works out of Arizona State University. She was last seen driving a white Chevy Suburban truck with New Mexico plates. She may be traveling with a child, a nine-year-old Navajo boy named David Bear. If anyone out there has seen these two, or talked to them, in the last few days, we’d like to hear from you. Thank you.”

Palmer turned away from the mass of reporters. He could already hear the questions fired at him even though he’d already told them that he wasn’t taking any questions.

“What about the bank robbers?” one of the reporters barked.

“Does the fire at the cabin have anything to do with this?” another screamed at him.

Palmer ignored them as he walked back up the steep incline from the parking lot to the Mountainside Inn that stood up on the hill in the darkness. The police and emergency lights were shining, the blue and red lights were flashing, the lights bouncing off of the woods in the distance.

Someone would come forward soon, Palmer thought as he walked back to the motel. Someone had to know something. Someone had to have seen something.

CHAPTER 36

Southern Colorado

Cole parked Bruce Goldman’s Chevy Tahoe at the edge of the parking lot of the bar, closer to the trees. He had the truck turned off, all of the lights off, and they were waiting as Cole watched the bar.

The bar was a rinky-dink, honkytonk place, a large wood building with an antique neon sign that read: Ollie’s Bar. The O in Ollie’s name was burnt out. The lights were dim at the entrance, but it was enough to reveal how seedy and rundown the place was. The parking lot was plowed, creating piles of snow around the perimeter of it, yet there were still fourteen vehicles parked there—hardcore drinkers, people who weren’t going to let a little thing like the snowstorm of the century keep them from their nightly ritual, people who would prove to nature, and to each other, that they would venture out on a night like this to drink.

It was a little after eleven o’clock. Late enough so new customers probably wouldn’t be coming, and still a little too early for many of them to be leaving. It was now or never, and Cole had already spotted a large pickup truck with a king cab as his target. The pickup looked like it was from the mid-nineties. It was rusted around the wheel wells, it had big meaty tires, a bent side view mirror, dents all over it that showed how many times this driver had driven home drunk. A few faded bumper stickers were pasted on the tailgate.

Even though Cole would rather drive an SUV or mini-van, this truck was their best option. It would be the easiest one for him to break into and to hotwire, and it would fit in with the ubiquitous pickups in the area. He just hoped everything worked in the truck: the radio, the heater, the lights.

“You ready?” Cole asked Stella. He had already explained to her that she was going to have to drive Bruce’s truck and follow him after he stole this pickup truck. They couldn’t keep driving Bruce’s vehicle; every cop in this state was going to be looking for it now. A pickup truck in this area was the best camouflage for them, and by the time this guy wandered out and reported his truck stolen they should have a good head start down to New Mexico. It wasn’t too much farther to the Ute Indian Reservation from here, and from there the border into the Navajo Reservation. Once they were on Navajo land, Cole felt that they would be a little safer from the police.

But not safe from the Ancient Enemy, he thought.

One thing at a time, he told himself. They needed this pickup truck and they needed to ditch Bruce’s vehicle.

“I’m ready,” Stella told him.

Cole slipped out of the SUV and walked towards the truck in the distance as Stella slid over to the driver’s seat. The SUV was already pointed towards the road, so once Cole got the truck started she could fall in right behind him.

*

As Cole walked towards the pickup truck, he realized that Stella could just start the Chevy and take off, leaving him behind. She had a vehicle now, she had some money, and she still had the gun he’d given her. She had tried to run away from him only a few hours ago, so what would stop her now?

And what would happen if she ran? he asked himself.

He would be stuck here on foot. He would probably go inside, have a drink, and then wander away. Maybe hitchhike to California.

But Stella and David would be in danger, Cole thought. The Ancient Enemy would still pursue them, not him anymore.

It would be her choice if she was going to run away from him again—there was nothing he could do about it now.

His boots crunched on the light film of snow and ice that coated the parking lot as he walked towards the line of vehicles near the bar. The pickup truck was parked right next to a beat-up van, and he already had the multi-tool in his hand that he’d found in Bruce’s SUV so he could switch the license plates.

Nobody had come out of the bar yet, and he ducked down behind the van, working quickly to unscrew the Colorado license plate.

*

Stella watched Cole as he unscrewed the license plate from a big Dodge van. Her eyes kept darting from Cole to the entrance of the dark building with its neon bar signs in the windows. She could hear the faint thump of music from inside the bar and the occasional bray of laughter or a stray hoot or holler.

Cole had just finished switching the license plates on the two vehicles and he seemed like he was about to get inside the pickup truck, but then he stayed crouched down at the rear of the truck as the door of the bar slammed open. Two overweight men dressed in jeans, boots, bulky coats, and cowboy hats stumbled out of the bar and walked down the snowy walkway that had been cleared and salted.

Stella had no way to warn Cole that the men were approaching, but she was sure he’d heard them by now. She leaned back a little in the driver’s seat, keeping in the shadows. The keys to the Chevy Tahoe hung from the ignition … all she had to do was turn the keys and drive across the parking lot to Cole if they spotted him.

Cole kept still as the men stumbled down the sidewalk in front of the bar that had a pathetic line of snow-covered hedges underneath the windows. They laughed and clapped each other on the shoulders as they walked past the pickup truck and van towards a car that looked like it had been rescued from the junkyard; it had different colored quarter panels, a cracked windshield, and no hubcaps on two of the tires.

“What’s he doing?” David asked from the back seat.

Stella turned around in her seat and looked at David. “You’re awake.”

He knuckled sleep from his eyes and looked back out the window. “What’s he doing?” he asked again.

How was she supposed to explain this? “He’s borrowing a friend’s pickup truck so we can drive it back down to New Mexico. Back to your home.”

David didn’t say anything.

“We’re going to try to find someone to help you,” she told him. “We’re going to find a shaman. He can help you with your … your gift. Help you get stronger.”

David still stared out the window, watching Cole as he slipped in between the pickup truck and the van, and out of view of the two drunk men who were getting into the wreck of a car.

“You need to get stronger so you can fight back against the Ancient Enemy.”

“I don’t want to fight it,” David said in a voice so low she could barely make out his words.

“I know you don’t. I know it’s scary, but you’re the only one who can fight it. You’re the only one who can beat it. You understand that, don’t you?”

David didn’t answer.

“David?”

“Yes?” he finally answered.

“It won’t stop following you,” she told him. She didn’t want to scare him, but he needed to know the truth. “It will never leave you alone until you kill it.”

David looked scared as he stared out the window.

“I’ll be here for you as long as I can stay alive,” she said. “But you heard that thing when it was inside the motel clerk. It’s going to keep bringing people to us, people who will want to kill you. It’s scared of you, David. That’s why it does these things. You need to remember that … it’s scared of you. It’s scared of your power.”

The old car with the two drunks inside backed out of its parking space with a throttling rumble. The back end slid a little in the snow on the parking lot, and then fishtailed a little more when the driver hit the gas too hard. She couldn’t tell if it was intentional or not.

After the car left the parking lot, Cole went right to work on the pickup truck. Stella couldn’t see what Cole was doing because he was hidden in the darker shadows between the vehicles, but he was inside the truck within minutes. The dome light inside the truck hadn’t come on … either it didn’t work or Cole had smashed it right away.

“Is Cole going to stay with us?” David asked. “He’s not going to leave, is he?”

The thought of running away had crossed her mind again, but she shook her head no as she looked at David. “No. I told you, he’s getting his friend’s truck so we can drive down to New Mexico.”

David seemed satisfied with her answer, or he didn’t feel the need to question it any further. She was sure he felt safer with both her and Cole around him.

“David … you told me before that your parents are gone.”

David just nodded as he watched Cole out the window. “They’re dead,” he said. “That thing killed them. It was inside my mom … and …”

David let his words trail off and Stella didn’t push him.

“There’s no one else in your family to take care of you?” she asked after a moment.

David didn’t answer.

Was he all alone? Stella wondered. Was he all alone in this world with a monster straight out of a nightmare pursuing him? And now the only protection he had was an archaeologist and a criminal. Stella felt like crying at the hopelessness of it all, but she needed to be strong for David.

She heard the pickup truck start up, and she looked across the parking lot.

Cole backed the pickup truck out of the parking space with the lights still off. He drove the truck slowly across the snowy parking lot, the engine idling. The brake lights flashed as he slowed down when he got to the road.

Stella started the Chevy Tahoe and followed him out onto the road.

CHAPTER 37

Southern Colorado

An hour later Stella still followed the pickup truck Cole had stolen. They had kept to the back roads for a while, and now they were driving down a road through the woods that seemed like a dirt trail covered with snow. She was afraid of getting stuck out here … they couldn’t be trapped out here in the woods, in the dark. The Ancient Enemy would find them again.

She pushed the thought away and concentrated on following Cole. The snow was a little lighter down here than it had been a hundred and twenty miles north, up in the higher mountains. Maybe the snowstorm hadn’t been as bad down here, but the driving was still slippery enough for her.

Finally, Cole pulled the pickup truck over on the side of the road in an area where the road widened out a little and the woods weren’t as close. She parked behind him and watched as he got out of the truck with its lights on, the motor still running. He hurried over to the Tahoe as she rolled the window down.

“Go ahead and get out,” he told her. “I’ll drive the Tahoe into that bare area over there.”

Stella didn’t respond. She turned around to the back seat and looked at David. “We have to get out now. We need to switch vehicles.”

David didn’t complain. He opened his door and stepped out into the night. As they walked away from the Chevy Tahoe, Cole got inside the vehicle and drove it across the road to a bare area, and then he drove it up as far as he could into the brush and the trees. Stella heard the branches and twigs snapping and scratching at the Tahoe, and then crunching underneath the heavy vehicle.

David took Stella’s hand as they hurried to the waiting pickup truck, smoke from the exhaust drifting up into the dark night, glowing red in the taillights. She felt the night closing in around them, and she thought she heard the sound of twigs and branches snapping somewhere else in the woods, on the other side of the road … something big moving around out there in the darkness.

It’s just your imagination, she told herself. She needed to get inside the pickup truck.

You’re not any safer in there than you are out here, her mind whispered.

Stella opened the driver’s door and hopped inside. She crawled across the bench seat, over the center console. She didn’t want to get in on the passenger side—she didn’t want to be that close to the woods. David crawled into the truck after her, and snuggled up beside her. She pushed the door lock down for the doors, but she kept the driver’s door wide open for Cole, who was already hurrying back through the darkness towards the pickup truck.

If there was a time that the Ancient Enemy could strike, it would be now, she thought. She could imagine a dark and constantly changing lifeform racing out of the trees or floating down through the air and enveloping Cole, trapping him before he could get to the truck.

But Cole made it inside the truck and he slammed the door closed on the cold air and the darkness. He put the truck in gear, turning it around in the middle of the road, and then he drove back the way they had come.

“Shouldn’t we set fire to the Tahoe or something?” she asked as they drove away.

He looked at her strangely.

“Get rid of any evidence,” she added.

“That’s just in the movies,” he told her. “Setting fire to that truck would be like setting a signal fire for the cops. As far as evidence goes, they already know I stole that guy’s truck. Besides, I wore gloves the whole time.”

Stella nodded.

“Stick to archaeology,” he told her with a smile.

David snickered right beside her, looking up at her with a grin.

Stella looked at David. “What are you laughing at?”

“Nothing,” he giggled.

“Aren’t you sleepy?” she asked him. It was about two o’clock in the morning now. “You can hop in the back if want to lay down.” The truck had a full-size king cab in the back, but there were a lot of tools and other junk back there that David would have to move out of the way first.

“No,” he answered.

He had slept for a few hours earlier and she suspected that it would be difficult for any of them to relax until they were out of these woods. The claustrophobic walls of trees on both sides of the road reminded her too much of the road to Tom Gordon’s cabin, and the driveway, and everything that had happened there. She didn’t know why Cole had to drive so far into the woods to ditch Bruce’s SUV, but at least it was done and over with.

“There’s a … a smell in here,” Stella said, wrinkling her nose.

“Yeah,” Cole answered. “Like old socks and a wet dog.”

Again, David laughed. He was probably overly tired and happy now that they were safely inside a vehicle and leaving these woods.

Safe? She thought. That was a laugh. They wouldn’t be safe until … until what? Until they found a shaman and he taught David how to defeat that thing out there once and for all? Who was she kidding? What were the chances of all of that happening? What were the chances of finding this shaman that she had only heard whispered rumors about before, the man called Joe Blackhorn? What were the chances Joe Blackhorn was even still alive? What were the chances he would be willing, or even able, to help them? What were the chances that any of them would survive until then?

But she couldn’t think about that. She would drive herself crazy if she kept torturing herself with these thoughts. All she could do was push on and keep moving. If it didn’t work out, then they would figure something else out … but she wouldn’t ever give up.

As Cole drove the rumbling pickup down the rutted, narrow trail through the woods, Stella stared out at the black forest. The trees whipped by in a dark blur. The only light came from a mostly full moon and their headlights. She could imagine the Ancient Enemy, whatever it was, hurrying through the brush and trees, following them as quickly as their truck moved, some kind of constantly shifting creature that could be insectoid at one moment, and then reptilian, and then part sea creature, and then something else that human eyes had never seen before, something that couldn’t be understood, something that could fry human wiring and drive them insane if they stared at it too long.

David snuggled up against Stella. She looked down at him to see if he was nodding off, but he just stared straight ahead out the windshield with wide eyes. He was quiet again. Of course with the trauma he’d been through, she could understand his silence. She was surprised that he hadn’t suffered more serious mental shock so far. But sometimes children were more resilient in these areas than adults were, especially when it came to something unexplainable. It was easier for David’s mind to accept that a monster was out there in the darkness, popping in and out of dimensions, from its own world into ours whenever it wanted to.

Time seemed to stretch out, but eventually they were out of the dark woods and back onto a paved road. They drove south down a road they had mapped out on one of Bruce’s maps earlier.

“We’ll find somewhere to crash for a few hours,” Cole said as he drove. “It’s too risky driving around out here at night with the cops looking for us. We’ll start driving again around five o’clock in the morning, that way we’ll look like any other pickup truck on its way to work.”

Stella didn’t say anything. Cole seemed to know what he was doing when it came to criminal matters. She just stared out the passenger window, comfortable with David snuggled up against her.

CHAPTER 38

Southern Colorado

David crawled into the back seat of the pickup truck and went to sleep by the time they got to the next town.

Cole drove slowly down the streets until he spotted an all-night diner/truck stop. He parked in a far corner where some semi-trucks were parked. Their pickup truck was hidden from view of the street, partially blocked from the other trucks, but it still felt somewhat safe for the moment.

He left the pickup running for a while, but turned off all of the lights. It felt warm and safe to Stella for the first time in a while.

“I guess you don’t have any kids,” Cole said after a long moment as he sipped some coffee that they’d bought at a gas station thirty minutes ago.

Stella shook her head. “What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know. If you had a family, I would think you would be trying to get back to them right now.”

It made sense to her. Maybe Cole was more perceptive than she gave him credit for.

“Let me guess,” Cole said. “You’ve been too focused on your education and career to have a family.”

“You should be a psychologist,” she told him sarcastically as she munched on a cold French fry. “What about you? Too busy stealing stuff for a family?”

He chuckled. “Never wanted a family. I’m right about your career, though. Right?”

She sighed. “After college, I couldn’t wait to get out in the field and work. I had so many theories about the Anasazi, theories that contradicted everything scholars were teaching, but I needed proof. There were accepted theories of the disappearance of the Anasazi. That’s what happens when a bunch of scientists agree on a theory, no one even tries to counter it or seek out other possibilities. It’s too much work for the scientific community, and they will make you out to be some kind of whacko or conspiracy theorist if you don’t go along with academia like you’re supposed to.”

“What were your theories?”

She looked at him for a second, smiling at him. “I’m sure you’re really interested.”

“Well, yeah. Since some ancient thing is chasing us now. Since everything that’s happened, I’m sure you’ve had to have changed your original theories a little, I would guess.”

“Well, yeah. Of course.”

Cole was quiet for a moment, waiting for Stella to continue.

“It’s widely believed as fact now that the Anasazi migrated up to the New Mexico and Arizona areas from Central America nearly a thousand years ago. They built roads and cities, large underground kivas. They raised crops and livestock. Those things were kind of unheard of in this area among the North American tribes at the time. Many peoples of Central and South America had built cities, roads, and complex civilizations, but the other tribes of Native Americans in the southwestern region didn’t really build cities.”

Cole sipped his coffee. He was listening to Stella, but he kept glancing around at the parking lot all around them every few seconds.

“It has always fascinated me that many of those people who built cities in South and Central America eventually abandoned them, and some of the people seemed to have practically vanished.”

“Like the Anasazi?”

“Sort of. Some of these people seemed to have just walked away from the massive cities they had built: The Olmecs, the Maya, the Inca. Some are still around, but it still doesn’t explain why they would just walk away from these massive cities they had spent so much time and effort building. And the Anasazi did the same thing here in what is now New Mexico and Arizona. They built large and complex cities, and then for some reason they abandoned them and moved north up into southern Colorado and southern Utah, where they built highly-defensible cities, some of the cities built right into the sides of mountain faces and rock cliffs.”

“I remember you telling me about that before.”

“Yes. Well, they eventually abandoned these strongholds, too. Evidence shows that they moved south again, maybe down into northern and central Arizona. They left a lot behind at these cities when they left: their pottery, their tools, their dead. It’s like they just ran.”

“So what are your theories?” Cole asked her. “Why do you think they ran?”

“First let me tell you what the accepted theories are right now. There were many signs of strife at these sites, but no real signs of hostile fights with other tribes. It seems more like they were fighting with each other. There is even evidence of sacrifice and cannibalism.”

Stella ate the last of her French fries and then set the bag down on the floorboard with all of the other trash the pickup truck’s owner had thrown there. “Anyway, the accepted theory is that the Anasazi just decided to abandon all of their cities, their technology, their culture, their law, their religion, and go south to either become modern-day Hopi and or Pueblo, or assimilate into those tribes.”

“But you don’t believe that.”

“No. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Why change their culture so drastically in such a short time? Why leave such defensible cities to build a new society in wide open spaces in the desert? Why not just go back to the older cities they had built before in Chaco canyon and other places? Most archaeologists cite weather or drought or other similar reasons, but to me they don’t seem justification enough to just run away from everything so quickly.”

“So what was your theory?”

“I didn’t really have a clear one yet, but I didn’t want to go along with the accepted theories just because everyone else was. That’s what I was looking for … some kind of proof.”

“What do you think now?” Cole asked her.

Stella was quiet for a moment. She stared out the windshield at the truck stop diner in the distance. The few patrons inside looked warm and comfortable at the tables, plates of food and cups of coffee in front of them. They looked safe.

“I think this … this thing has been around for a long time. I think it might sleep for certain periods of time and then it wakes up … maybe it sleeps for decades or even centuries. But when it wakes up, I think it feeds for a certain period of time. I think this thing has been in many places in the world, at least in this hemisphere. There may even be others like this one. It might live in a different dimension, a time and space that we can’t understand, like a fourth or fifth dimension.”

It looked like she might be losing Cole a little, but she went on. “I think at various times in history it has attacked people … maybe even whole civilizations and cities. I think it took what it wanted, maybe even wiping out whole groups of people, and then it rested again for a period of time.”

“Any chance of publishing your theory now?”

She looked at him and then burst out laughing. She knew he’d meant it as a bad joke, and it really wasn’t that funny, but she couldn’t help laughing until tears rolled out of her eyes. After the emotional roller coaster she’d been on, her mind felt scrambled and it felt good to laugh. “I just might,” she finally answered.

Cole looked out the window again. She studied his face in the darkness. “What are your plans after … this?” she asked him.

He looked at her and sighed. “What do you mean? If we survive?”

Stella didn’t answer, but it was what she was asking.

“After the bank robbery, after Trevor paid Frank back, I had planned on us going down to Costa Rica. Get him away from bad elements. I bought a place near the beach there years ago. Nothing special, just a small house, but it’s paradise to me. I’ve got a friend named V.J. who owes me some big favors. He can get me some new IDs so I can get on a plane.”

It sounded like Cole had it all figured out.

“But that’s if we survive this,” Cole said in a low voice.

“Yeah,” she answered. “If we survive.”

They were quiet for a moment.

“Try to get some rest,” Cole told her. He sounded sleepy. “We’ll take off in a few hours.”

PART 3

TUESDAY

CHAPTER 39

Destin, Colorado

Special Agent Palmer was trapped in the nightmare again.

It was the same dream he’d had before, the one where he was inside a massive warehouse full of furniture and appliances, and hallways and rooms that looked like they belonged in houses. It didn’t make any sense, yet within the dream it seemed to make perfect sense; it seemed so real … like the only reality there was.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been trapped inside that endless building, but it seemed like he’d been there for such a long time now. He had worked his way up and down the same wide hallway he had walked through before, peering into the rooms set up with furniture and décor like they were showrooms. Windows that looked out onto the world let in a dull sunlight, like the light at the end of a cloudy day. He could escape out those windows, but somehow he knew he wouldn’t be able to get them open or break the glass.

Besides, he knew he had to keep moving down the hall. He needed to be somewhere …

Then he was at the metal sinks again … a massive pair of sinks situated in the middle of all of this furniture and appliances for as far as he could see.

And there, not too far away, was an office built into the middle of the furniture. The office looked even more out of place among the sea of furniture than the sinks did.

The water was running in the sink, and he was holding something soft underneath the faucet, washing it, being careful with it.

“Hey!” the man from the office yelled at him.

Palmer looked down at his hands, at the unidentifiable piece of flesh he was carefully rinsing off. He watched the dark blood drain from the soft flesh and his hands, the blood swirling down into the drain, becoming pink from the dilution of the water.

The man from the office stared at Palmer, leaning back in the same old decrepit office chair, the springs screeching in protest at the angle of the man’s posture. His eyes were wide with shock, his mouth agape, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His lips trembled and his hands gripped the armrests of his office chair, clawing at it.

“He’s coming!” the man said, his voice a shuddery whisper … yet Palmer heard him so clearly, like you do in dreams.

“You have to run. You have to run right now. He’s coming for you and by God, believe me, you don’t want to see him. You don’t want to see what he really looks like.” The man’s voice rose higher and higher, becoming a yell, then a scream of panic.

Heavy footsteps thundered from the hallway.

Palmer looked away from the man in the office towards the other end of the vast room, back to the wide hallway he had walked down only moments ago (or was it hours ago now). The sun was setting now, night falling so quickly across the land out there, smothering out the daylight like a giant blanket.

A man was approaching from way down the hall, hidden in shadows. But it wasn’t a man … it was a coyote … and then a spidery thing … and then a man again … constantly changing.

A growl, and then more thudding footsteps …

He was coming!

Palmer had to run! If he didn’t run right now, that thing was going to catch him.

He turned and ran through the furniture, dodging around armchairs and loveseats and dining room table sets and end tables stacked on top of each other. He darted around a line of old refrigerators that looked like they’d been brand new in the early nineteen fifties. He bolted past armoires and dressers with mirrors attached to them.

In one of those mirrors Palmer caught a glimpse of the thing right behind him, reaching for him with a spider-like leg that was somehow changing into a tentacle dripping with slime. Each sucker on the underside of the tentacle had tiny rows of rotating sharp teeth.

Palmer woke up, stifling a scream as he sat up in bed.

For a second he couldn’t remember where he was. He had an overwhelming urge to jump out of bed and bolt for the door.

He had to run … that thing was coming.

Palmer’s heart thudded in his chest and panic squeezed his lungs. He groped in the darkness beside him, looking for the familiar end table from home where the lamp was, where he kept his gun beside him while he slept … and the bottle of vodka.

His fingers found the lamp, an unfamiliar one. It took a few moments for him to find the light switch, but then he did.

The lamp lit up the room, driving back the darkness in a second.

He was in a motel room. He was in Destin, Colorado.

It was just a nightmare. The worst one he’d ever had. It wasn’t just what he’d seen in the nightmare, but also what he’d felt … an utter hopelessness. Why run? It would just hunt him down and find him. He couldn’t outrun it forever, and it would never stop chasing him.

Palmer got up and paced around the room. He only wore his underwear and a white T-shirt. The shirt was soaked with sweat even though the room was chilly because he hadn’t turned the heat down real low when he’d gone to bed.

Everything was coming back to him now. He’d driven back to Destin to get a motel room since the only hotel in Cody’s Pass was now a crime scene. It was late as he drove back down the snowy roads that wound through the mountains between the two towns. Debbie had already booked a room for him at a place called the E-Z Rest Motel on Sixth Street. He was checked in by a bored clerk who hardly spoke to Palmer.

He’d picked up a sandwich from an all-night fast food drive-thru, wolfed the burger and fries down, and then drank a few nips from his bottle of vodka, which now sat right beside his service pistol on the end table next to the bed. The lid was on the bottle of vodka, but he was still glad he hadn’t knocked it over while fumbling for the switch on the lamp.

His heartbeat and breathing were finally back to normal. He grabbed the remote control for the TV and pressed the power button. He found a news channel and left it there with the sound down low. He checked the time on the alarm clock: four o’clock in the morning.

He lay back down and tried to go back to sleep, but he wasn’t so sure he was going to be able to.

Instead, he propped his back up against all of the pillows on the bed and stared at the TV.

CHAPTER 40

Southern Colorado

Before the first lights of dawn broke the eastern horizon, Cole was back on the road. He’d slept two and a half hours and felt like he needed more, but he was too edgy to sit still in one place for too long. He knew it would only be a matter of time before some puppet of flesh approached their truck.

Stella woke up for a few minutes when he started the truck—actually, she jolted awake.

“You can go back to sleep,” he told her as he pulled out of the diner parking lot, following a semi-truck out onto the road.

A few hours later in Cortez, Colorado, Cole pulled into a Wal-Mart parking lot.

Stella woke up as he looked for a parking spot close to the entrance. It was a twenty-four hour Wal-Mart, but it wasn’t too busy at this hour.

“What are we doing here?” Stella asked.

“I need to get a few things,” Cole told her. “I’ll get us a few more drinks and some snacks,” he said. “I won’t be long. Just keep the doors locked. Keys are in the ignition.”

She stared at him and he could read her eyes: You’re really ditching us this time.

He didn’t bother arguing with her. He’d told her enough times that he was going to see this through to the end, he didn’t know how else to convince her now.

The Wal-Mart wasn’t crowded at all when Cole entered and grabbed a cart. He felt a little funny walking in this store with all the security cameras around; here he was, one of the most wanted men in Colorado right now walking around in a department store.

He didn’t want to take too long in here. He headed right for the clothing section first. He bought some baseball caps, new coats for all three of them, a better pair of gloves for Stella (ones that actually fit her). He bought another set of clothes for David and a big shirt for Stella and another one for himself. They could all use a change of clothes.

Next he bought a small cooler so they could carry some drinks with them instead of stocking up at gas stations and drive-thru lines at fast food joints.

For his last purchase he would need to go to the tech section of the store. There he bought the cheapest Smart Phone they had and then he asked the guy working there to sign him up for one of the cheapest services. He only needed the service to work for one phone call. He paid for the phone at the tech counter with a stolen credit card he’d gotten from V.J. before the bank robbery job, and then he paid for the rest of his stuff at the checkout line using cash from one of the packs of money.

Five minutes later he was out in the cold air again, walking to the pickup truck. He was relieved not to see cop cars racing down the parking lot aisles, screeching to a halt in front of the store, cops jumping out and aiming guns at him.

Maybe they could really make it down to the Navajo Reservation.

“Everything okay?” Cole asked Stella when he got back inside the truck. He set the cooler in the back and handed some of the bags to Stella.

“We didn’t see any cops,” she told him.

David was sitting up in the back seat, knuckling sleepy bugs from his eyes. “Where are we?” he grumbled.

“He’s alive!” Cole said.

That got a smile out of David. “I’m hungry,” he whispered.

“We’re going to get you something to eat right over there,” Cole said, pointing to a McDonald’s in the far corner of the massive parking area.

“What are these?” Stella asked, looking through the bags.

“I bought us some coats, hats, and gloves. Also some extra shirts for each of us.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“I wanna see,” David said.

Stella handed him a gray coat that looked like it might be a little big for him.

Cole started the truck and pressed the button to lock the doors. He turned the heat up one notch and then he picked up the cell phone and dialed a number from memory.

The phone was ringing in his ear, and he hoped to hell V.J. was going to pick up at this early-morning hour.

“Hello?” V.J. croaked into the phone.

He had woken him up.

“V.J.!” Cole yelled into the phone.

“Who is—” A pause as V.J.’s mind came fully awake. “Wait a minute, is that you, Cole?”

“Yeah. Sorry I woke you up.”

“Naw. It’s okay, man. What’s up?”

“I need a favor.”

“Yeah, I figured that.”

“I’ve got a throwaway cell phone and I need it scrambled so it can’t be traced. I also need it beefed up. Top of the line service. We’re going to a … a rather remote area.”

“What? Costa Rica, finally?”

“Yeah. Eventually. But we have to go somewhere else first.” He glanced at Stella, who wasn’t abashed at watching him while he talked on the phone.

“Look, I’ve got some money in that account that you know about,” Cole told V.J. “Clean it out … it’s yours.”

“That’s a little generous for what you’re asking.”

“Well, I think I’m going to need a few more favors from you down the road. You know, before Costa Rica.” If I live that long, he thought.

“Sure. You got it. You know that.”

“Thanks, man.”

“No problem. I’ll get everything set up and send you some links in the e-mail that I’ve got for you. Don’t use the phone anymore until you get my e-mail. Okay?”

“Got it.”

“When you get the e-mail, click on those links and let the info download completely. Then you should be good to go after that.”

“You’re a genius.”

“I know. Anything else?”

“Not at the moment. Like I said, I might be calling you a few days from now for a few more favors.”

“You know I owe you anyway. What about Trevor? How’s he doing?”

Cole felt his throat closing up quickly. He knew V.J. was going to ask about Trevor eventually. He cleared his throat. “He’s … he’s dead.”

“Dead?”

“It’s a long story. Not one I want to talk about on the phone right now.”

“Yeah, man. I’m sorry to hear about that.”

“Thanks.”

“You should probably get off this phone now.”

“Yeah.”

“Take care, man.”

“You’ll hear from me soon.”

Cole hung up the phone and wiped at his eyes. He sniffled in a big breath and set the phone in the center console. He looked at Stella. “You can’t use that phone until I get an e-mail that will make this phone untraceable.”

Stella nodded like she’d heard that part of the conversation.

“You hungry?” he asked her.

“I am,” David said from the back seat.

Cole couldn’t help smiling. He put the truck in gear and drove across the parking lot to the McDonald’s. A few minutes later they ordered a variety of sandwiches and hash browns … more food than they could eat right now, but they would save the rest for later—it wasn’t like that kind of food was going to go bad anytime soon with all the preservatives in it. And of course they got two large coffees for them. Cole felt like he was living off of coffee right now.

He also took two No-Doz that he’d bought at Wal-Mart and swallowed them down with a few gulps of the coffee.

He thought about switching vehicles again, but they weren’t too far away from the border according to the map. Besides, he wanted to get back on the road, back on the move. And this time of the morning was the safest time to be traveling, the least likely time to be pulled over by a cop. They would just be one more work truck.

As they drove down the road, David munched a little on half a sandwich and drank a few sips of his soda, and then he lay back down to go to sleep again. He needed as much sleep as he could get, Cole thought.

Cole wished he could sleep as deeply and easily as David could. But every time he closed his eyes he saw his brother, his body parts stacked up again, a collection of parts brought back to simulated life, a grotesque puppet controlled by that thing.

All of this was still hard for Cole to wrap his mind around; it was like some nightmare that had come to life. He was used to the world being reliable, a natural set of physical laws that could be counted on. But now the world was tilting out of order, everything off balance now, like some kind of dream world that he was trying to navigate his way through.

And now that Trevor was gone it made everything so much more surreal. Of course he had prepared himself for the possibility that Trevor could die someday. It was a possibility all humans entertained no matter how much we tried not to dwell on it. And with Trevor’s choice of employment, his risk of death was a hundred times higher. But Cole hadn’t expected Trevor to die right in front of him. And not in that gruesome way … torn apart into pieces and then put back together into some kind of Frankenstein’s monster and possessed by that thing, that creature or being, or whatever it was.

Cole wasn’t particularly afraid of dying … he never had been. He wasn’t a religious man and he figured the lights just went out when you died … the show just ended. But after these last few days, after the things he’d seen, his idea of what reality was—and what existed outside of our own narrow perceptions—was changing abruptly.

CHAPTER 41

Cody’s Pass, Colorado

Special Agent Palmer jumped awake when his cell phone rang. He didn’t think he was going to be able to fall back asleep after the nightmare he’d had, but at some point he had drifted off … probably from pure exhaustion.

“Agent Palmer,” he said into the phone after the third ring. He didn’t even look at the number, his eyes still blurry with sleep. The TV was still on across the room and the sound was turned down almost all the way. Daylight was invading the room from around the edges of the blackout drapes over the front windows.

What time was it?

He glanced at the alarm clock. The red digital numbers glowed brightly in the murky room. Almost eight thirty.

“Agent Palmer?” the sheriff asked on the phone even though Palmer had just identified himself to the caller.

“Yes, Sheriff,” he said with a sigh.

“You said you wanted to speak to any witnesses.”

Palmer nodded. “Yes, I did.”

“We’ve got two of them lined up for you.”

“Great. Text me some addresses and directions if you could.”

“Sure.”

*

Both of the witnesses were young women and they were both cashiers in Cody’s Pass. Palmer decided to visit the woman named Melissa Caldwell first. She had seen Stella and David at the gas station where she worked on the morning of the bank robbery. The other cashier was a teenager named Cassandra who worked at a small grocery store. Sheriff Hadley had pointed out that both of them had been questioned already, but Palmer still wanted to speak to both of them in person.

He drove his rental car through the treacherous mountain pass from Destin down to Cody’s Pass. Melissa lived in a small two-story apartment building and there was already a police cruiser parked outside to keep any reporters from harassing the young woman.

Palmer parked his car near the squad car. He flashed his ID at the officer as he walked by and then climbed a set of concrete steps at the corner of the building that led up to a walkway protected from the snow by the edge of the roof. He walked about halfway down and a door opened up before he even got there.

Melissa filled up the doorway, smiling at him.

“Melissa Caldwell?”

“That’s me.”

Palmer pulled his ID and shield out again, flashing it at her. “I’m Special Agent Palmer with the FBI. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

She nodded. “Yeah, the sheriff told me you were coming by.” She moved out of the way so he could enter her apartment. “Come on in.”

Palmer entered Melissa’s small and cluttered apartment. The smells of old cooking grease and dirty diapers hit him right away. She gestured at a lumpy couch against the far living room wall. “Have a seat.”

He sat down on the very edge of the couch cushion, his body hunched forward and tense.

Melissa sank down into the corner at the other end of the couch, and it was like that section of the couch had become molded by her body over the years. She grabbed a gigantic To-Go cup (probably from the gas station where she worked, Palmer thought) and sipped something red and sugary from it, sucking the liquid up through a straw.

“I’m here to talk to you about the woman and the boy you saw on the morning of the bank robbery,” Palmer said as he pulled out a small notebook from inside his suitcoat pocket.

“Yeah. That was right before the big storm. I remember it. I remember her and the boy too.”

“Do you remember what kind of vehicle the woman was driving?”

“It was a big white truck. I don’t know what kind it was or what year. I’m not good with that kind of stuff.” She smiled sheepishly. “I remember that she bought fifty bucks in gas.”

“Did she have anybody else with her besides the boy? Did you see anyone else in her vehicle, or someone pumping gas for her?”

“I don’t think so. I’m sure it was only her and the boy in the store.”

Palmer jotted down some notes and then looked back at Melissa who was watching him intently.

“Did she only purchase gas when she was there?”

“No. She bought some other stuff.”

“You don’t happen to remember any of the stuff she bought, do you?”

“Oh yeah.” Slurp—another big sip of the fruit juice. “She looked like she was stocking up on supplies for a trip or something. She bought toothbrushes, a small tube of toothpaste, which is the only size we sell there. She bought some toilet paper. She bought some drinks and a few snacks. I even asked her if she was going on a trip or something. I asked if she was heading north. I told her a bad snowstorm was coming, but she didn’t seem to care.”

Palmer just nodded.

“Yeah. I told her she should wait out the storm.”

“How was her appearance? Was there anything unusual that you noticed about her? Did she seem nervous or angry? Was she in a hurry? Anything like that?”

“Yeah. Now that I think about it, she seemed nervous. Maybe even scared. And she was definitely in a hurry. It seemed like I was going too slow for her when I was ringing up her items. You can tell things like that after you’ve done this job for a while.”

“Of course,” Palmer said and smiled at her. “Is there anything else that you remember?” He would check the gas station security camera footage, but he wanted to see if anything popped up in Melissa’s memory right now.

“Something strange did happen when she was in the store,” Melissa said and leaned forward a little like she was letting Palmer in on the secret. She looked excited, like she couldn’t wait to share this with someone.

“Hi,” a kid said.

Palmer looked across the living room. Beyond a sea of toys scattered across the carpeting stood a two-year-old boy dressed only in a saggy diaper. The kid waved at Palmer and he had a big glistening grin on his face.

“That’s Brent,” Melissa said.

Palmer smiled at the boy and waved back at him. “Hi, Brent,” he said, but then he turned his attention back to Melissa, waiting for her to continue.

“Yeah, I already told the police about Jed being in the store that morning. He came in all the time, almost every morning. Usually for coffee, but sometimes for a donut or a sweet roll.”

Palmer nodded.

“Jed was the one who got killed in the bank robbery.”

Again, Palmer nodded.

“Anyway, he was there that morning. That was the last time I ever saw him. He went across the street to the bank and …” She let her words trail off as she looked away, almost like she could still see him walking away.

“I know this must be difficult for you.”

“Jed was a good man,” Melissa said, choking up a little, and then she miraculously recovered in seconds. “But he came in when that lady and her kid were in the store. She was at the counter and I was ringing her stuff up, and then she started looking around and panicking, like she’d lost her kid or something. But he was right down the aisle where she’d left him. And he was holding hands with Jed.”

“Holding hands with him?”

“Yeah. She ran right over to them and ripped her kid’s hand right out of Jed’s hand, like he was a pervert or something.”

“Do you think Jed grabbed David’s hand?” Palmer asked. He would try to double check with the security footage at the gas station.

“No. I think that kid grabbed Jed’s hand. And the lady was like all over him about it. But the weird thing is that Jed was like … like all stiff for a minute while he was holding the kid’s hand. His eyes … he looked like he was sleepwalking or something, like he wasn’t seeing what was there. You know what I mean?”

Palmer nodded as he scribbled down some notes in his little book.

“And then Jed kind of snapped out of it when he let go of the kid’s hand. It was like he’d just woken up or something. He walked back to the doors and I asked him if he was okay. I even said, ‘You don’t need anything today?’ Or something like that. And he just shook his head and said that he needed to get to the bank. But it was weird. It was like Jed wasn’t himself. Like he looked sick or something.”

“And then he went to the bank?”

“Yeah. He didn’t even get any gas, even though he was parked in front of the pumps. He just got in his truck and drove over to the bank. And then … he …” Melissa’s face crumpled a little again with emotion, on the verge of crying.

“That does sound a little strange,” Palmer said. “Anything else you can tell me?”

Melissa took another loud slurp from her gigantic drink and then she shook her head. “That’s about all I can remember.” She stared at Palmer like she was looking for approval for a job well done.

Palmer stood up and tucked his notebook away inside his suitcoat pocket. “Thanks for talking with me.”

She stood up, beaming. “You think you’re going to catch those guys who robbed the bank?”

“We’re working on it.” Palmer thought of all of the charred bodies at the cabin, and the one man who was still on the loose.

He left Melissa’s apartment and headed back down to his rental sedan. It seemed strange that David would hold a stranger’s hand and then that stranger would go right across the street where a robbery was going to happen only minutes later.

Quite a coincidence.

But Palmer didn’t believe in coincidences.

CHAPTER 42

New Mexico—Navajo Reservation

“I don’t like this,” Cole said as he drove.

They had driven across the border into the Navajo lands hours ago. The sky had turned from gray clouds in Colorado to deep blue sky in New Mexico, but the air was still bone-chillingly cold.

Stella glanced at Cole, but she didn’t respond to his comment. They’d already had this debate twenty minutes ago when Alice had called back.

Right after they crossed the border, Stella called Alice Newcastle, another archaeologist that she knew, a woman in her late fifties who had worked in this area for decades, working at practically every major dig site at one time or another. Over the years Alice had built up a trust with many of the Navajo people, and she even spoke a little Navajo, which was one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn. If anyone knew how to find Joe Blackhorn, it was Alice.

She knew Cole thought this might be a set-up. And she had to admit that it had crossed her mind as well. But what other choices did they have? David needed help from a shaman … and he needed help fast.

Alice had been a little distant on the phone when Stella called her from the now-secure cell phone. The conversation replayed itself in her mind.

“It’s me, Alice. It’s Stella.”

“Stella …”

She could hear the shock in Alice’s voice, the trepidation, the uncertainty of what to say next.

“I know you’ve probably heard some things about me,” Stella said.

“The police have contacted me about you,” Alice practically hissed into the phone, like she was keeping her voice low without being aware of it. “Not just the Tribal Police, either. The FBI, too. They’re looking for you. They’re saying that you might be traveling with a Navajo kid, David Bear, whose parents were murdered.”

“Listen, Alice. You know me. You’ve known me for years.”

Silence on the phone from Alice.

“Everything isn’t what it seems to be, and I can explain everything to you. I just need some help first.”

Alice was still listening. At least she hadn’t hung up.

“I need to find Joe Blackhorn,” Stella said.

“A difficult man to find.”

And Stella knew that was true. She had tried to get in touch with the reclusive Joe Blackhorn many times before, but he was protected by the people he knew. Alice told Stella a few years ago that she had talked to Joe Blackhorn, but she didn’t know where he lived.

“I know,” Stella said. “But I need his help.”

“You need a shaman’s help?”

Stella was getting frustrated, but she had to control the sudden anger and impatience rearing up inside of her. She also had to think of things from Alice’s point of view. “I just need you to put me in touch with someone who can introduce me to him. Someone who can show me how to find him.”

There was another long pause on the phone.

“Alice, please. I need help. David needs help. I swear I can explain everything.”

Alice seemed to be weighing it over in her mind.

“In person,” Stella told Alice. “We’ll meet in person. Just you, me, David, and someone who can help me find Joe Blackhorn.”

“David’s parents were murdered,” Alice said in a cold voice.

“I know,” Stella said. “I told you I can explain what happened.”

“You know who killed them?”

Stella hesitated for a moment, then: “Yes.”

“Then you need to tell the police,” Alice screeched into the phone.

“I will, but I have to protect David first. Will you set up a meeting? Anywhere you want. I can pay this person whatever he or she wants. And I can pay you, too.”

“I don’t need any money,” Alice said. Stella knew that was true. Alice came from a wealthy family—Old World money from oil and mining. They had more money than they could ever spend. Alice could’ve spent her life jet-setting around the world and partying in world capitals, but instead she chose to spend her time out in some of the most remote locations, digging through the dirt for shards of pottery and pieces of bone. Alice’s family’s money gave her the freedom to pursue something much more valuable to her than money.

And then it clicked in Stella’s mind. She could offer Alice something much more valuable to her than money.

“I’ve discovered some things, Alice. Things about the Anasazi.”

“I’m listening.”

“These are major breakthroughs. Things that could rewrite history.” She could tell that Alice was intrigued.

“What is it?”

“Jake Phillips called me down to a dig site … a cave, and we found a city inside that cave.”

“A city?” Alice was getting excited.

“Yes, an undiscovered city. But there was more than that. An even bigger discovery.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to talk about this on the phone. Only in person.”

Alice took her time thinking it over.

“Okay,” Alice finally said. “I’ll call someone I know. It may take a little while, but I’ll call you back as soon as I get a hold of him. Is this number you’re calling from a good one to call you back at?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you so much, Alice. You don’t know how much help this is.”

“I just want you to know that this friend of mine will hear you out, but there’s no guarantee that he will decide to take you to Joe Blackhorn. Is that understood?”

It was the best she could do, Stella realized. “Of course.”

After Stella hung up the phone, she and Cole had had their disagreement about meeting with Alice and whoever else was coming with her.

Then, forty-five minutes later, Alice had called back and told Stella to meet her and her friend at a gas station on the outskirts of Sanostee off of Route 491 in two hours.

Stella told Alice that they would be there and hung up the phone. They could be at that location in an hour.

“I still don’t like this,” Cole said again. “It doesn’t feel right.”

“You don’t like what?” David asked from the back seat of the truck.

Stella spun around and smiled at David. “Look who’s finally awake.”

David smiled back at her. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Number one or number two?” Stella asked.

David held up one finger.

“I’ll pull over,” Cole said.

He slowed the pickup truck down and pulled off of the ribbon of blacktop that ran down through the breathtaking landscape all around them. The scenery looked both beautiful and dangerous at the same time.

Many people thought the southwestern desert was a barren and lifeless place, Stella thought. Many people thought it looked like the dunes of the Sahara or something, but these lands that she’d come to know so well were a beautiful place, a myriad of colors, and layers upon layers of ecosystems making up one giant living world out here.

“It’s cold out there,” Stella told David once the truck had stopped. “Button up your coat.”

Cole got out of the truck, but he left it running. Stella knew he had his nine millimeter on him in his coat pocket and she had hers with her. She got out and opened the back door of the king cab for David who hurried out into the cold.

Stella walked with David away from the truck.

“Over there by that rock,” she told him. “Not too far away.”

He smiled at her and ran across the dirt and sand to the large collection of rocks. He stood in front of the rocks and a moment later he was peeing.

Stella smiled. This almost felt normal, and she wondered if this is what being a mother felt like.

A snapping of brush startled her.

Stella’s hand was in her coat in a flash, her fingers curling around the gun handle.

“Cole,” Stella said in a low voice. She glanced back at the truck and saw that he had his hand inside his coat pocket like he was ready to draw. He was looking up at the endless blue sky where some buzzards were circling overhead.

Another snapping of brush. Louder now and closer.

“David, you almost done?” Stella asked as she walked a few steps closer to him.

“Almost,” he said.

There was something in the brush only a few yards away. More than one of them.

“I think we’ve got a problem,” Cole said from right behind Stella.

CHAPTER 43

New Mexico—Navajo Reservation

Cole had seen the buzzards land on the rocks all around them on both sides of the road. The buzzards just sat there, perched on the rocks, staring at him with no fear. Cole thought he could see intelligence in those eyes.

He glanced up and down the road again; it looked like a black ribbon heading up into the rocky hills. No cars or trucks in sight, no sounds except the cold breeze and the rustling in the brush all around them.

Across the road he saw a coyote come out of the brush and stand at the edge of the road. The animal just stood there, its eyes on Cole the whole time. And in those eyes he saw the same intelligence that he saw in the buzzards’ eyes.

It was the Ancient Enemy inside that coyote … Cole was sure of it. Inside the buzzards, too.

Cole hurried around the back of the pickup truck to Stella, his hand inside his coat, ready to draw his gun.

“I think we’ve got a problem,” he told Stella, startling her.

But then they both looked over at the brush just beyond the rocks and saw the animals coming out slowly: two more coyotes, a jackrabbit, four rattlesnakes slithering forward. All of them were just staring at them, watching them with those same intelligent eyes.

David hurried back to them, staring at the line of animals as he ran into Stella’s arms.

“I think we need to get back to the truck,” Cole said. “We all just need to walk together very slowly.” He had his gun in his hand, his finger on the trigger. “I’ll watch the animals. You two just get back to the truck.”

Cole didn’t look at Stella or David—he kept his eyes on the line of animals, his gun aimed at them. The rattlesnakes had curled up into coils, their rattles shaking. He heard Stella and David running across the sand to the waiting truck, the motor still rumbling.

That thing can turn the truck off, Cole thought. It can destroy the engine in a second if it wants to.

But the truck was still running. Maybe David was blocking that thing’s power somehow. Maybe David was getting stronger with each confrontation with that thing, whether he realized it or not.

Cole backed up to the tailgate of the truck, and then he backed up to the driver’s side corner. He turned his back on the animals from the brush and kept an eye on the coyote that stood motionless across the road. He shifted his eyes to the buzzards perched up on the rocks in the distance as he ran to the driver’s door.

He hopped inside the truck and then closed and locked the doors. He shifted into drive and peeled out of the sand and back onto the road, the rear tires spinning on the pavement for a minute, barking in the air before they caught traction.

“You see that?” Cole said as he sped down the road. “Those animals. That thing … it was in them somehow.”

“We’re okay,” Stella said and looked at Cole. “I think it’s getting more and more afraid of David.”

They locked eyes for a second, and then Cole looked back at the road.

Maybe she was right, Cole thought. Why hadn’t those animals attacked? Why hadn’t the Ancient Enemy shown itself just now? They were isolated out here in the middle of nowhere. What easier time was there?

But maybe it was David holding that thing back. It was still afraid of David, like Stella had just said. Maybe it was more afraid now than it had been in the cabin. More afraid than ever. Was David really getting stronger?

“I’m hungry,” David said from the back seat.

It was such a normal thing for a child to say that Cole almost barked out a laugh and a sob at the same time.

Stella turned around in her seat and handed David a McDonald’s bag. “Here’s a sandwich and some hash browns. They’re cold now, but still good.”

David didn’t complain. He took the bag from her. “Can I have one of the Yoo-hoos in the cooler?” he asked.

“Sure,” Stella told him.

David opened up the cooler in the back seat and cracked the can open.

Stella turned back around and stared out the windshield.

Things had gone somewhat smoothly since they had left the Mountainside Inn behind and the three dead bodies, Cole thought. The Ancient Enemy hadn’t shown itself again until now.

“I still don’t feel right about this meeting,” Cole finally spoke as he drove down the road, his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard it felt like he could’ve snapped it if he wanted to. He couldn’t seem to relax. Not only was there the threat from the Ancient Enemy, but they had the cops to worry about. He couldn’t let the cops take David.

“Alice is the only one I can trust,” Stella said. “There are some other people I could’ve called, but she’s the only one I can trust, the only one who knows people who can find Joe Blackhorn.”

“We’ll get to this gas station early. If anything seems funny …” He let his words hang in the air.

Stella just nodded. She was learning to trust Cole’s instincts. He had developed almost a sixth sense when it came to trouble from the cops. If something was wrong at this gas station they were going to, then she was sure he would be able to tell.

CHAPTER 44

Cody’s Pass, Colorado

Special Agent Palmer drove to the other side of Cody’s Pass, to a neat little neighborhood sprawled up into the foothills of the mountains, which rose up sharply out of the valley. Some of the houses in the neighborhood were perched up several levels above the rest of the development. He drove halfway up into the hills and parked in front of a middle class home.

He got out and walked up a set of steep wooden steps to the front porch where Cassandra and her parents were already gathered and waiting for him. He flashed his badge and ID at them as he walked up and introduced himself.

Cassandra’s parents welcomed him inside their home with nervous smiles and quick little gestures.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Cassandra’s mom asked as she closed the front door. “We just made a fresh pot of coffee.”

Palmer could smell the coffee mixed in with some kind of vanilla-scented candles burning somewhere in the house. He smiled at her. “No thanks.”

The parents sat down close to each other on a loveseat next to the recliner where Cassandra sat. Palmer sat down on the last piece of available furniture—a couch against the wall right underneath some kind of abstract painting. Cassandra’s parents didn’t seem like they had any intention of leaving their teenaged daughter alone with him, so he took his notebook out.

Cassandra looked nervous.

“How are you doing?” Palmer asked and forced a smile on his face—a smile felt like a foreign thing to him these days.

She smiled back. “I’m fine. Thanks.”

The parents seemed to beam with pride at how politely they had trained their daughter.

“No need to be nervous,” Palmer told Cassandra. “I just want to ask you a few questions about a woman and a boy who came through your checkout lane yesterday afternoon. I know you’ve already answered some questions for the police, but I just wanted to ask you a few more. Would that be okay with you?”

She nodded and seemed to be bracing herself.

“Are these people suspects?” Cassandra’s mother asked with a dramatic clutching of hands in front of her, eyes wide with alarm that perhaps her daughter had been within arm’s reach of actual fugitives.

“We don’t know yet,” Palmer answered and looked at Cassandra’s parents who were huddled together on the loveseat.

He turned back to Cassandra. “How did the woman and the child seem to you when you checked them out at the store?”

“Uh … they seemed normal, I guess. The kid was real quiet.”

“Did the woman seem nervous to you? In a hurry? Scared or angry?”

Cassandra thought it over for a moment. “Not angry. But she seemed like she was in a hurry. Maybe nervous. I don’t know. Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. Just give me your honest impressions. That’s all. There aren’t any right or wrong answers here.”

She smiled again—an awkward teenager smile.

“Do you remember what the woman bought when she was in your checkout line?” Palmer asked. The police would have a list from Cassandra’s cash register, but he wanted to hear what she had to say.

“I don’t usually pay a lot of attention to what people buy,” she answered. “But it seemed like this lady was stocking up on stuff. She had toothbrushes … three of them. A small tube of toothpaste. Different kinds of snacks.”

These sounded like the same things Stella and David had bought at the gas station store a few days earlier. The most interesting thing was that she’d purchased three toothbrushes … so the other person still had to be with her and David at the time.

“And she paid with cash?” Palmer asked.

“Yes.”

Palmer already knew that Stella had paid with cash … twenty dollar bills, and the police were comparing the serial numbers with the stolen money from the bank. But Palmer already knew they were going to match. He already knew that Stella and David were traveling with one of the bank robbers for some reason. It didn’t make a lot of sense. Was Stella in on the bank robbery the whole time? Maybe she and the robbers had set up a robbery at the dig site, taking something valuable they wanted from there. And then they had traveled up here to Colorado to rob a bank. Then they turned on their own crew, killing all of them, and then they fled to … Travis’s house to kill his family? And then what? Back here to Cody’s Pass? To a hotel where they murdered even more people, including Travis? And what did the little boy David have to do with all of this? If they had killed all of those scientists and grad students down at the dig site and they wanted to flee as quickly as possible, then why would they go all the way to Iron Springs to kill David’s parents and then abduct him? Stella Weaver didn’t have any kind of criminal record—she was squeaky clean. What would make her go along with all of these gruesome killings so suddenly?

There was something he was missing … large pieces of the puzzle that he couldn’t see yet. It seemed like he had missed something important down in New Mexico, some clue that he had overlooked.

He thought about the Mountainside Inn. Why would Stella, David, and the bank robber she was traveling with stop there? Stella had checked in with a fake name and wrote down fake info for a vehicle. Palmer had checked the footage from the CC cameras in the lobby, but there was a lot of interference on them, and they stopped working altogether before showing exactly how Bruce Goldman and the hotel clerk were killed.

Why would Travis follow Stella and David to the Mountainside Inn? Why were Travis’s mom and sister slaughtered? Why was Travis’s dead father dug up and taken there? Why was he shot in the head? Why did Travis have his mother’s finger with him? Why wasn’t there a trace of DNA evidence at any of the murder scenes? And there was no DNA evidence that Stella or David had ever been inside Nora Conrad’s house—their killers had to have been someone else.

Palmer smiled at Cassandra, getting his mind back on the interview in front of him. “Anything else you can think of that seemed strange to you about them?”

Cassandra shook her head no. “They were bundled up in coats. And they looked … they looked kind of dirty.”

“Dirty?”

She smiled, revealing a mouth full of braces. She glanced at her parents like she was waiting for approval to say something impolite.

Her mother gave her a solemn nod to keep going.

Cassandra looked back at Agent Palmer. “I don’t want to be mean, but they kind of smelled bad.”

Palmer couldn’t help chuckling a little and his laughter seemed to set Cassandra more at ease. “Smelled bad? Like body odor?”

“Yeah. But it was more than that. There was another smell, like smoke. It was kind of faint, but …”

Palmer nodded, the image of the smoldering cabin flashed into his mind for a moment. He jotted down a few notes in his notebook and then smiled at Cassandra. “Thank you. You’ve been a lot of help.”

Cassandra smiled back at him and then she looked at her parents, who got up and walked Palmer to their front door. All three of them watched Palmer walk away from their front porch to his car.

Palmer got inside of his rental car and started it. He sat there for a moment with the engine running as he stared down the street. He was tired and this case was just spinning around in circles in his mind. None of it was making sense. What was he missing?

He thought of Captain Begay down at the Navajo Reservation and his talk of skinwalkers and other ancient legends.

CHAPTER 45

New Mexico—gas station

Cole had staked out the gas station and he felt as good as he could about this meeting. He told Stella that he was going to wait in the pickup truck while she and David went inside to meet with Alice and the man she’d brought with her. He was sure that this friend of Stella’s wasn’t going to talk freely with him sitting there.

She reluctantly agreed.

Cole watched Stella as she turned around in her seat and explained to David that they were going to see a shaman who could help him with his power. But first they needed to find this shaman, and these people were going to help with that.

“My friend is going to ask me some questions about what happened to your parents,” Stella told David. “You have to be ready for that. She may even ask you about it.”

David nodded.

“Just answer whatever you feel comfortable with, okay? If you don’t feel like answering a question or talking about something, you don’t have to.”

David nodded again, and Cole could see that the kid was close to tears.

“I don’t want you to be scared, David,” Stella told him. “You know I would never do anything to hurt you.”

“I know,” David whispered.

Cole’s attention was drawn to two vehicles that had just pulled up at the far end of the gas station parking lot, where the newer diner had been built. A beat-up pickup truck followed a small import car. After the vehicles parked, a skinny woman with gray hair got out of the small car that was covered in dust. A tall, thin man with a long dark ponytail got out of the battered GMC pickup truck that had different colored fenders and big tires on the back.

They walked towards each other, but neither of them smiled at the other, and neither one touched the other in greeting, not even a handshake. And neither one of them looked this way to their truck.

But they know we’re here, Cole thought.

Then the two of them entered the diner through a glass door.

Cole looked at Stella. He hoped that this friend of Stella’s was honest. And maybe she was; maybe she really wanted to help.

But Cole needed to stay ready and on edge; he hadn’t met too many people in his life who were honest and who kept their word.

“You got your gun in case anything goes sideways in there?” Cole asked Stella.

She nodded. “I don’t think anything’s going to go sideways.”

“Not just with them,” Cole reminded her. “If you see anyone else in there who … who doesn’t seem like themselves …”

“I know,” she said.

And he knew she did. The Ancient Enemy was close now—that little incident in the desert with the animals was proof of that.

“I don’t like leaving you alone out here,” she said.

“We don’t really have a choice. You need to get this information and I don’t think they’re going to be so willing to talk with me sitting there.”

Stella nodded.

“I’ll be okay,” Cole assured her. But he thought of others who had been alone and away from David’s presence—they had been taken by that thing. His brother Trevor had been taken by that thing right out of the bathroom window in the cabin.

Maybe David will still be close enough for some kind of protection, Cole thought. And he swore he could see the same thought in Stella’s eyes.

She looked at David. “You ready, kiddo?”

He gave her a small smile and nodded.

Stella got out of the truck and opened the back door for David. He slid out and stood beside her.

“Good luck,” Cole told her.

“Thanks,” she answered and smiled, and then they closed the doors and walked away.

Cole watched them walk towards the building as he pushed the button down to lock the doors.

David’s still close, he thought. Maybe that’s why the animals hadn’t attacked earlier, because David was still close. How close did David have to be to remain under the wing of his protection?

Cole had his nine millimeter tucked down underneath his leg, ready to draw it in a second if he needed to. He had filled up the gas tank an hour ago, when they’d first gotten here to the gas station. He kept the truck running with the windows rolled up and the doors locked.

He thought of the animals that had come out of the desert brush, the buzzards perched on the rocks. So many of them … all of them just watching. That thing was inside all of those animals at the same time.

How powerful was this thing? Did they even have any hope of fighting it? Could David ever be that strong, or was the Ancient Enemy just playing with them right now?

Was that thing all around them all the time? Constantly following them and watching them? Was this thing some kind of god?

Or maybe an alien, as Stella had suggested. That was an even scarier concept.

CHAPTER 46

Navajo Reservation—gas station

Stella walked across the parking lot to the door of the little diner that was attached to the sprawling building of the gas station store. The store had been packed with goods, because the next nearest store and gas station were forty miles away. That made this a busy little gas station. And that was good for her and David. Plenty of other people around.

And good for Alice, she thought.

Alice and the friend she’d brought with her waited at a corner table as far away from everyone else as they could get. Both of them already had bottles of drinks in front of them: a bottle of water for Alice and a can of soda for the Navajo man.

Stella held David’s hand as they walked towards the table.

Alice popped up from her seat and rushed over to hug Stella. Alice was a tall woman, nearly five foot eleven and even though she was stick-thin, she was a lot stronger and tougher than she looked. She was still a pretty woman, but she had aged prematurely from decades of hard work under a brutal sun. But her eyes were alive, like little glittering gems.

“Stella,” she said as she hugged her. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

“Thank you for doing this, Alice,” Stella whispered back.

Alice let Stella go and smiled down at David. “And you must be David.”

David nodded, but he didn’t say anything to her, grabbing Stella’s hand again.

“Come on and sit down,” Alice told them. “Are you guys hungry? Thirsty?”

“No thanks,” Stella said. “We just ate a little while ago, and we have some drinks in our cooler in the truck.”

Alice glanced towards the windows like she could still see the truck … and Cole sitting inside of it.

“He’s helping us,” Stella explained.

Alice just nodded.

“It’s a long story,” she said.

“Yes … a story you promised to tell me about.”

Stella nodded, and she looked at the Navajo man who had remained very still and silent the whole time.

“I’m sorry,” Alice said. “This is Billy Nez.”

Billy offered a hand to Stella and she shook it.

“Ya-tah,” Billy said in greeting.

“Ya-tah-hey,” Stella answered back.

Billy had rough and strong hands, but he shook her hand with the gentlest of grips like he was trying not to hurt her. Then the man turned to David and gave him a smile and offered his hand to him.

David shook the man’s hand and Billy seemed to freeze for a moment, his dark eyes glazing over like he was in an instant trance. It only lasted for a second or two, and maybe Alice hadn’t even noticed, but Stella had. Billy looked the same way the old man in the gas station had looked when David had taken his hand.

He’s seen something, Stella thought. David just showed him something.

“So, it’s time to tell me everything,” Alice said, her focus right on Stella.

“I’m going to tell you,” Stella told Alice, and then she met Billy’s eyes. “But you’re not going to believe me.”

Neither one of them said anything.

“Please don’t interrupt me until I’m finished,” Stella said. “I know all of this is going to seem … outlandish, but just let me get through all of it. Once I’m done, then you’ll know why I need Joe Blackhorn’s help so badly.”

“Fair enough,” Alice said, and she looked at Billy for his blessing.

Billy nodded solemnly.

Stella took a deep breath and began her story.

*

Forty minutes later Alice stared at Stella with a dumbfounded expression.

“And now we’re here,” Stella said, finishing her story. “And we need help. David needs help.”

“I … I don’t know what to say,” Alice said in a low, husky voice, and then she cleared her throat. “It all sounds …”

“I know you don’t believe me,” Stella said. “I understand that. I know you think I’m crazy. But if you could just help me find Joe Blackhorn, if I could just see him for a little while, then I’ll turn myself in and David can go back to his family. And the man we’re traveling with will turn himself in to the police, too.” Stella was telling a lie, but she wasn’t even sure if she was lying. She knew she couldn’t speak for Cole, but she wasn’t sure what she was going to do if she survived all of this. “The only thing I care about right now is getting help for David.”

Stella could feel tears of frustration threatening. She hated being in this position of begging for help.

David grabbed her hand on the table and held it.

Stella couldn’t help the tears now … she wiped away at them. “Sorry.”

Alice’s eyes were tearing up and she reached across the table and took Stella’s other hand and held it for a moment.

Billy just sat there in his chair, his body rigid, his dark eyes unreadable. He hadn’t said a word the entire time when Stella told her story.

“I want to help you,” Alice said and she looked at Billy. The two of them stared at each other for a long moment, almost like they were reading each other’s mind, and then Billy nodded slightly.

“Okay,” Alice said. “We’ll help you. Billy knows how to find Joe Blackhorn, how to get in touch with him. He’ll let him know you’re coming to see him.”

Stella felt a rush of air escape her lungs, the tension draining out of her, and she cried some more. “Thank you, Alice.” She looked at Billy. “And thank you so much, Billy.”

Billy nodded again in response. He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a piece of paper folded up neatly. He slid the folded piece of paper across the table to her. “These are the directions to Joe Blackhorn’s property. He lives far away from here. The closest town would be Many Farms.”

Stella looked down at the folded up piece of paper that looked like it was copy paper for a printer. She glanced around at the others in the diner, but they were all in different areas of the dining area and involved in their own conversations. She reached into her coat pocket slowly, and she could sense the other two tensing slightly.

“Just the payment I promised,” Stella whispered, but she kept her movements slow. She grabbed the envelope of hundred dollar bills out of her coat and then slid the envelope across the table at Billy.

Billy took the envelope in a flash, like a snake reaching out for a mouse in a lightning-quick movement, and then the envelope was gone, tucked safely away inside of Billy’s jean jacket.

Stella looked at the folded paper on the table again and she snatched it up. She didn’t unfold the paper and look at it—that would be rude. She tucked the square of paper down into the pocket of her jeans. “Thank you so much,” she said to Billy.

“I will send someone to speak to Joe Blackhorn,” Billy said. “He will tell Joe Blackhorn that you will be there tonight.”

“Good,” Stella replied. The sooner the better.

“There’s no promise that Joe Blackhorn will help you,” Alice said and then she looked at Billy like she was making sure this was true.

Billy shrugged, but he kept his eyes on Stella. “I cannot speak for Joe Blackhorn. He is his own man. But if you tell him your story, maybe he will listen, and maybe he will help.”

“That’s all I’m asking for,” Stella told them. “Just a chance.”

“It is a long journey,” Billy said. “You will want to begin soon.”

“Yes,” Stella said, standing up.

Alice came around the table and gave Stella another hug, squeezing her hard for a few seconds.

“Thank you for doing this,” Stella whispered to Alice.

“Be careful,” she said and let Stella go. She looked down at David, who was standing up now.

Billy looked at David and nodded at him, but Billy didn’t shake his hand again.

Stella and David left the diner and hurried back out to the pickup truck where Cole was still waiting.

*

After Stella and David were gone, Alice grabbed her coat and looked at Billy. “Thank you for coming with me,” she said. “I know that kind of nonsense must’ve been hard for you to sit through.”

Billy didn’t say anything.

“I need to make that phone call now,” she told Billy as she made her way to the hallway that led to the restrooms.

Outside of the women’s bathroom, Alice got her cell phone out of her purse and dialed the number for the Tribal Police office. “Hello, can I speak to Captain Begay?” she said after a receptionist answered.

Alice waited a few minutes on the phone, and then she heard Captain Begay’s deep gruff voice: “Captain Begay speaking.”

“Hi, this is Alice Newcastle. I spoke to you a few hours ago.”

“Yes,” Begay perked up. He was silent, but she could practically feel the tension from him through the phone, the impatience … the hope.

“It’s done,” Alice said. She couldn’t help feeling bad. She felt like she was betraying a friend, but it was obvious now that Stella was mentally disturbed. She didn’t know which parts of Stella’s story were true, or if any of it was true, but she couldn’t let this continue. Stella needed help … and Stella was right about one thing … David needed help most of all.

“They’re on their way to the destination?” Begay asked.

“Yes. We sent them to a friend’s property and told that friend not to be there. He’s going to leave a note on the door saying that he’ll be back in a few hours and sign it as Joe Blackhorn. Stella, David, and whoever she’s with will be there tonight, within a few hours. I’ll send you the address they’re going to. It’s near Many Farms.”

There were distant clattering noises on the phone; it sounded like Captain Begay was searching for a pen and paper. “Okay. Send the directions to the e-mail I gave you before.”

“Okay,” Alice said.

“Thank you, Alice,” Begay said after he was done. “I know this probably wasn’t easy for you.”

“Just go easy on her,” Alice said.

“Everything will be fine,” Begay told her and he hung up.

Alice pulled up the file on her phone that had the directions and a hand drawn map that Billy had made in it. She wrote out a quick e-mail and attached the file and then sent it to Captain Begay’s e-mail address.

CHAPTER 47

Navajo Reservation—Captain Begay’s office

Captain Begay hung up his phone and checked his e-mail.

The e-mail from Alice was there with an attachment. He read the e-mail, opened up the attachment and looked over the handwritten directions and roughly-drawn map. It was good enough, he supposed. He knew the area this was in. He printed out twenty copies of the map and the directions.

As the copy machine on the other side of the office spit out pages, Begay dialed his lieutenant who had a group of officers waiting on standby. “We’re good to go,” Begay said into the phone. “We’ll meet in half an hour and then head out there.”

Begay looked up at the large map of the Big Reservation on the wall beside him; he was already planning out the best route to this place that Stella thought was Joe Blackhorn’s property. Stella Weaver, David Bear, and whoever they were traveling with would be on their way to the destination now. They would get there and read the note. Hopefully they would wait. Begay and his men would have them boxed in by then.

Nobody was going to get hurt, Begay thought. That was the most important thing. This was going to go smoothly and nobody was going to get hurt. Begay and his men were going to show up in force, box them inside in the canyon, and then the man with them was going to surrender. And after that David would be back with his aunt … he would be back with his family again. It would take a long time for that boy to heal, Begay thought, but the process could at least begin.

Begay got his coat and put it on. He was about to head out to his car, but he hesitated for a moment. He reached into his wallet and took out a business card. He stared at the card for a long moment, not sure if he should do this at this time or not. He could put this off for a while; he could claim that he had gotten wrapped up in the pursuit of Stella and the others.

But he decided to make the call.

Begay picked up the black phone on his desk and dialed the number on the business card. The phone rang four times, then five. Begay was bracing himself for the call to go to voicemail, but then Palmer answered.

“Special Agent Palmer here.”

“It’s Captain Begay from the Navajo Tribal Police,” Begay said into the phone.

“Yes.”

“We’re going to be apprehending Stella Weaver and David Bear soon,” he said.

Silence for a moment.

“They are traveling to a man’s property. They believe it’s the property of a man people claim is a shaman … that’s sort of like a medicine man.”

Palmer breathed out a huff of breath like he was annoyed. “I know what a shaman is. Are they traveling with someone else?” Palmer asked. “A man?”

“Yes,” Begay said. “How did you know?”

“There have been some … some developments up here. She was up here in Colorado at numerous crime scenes, and it seems like they might be traveling with a man who was involved with a bank robbery and several murders.”

“What kind of murders?” Begay asked. “Like the bodies we found here?”

Palmer hesitated on the phone. And it seemed to Begay like Palmer wasn’t sure how much he should tell some lowly Tribal Police officer. Then Palmer sighed and said: “Yeah. They’re a lot like the ones down there. Mutilations.”

“How many?” Begay asked. He was sure he was pushing his luck with Palmer. He wouldn’t normally pry like this, but he felt some kind of strange bond with this FBI agent that he couldn’t explain.

“A lot,” Palmer said. “Five in one location. Three in another. And three in one other place.”

Begay just sighed. “Thanks for the heads up about the man,” he said.

“No problem. I’m coming down there right now. I’m going to be flying in to Farmington as soon as possible.”

Begay nodded again; he already knew that was going to happen.

“Have you notified Agent Klein yet?” Palmer asked.

“Not yet. He’s going to be my next call.”

“Good. Just be careful, captain. This guy Stella and David are with, he’s a real piece of work judging from what I’ve seen so far up here.”

Begay sighed heavily into the phone again. “We’ll take all necessary precautions.”

Palmer hung up and Begay set the phone receiver back down into the cradle gently.

Eleven more bodies up in Colorado. All from one man? That didn’t make any more sense than what had happened down here. Begay thought about this woman and this boy traveling with a possible bank robbery and murder suspect. They had gone up to Colorado and now they had come back down here. Why? Just to go and see Joe Blackhorn? Everyone around here knew that Blackhorn was a shaman … a powerful one, the rumors said. Begay didn’t know the man—he had never met him—but he had heard the stories of the man’s colorful past.

Why were they risking everything to meet with Alice Newcastle just to find Joe Blackhorn? Begay wondered. They’d had plenty of chances to run. They could’ve went anywhere from Colorado. They could’ve even left the U.S. But instead of running, they were going to what they thought was a shaman’s property.

Begay didn’t feel good about this. After the bodies and mutilations he’d seen, and then Palmer’s description of what had happened up in Colorado, this didn’t feel right. He tried not to be a superstitious person, but this felt otherworldly to him, something that was too big for him and his men. Too big for the FBI.

He picked up the phone and dialed the FBI office in Farmington. Moments later he got Klein on the phone and told him what was going on.

“You wait for me!” Klein screamed into the phone. “I’m on my way! Don’t do anything until I get there. You understand me?”

Begay hung the phone up without responding to Klein’s orders, but he felt like throwing it across the room. He hated Klein giving him orders; he hated the fact that murders and other major crimes on the Rez fell under the jurisdiction of the FBI and the government. It was like the whites didn’t believe the Navajo were smart enough to take care of themselves, to solve their own problems.

It was an old argument, one that would never be solved; nothing was ever going to change, so there wasn’t any use in ruminating over it.

Begay grabbed his hat and plopped it down on his head, adjusting it. Then he walked towards the door to gather his men together.

He had no intention of waiting for Agent Klein.

CHAPTER 48

Navajo Reservation

Cole drove the pickup truck down Route 13 around the Lukachukai Mountains. He would connect with another small road and then another one after that. The farther they traveled, the more remote everything became.

The afternoon was giving way to evening, the shadows lengthening, the sun dipping down below the mountains, the air getting even colder.

But within a few hours they should be at this man’s property, this shaman.

Cole still didn’t feel right about this, but he didn’t want to pound the point home again to Stella. He’d made his case already and he wasn’t going to keep doing it. They had made their decision. Like Stella had said, what other choices did they have?

What if they ran? Would that thing just keep following them to the ends of the Earth? Was there a place they could hide from that thing? It was like David was a beacon to the thing, like that thing could always tell where David was going, and it wouldn’t stop until it had someone kill David for it, until the threat of David was gone.

They had eaten a little more from their stash of snacks, but none of them were very hungry.

It was a scary feeling driving to this shaman’s property, but there was also a feeling of hope. Maybe the shaman could finally help them; maybe this shaman could finally explain everything to them.

Cole wondered what he was going to do when all of this was over. But he didn’t like to plan too far ahead. Right now he just wanted to focus on what was in front of him right now, put all of his energy into surviving.

And he needed to stay alert. He still wasn’t sure if they could trust Stella’s friend, and if anything looked shady he wanted to be able to get out of there.

“Shit!” Cole yelled.

Cole slammed on the brakes as two pickup trucks pulled out onto the road from each side. Both vehicles had been hidden behind large rocks and brush, and now they were blocking the road, parked nose-to-nose.

“Hold on!” Cole yelled as the truck slid to a stop on the road, the tires screeching in the cold air.

The evening was approaching quickly, but there was still plenty of light to see the men in the pickup trucks. There were two men each in the cabs of the trucks and two men in the beds of each of the trucks. All of the men in the beds of the trucks were laying low with the barrels of their rifles pointing at them.

“What the hell is this?” Cole muttered. He slammed the pickup truck’s gearshift into reverse and stomped on the gas pedal as he turned around to look behind him.

Two more pickup trucks pulled out from the brush and rocks behind them, parking nose-to-nose in the middle of the road, like the trucks in front of them had done.

They were blocked in.

Cole stomped on the brakes and the truck came to a jarring halt.

Stella looked into the back seat at David. He was scared, holding on to the back of the seat, his fingers dug into the fabric.

“It’s okay,” Stella whispered.

It’s not okay, Cole thought as he sat there with the pickup truck rumbling, options running through his mind.

Could these men be flesh puppets controlled by the Ancient Enemy?

It was possible.

Or had they been double-crossed by Stella’s friend?

That seemed to be a more likely scenario to him.

Cole glanced back in front of them at the men hunkered down in the back of the two trucks aiming their rifles at them.

“You guys need to hold on,” Cole said. “Make sure David has his seatbelt on.”

“What are you going to do?” Stella asked him.

“I’m going to ram them,” he said and looked back at David. “You stay down low, you hear me?”

David nodded, staring at Cole with wide eyes.

“Wait a minute, Cole,” Stella said. “We don’t even know what they want.”

“I think it’s kind of obvious,” Cole said. “Your friend set this up somehow. They want to apprehend us for the cops. Or even worse, enact their own justice for David’s parents.”

Cole gripped the steering wheel. The truck was still in reverse; his foot was still on the brake pedal. He thought the best idea would be to reverse into the trucks behind them, perhaps saving any damage to the front of the truck so it could still run.

“Wait a minute,” Stella said and pointed at the windshield. “Someone’s getting out of the truck.”

Cole looked out the windshield at the tall, thin man walking towards them from his pickup truck. The Native American man showed no fear. Cole recognized the man now. He should’ve recognized the beat-up GMC pickup the man had gotten out of. It was the same man who had met with Stella and David at the gas station diner.

“It’s Billy,” Stella said.

Cole pulled his nine millimeter out of his coat pocket and held it down low in his lap, ready to use it.

“Don’t shoot,” Stella told Cole as she opened the passenger door.

CHAPTER 49

Navajo Reservation—Route 13

“What the hell are you doing?” Cole yelled at Stella as she got out of the truck and stood next to it.

“It’s Billy,” Stella said again. “It’s the guy who was with Alice at the diner. He wants to tell us something.”

Cole looked back out the windshield at the tall Navajo man who stood like a statue in the middle of the road. He had his hands raised slightly in the air in a half-hearted surrendering gesture, and there was something white clutched in one of his hands.

“He has the envelope I gave him,” Stella said, not even looking back inside the truck at Cole. “The one with the money in it.”

Stella started walking towards Billy.

Cole put the truck in park, but he left it running. He looked back at David, who peered out the windshield, his hands cupped over the back of the seats. “Wait here,” Cole told him.

Cole got out of the truck with his gun in his hand.

“You can put your gun away,” Billy said to Cole, his deep voice carrying easily down the road.

Stella, who was now halfway between the front of their pickup truck and Billy, looked back at Cole. “Please put it away,” she said.

Cole glanced back at the two pickup trucks parked nose to nose behind their truck. All of the men were armed, just like the men in the two pickup trucks in front of them. All of them had their rifles aimed at him and Stella. There was no way Cole could fight all of them.

“We don’t want to hurt you,” Billy told Cole as Stella walked a few steps closer towards him. He still had his hands raised in the air.

“What do you want?” Cole asked as he looked back at Billy.

“I want to show you the way to Joe Blackhorn’s property.”

“That’s where we’re going,” Cole yelled back.

Billy gave them a small smile and shook his head no. “I gave you a different set of directions than I gave to Alice.”

Stella stopped in the middle of the road.

“Alice called the police,” Billy said. “She had it planned that way all along. We set it up so you were going to a friend’s property.”

“But it’s not really Joe Blackhorn’s place,” Stella said.

“That’s correct,” Billy said. “The police, and I’m sure the feds, are on their way there right now.”

“Why are you helping us?” Stella asked.

“Before our meeting, I drew up two different maps and sets of directions. I took them both with me. I wanted to hear your story first. We’ve heard stories of what happened to those people at the dig site, including Jim Whitefeather. He was a friend of mine. And now we’ve all heard what happened to that boy’s parents. Some Navajo don’t believe in the legends anymore, and the whites don’t believe in them at all. But there is too much evidence to deny that something is going on right now. I wanted to hear your story first and then I would decide which directions I gave to you. I gave you the directions that led to this spot.”

“So you believe me?” Stella asked.

Cole now realized that the men in the back of the pickup trucks were pointing their weapons away from them and towards the rocks and brush, like they were afraid something might come out of the wilderness.

Like animals, Cole thought. Animals controlled by the Ancient Enemy.

And now Cole heard sounds way out there in the growing darkness; there were animals moving around out there.

“We don’t have much time,” Billy said and lowered his hands. He held out the white envelope to Stella.

“You can have that for helping us,” Stella told him.

“I don’t want this money,” he told her. “It’s blood money, isn’t it?”

Stella couldn’t deny it.

“Take your money back. Inside the envelope is another set of directions. When you get to the end of this road, head north instead of south. Then follow the directions I’ve written down from there. Joe Blackhorn lives very far out in the desert, past Kayenta. But I was not lying when I said that I sent someone to contact him. He knows you are coming. I was also not lying when I said that I cannot be sure if he will agree to help you.”

“I understand,” Stella said as she stood right in front of Billy. She accepted the crumpled up envelope from him. “Thank you for helping us.”

“I’m helping David Bear,” Billy practically spat out. “I’m helping our people.”

Stella nodded like she understood.

Without another word Billy turned around and headed back to his pickup truck.

Stella hurried back to the truck and got in. Cole got in the driver’s side and they slammed the doors shut at the same time. Cole pushed the button down to lock the doors.

They watched out the windows as the trucks all turned around in the road and drove away in two different directions, their taillights growing smaller out the windshield and in the rearview mirror.

Stella opened up the envelope. All the money was still there, but another folded piece of paper was right on top of the hundred dollar bills. She pulled the paper out and unfolded it. It was a lot like the other paper: handwritten directions in neat handwriting and a hand drawn map.

She looked at Cole and then gave him the paper so he could look at it. She opened the glove box and pulled out a map of the Navajo Reservation they had bought at the gas station earlier. She selected a black pen from the center console and marked the route to Joe Blackhorn’s property.

Cole watched Stella trace the route as he put the truck in drive, his foot still on the brake pedal. He glanced out the driver’s side window at the rocks and brush all around them. The land was getting very dark behind them, and the sun was dying behind the jagged mountains in front of them in purple and deep blue hues.

A howl from a coyote sounded from somewhere to their left, somewhere deep in the brush. Then another howl answered. And another one answered that one. It was like they were talking to each other.

“Let’s get going,” Cole said, and he stomped down on the gas pedal.

CHAPTER 50

Navajo Reservation

Special Agent Palmer raced down the road in the night.

He was angry. He had talked to Agent Klein, who was also angry that Captain Begay and his men hadn’t waited for them. And now Begay and his men were at the property that was supposed to be a ruse.

Palmer called Begay’s cell phone again. The last five phone calls had all gone to voicemail and Palmer hadn’t bothered leaving a message. But this time Begay picked up.

“Captain Begay speaking.” He answered the phone officially even though Palmer was sure the captain knew who was calling him.

“Captain Begay,” Palmer snapped. “You were supposed to wait for us.”

“They’re not here,” Begay said, ignoring Palmer’s words and harsh tone.

Palmer sped down the road, the headlights from his black rental car piercing the darkness. According to his GPS he was almost there. He was driving along a road that wound through canyons and led down into a valley below. “What do you mean, they’re not there?”

“They’re not here,” Begay said a little slower like he was talking to someone who couldn’t understand him. “I don’t think they were ever here.”

Palmer wound around a bend in the twisting road and saw the police lights flashing below in the valley. Outside lights illuminated a scattering of structures that looked like trailers and maybe some kind of large barn.

Klein was already there, but Palmer hadn’t called him yet, wanting to talk to Begay first.

“I think either they smelled something rotten here,” Begay said, “or they were tipped off somehow.”

“Tipped off?”

“Maybe by the man who Alice met them with.”

“And who was that?”

“She won’t say,” Begay answered.

“Hold on. I’m here now.”

Palmer parked his car, a cloud of dust rising up all around it. The property was situated in a dale with jagged hills all around it, the largest hill of rock rising up only a few hundred yards behind the three mobile homes grouped together on the property.

Agent Klein marched right up to Palmer as soon as he got out of the car. “I’m reporting Captain Begay,” he said through clenched teeth. “I gave that sonofabitch explicit orders to wait for me.”

Palmer ignored Klein as they walked towards Begay, who stood with two other officers. Other Tribal Police officers were milling around the scene, some of them standing next to their police vehicles.

“So what happened?” Palmer asked Begay, trying to keep his tone professional this time.

“Like I told you, I think they were tipped off.”

“And you can’t get to this guy?” Klein said with a sneer. “You can’t make this Alice person tell you?”

“I can question her,” Begay said.

“Maybe you should tell her that she’s going to be charged with obstruction of justice,” Klein said.

Palmer pulled Begay away from Klein. “Can we talk a minute?”

Klein looked like he’d been slapped in the face and Palmer held up a finger to him, gesturing at him to wait behind.

“Sorry about that,” Palmer muttered as they walked away. “Is Klein always like this?”

Begay just stared at him, offering no information, but his eyes answered the question for Palmer.

“Yeah,” Palmer breathed out. That’s why Klein was stationed out here, and that’s why he’d been here for so long now. “I know you don’t want to lean on this woman …”

“Her name is Alice Newcastle. She’s an archaeologist. She’s been working here for almost thirty years. Very respected in our community by many Navajo.”

Palmer nodded.

“And she’s very wealthy. Her family can afford the best lawyers in the country. And she’s very stubborn and principled.”

“Well, maybe if she realizes that her friend tricked her and Stella and the man she’s with are still on the loose …”

Begay nodded like he’d already thought of that. “I tried that line with her. She is concerned, but it’s still not a good enough reason for her to break her word. I don’t even know where they met Stella at; she won’t say anything. I’ll get my officers to start questioning people, but that could take days, maybe weeks.”

Palmer nodded and sighed heavily again. He had rushed down here and they were back to square one. “What about this guy they’re trying to find … Joe Blackhorn? Where does he live?”

“Not many know.”

Palmer winced. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“The few people who know where Joe Blackhorn lives keep it a secret. Joe Blackhorn doesn’t like to be bothered.”

“But there’s got to be some kind of property records or something.”

“He lives off the grid. People help him. He used to be a professor at Arizona State University years ago. He was kind of famous in those circles, I gather. And then he just stopped his research about fifteen years ago and came back here. No one knows why he changed so suddenly. I heard he cashed in all of the money he made and searched the Rez until he found a place to squat.”

“So he’s just living in a travel trailer or something out in the middle of the desert?”

Begay shook his head no. “More likely he’s living on someone else’s property, someone who’s helping to hide him from everyone else. Probably has his vehicles registered in someone else’s name.”

“God, this is going to be like a needle in a haystack,” Palmer said, wiping a hand through his close-cropped hair.

“Like I said, I’m going to have my people ask around. Maybe someone will talk eventually.” Begay glanced back through the cold darkness to make sure Klein wasn’t coming their way, and then he looked back at Palmer. “I’m more interested in why a woman and a fugitive would risk everything to come back down here to find a shaman.”

Palmer didn’t say anything.

“That doesn’t strike you as odd?”

Of course it did, but Palmer didn’t admit it.

“You still don’t think there are some … some unexplainable things going on here?” Begay asked.

Palmer stared at Begay and then a revelation hit him suddenly. He began to wonder if Begay really knew where Joe Blackhorn lived. He began to wonder if Begay knew someone who knew that information. He began to wonder if Begay really believed in all of this supernatural mumbo-jumbo. He began to wonder if Begay was going to go after Stella and David by himself tomorrow.

CHAPTER 51

Navajo Reservation

The headlights knifed into the cold darkness, barely lighting their way as Cole drove down the rough trail across the hard-packed dirt, following the two ruts in the frozen ground. At least their stolen pickup truck was suitable for this kind of travel with its large knobby tires, high clearance, and tough suspension. Even though the suspension was tough, it wasn’t comfortable—this definitely wasn’t a Lincoln Continental they were traveling in. Each bump and dip rocked the pickup, the frame of the truck creaking and squealing, the cab shaking, the beams of lights from the headlights bouncing around in the darkness in front of them.

Cole gripped the steering wheel tightly, practically wrestling with it as it bucked in his hands. He drove agonizingly slow down the trail, afraid that one false move might bury a tire or, even worse, snap an axle.

Stella looked out at the darkness all around them. It had gotten dark hours ago. The trip down the lonely roads had taken such a long time, but once they got to this trail it was even worse. It seemed like they were traveling forever into the darkness.

Along the way, Stella had seen the shining eyes of the desert animals staring back at them from the darkness. She’d also heard the lonesome howls out there in the distance. It would only be a matter of time before those animals caught up to their truck and trotted alongside of it, the animals gathering, waiting to attack as one.

“How much longer do you think?” Stella asked Cole. She turned around and glanced back at David to see if he was asleep. But he was wide awake. Who could sleep in this rocking truck anyway?

David gave her a wan smile.

“I don’t know,” Cole said. “Maybe you should check the map again.”

Stella turned back around and stared out the windshield. She had checked the hand drawn map Billy had given her several times now. She was sure Cole was going to suggest that her “friend” Billy had given them a fake map to either play a joke on them or lure them out into the middle of nowhere and get them stuck out here.

She didn’t believe that. She couldn’t explain why she trusted Billy, but she did. It felt like he realized the seriousness of this situation and he wouldn’t do all of what he’d done just to play a joke on them. If he’d meant them harm, he could’ve done that when they had blocked the road.

“How’s the gas?” Stella asked.

Cole looked down at the gauges in the instrument panel. He scrunched his face slightly like something was bothering him.

“What is it?” she asked, sitting up a little straighter.

“These gauges … their kind of going crazy.”

Just then the headlights went out, plunging them into complete darkness. A split second later the truck hit a deep rut that sent them up into the air and crashing back down to the ground, like a boat rocking on a wave. The force slung all of them forward against their seatbelts and then rocked them back down to their seats.

“Shit!” Cole yelled as the headlights came back on brighter than ever, then dulled back down to their regular brightness.

But the truck had slowed down almost to a crawl. Cole pressed the gas pedal down and the back tires spun in the dirt.

Stella grabbed at the armrest on the passenger door with one hand and the center console with her other hand, bracing herself for a lurch forward if the truck suddenly jerked free from the rut they were stuck in. “What happened?”

“Tire,” Cole said as he fought to control the steering wheel jumping in his hands.

Stella looked into the back seat at David. He stared back at her with wide eyes. “It’s okay,” she told him.

But it wasn’t okay. How many times had she said that to David? How many times had she told him that everything was okay? How many times had she lied to him now?

Cole stopped the truck, but he kept the motor running.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him again, feeling the panic building up inside of her. “What’s wrong with the tire?” She watched him as he stared at the instrument panel on the dashboard.

“I think one of the front tires came off the rim,” he said as he studied the instrument panel. It reminded Stella of when he had jumped into the driver’s seat of her Suburban, when he and his bank robbery buddies had carjacked her truck on the snowy road in Colorado.

“The rim’s probably bent,” Cole said in a monotone voice, his hands still gripping the steering wheel.

“So we’re stuck?” Stella asked, even though the answer seemed rather apparent.

“Yeah,” Cole answered, his voice practically a whisper.

“Can’t we drive on a flat tire?” she asked. She felt the panic really beginning to mount now. “We’ve got to be close to Blackhorn’s property now. Maybe only a few miles away. Can’t we push the truck a little farther … as much as we can?”

Cole still hadn’t looked at Stella. His eyes were on the headlight beams shooting out into the darkness in front of them. “Normally we could try to drive as far as possible, but these ruts are too deep. This road is too bad.”

We could try, Stella almost said, but she could tell Cole had more to say.

“The tire and rim are the least of our problems right now,” Cole told her and finally looked at her. Then he looked back at the gauges on the dashboard. “The truck’s starting to run hot. The engine’s going to overheat soon.”

“Well, let’s drive as far as we can before it seizes up. Let’s get as far as we can.”

Cole still hadn’t put the truck back into drive. The motor was rumbling, but it was also sputtering like the engine was misfiring.

Stella looked out the windshield at the headlight beams and saw that they were flickering badly now, about to go out.

“Alternator light’s on, too,” Cole said, his voice still monotone like a doctor delivering a terrible diagnosis. “It’s like all the systems are shutting down at the same time.”

Stella didn’t have to ask how or why that was happening. She knew the Ancient Enemy was doing it somehow, just like it had drained all the batteries of the vehicles and killed their phones, radios, and the generators at the dig site. The Ancient Enemy seemed to have some kind of power over electricity … maybe that’s how it operated dead people’s brains and nervous systems, through electrical power. It had drained the battery of her Suburban at the dig site, but then somehow David had brought it back to life enough for them to escape, even though he probably wasn’t aware of how he’d done it. When they got to the cabin, the Ancient Enemy probably destroyed the electrical systems of her Suburban and Tom Gordon’s pickup. But then it had also beaten the engines of both vehicles to pieces with an ax so David couldn’t fix them.

That thing out there could’ve disabled their truck at any time before, but it chose this moment now to strand them out here. It seemed to have been hesitant for some time now, like it had been waiting for the right time to attack … and that time was now.

A flash of movement streaked across the dimming splash of light from their headlights—a coyote darted in front of their truck, disappearing back into the darkness.

Stella stifled a scream, her body tensing up, frozen for a moment.

“I saw it,” Cole said in a low voice.

Their pickup truck’s engine was really sputtering now … dying. The headlight beams were fading even more.

“I’m scared,” David said in a low voice from the back seat.

“We’re going to be okay,” Stella said, telling David that well-worn lie again. She needed to start telling David the truth, and it needed to start right now.

She turned around in her seat and stared at David. “No, I’m sorry, David. We’re not okay. That thing out there has stopped our truck. And now it’s coming for us. And you’re the only one who can fight it. You’re the only one who can stop it.”

David didn’t look so sure about that.

“You have to find the power inside of you. You’ve done it before … you can do it again.”

David just nodded, but he seemed close to tears.

Stella hated yelling at David, but the situation was critical now. The Ancient Enemy had attacked them at the Mountainside Inn, but that was over twenty-four hours ago. It had laid low for a while, waiting for the right time to strike. It had been hesitant, Stella was sure of that, but now it was ready and it had finally struck, disabling their vehicle. And now there wasn’t a group of dead people coming towards their vehicle in the darkness … but there were plenty of animals out there.

Stella turned back around in the passenger seat, looking out the windshield again. “What are we going to do now?” she asked Cole.

He sighed. “We could wait until the morning and then walk.”

“Those animals out there are going to attack soon.”

“They can’t get in here,” Cole said. “And at least in the daytime we can see them to shoot at them. If we try to walk at night then they’ll be on us before we ever see them coming.”

As if answering Cole, a howl from a coyote pierced the night.

And then another howl.

And another.

We’ll freeze to death if we wait in here too long, Stella thought, but she didn’t say it out loud.

The pickup truck was still in park, still rumbling and chugging. The heater was already blowing cold air. The radio was reduced to static. Their cell phone had lost any signal hours ago. The dials of the speedometer, alternator gauge, and gas gauge were spinning wildly back and forth.

Stella looked back out the windshield and her breath stopped for a moment, her body frozen with fear, her skin crawling with dread.

“I see it,” Cole whispered, his words barely heard over the sputtering motor.

In the flickering light of the headlights a horde of snakes, spiders, and scorpions traveled across the two ruts in a wide line like a group of pedestrians crossing a busy city intersection.

“Those spiders and scorpions,” Stella said, fighting for her breath. “They’ll be able to get inside the truck, won’t they?”

CHAPTER 52

Navajo Reservation

“Those spiders and scorpions will be able to get in here!” Stella said again, her voice squealing in panic.

Cole only nodded, swallowing hard, too shocked to speak for a moment.

Stella had seen Cole afraid many times already in the past few days. She’d seen his shock as the reanimated dead attacked them at the cabin, but this seemed to be a new level of trauma for him, a new depth of fear, some subconscious phobia finally tapped.

Stella looked back out through the windshield at the impossible sight. There were hundreds of those creepy-crawly creatures traveling across the ruts in the dirt right in front of their truck in an orderly fashion. And there were probably thousands and thousands more out there in the darkness, all of them summoned from the square miles of desert all around them by the Ancient Enemy. She had worked out here in these deserts for years now; she knew how many snakes and spiders there were.

“They’re going to get inside the truck,” Stella said again, her voice lower this time. “They’re going to get in here and … and attack one of us … and the other one is going to have to watch that person die.” She could imagine her or Cole covered with tarantulas and scorpions until that person panicked enough to bolt outside where the coils of snakes would be waiting, their rattles shaking in unison like the buzzing of cicadas.

No, this was too much.

“David,” Stella said, turning around to look at him.

He was crying. He looked miserable. “I don’t know what to do.”

“You have to fight it,” she told him. She was holding on to the back of her seat and staring at the child who watched her with hopelessness in his dark eyes. She felt the tears slipping out of her own eyes. “You have to try.”

Just then the cab of their pickup truck was lit up with a bright light.

“Headlights!” Cole said, pointing out the windshield.

Stella turned back around and plopped back down in the passenger seat.

A vehicle was speeding towards them down the rutted trail, its headlights washing their vehicle in light.

The lines of snakes, spiders, and scorpions scattered, trying to crawl out of the way of the oncoming truck and rush back into the darkness, but the truck ran many of them over.

The truck slowed down and pulled right up to the front of their truck so that the two trucks were pointed grill to grill, with only a few feet between them. The headlights dimmed down from the high beams to low beams. The truck looked a lot like the pickup truck they were in, only older and more beat up. The interior light flicked on and an old Navajo sat in the driver’s seat. He rolled down the window a little and stuck his arm out into the night, gesturing wildly at them to get into his truck.

“That must be Blackhorn,” Cole said, already reaching for the doorhandle of the driver’s door. “We gotta go!”

“We should all go together,” Stella said. “All of us from the same side.”

“Wait,” David said from the back seat.

Stella was stunned to hear David speak, and she was also surprised at the sound of his voice, it seemed a little stronger than it had ever been before.

They both turned around to look at David. The other truck’s headlights bathed David in light.

“What is it, David?” Stella asked.

“Let me go first,” he said.

Stella was already shaking her head no, ready to dismiss that idea.

“I think he’s right,” Cole said.

“I don’t want him going out there first,” Stella said.

Cole glanced out the windshield at the truck that was so close to them. “Look,” he said, pointing at the truck.

Stella saw that there were already several tarantulas and scorpions clinging to the grill of the truck, crawling up the metal quickly like ants on a mission. One particularly large tarantula clung to one of the headlights, blocking out the light a little.

Stella looked out her passenger window down at the ground, which was lit up from the truck’s headlights, revealing a living carpet of snakes, spiders, scorpions, desert rats, and a vast assortment of insects.

“Blackhorn’s not going to wait there forever!” Cole said. “If we don’t do something soon his truck is going to be covered in those spiders and scorpions. He’ll have to leave.”

David jumped over the back of the front seat, crawling into the front.

“Out the driver’s side,” Cole told David as he scooted over to the middle and let David crawl into the driver’s seat on the other side of him. “That’s the shortest way to the passenger side of Blackhorn’s truck.”

Stella didn’t object this time; she knew David and Cole were right, even though she didn’t like the thought of David going out there first.

“You can do this,” Cole told David as he opened up the driver’s door. Their truck had already stalled and the headlights were out. The keys hung uselessly in the ignition.

David didn’t answer Cole. He didn’t turn around to look at either one of them. He took a deep breath and stuck his foot out into the space, lowering it down towards the dirt.

The critters scurried away from his foot, crawling back into the darkness like David’s foot was a magnet repelling smaller magnets.

“They’re backing away,” Cole said. He glanced back at Stella with an insane smile of disbelief on his face. “He’s making them back away!”

David stepped down onto the dirt beside the truck. The spiders and snakes crawled back into the darkness, keeping ten to twelve feet away, like there was an invisible barrier that they were unwilling to cross.

“Come on,” David said to Cole and Stella without looking at them.

Cole got out of the truck right behind David, and Stella got out behind him. She stood there huddled together with Cole and David.

“We all walk slowly towards the truck,” Cole said. “We stay together.”

They walked slowly and Stella watched the hordes of animals back away even farther into the darkness.

The spiders and scorpions were already falling off of Joe Blackhorn’s truck and dropping to the dirt and then scurrying away.

They were going to make it, Stella thought as they inched closer to the waiting pickup truck.

A coyote howled from the darkness. Then another one. These howls seemed angry. Snakes hissed all around them and their rattles buzzed in the cold night air.

“Almost there,” Cole said.

Stella kept her hands on Cole’s back, just like she’d done when they’d been on the snowmobile. And David was in between them, just like on the snowmobile, but he was still enough protection to keep the animals driven back.

They got to the passenger door. Cole opened it. “You first, Stella,” he said.

She clamored inside the truck into the back seat; Blackhorn’s pickup had a king cab and a back seat like the pickup they’d just been in, only this one didn’t have all the clutter that the other one did.

“You next, kiddo,” Cole told David.

David climbed up into the truck.

Cole looked back at the sea of animals all around him and as soon as David was inside the truck the snakes, spiders, and scorpions shot out of the darkness for him. Coyotes bolted out of the blackness, snarling, eyes practically glowing with fury.

“Cole!” Stella yelled. “Get inside!”

Cole just got inside and slammed the door shut before three coyotes thumped into the passenger door. Joe Blackhorn shifted into reverse and stomped his foot down on the gas pedal without even looking behind them.

The back tires spun for a moment in the rutted dirt, but they grabbed quickly. The truck bumped and creaked as it picked up speed, backing up over animals. They could hear the thumps and crunches as it ran over snakes, insects, spiders, and other small animals that hadn’t gotten out of the way in time.

Joe Blackhorn spun the steering wheel around in his wrinkled hands like an expert racecar driver. They all held on while the truck spun around to head back the way it had come from.

Stella looked out the rear window of the truck. She expected to see the bed of the truck awash with spiders and scorpions, but there wasn’t a single creature there. All of the desert animals stood in a line in the darkness, all of them watching as they drove away.

She turned back around and looked at the front of the truck. David sat in between Cole and the old Navajo man who wore a flannel shirt and a red bandana over his long gray hair that he had tied back in a long braid. His skin was wrinkled and dark, but he looked trim and healthy for an old man.

He turned and looked down at David for a moment before looking back out the windshield. “It’s really you,” he said in a low voice. “It’s like looking at a ghost.”

CHAPTER 53

Joe Blackhorn’s property

“What do you mean by that?” Stella asked. “What do you mean, it’s like looking at a ghost?”

The old Navajo turned around in the driver’s seat and looked at Stella who was leaning forward from the back seat. He gave her a humorless smile. “All in good time. I’m Joe Blackhorn.”

I figured that, she almost said, but stopped herself. This man had just saved their lives. Perhaps she, Cole, and David could’ve walked all the way to Joe Blackhorn’s house in a tight group with all of the snakes, spiders, and other animals following them, but it would’ve only been a matter of time before the animals got to one of them.

“Stella Weaver,” she finally said and offered him a hand.

“Forgive me if I don’t shake,” he told her. “This road … I need to keep both my hands on the wheel.”

“Please do,” Cole said. He nodded at Joe Blackhorn and smiled. “I’m Cole. And this is David.”

“David,” Joe Blackhorn said. “Even the name’s the same.”

“What do you mean by that?” Stella demanded.

“I will tell you everything soon,” he said as he drove. He didn’t seem particularly worried about the horde of animals they’d left behind nor traumatized by what he’d just witnessed … almost like he’d been expecting something like it.

“Did Billy Nez tell you about us, Mr. Blackhorn?” Stella asked, trying a different line of questioning.

“Yes,” he answered. “And please, just call me Joe.”

“Joe,” she said.

“Billy told me that you were looking for help. He told me a little about what had happened at a dig site and …” He hesitated a moment like he wasn’t sure if he should go on. “And what happened to the boy’s parents,” he said in a lower voice.

“You’re going to help us?” Cole asked.

Joe drove for a moment, his truck bouncing around on the rutted road. He drove a lot faster than Cole had dared to drive on this rough road, but he seemed to know where all of the worst bumps and dips were and he navigated around them almost with a sixth sense. “Let’s get you back to the house,” was all he said.

*

Twenty minutes later they drove down a steep decline, and there below, tucked neatly in a narrow valley, was Joe Blackhorn’s home. The headlights from the truck splashed across several structures and the foothills of the ragged mountains rose up sharply right behind the property, like a wall of rock in the darkness. Stands of cottonwoods and junipers flanked the structures on both sides, boxing them in.

Even if the headlights hadn’t spotlighted the buildings, the full moon and the cold cloudless night sky of stars would have been enough light to at least make out what was down there: four main structures, and only one had lights on inside—a singlewide mobile home that looked like it was new back in 1975. A large shed sat a few yards from the end of the trailer. Another building—it looked like it could have been a stable for horses—was set far off from the trailer, with a large corral beside it that was fenced in with a myriad of building materials including wooden posts, wire mesh, and pieces of chain-link fencing. In between the horse barn and corral was an old hogan; it was closer to the foothills, shrouded by trees and shrubs.

Stella recognized the hogan, a traditional building of the Navajo, but this building looked (and felt) abandoned to her, like Joe Blackhorn had left that structure alone for quite some time now.

There was some debris stacked up beside the shed and near the back of the trailer: wood planks, wire mesh, pieces of metal, a few old truck rims, fencing supplies.

A squat wooden structure with a mishmash of plastic and glass panels in it that made it look like some kind of greenhouse stood between the end of the trailer and the horse stables. A metal and wood windmill tower stood behind the trailer about fifteen feet away. The metal blades turned slowly and creaked in the cold air.

There were three old vehicles parked near the nose of the trailer. One of the vehicles, a pickup truck from the 1950’s, was just a rusted hulk sitting on rotting tires. There was another pickup truck that looked very similar to the one they were in. It looked like it could still be drivable, but maybe it was reserved for parts. Parked near the truck was a 1980 AMC Concord, the paint far past faded now. It had been a while since Stella had seen one of those cars.

“Here we are,” Joe said as he parked right beside the other pickup truck and shut off the engine and the headlights.

“Is it … safe?” Cole asked.

Joe looked at his property out through the windshield, and then he looked out through the driver’s window. He looked back at Cole, and then down at David in between them like he was waiting for David’s judgement on this matter.

David just nodded.

“I think it’s going to stay away for a while,” Joe said. “But it won’t stay away for long.”

“So you know what that thing is … the Ancient Enemy?” Cole asked.

“Is that what you call it?” Joe wondered.

“I’ve heard it called the Darkwind,” Stella said from the back seat.

“It’s had many names through the years,” Joe said as he opened his driver’s door and got out.

Cole, David, and Stella got out through the passenger door, all of them looking around, trying to spot any movement in the dark, all of them traumatized by what they had just been through.

A barking startled Stella. She froze as a dark German shepherd mix ran up to them, yapping at them and wagging its tail.

“He’s harmless,” Joe said and then he spoke harshly to the dog in Navajo. The dog came over hesitantly towards Stella, Cole, and David, sniffing at the air, then the dog shadowed Joe as he walked to the steps that led up to the aluminum door that was the front door of his trailer.

Not a particularly sturdy-looking door, Stella thought.

Joe opened the door and the dog rushed inside. He held the door open for Stella. She went in first, followed by David and then Cole.

Stella wasn’t ready for what she saw inside Joe’s trailer. She had expected the messiness of an old man’s bachelor pad, or maybe the traditional décor of many of the Navajo that she’d known over the years. And there was a mixture of those two things; plenty of clutter and plenty of Navajo woven baskets, pottery, and blankets. But the bookcases that filled the corners and wall space in the living room surprised her. The shelves were crammed with science books. There were also pieces of science equipment on the shelves in front of the books. The home was neat and orderly, but a cluttered mix of Navajo culture and modern science.

The black German shepherd rushed right up to David, pawing at him to be petted, his tail wagging.

Joe spoke sharply to the dog in Navajo, and the German shepherd sat back down, but he stared up at David with big brown eyes, panting. “I told him to quit pawing at you,” Joe told David.

“He listens to you?” David asked, smiling.

“Yes,” Joe said, smiling back at David. “I’ve taught him all kinds of tricks.”

“Can I pet him?” David asked.

Joe seemed to think this over for a moment, but then he smiled. “Only if you want a friend for life.”

“I do,” David said and giggled. He dropped down to his knees and petted the dog.

“He really likes you,” Stella said to David.

“What’s his name?” David asked Joe.

“I call him Łizhini.”

“How do you have electricity way out here?” Cole asked Joe. “I didn’t hear a generator running.”

“I have a windmill generator in back,” Joe answered. “I also have some solar panels on the roof I bought a few years back. And there’s a gas-powered generator in the shed in case of an emergency, but the solar panels do a good job of storing up the electricity throughout the day. I also have a well for water with an electric and hand-cranked pump. I have a greenhouse out there and a garden for food. Two horses and a few goats are in the barn way out there, and there are a few chickens that run around here. Totally off the grid, as they say. I still go into town about every month or so for basic supplies like gasoline, flour, sugar, any building supplies I might need.”

David stood back up, but the dog pawed at him again.

Joe looked at David. “You thirsty?”

Stella thought about all of the drinks and food they’d had to leave behind in their stolen pickup truck. At least they still had their guns and the cell phone on them, not that the cell phone was any use way out here in the middle of nowhere.

“Yes, sir,” David answered.

“I’ve got some tea made. I can put some sugar in it for you. Would you like that?”

David nodded. He followed Joe into the kitchen and watched him prepare the tea. The dog followed David and sat down near him, his tail thumping on the linoleum floor.

Cole looked at the flimsy front door like he was expecting something to burst through at any moment.

Stella knew how he felt. Joe Blackhorn seemed awful relaxed after the display of power by the Ancient Enemy that they’d just seen out there. She slipped off her coat and laid it down on the arm of the sofa, folded over gently. Cole took off his gloves and stuffed them into the pockets of his coat and then hung his coat up on a coatrack that looked like it had been constructed from deer antlers.

Stella walked from the couch over to one of the bookshelves near the TV and perused the titles. There were books on physics, astronomy, biology, business, and many books on ancient civilizations and Native American tribes. Stella had read many of the books on Native Americans and ancient cultures. There was also a fair mix of fiction among the books, many of them dog-eared paperbacks: mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, and even some horror.

She picked up an old sextant from one of the shelves, studying it for a moment.

“I’ve collected some old science equipment years ago,” Joe said as he walked back into the living room. David was drinking a glass of tea as he walked over to the couch. He set the glass down carefully on the coffee table that was cluttered with books.

“You want to watch TV?” Joe asked David.

“Yes, please,” he answered.

Joe pulled a blanket down off the back of the couch and fluffed up some pillows for David. “Lay down here,” he said as he turned the TV on. “It’s satellite TV, not the most reliable, but let’s see what we can find on there.” Joe flipped through the channels until he came to an animal show, something about animals on the African plains.

“You two can help yourself to some coffee or tea,” Joe told Stella and Cole as he set the remote control down on the edge of the coffee table. “It’s there in the kitchen if you want it.”

“Thank you,” Stella said. She followed Cole into the kitchen, which was at the front of the trailer. She fixed herself a cup of coffee. The coffee smelled strong, and she thought that both of them might need it.

After David was settled in the couch, tucked down into the blanket and stretched out, his shoes on the floor beside him and the dog on the floor right beside him, Joe came into the kitchen. He took a bowl of what looked like loose herbs and lit the concoction with a lighter. A pungent but not unpleasant smell came from the bowl. He took the smoking bowl and a large eagle feather to the front door and waved both of them slowly over the door as he chanted under his breath. The chanting sounded like a mixture of talking and singing.

“You think that’s going to work?” Cole asked.

Joe walked back into the kitchen and set the burning bowl of herbs back on the counter near the coffee pot. He slid the eagle feather back into a hook over the sink. “It can’t hurt,” he said as he turned around to look at Cole. “I’ve been performing The Enemy Way ceremony for the last few days.”

“What’s that?” Cole asked.

“It’s a ceremony to ward off evil spirits, ghosts, and demons,” Stella told Cole. “It’s the opposite of the healing ceremony called The Blessing Way.”

Joe just nodded and stared at her. “I could feel something out of balance for at least a week now. A disharmony in nature … an evil that was approaching.”

“Is that how you knew we were out there?” Cole asked.

“Billy Nez sent a friend of ours to come see me not too long ago. He told me what happened to …” Joe glanced into the living room at David, and then he looked back at them and continued in a low voice. “He told me what happened to David’s parents and what happened at the dig site. He asked if I could help. I told him I would do what I could. So I knew you were coming tonight. When you didn’t get here …” He let his words trail off.

Stella crept back into the living room and looked at David. The German shepherd looked up at her from the floor, watching her.

David looked like he was already asleep, breathing deeply. He was so exhausted, so traumatized by what had happened so far. He might be the key to their survival, to many people’s survival, but he was still just a kid who got tired, a kid who couldn’t stay up for two days straight like she and Cole could. He needed some more sleep. He needed to rebuild his strength … and rebuild his power, wherever that came from.

Stella walked back towards the kitchen and stopped and looked at another piece of science equipment.

“I used to be a scientist,” Joe said as if Stella had asked a question. “A theoretical physicist.”

“I remember someone telling me that,” Stella said, joining them in the kitchen.

Joe gestured at the small table and chairs in the kitchen. “Please … sit.”

Cole sat down near the wall with his hands wrapped around his steaming cup of coffee. Joe sat at the head of the table facing towards the living room, and Stella sat down on the other side of the table.

“I’m sure you’ve heard stories and rumors about me,” Joe said to Stella.

“Yes. I heard you were a scientist, but then you gave it all up to come back here to become a medicine man.”

Joe nodded. “I came back here for a certain reason.”

CHAPTER 54

Joe Blackhorn’s home

“When I was young,” Joe Blackhorn said, “the Diné culture was drilled into me. I resisted it; I knew there was a huge world outside the Rez and I wanted to explore it. So many of my family, especially the elders, looked at me like I was a traitor to my people for wanting to leave, like I was some selfish bastard who was willing to turn my back on my people and their ways. They promised me that I would only get hurt if I went out there into the white man’s world and became indoctrinated into the white man’s ways.”

Joe took a sip of his tea, thinking for a moment.

Stella glanced at Cole. She could see he was impatient to find out what they were going to do about the Ancient Enemy roaming around out there in the darkness somewhere, but she didn’t rush Joe Blackhorn.

“I had tired of what I called the mumbo-jumbo of my culture,” Joe continued, “of the fear and suspicion they lived with, and the depression and apathy I sometimes saw. But I was young then. I was seeing everything through a young man’s eyes … a selfish young man’s eyes. I got a scholarship from the government to go to college, some kind of program to help Native Americans or something, and I enrolled at Arizona State.”

“I went to Arizona State,” Stella said.

Joe just nodded, but he didn’t look very impressed with the coincidence. “I think I was there a few decades before you were. And it was a different time then. People weren’t as tolerant to other cultures as they are now. But I toughed it out. I learned and I got a degree in quantum physics and a minor degree in molecular biology. Of course I explored other sciences while at college and afterwards, but I wanted to learn how things worked. There was so much I wanted to learn, and I sought it all out.”

He paused for a moment, taking another sip of his strong tea, and then he continued. “After college I worked for a research company in Phoenix. But I learned rather quickly that sometimes science can be a whore sold to the highest bidder. I began to realize that as a scientist I didn’t work on whatever project I wanted to … many times research projects were funded by either the government or large corporations. And believe me, they expect certain results when they’re shelling out the money; they expect data to be skewed their way. You learn to play along with their rules or you get thrown out of their private club. You don’t buck the system or you get ridiculed. You don’t ask questions, you just accept their beliefs like dogma. I began to realize that the pursuit of knowledge of new truths wasn’t cultivated like I thought it would be. I had this fantasy of scientists discovering things like the great scientists of the past had done: Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Plank, Einstein—scientists who discovered things for the good of all humans, scientists who sought out the truth.”

They were all quiet for a moment. Stella looked at Cole who grinned sheepishly at her. “I’m afraid this is a little over my head,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Joe said. “I’m going off on one of my little tangents about the scientific community.”

“No,” Stella said. “I understand completely. I’ve run into roadblocks along the way in my career. I’ve tried to challenge preexisting notions about archaeology, and I’ve been met with the same skepticism and sometimes outright contempt for even daring to challenge the status quo. I’ve been laughed at and even threatened. I’ve always believed there were different reasons for the disappearance of ancient peoples than scientists were proposing; the disappearances of the Olmec, the Inca, the Maya … and the Anasazi.”

“And now you believe you’ve found an answer to your theories?” Joe asked.

“Unfortunately,” Stella answered. “And this is a truth I don’t want to share with the world.”

“I’ve learned over the years that some secrets are kept from people for their own good,” Joe said. “I’ve learned that if many people knew some of these truths, then those truths would shatter their perception of what the world around them is really like.”

Joe sighed and shrugged like none of it mattered anymore. He took another sip of his strong tea. “The more I learned about physics,” Joe continued while still looking down at his cup of tea, “the more I realized that there are so many things we don’t know about, even if the scientific community pretends that it does. What is matter built of? Why do the smallest particles blink in and out of existence constantly?”

“Is that true?” Cole asked.

Joe nodded.

Cole looked at Stella for her opinion. She nodded at him, agreeing with Joe.

“Atoms make up all matter,” Joe said.

Cole nodded, indicating that he knew at least that much.

“Well, atoms are made up of even smaller particles: protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks, neutrinos, photons, etcetera. But when we study some of these smallest particles, they are here one moment, then gone, then back again. This world around us that seems so solid is made up of all of these tiny particles that are here and then not here and then here again.”

Cole looked a little queasy at the prospect of that.

“This gives the theory of different dimensions plausibility,” Stella said.

“Exactly,” Joe said, coming to life a little, getting a little more excited. He seemed to like having someone to talk about science with. Even though he claimed to loathe the politics of it, he seemed passionate about pure science and discovery. “The idea of different dimensions used to be science fiction, but now it’s almost universally seen as science fact.”

“Different dimensions?” Cole asked. “Like where that thing out there comes from?”

Joe remained silent.

“Where did this thing come from?” Stella asked Joe.

“I don’t know,” Joe finally answered. “I can admit when I don’t know something, unlike many scientists. I believe the Darkwind could be from a different dimension or even an alien. I have my theories about it.”

“What are your theories?” Stella pressed.

Joe didn’t answer right away. He leaned his head back a little and sighed, looking up at the ceiling for a moment like he was lost in thought. “After I saw the corruption of science, the weaponization of it sometimes, I yearned to come back home. I yearned for the stories of my people, of my land, the place where I felt at home. Now, some of those stories told by elders that I had scoffed at before didn’t sound so ridiculous to me after learning about the disappearing particles, the Big Bang, the expanding universe, and all of the other things I was forced to accept as scientific truth. I came back and became a yataalii, a medicine man. I learned from an uncle and studied as hard as I ever had in college. I learned that this world we live in isn’t the only world there is. There are other worlds all around us, intertwined with us … scientists call these different dimensions. Many scientists believe there are at least eleven different dimensions, and some believe in an infinite amount. Most of the time these worlds are separate from ours, and the barriers between the worlds are strong. But sometimes, under the right conditions, doorways in these barriers can be opened. And there are people, those who are born with certain powers, who can open these doorways whether they realize it or not.”

“People like David.”

“Yes,” Joe said. “Like David.”

“But David doesn’t realize this yet,” Stella said. “He doesn’t fully understand the power he has.”

“David could be causing this, too,” Cole said. “Isn’t that right?”

Stella glared at Cole—she didn’t like that line of thought from him that he seemed to be stuck on.

“In a way,” Joe answered. “Maybe he’s helping to open a doorway for the Darkwind.”

“But not controlling it,” Cole said.

“Not really. But in a way they might be controlling each other, feeding off each other’s energy, driving the other for a while.”

Joe took another sip of his tea and sighed. “I believe that in these other worlds, these other dimensions, there are monsters there—true shapeshifters, true demons, the things we see in the shadowy corners of our nightmares. I even believe that some of us catch a glimpse of these monsters in our nightmares, when the barriers between our world and their worlds are the thinnest and the weakest.”

Joe looked at Cole, then at Stella. “You ever have a nightmare that you woke up from that scared you so badly, but you didn’t know why? Your heart is pounding in your chest, your skin covered with sweat. You’re tense, ready to run. You try to remember the dream but all you get are fragments of it. Maybe you hear the voice of the monsters in your mind, a scrambled and garbled message, like a thousand words mixed together, like a thousand whispers. But for a moment in your dream, you understood those voices, you understood those ancient words, and you understood how everything in the universe worked, how it all fits together.”

Stella felt her skin crawl at the thought of it.

“But then the rational mind takes over,” Joe said and smiled a humorless grin. He took a sip of his tea.

The wind howled outside the trailer, a strong gust rocking it just a bit.

That’s not the wind, Stella’s mind whispered. It’s that thing out there screaming at us in frustration, calling us, threatening us.

“The rational mind protects you,” Joe said. “It’s designed to protect you, to shut down the memories of your glimpse into their world. There are weak spots between our world and so many other worlds … their world. The Hopi used to call these dimensional portals sky holes. And beyond those portals was a dark world they called ‘the ocean of pitch.’ I call them weak spots, and I think these ancient things can get through sometimes when those doors are opened.”

“And someone like David can open the door,” Cole said.

“David has already opened the door.”

“Can he close it again?” Stella asked.

“I hope so,” Joe muttered. “Only he knows how to close it, even though he may not realize it yet.”

The wind shrieked outside again, a blast of it rocking the trailer. They were all quiet, all of them looking into the living room at the front door.

David was still asleep, but the dog had raised his head up, a whimper caught in his throat.

“Tell me what has happened to you so far,” Joe said to Stella.

CHAPTER 55

Joe Blackhorn’s trailer

Stella made another cup of coffee and sat back down at the table.

She began telling Joe everything that had happened. She told him about Jake Phillips calling her down to the dig site with the great discovery he’d made. She told him that after a few days David wandered into camp near the mouth of the cave. Stella had been the one who had found him, and she’d seen the bloodstains on his hands and face.

She told Joe that Jim Whitefeather seemed to be scared of David, but he agreed to go and get the police. He left. But then his dead body was outside, slumped up against a tree … his eyes gone. Then he disappeared, and then he came back—only he wasn’t himself anymore. He asked for things … and all of it was leading up to sacrificing David.

She told Joe about how she escaped from that place after Jake sliced his own throat. She told Joe about her reckless journey north up into the snowy mountains of Colorado. She told him about what happened in the gas station, and then being carjacked by Cole and his crew.

Joe looked at Cole in a new light now, but Stella continued on. Joe had just preached about how much he valued the truth in science, and she wasn’t going to lie to him now about Cole. She told him how Cole had only been there with the bank robbers to try to save his brother from Frank, to get him paid back so he could get Trevor out of Frank’s crew.

She told him about what had happened at the cabin, how Frank was taken in the middle of the night. And then the others were taken one by one. She told him about their escape on the snowmobile and what had happened at the hotel. She told him about their journey back down here to the Navajo Reservation to find him, to find someone who could help David, someone who could teach David to fight back against this thing.

Joe had remained silent during Stella’s recounting of what had happened. He finally nodded. “The bodies at the dig site have been discovered,” he said. “And David’s parents.”

Stella felt like crying. She’d heard the same thing from Alice. She had dared to believe that maybe a few of the archaeologists at the dig site had made it, but deep down she knew it wasn’t true.

“They were all slaughtered,” Joe said. “Details aren’t being released, but people talk. The police and FBI are baffled by what has happened.”

Stella nodded.

“So what do you think that thing is?” Cole asked. “I know you said it comes from another dimension, but what is it?”

“I don’t know,” Joe said. “There’s a story in our culture of the Star People who came down from the skies and born the first man and first woman. It’s not too different from the Adam and Eve story in the Bible. In fact, there are more similarities between religions around the world than people care to admit, similarities in their origin stories, similar tales of great floods, of prophets coming to preach to them, so many similarities even though so much land, sometimes even continents and oceans, divided all of these cultures for a millennia.”

“So you think this thing might be an alien from outer space?” Cole asked, trying to get Joe back on track.

Joe shrugged. “Alien, yes. From outer space? I don’t know. Maybe it’s an alien from its own world, its own dimension. Maybe it lives on an alternate Earth where its kind is as normal as our animal and plant life are to us. But their world is so fundamentally and physically different from our world that it would drive us insane if we stared at it too long.”

“So it’s an alien in the truest sense of the word,” Stella said. “A lifeform that’s strange to us, completely foreign.”

“Yes.”

“You said that this has happened many times before,” Stella said. “You mean like with the Anasazi? Like how they disappeared?”

“Yes. But even more recent than that. I believe the Darkwind slips through every so many years … every one hundred and twenty years to be exact.”

“So it sleeps for a while and then it wakes up,” Cole said.

“I don’t think it’s quite that simple.”

“Then what?”

“I think it has something to do with people like David.”

“Why do you think the time span is a hundred and twenty years?” Stella asked. “That seems like a pretty specific number.”

Cole didn’t give Joe a chance to answer. “When we were driving here, you said that looking at David was like looking at a ghost.”

Stella’s eyes widened with the memory. “That’s right. You said even his name is the same. What did you mean by that?”

Joe nodded. “I need to show you something that you may not believe.”

CHAPTER 56

Joe Blackhorn’s trailer

Joe Blackhorn said he wanted to show them something they wouldn’t believe, but Stella was sure that after the things she’d seen, after what she’d been through, she might believe just about anything now.

Joe got up from the table and stood there. “I had to search through the spare bedroom for it.” He smiled at them. “The spare bedroom is my storage room now, so I’m sorry that all I can offer you is the living room to sleep.”

“That’s fine with us,” Cole said.

Stella and Cole’s eyes met; she could read his thoughts—if we can sleep at all.

“It would probably be a good idea if we all slept in the same room anyway,” Cole suggested as he looked back at Joe.

Joe nodded like that was a good idea, one he’d already thought of. “I knew you were coming,” Joe said. “And I wanted to find this folder to show you. It has some information in it that I’ve collected over the years.” He shook his head in frustration and smiled at them again. “It would be easier to show you.” He held up a finger, indicating that he’d be right back.

Stella turned around in her kitchen chair and watched Joe as he walked into the living room. Her eyes shifted to David for a moment, making sure he was still asleep. The dog lifted his head a little as Joe walked through the living room, but he made no move from the couch to follow his master.

Joe picked up the remote control to the TV and turned the volume all the way down, but he left the TV on. Then he went down the hallway to the back of the trailer.

Stella looked back at Cole. He sipped his coffee. He looked exhausted; the days of shock and lack of sleep were adding up to much more than either one of them could take. The idea of all of those spiders, snakes, scorpions, rats, and insects that had surrounded their truck ran through her mind again. She could imagine all of those creepy-crawly creatures making the journey down the bumpy trail to this little valley, then standing on the ridge like an army, waiting to invade the trailer. A shiver ran through her.

Her mind felt like it was going to snap. She didn’t feel like herself anymore, and she hadn’t felt real for a while now. Talking a little bit about science tonight had occupied her mind for a short time, taking her away from this nightmare, but not for long. Part of her just wanted all of this to be over with and part of her even welcomed the dark, comforting embrace of death, of the nothingness to wrap around her and take her away.

But she knew that the Ancient Enemy would never let death envelope her. The Ancient Enemy would keep her alive … it would let her suffer as it used her body as a puppet.

She glanced at Cole again. He’d been such a surprise to her. He’d saved them at the hotel in Colorado even though she and David had run out on him. She couldn’t help feeling attracted to him in some odd way, a way she’d never been attracted to a man before. In the short time they had known each other, they’d been through more trials and tribulations, more loss and fear, than most couples go through in a lifetime. She knew he felt something for her, too.

Why had Cole stayed with them and helped them? Maybe he was trying to prove his goodness to her, maybe this was his way of atoning for his past sins, maybe it was all about revenge for his brother’s death. Maybe revenge fueled a man like Cole more than fear or even love could.

Stella knew she loved Cole in a way … a deep love of two people who had walked through hell together. It was hard to explain. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever really loved a man before, but she knew she loved Cole in a strange way. She’d had her flings in high school and in college, but she’d never let herself get too close to anyone because her career had been her driving motivation in her life. She figured once she got out into the field, once she made some great discoveries and published papers and wrote some books, then she would have time for a husband, for a family … time for love.

But the years had slipped by quickly with no real relationships … and no real discoveries out in the field, either. She’d had an off and on again relationship with Jake Phillips, mostly off. And when he’d called her about his great discovery in the cave, she couldn’t help wondering if it was just a ploy to get her out there and together with him. Maybe she’d been too jealous of Jake to get close to him. He had made some discoveries, written some books, published some papers, secured some grants … all the things that she had wanted to do.

But it hadn’t been a ploy to get her down there with him. Jake had really discovered something amazing—an entire city built deep inside a cave. But the most incredible thing was the collection of tablets with the ancient writing carved into them.

Her life had changed when she went down to that dig site. From the discovery of Anasazi writing, to David showing up, to the Ancient Enemy pursuing them … everything had changed. She didn’t think about publishing papers or writing books anymore. Now all she thought about was protecting David and surviving.

Jake had changed, too. He had changed into an animal that last night at the dig site, ready to agree with the others, ready to sacrifice David to that thing out there. And then that night when she had run away with David, she watched Jake rush towards her with the hunting knife. He said he only wanted to give it what it wanted, but she knew he wouldn’t hesitate to kill her, too.

And then Jake’s eyes had cleared at the last moment, like he’d woken up from a dream. He stood out there in that scrub brush next to the trailer, out there in that cold night, in that cold wind with the coppery smell of blood on it. She liked to believe that in that last moment Jake had realized the animal he had become, and now she understood the nobility of his actions as he’d ended his life, and maybe how he was disgusted with his own cowardice. Then she watched him cut his own throat.

But Cole had never even thought about sacrificing David to that thing out there. He had even killed Jose to save David. Maybe Cole was smart enough to know that the Ancient Enemy would never let them go if David was killed. Maybe Cole knew they would be even more vulnerable than ever. Maybe he had been using David as a shield. But once they got away from the cabin, he could have run so many times. And he didn’t need to come after them after they had run out on him at the Mountainside Inn. He had already been in Bruce the salesman’s SUV by then with the engine running—he could have just left the parking lot. But he hadn’t, and she thought she might love him for that, too.

Cole touched her hand.

Stella looked at him. He smiled at her like he’d been reading her thoughts.

Joe came back from down the hall into the living room. His footsteps were so light, he hardly made a sound on the old floorboards of his trailer. He held what looked like a three-ring binder a kid might take to school. He entered the kitchen and sat back down at the head of the table.

On closer inspection, Stella realized that the binder was actually a cheap photo album with a dark vinyl cover. Joe opened it up and she saw news clippings from magazines and newspapers carefully positioned behind the clear plastic covering the thick white pages. There were also internet printouts that had been cut to size to fit the pages. There were articles and photos and also many pages of notebook paper in between the white stiff pages of articles and photos; the notebook paper was filled with small, neat handwriting.

Joe flipped through the pages, looking for something. “What is happening now,” Joe said as he flipped through the book, “what is happening to David … it has happened before.” He looked up at Stella, and then at Cole. He left the book open, apparently having found what he’d been looking for. “I don’t have proof of every occurrence in the past, but I have enough to recognize a pattern.”

He still hadn’t shoved the book Stella’s way, but she could see the open pages and she saw what looked like three articles and photos that had been cut out from internet printouts and newspapers, all situated neatly under the clear plastic sheet. On the opposite page was a piece of notebook paper secured in the three-ring binder. The notebook paper was filled with small, neat handwriting.

Joe was still looking at them, his hands clutching the edges of the photo album protectively. “In September of 1891, something like this happened not too far from here in a town, a settlement really. A lawman and bounty hunter named Jed Cartwright apprehended a fugitive, a half-Navajo named Red Moon, who was wanted for twenty murders along with robbery, horse thievery, and various other crimes. Jed and his partner, a man only listed as Roscoe, and a younger man named Stephen Dobbs, caught Red Moon in the northwestern corner of Arizona and they were taking him back to Smith Junction.”

Joe sighed, pausing a moment. “Jed never showed up at Smith Junction. The story goes that somehow between where Jed and his men had apprehended Red Moon and Smith Junction, they were jumped by a band of Navajo pretending to be skinwalkers. Roscoe and Dobbs were killed … mutilated, and Jed made it to a ranch where he found a whole family slaughtered … the only survivor was a young boy. A boy named David.”

Joe slid the photo album across the table to Stella. She stared at the grainy black and white photograph of a boy who could’ve been David’s twin. There were other people in the photo with the boy.

“That’s most likely David’s family,” Joe said. “His mother, father, and older brother.”

Stella looked at Joe. “This is … he looks just like …”

“Now you understand my reaction when I saw David.”

Stella slid the photo album across the table so Cole could see the photo. He stared down at the photo for a long moment, and then he looked back at Stella. “This looks an awful lot like David,” he agreed. “But it could still be a coincidence. I’ve had people come up to me before and swear I was someone else.”

Joe nodded. “Yes, I thought of that. But it’s the rest of the story that might sound very familiar. I wrote it down, piecing it together from various sources.”

“What’s the story?” Stella asked.

“When Jed Cartwright got to the ranch and found the family slaughtered, he took the boy with him. They took two horses and began to ride to Smith Junction. But they didn’t make it all the way there. They stopped in a small town along the way, seeking shelter from a sandstorm. It wasn’t long before the members of that town were wiped out.”

“Did the boy live?” Stella asked. “Did he survive?”

Joe shrugged. “No one knows. Jed never turned his bounty in and the slaughter in that town was attributed to either a rogue band of Apache or a part of Red Moon’s gang seeking retribution.”

“But you said there was more,” Stella reminded him.

Cole pushed the photo album back to Joe.

“There’s another account,” Joe said. “Not too much information on it, but about a hundred and twenty years before that, in 1771, a whole village was wiped out. The people were slaughtered, mutilated in the most horrendous way. I have a few clippings of people telling their story, but there are no actual newspaper accounts of it like there is with what happened in 1891. And there are stories of similar happenings a hundred and twenty years before the 1771 event, all the way back to the late twelve hundreds.”

“When the Anasazi disappeared,” Stella said. “When they had supposedly walked away from the cities they had built into the sides of cliffs.”

“Yes,” Joe said.

“Archaeologists like to give many reasons why the Anasazi walked away from those cities,” Stella said. “They cite conflicts with the Spanish explorers, but there was no record of the Spanish ever reaching this far inland before 1300. Other tribes attacking them doesn’t make sense to me because the Anasazi were the most sophisticated and advanced culture at that time in the area. Some archaeologists cite drought and weather changes … but if that’s true, then why did they head south into the Arizona and New Mexico deserts, where the drought could be worse? Some archaeologists say inner conflicts destroyed the Anasazi because of the evidence at these cities of mass killings and cannibalism.”

“And of course when scientists can’t figure out what happened to an ancient culture, they always cite religious reasons,” Joe said. “Why were people sacrificed in the Maya culture? We don’t know. Must’ve been religious reasons. Why were those gigantic designs drawn on the Nazca plains in South America? We don’t know. Must’ve been religious reasons.”

“But the killings and cannibalism at the Anasazi sites,” Stella said, getting Joe back on track. “What if those people were told to kill and mutilate? What if a dead person had been sent back as a messenger, demanding things until they gave up what the Ancient Enemy truly wanted?”

“Someone like David,” Joe said.

“And if they sacrificed someone like David,” Stella continued quickly, “then they were completely vulnerable to the Ancient Enemy.”

Joe nodded and sighed.

“So we know there’s a cycle,” Cole said. “We believe there has been at least one boy like David a hundred and twenty years ago, and other similar instances going all the way back to when the Anasazi disappeared. We know the Ancient Enemy or Darkwind or whatever, is most likely some kind of alien creature that we can’t possibly understand, a creature that slips through from its dimension into ours with the help of a true shaman like David, a true shaman that can hurt it, possibly destroy it, so the Ancient Enemy must force someone to kill David before he grows up and becomes powerful enough to kill it or send it back. We know all of that, but what do we do now?”

Stella and Joe looked at Cole, and then Stella looked to Joe for the answer.

“I have been preparing,” Joe said. “I have been praying very hard as I performed The Enemy Way ceremony. I know that I must give David a crash course in medicine.” He looked at Stella. “You said when you were at the cabin, David wrote down symbols … ancient writing.”

“Yes,” Stella answered. “I don’t have the notebook with me; it burned up in the cabin. But I recognized the symbols as the written language of the Anasazi—they were the same symbols I saw on the tablets that Jake and I got from the dig site, buried deep in that cave where we found a city buried inside.”

Joe huffed in disappointment. He looked away like he was in deep thought for a moment. And then he looked back at Stella. “Have you ever asked yourself why David showed up to you where he did? Why he came all the way to your dig site?”

CHAPTER 57

Joe Blackhorn’s trailer

“Of course I’ve wondered why he came there,” Stella answered. “I never knew how he found us or why. I never knew where he came from. He would barely talk to me. I figured something traumatic had happened to him. Maybe a car accident or something. Like I told you earlier, we sent a man named Jim Whitefeather to go for help … but he came back as a messenger for the Ancient Enemy, asking for things from us. Later, David eventually told me that his parents weren’t here anymore and I assumed they were dead, only by then I knew their deaths hadn’t been an accident … the Ancient Enemy had gotten them. I could never get much more out of David. But now you say he lived with his parents in Iron Springs. I know where that is, and it’s pretty far away from the dig site. A lot of treacherous walking to get to us.”

Joe nodded solemnly. “Yes. And David didn’t seek out help in Iron Springs, or at any of the ranches along the way. He went straight to you … or I should say straight to the dig site.”

It was dawning on Stella suddenly. “The dig site … he was drawn to it.”

“I believe so,” Joe said. “Whether he ever realized it or not, I think it was a place of safety for him.”

“And this dig site is where you found samples of the Anasazi writing,” Cole said.

“Yes,” Stella answered, the word coming out as a whisper as she thought back to it. “It was a huge discovery; the first collection of writings from the Anasazi culture. If those writings could be deciphered, then the story of the Anasazi could finally be told, perhaps even the mystery of why they had abandoned so many cities finally solved. Finding those writings was like finding the hieroglyphics in the Egyptian ruins. Like finding the Rosetta stone.”

“And David wrote some of those symbols down in that notebook in the cabin,” Cole said, obviously going somewhere with this line of questioning.

“Yes,” Stella said.

“Then maybe David saw those symbols at the dig site. Maybe he copied down what he’d seen at the dig site in the notebook at the cabin.”

Stella shook her head, already dismissing that idea. “No, that couldn’t be possible. Those symbols he drew in that notebook were perfect copies of the Anasazi writings. No way he could’ve copied them so perfectly.”

“Maybe David’s a savant,” Cole said. “Possibly autistic. He shows the signs.”

“He also shows the signs of a traumatized child,” Stella argued. “And his behavior’s changing. He’s opening up to us now, talking more, relating more. He could be autistic, I don’t know, but as far as the writing, we hadn’t even taken most of the evidence out of the cave yet. And David had never even been in that cave.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Stella snapped. “I was leaving the cave when I found him, so I know he’d never gone in there.”

“Unless he snuck inside the cave in the middle of the night.”

Stella already knew where Cole was going with this. David had left the cabin in the middle of the night when the electricity had gone out. “We never found him outside at the dig site like we did at the cabin,” she said, but then she thought of the night she left. She thought about David being outside the trailer, staring at the cave in the distance. Had she told them about that?

Joe sipped his tea, watching them silently.

Stella looked at Joe as an idea occurred to her.

He stared at her and raised his eyebrows like he’d been patiently waiting for her to reach the obvious conclusion.

“We need to go back to the dig site, don’t we?” she asked.

Joe just stared at her for a moment. “Or another place like it.”

Stella felt her heart skip a beat. Was there another place like the dig site at the cave? Another Anasazi city waiting to be discovered?

“There’s a sacred place not too far from here. It’s one of the reasons I chose to live here.”

“And we need to go there, don’t we?” Cole said.

Joe nodded again. “I think there are many places on Earth where the barrier is weak … hot spots, if you will … and this place is one of them.”

Thoughts swirled through Stella’s mind. There was another place like the dig site? “Is it an Anasazi ruin?”

Joe sipped his tea again. “Most Navajo don’t go near this place, mostly out of superstition and fear, and many don’t go near it out of reverence. Like I said, it’s a sacred place. It’s a place that must be left alone.”

Stella felt the sting of his words. She could interpret what he meant—he and other Navajo didn’t want this place scoured by scientists.

“Of course,” Stella told him, but she couldn’t help wondering what secrets and discoveries were hidden there. But she refused to pester Joe about it—he wasn’t going to give explanations until he was ready, she had already seen evidence of that.

“Where is this place? You said it wasn’t too far away.”

“A few hours away,” Joe said. “We can get there by horse or four-wheelers.”

“So what are we going to do … use David as bait?” Cole asked, clearly disgusted.

Joe shook his head slowly. “No. We will be using ourselves as the bait. It can’t attack David, it can’t kill David, so it will go after one of us.”

They were all silent for a moment.

“I will prepare us as much as possible,” Joe told them. “But only so much can be done in such a short time against a powerful chindi like the Darkwind.”

Joe stood up. “We should get some sleep for a few hours. Rest our bodies and minds, build up our strength. We will need it. When the sun is up, I will begin working with David.” He walked over to a kitchen drawer and pulled out a spiral-bound notebook, similar to the one David had written on in the cabin. He found a ballpoint pen in the drawer and brought both items to the table. “First, David will need to draw those symbols again, that same ancient writing he wrote down before. As much as he can remember.”

Stella nodded.

Joe left the kitchen. “I’ll get us some blankets,” he said over his shoulder.

Stella and Cole looked at each other as the wind howled even harder outside the trailer.

PART 4

WEDNESDAY

CHAPTER 58

Captain Begay’s house

Special Agent Palmer woke up from the nightmare even before the sun was up. It was the same dream as before. He was back in that warehouse, or building, or whatever it was, that seemed to go on forever. Something was chasing him, something that constantly changed form, some shadowy monster. But it wasn’t a mindless monster—it was smarter than he was, anticipating his every move … and he knew he wasn’t going to get away from this monster.

He’d never had nightmares like this one before in his life, and he felt a little queasy as he sat there on the edge of the bed. But at the same time the thing in his dream seemed familiar somehow, like he had encountered it many times before, like he had seen it several times throughout his life, just glimpses really, but he hadn’t remembered it until now. And now all of those memories were crashing back onto him.

That thing in his dream meant to kill him; it would never stop chasing him. He still felt that sense of hopelessness left over from the dream, the hopelessness of ever escaping it. That thing was everywhere … it could come into our world anytime it wanted to. And in the dream Palmer knew all of this; he understood it all and how everything fit together.

A shiver ran across his flesh like the dancing legs of a thousand spiders.

Where had that thought come from? He hated spiders.

Palmer sat there on the edge of the bed for a moment longer in Captain Begay’s home … in Begay’s daughter’s old room. Even though Begay and his wife had turned their daughter’s bedroom into a guestroom after she’d left for college, the bedroom still felt somewhat like Begay’s daughter lived there. It had the feel of so many bedrooms that Palmer had seen over the years, museums to missing or dead children.

He wore only his underwear and white T-shirt. His dark suit was folded up neatly on the chair across the room, his suitcoat and overcoat hanging up in the small closet. His ID and badge, cell phone, service pistol and shoulder holster, and a pint of vodka were on the nightstand next to the bed. His duffel bag was on the floor across the room, still opened up and exactly where he had dropped it last night.

After a sip of the vodka, Palmer sat there for a moment longer. The dream was already fading away and his mind was turning to this case he was working on—the strangest case he had ever been assigned to.

He thought of Begay’s “raid” on the property last night. They had been tricked, set up by someone, and Palmer had a feeling Begay knew who it was.

Palmer got up and got dressed in the darkness. He slid his shoulder holster on, and then slipped his service pistol down into the holster; it was a reassuring weight against his body. He stuffed his cell phone down into the leather pouch on his belt. He hid the vodka bottle down in his duffel bag after one last swig, and then he grabbed his travel case with his deodorant, mouthwash, shaving cream, razor, toothpaste, and toothbrush inside. He left the room to use the bathroom in the hall.

The house was still dark and quiet; the only sound was the humming of the heat through the ducts in the ceiling. Palmer slipped inside the bathroom, closed the door and locked it.

After using the bathroom, Palmer went back to his room and slipped his suitcoat on. He grabbed his overcoat and duffel bag and walked back down the hall to the living room and kitchen.

Like the last time he had stayed here, Captain Begay’s wife Angie was up and moving around in the kitchen. The aroma of coffee and slightly burnt sausage hung in the air.

“I made a plate for you,” Angie said and stared at Palmer for a moment.

He knew she wasn’t going to let him turn down breakfast a second time, so he sat down at the table. “Thank you.”

“The captain’s still getting dressed,” she said as she set a plate full of scrambled eggs, sausage, and fried potatoes down in front of him. “Salt and pepper is on the table. There’s hot sauce or ketchup if you need it.”

“No, this will be fine,” he said and smiled at her.

Begay entered the kitchen, dressed in a long-sleeved flannel shirt, a pair of faded blue jeans, and a pair of worn hiking boots. Apparently Begay was figuring on outdoor work today.

“Sleep well?” Begay asked Palmer.

“Like a baby,” Palmer lied.

Angie set a plate of food down on the table in front of Begay, and then she set a plate of toast in between the two men. Begay buttered his toast carefully and then slathered it with the homemade jam.

Palmer watched the big man eat for a moment. Where Palmer was indifferent to food, he could tell that Captain Begay took pleasure in it and that he had particular tastes and rituals when it came to eating.

“What’s on the agenda for today?” Palmer asked after shoveling another bite of food into his mouth.

Begay shrugged as he ate. “Keep searching for your fugitives.”

Palmer sensed that the captain’s plans didn’t include him, but he wasn’t going to be brushed off that easily.

Begay chewed his food slowly and looked at Palmer. “You still have to stay here?” he asked bluntly.

“Yes,” Palmer answered. Another lie. Cardenelli wasn’t very happy about Palmer abandoning the crime scene in Colorado, closer to his own territory, but Palmer wasn’t going to give up this collar to Klein so he could screw everything up. And he wasn’t going to let a murder suspect (or suspects if Stella turned out to be involved in all of this somehow) get into Begay’s hands—and Begay knew it, so it didn’t need to be said. Threats didn’t need to be made right now, especially not in front of the man’s wife. He hoped they could keep things civil.

“Any leads?” Palmer asked as he ate another bite of his breakfast. It was his way of asking the same question: What were they going to do next?

Begay wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t letting it show. Palmer could tell that Angie sensed the unease and tension in her husband, but Palmer didn’t care if he was hurting anyone’s feelings or stepping on anyone’s toes—he’d learned over the last few decades to be a single-minded machine when it came to searching for criminals and solving crimes.

“We’re going to find Billy Nez,” Begay said as he took another bite of his food.

“Who’s that? Someone hiding from you?”

“He was the one with Alice when they talked to Stella and David.”

“How do you know that? You talked to him?”

“Someone I know saw them all at a diner together. Someone who owes me a favor.”

“Good,” Palmer said. “I’m going with you.”

Begay didn’t argue. Palmer could remind Begay that he had let him tag along to the crime scene at John and Deena’s house, but he didn’t say anything.

Palmer got up to take his plate to the sink, but Angie swooped in and intercepted him like she’d been waiting for him to make a move to clean up. “I’ll take that,” she said with a forced smile.

“Thank you, Angie. That was the best breakfast I’ve had in a long time.”

She nodded and the smile on her face never wavered. “Thank you, Agent Palmer.”

Palmer looked at Begay, who wasn’t hurrying through his breakfast. “I’ll wait for you outside. I have a few phone calls to make.”

Begay nodded, but he gave him a “whatever” look with his eyes.

Palmer got his coat and duffel bag and went out through the front door.

*

After Agent Palmer went outside, Begay continued eating his breakfast. He enjoyed his wife’s cooking, it was one of the great pleasures of his day, and he wasn’t going to let the sour FBI agent ruin his breakfast.

He wasn’t too happy about Palmer riding with him all day, but he couldn’t exactly kick him out on his own. This was an FBI investigation now, whether he liked it or not, and it was best to play ball up to a point. Besides, working with Palmer was much better than working with Klein.

Begay stopped eating. He could feel the weight of his wife’s stare on him. He looked at her. She stood by the stove, watching him. She looked a little nervous, holding her hands in front of her, rubbing them; it seemed like the winter weather was affecting her arthritis again.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her.

“I don’t feel good about this.”

“I’m just going to track down Billy and find out what he knows.”

She sighed and shook her head slightly. “You know what I mean,” she whispered as if Palmer might somehow overhear her from outside.

He knew exactly what she meant. Angie was a believer in all things mystical, and Begay had to admit that she had a gift of some sort. She’d predicted things plenty of times before with an uncanny ability and a spooky accuracy. Even though he wanted to brush off her fears right now, he knew he had to respect them and listen to whatever warning she had to offer.

“I had a bad dream last night,” Angie said in a low voice.

Begay got up and took his plate to the counter. As good as the breakfast was, he didn’t think he would be able to finish the last few bites now—he’d suddenly lost his appetite.

“There was this … this thing in my dream,” Angie said. “It was chasing me. And chasing other people. It looked a little like a shadow, constantly changing and moving, but it wasn’t a shadow. It was real … it was all of the evil in the world rolled up into this black form.”

Begay laid a hand on his wife’s shoulder, a gentle touch.

“I’m scared,” she said.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Begay said.

“Not just for you,” Angie said and her dark eyes flicked to the front door in the living room. “For him, too.”

Begay nodded and exhaled a long breath. “We’ll be careful,” he said. “But I have to go. It’s my job. It’s his job too.”

Angie bit her lip and forced a smile, but Begay saw her lips trembling just a little. She nodded, indicating that she understood that he had a job to do. “Just be careful,” she whispered.

“It’s my middle name,” he said.

He kissed her, and she grabbed on to him and hugged him tight, like he was going away and she might never see him again. That hug, the way she clung to him, scared him more than her warnings and bad dreams had.

CHAPTER 59

Captain Begay’s house

Special Agent Palmer stood outside Captain Begay’s house in the cold air. The world was lightening up quickly, the sky such a deep blue already. He walked to his black rental car that he had parked in the strip of gravel beside Begay’s driveway last night. Begay’s giant Ford Bronco was parked in the driveway right behind Angie’s car.

As he walked to his car Palmer dialed Agent Klein’s number to get an update from him.

Agent Klein was at the dig site already.

“Some group of scientists is here,” Klein said on the phone. “They’ve been here since last night, poking around everywhere. They’re calling this dig site one of the greatest finds in the last fifty years. Definitely in this century so far, they said. I’m constantly beating these guys back away from the cave like flies off shit. I don’t know how many times I need to tell these bozos that this is still a crime scene. I don’t care if they found Amelia-fucking-Earhart’s airplane in there.”

Palmer stared out at the end of the driveway as he listened to Klein drone on. He watched his breath mist up in front of his face.

Palmer instructed Klein to remain at the dig site and got a groan from the agent who wanted to team up with Palmer, and then he finally got Klein off the phone.

His next phone call was to the forensics offices in Albuquerque to see if they’d gotten anywhere. Most of the team wasn’t there this early, having worked late into the night, but Susan Dorsett, the woman he’d talked to at David’s parents’ house, talked to him for a few moments on the phone.

“I only have a few minutes,” she warned him. “I’m really busy.”

Palmer asked her some quick questions.

No, she hadn’t discovered anything new. No, there was still not a shred of DNA evidence found on the bodies. No, they hadn’t gotten any further in this investigation.

“How am I supposed to put this in the report?” Susan finally asked Palmer.

Palmer didn’t have an answer for her, and he really didn’t think she was expecting one from him.

He told her that he would get back with her later in the day, that he had something to work on right now. She seemed relieved to get off the phone.

Palmer looked at his cell phone in his hand. He needed to call Cardenelli, but he decided that he would put that call off as long as he could. Instead, Palmer called the forensics team up in Colorado. He got someone named Ben on the phone.

The forensics team in Colorado was just as baffled as Susan and her team was down here in New Mexico.

“One of the people in Nora Conrad’s house was her husband,” Ben said.

Palmer remembered the sheriff up there saying that the dead man on the floor with the bullet hole in his head was the woman’s husband and the girl’s father, and that he had been dead for at least six months.

And Ben verified that now. “Why would someone bring a dead man there and then put a bullet in his head?”

Again, Palmer didn’t have answers for the man. “What about the bodies from the hotel?”

“It just gets more and more bizarre,” Ben said. He was breathing hard into the phone. He sounded overweight. “One of the victims …” He sounded like he was looking something up real quick—Palmer heard the sound of the clicking keys on a keyboard. “A Travis Conrad, son of the dead guy in the house, was definitely run over by a vehicle. But the other two … one was twisted completely around, his spine snapped in several places, muscles torn, ribs smashed to pieces, organs practically liquefied.”

Palmer just nodded and rubbed at his temple with his other hand.

“And the other one … it looks like he came out of a garbage compactor. I don’t know how anyone … how a person could possibly do this to other human beings without some kind of high-powered machinery being involved.”

Palmer sighed into the phone. “I know this is a strange one,” he said. “Did you find any kind of evidence on the victims? Some hair samples, skin, blood … anything?”

“Nope. Nothing. Not one bit of DNA evidence at all. It was like these people were mangled without even being touched.”

“Okay,” Palmer said. He was ready to hang up now. This was getting nowhere.

Begay stepped out of his house and closed the front door with a thump.

“I gotta go. Thanks.” Palmer hung up his phone and met the big captain by his Ford Bronco.

Begay got in his truck and hit the button to unlock the passenger door for Palmer.

CHAPTER 60

Joe Blackhorn’s property

An hour after the sun was up everyone was awake inside of Joe Blackhorn’s trailer.

Joe made a quick breakfast of eggs, some kind of shredded meat, and a fried mixture of potatoes, peppers, onions, and tomatoes.

David picked at his food, but he drank two glasses of juice. He brightened when Stella gave him the spiral bound notebook and the pen.

“Remember when you drew those symbols in the notebook at the cabin?”

David nodded.

“Do you think you could draw those again?” she asked as she opened the notebook up and folded the cover back to reveal the first blank page.

David nodded. He took the notebook and went to the couch, curling up on it, his eyes on the paper, his hand clutching the pen, already drawing furiously.

Stella watched David for a moment. She felt like crying while she watched him, and she wasn’t exactly sure why. He seemed like such a normal boy at this moment, just a boy doodling in a book. But there was nothing normal about David, and nothing normal about what they had been through. Maybe the trauma was catching up to her; maybe she was finally having a breakdown.

Joe and Cole cleaned up the kitchen. Stella went in there to help, wiping the small wood table down.

The wind outside was picking up again, gusts shaking the trailer slightly. But there had been no attacks through the night. No army of animals and other creatures stood guard on the ridge in the distance. No dead person had stumbled across the desert and up to their door, waiting outside for them, calling them and asking for things.

“Why hasn’t it attacked?” Cole asked as he put the plates in the cabinet.

“I think it might be building its strength back up,” Joe said. “Kind of like we’re all doing. Maybe it needs to rest like we do. What it did last night—with all of those snakes and spiders and other animals—that must’ve taken a lot of energy.” He shrugged. “Or maybe it’s planning its next attack. I don’t know. All I can do is guess.”

“Does David know?” Cole asked in a low voice.

They all glanced at the living room. If David was listening to their conversation, he didn’t show it; he was still concentrating on the ancient language that he was scribbling down on the notebook paper. Joe’s dog was sitting near David, watching him draw.

“I don’t know,” Joe said in an even lower voice, almost a whisper. “I think he knows when it’s close.”

Stella remembered when they were back in the cabin—David always knew when Frank was out in the snow waiting for them.

“So what now?” Cole asked again. “That thing out there isn’t going to rest forever. Do we go to this … this place you were talking about?”

Joe nodded. “We need to go soon.”

“How soon?” Cole asked. “If we wait too long, then the four-wheelers won’t work. It will destroy them just like it disabled our truck when you picked us up … and just like it destroyed the engines of the trucks at the cabin. And it will probably kill your horses.”

Joe nodded like he had already considered those possibilities.

“David has to be ready,” Stella said and looked at Joe. “We can’t put him in front of the Ancient Enemy until he’s ready.”

“It’s true he needs to be ready,” Joe said, “but Cole is right. We need to hurry.”

“I’d be surprised if the horses aren’t already dead,” Cole mumbled, “and the four-wheelers and all the other vehicles out there trashed.”

“Yes, but we can’t rush David into this,” Stella said. “If we don’t get this right …”

“But we have to bring David to the place where he can fight it the best,” Joe insisted. “We have to take him to the place where he has the best chance of defeating the Darkwind … killing it, or at least sending it back to where it came from. And we do need to hurry.”

“So when are we going?” Cole asked.

“Today,” Joe said like he’d just made up his mind. His face was set in a grim expression like he wasn’t going to change his mind.

“Today?” Stella said, not hiding her surprise and horror.

“He’s right,” Cole told Stella. “We need to do this before we’re trapped here. You know what will happen if we’re trapped here.”

Stella sighed and glanced back at David.

David still hadn’t looked their way; he was still concentrating on his notebook, seemingly in his own world right now.

“You two need to understand something,” Joe said.

Stella and Cole looked at Joe again.

“This journey we’ll be taking will be dangerous. David will offer some protection, but when the Darkwind is strong again it will attack and all of us may not survive.”

Both Cole and Stella nodded … they understood.

Joe smiled at them. “But I’m going to bring along some things that can help us. Some things to help give us an edge.”

CHAPTER 61

Special Agent Palmer rode with Captain Begay in his jacked-up Ford Bronco. They drove down a strip of pavement that seemed to run on forever through the rocks and sandy hills.

They had been driving for hours, and they had already stopped to talk to a few people. Begay had gone into homes and buildings on his own, asking Palmer to wait in the truck. Through the morning Begay had questioned several people about where Billy Nez was. Palmer was sure that bargains had been made by Begay to find Billy’s whereabouts … and he was sure that threats had been made, too.

Close to eleven o’clock, Begay left a stucco-covered adobe building where some men milled about outside. Palmer wasn’t sure what kind of place this was, but he’d waited in Begay’s truck for twenty minutes while Begay talked to some of the men inside.

Once Begay got back in the truck, his expression gave nothing away. He stared ahead with the mirrored sunglasses still on his face. He put the truck in reverse (he’d left it running for Palmer while he’d been inside to keep the heat on) and backed up to leave the dirt parking area.

Obviously Begay wasn’t going to volunteer any information.

“Well?” Palmer finally asked.

“He told me where to find Billy,” was all Begay said. It even sounded like he was angry about having to tell Palmer that much.

Palmer knew Begay wasn’t happy that he had insisted on riding with him instead of following him around all day in his rental car. Palmer had given up trying to memorize the map and the crisscrossing of the roads out here on the Big Reservation. This reservation was huge—fifteen thousand square miles: the size of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts put together. He knew it would’ve only been a matter of time before Begay ditched him and then Palmer would’ve been hopelessly lost out here in these badlands. It was amazing to Palmer how remote some of these places were, and the GPS and reception on his cell phone were spotty at best. So he had decided to ride with Captain Begay, whether the man liked it or not.

*

An hour later, they drove down a long rutted trail through the brush and rocks, and then down a steep decline towards a large stand of trees with a creek running through them. Mountains rose up sharply in the distance. It was as beautiful as it was foreboding, Palmer thought.

Ten minutes later they pulled up to a group of trailers. Palmer thought the place looked like some kind of refugee camp. The trailers were rusted-out hulks with debris piled all around them. Abandoned junked cars and car parts hid in the weeds and scrub brush. A clothesline full of clothes was set up right in the front yard above a scattering of children’s toys.

A pregnant woman holding a baby came to the front door of the trailer, the door barely hanging on by its hinges. A curious three-year-old dressed in an oversized sweatshirt and baggy pants stood beside the woman on the untrustworthy wood deck in front of the door.

A scruffy-looking dog poked its head out of a doghouse that looked like it had been constructed from petrified wood. The dog didn’t even bark at them, it just stared at them with large eyes.

“Is this where Billy Nez lives?” Palmer asked as Begay parked the truck and turned off the engine.

“No.”

Palmer didn’t expect Begay to expound.

Begay got out of the truck and Palmer opened his door and stepped out into the cold. One thing was for sure, he wasn’t staying in the truck anymore.

“Ya-tah,” Begay said to the woman as he walked towards the trailers that sat nose to nose in the distance.

The young woman hadn’t made any kind of movement to come down and greet them.

Palmer watched as Begay made some kind of hand gesture to the woman. “Ya-tah,” he said again.

“Ya-tah-hay,” the woman finally answered in a low voice. She made a half-hearted gesture of her own back to Begay.

Begay said something in Navajo to the woman.

She just nodded her head towards the trees and the creek off in the distance.

“He’s that way,” Begay said to Palmer, already walking towards the trees.

It was a five-minute trek through the woods that lined the stream. Then they came to a squat dome of a structure covered with mud and grass. Not too far away from the mud hut, a fire was crackling inside a pit in the ground that was surrounded by rocks. Palmer noticed that there were rocks in the fire too.

“Wait out here,” Begay said as he walked towards a flap that served as a door to the hut.

Palmer thought about arguing.

“Sacred ceremony inside,” Begay said over his shoulder as if he sensed that Palmer was going to debate his request. He took off his coat before entering the hut, laying it down neatly over a large flat rock.

Palmer just nodded and sighed. He thought Begay had come here to arrest Billy Nez, not hang out with him inside some sweat lodge. Obviously obstruction of justice was a petty crime out here in these parts. Palmer hoped Begay would at least get the information they needed.

*

Begay pulled the flap back from the mud-covered hut and entered the dark steamy interior.

Billy Nez sat on a small colorful rug that was spread out on the hard-packed dirt floor on the opposite side of the hut. Billy was nearly naked, only wearing a loincloth. His skin was shiny with perspiration and his long dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail. He used to be a muscular man long ago, but now what muscles he had left sagged on his old man’s body. The wrinkles were deep lines etched into his brown face.

Begay noticed that there was a similar woven rug spread out on the floor not too far away from the flap—an invitation for him to sit down, Begay guessed. And in between the two rugs was a pit dug into the dirt floor, the pit filled with hot rocks and burning kindling. The meager amount of smoke the fire put out drifted up towards the hole in the middle of the ceiling at the top of the dome.

Begay unbuttoned his shirt a little and rolled up the sleeves to his elbows. He sat down cross-legged on the small woven rug. It was already so hot inside the hut—a stark contrast with the bitterly cold air outside.

“Did you come here to arrest me?” Billy asked in Navajo.

“Depends,” Begay answered in Navajo. He was sure Palmer had stayed close enough to the hut to listen to their conversation; he might even be right outside the flap. But he wouldn’t understand any of it.

“I have an FBI agent with me,” Begay said. “He’s waiting outside right now.”

Billy nodded, but he didn’t seem alarmed. He seemed like a man who felt righteous in his innocence. He didn’t ask what he was being hassled about. He didn’t try to run when they had shown up. He wasn’t drunk right now or belligerent. These were all plusses in Begay’s book, all good marks in favor of Billy Nez, and Begay would return the favor by hearing the man out.

“You tricked us,” Begay said when he realized Billy Nez was in no hurry to begin the conversation. “The map Alice Newcastle gave us led to an abandoned house.”

“I gave Alice the wrong map because I knew she would break her word and call the police. It doesn’t matter how long she has lived here on this land with us, she will never be one of us. She will never truly understand our ways.”

Begay sighed. He didn’t want to get off track into some philosophical conversation with Billy right now. “Alice called us because it was the right thing to do. Those three are wanted by the law.”

“One is only a boy.”

“Yes, but the man they are traveling with is a suspect in at least twenty-one murders, two stolen vehicles, and one bank robbery. You’re helping a possible criminal.”

“Sometimes you must overlook some bad to find the greater good.”

“And you think twenty-one murders is only a little bad?”

“I don’t believe your suspect murdered those people.”

Begay nodded. “And who did?”

“You know who murdered those people. You know what murdered them.”

Begay didn’t respond.

Billy Nez ladled some water from a wooden bucket near him and drenched the hot rocks. The rocks hissed when the water hit them, steam rising up instantly.

“It has happened before,” Billy said as he put the wooden ladle back into the bucket of water. “The chindi is back and it wants things.”

“Chindi?” Begay asked, surprised that Billy was using the Navajo word for ghost.

“Chindi,” Billy repeated. “Or yenaldooshi—skinwalkers. Darkwind. Anasazi, Ancient Enemy. Whatever you want to call it. But it’s here again. What happened to that boy’s parents, and what happened to those belegana scientists in that cave, you know there is no rational explanation for that.”

“So you led those three where? Right to the chindi?”

“No. I led them to someone who can help them.”

“Who?” Begay asked.

“A yataalii—a true medicine man.”

“What’s his name?” Begay asked. “Joe Blackhorn?”

If Billy was surprised that Begay already knew they had gone to find Joe Blackhorn, he didn’t show it.

“We know that’s where you sent them. But we just don’t know where to find Joe Blackhorn. I need to find those three before something else happens. I need to help David.”

“The boy is pursued by the Darkwind. Only he can drive it away again.”

Begay let out another long breath, trying to remain calm.

“I know you say you don’t believe,” Billy said. “I know you try not to believe. But deep down inside, you know something is wrong with these murders. You know something is different about the boy and the woman on the run.”

Begay thought of his conversations with Agent Palmer a few days ago and how similar they were to the one he was having with Billy right now. But in that conversation it had been him trying to convince Palmer that something supernatural might be going on, and it had been Palmer who wouldn’t even consider it.

“I met with that woman and the boy,” Billy said.

Begay nodded, indicating that he already knew that. “The boy’s name is David. David Bear.”

“They were not being forced to do anything by that man they were with. They are not being held captive by him.”

“You met the man with them? You saw him?”

“He waited outside in a pickup truck while we met the woman and David at the diner. Once they were inside the diner, they could’ve asked us to help them. They could’ve called the police. They could’ve run. But they didn’t choose to do any of those things.”

Thanks for your expert opinion, Begay thought but he bit back the words.

“They risked everything to find Joe Blackhorn,” Billy said.

Once again Begay thought of the same thing he’d said to Agent Palmer not too long ago. Why would they risk everything to come back down here and find this shaman?

“Alice knew that I knew how to find Joe Blackhorn,” Billy continued. “We agreed to give the woman a different map so she could be caught by the police. But what Alice didn’t know was that I drew two maps, and the other one led to Joe Blackhorn’s home. I wanted to hear the woman’s story first. After I listened to her story, I knew she was telling the truth, and I knew the Ancient Enemy had come again. I knew the boy could fight the Ancient Enemy, and I knew Joe Blackhorn could help him. Later, we ambushed the three of them on the road and I gave the woman the real map. I put her on the path to find Joe Blackhorn.”

“I need to find them,” Begay said. “I need you to show me where they are.”

Billy ladled more water onto the hot rocks, taking his time. Then he shrugged. “I have a map that I have drawn for you. But the four of them may not be there now.”

“Why not? Do you know where they are going?”

“There’s a sacred place,” Billy answered. “A place where the barrier between our world and the Darkwind’s world is the weakest. Joe Blackhorn will take the boy there to fight it, to send it back for good.”

Begay was beginning to get impatient. He was starting to sweat underneath his clothes and his crossed legs were cramping up a little. “Billy, I won’t come back here and arrest you if you give me that map. If you help me.”

“This is going to be a dangerous journey for you,” Billy said. “Who are you taking with you?”

Begay didn’t answer; he just huffed loudly, hopefully showing Billy that he was tiring of this game of his.

“Many could be killed,” Billy said, unperturbed by Begay’s show of disapproval.

Begay thought it over. He had to be careful here because he knew Billy Nez was not afraid of being arrested and locked up. He couldn’t threaten him to get what he wanted. He had to make sure that Billy was telling him the truth and not sending him on another wild goose chase.

“Don’t take too many men with you,” Billy said. “They will just end up dying and their blood will be on your hands. I would ask you not to go, to let the boy fight the Darkwind on his own, but I know eventually someone else will tell you where Joe Blackhorn lives.”

“I won’t take any of my men with me,” Begay promised, but he knew one person that he would be taking with him whether he wanted to or not, and that person was standing right outside the flap of this hogan.

Billy pulled out a small leather bag from behind him and opened the drawstrings. He pulled out a folded-up piece of thick white paper and another object. He stood up, the sweat running down his nearly naked body.

Begay stood up, happy to stretch out his aching legs. He wiped at his brow with the sleeve of his shirt. He was actually looking forward to going back out into that cold weather again.

Billy walked around the pit of hot rocks and stood in front of Begay. He handed him the paper. “This is the map.”

Begay didn’t bother unfolding the paper and looking at it, that would only offend Billy Nez. He tucked the folded-up paper down into the pocket of his jeans.

“I have something else for you,” Billy said. “I want you to accept it and keep it with you all the time when you pursue these three.”

Begay just nodded.

Billy held the other object in his hand out to Begay. It was a necklace of worn leather string with a large silver and turquoise charm on it.

“This is a special charm,” Billy said. “This is a magical charm that will protect you on your journey.”

Begay accepted the gift. He noticed that the charm could be twisted open. “What’s inside the charm?” he asked.

“Something to keep you safe,” was all that Billy would say.

CHAPTER 62

Captain Begay sat down in the driver’s seat of his Ford Bronco as Special Agent Palmer got into the passenger seat. The woman was standing again at the trailer door with her baby in her arms, staring at them silently. The dog poked his head out of his gray petrified home and watched them as silently as the woman did, and with seemingly the same expression.

“So?” Palmer asked as soon as they were back inside Begay’s truck. Palmer hadn’t said a word to Begay as they hiked back through the woods from the hut, and then across the junk-littered front yard to the truck. Billy Nez hadn’t come out of that mud hut structure with Begay so Palmer had to assume that Billy wasn’t being arrested today, which led him to assume that Begay had retrieved the information they had come all the way out here for.

Begay started his truck. It had gotten cold in the truck in the short time they’d been gone, but it was still better than the freezing wind outside. Begay turned the heater up all the way as he shifted into reverse and backed down the rutted trail that served as the driveway. Begay stretched a meaty arm out over the back of the seats as he turned around to look out the rear window, backing his truck up in between two rusted relics of automobiles to turn around.

Palmer felt agitated, shivering a little with both the cold (which didn’t seem to affect Begay at all) and the excitement that they could finally be close to finding the trail that led to Stella, David, and whoever they were traveling with. He was also agitated because Begay seemed to be purposely taking his time answering his question.

Palmer noticed the necklace that Begay was sporting as soon as he left the hut. He’d thought about asking about it or making some kind of wisecrack about bribes, but he kept his mouth shut, not sure if he would be somehow unknowingly offending the captain.

Begay shifted into drive and pulled back out onto the rutted trail from between the two rusted vehicles.

Palmer remained silent for a moment longer, waiting to see if Begay was going to respond to him yet. Begay seemed to be a different man now after his time inside the hut with Billy. Maybe they had smoked something together in there.

“Where are we going?” Palmer asked when he couldn’t stand Begay’s silence any longer.

Begay pulled out onto the narrow, two-lane road from the rutted driveway. There wasn’t another vehicle in sight on the road in either direction for as far as Palmer could see.

“Right now I’m going to find a gas station and fill my truck up.”

“He speaks,” Palmer said sarcastically. “And then?”

“And then I’m going to drive to Joe Blackhorn’s property.”

Palmer’s heart skipped a beat. He knew Begay had gotten the information they needed. “That guy …”

“Billy Nez,” Begay said.

“Yeah, Billy Nez. He told you where to find Blackhorn?”

“He gave me a map.”

“A map? Let me see.”

Begay drove in silence for a long moment, staring out the windshield.

Palmer was getting a little tired of the silent treatment. “Uh, the map?” he asked him.

“I burned it.”

“What?” Palmer asked. “What do you mean, you burned it?”

“I threw it in the fire right before we left,” Begay said.

“I didn’t see you do that,” Palmer said.

Begay glanced at Palmer for a moment, his expression saying: There are many things you haven’t noticed. “I’m not taking anyone with me to Joe Blackhorn’s place,” Begay said and turned to stare out the windshield again, his big hands gripping the steering wheel.

Palmer shook his head a little. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about. What … you’re worried this is another trick?”

Begay looked at Palmer again, his dark eyes fierce now. “No. Billy is telling the truth. This is no trick.”

“What is it then?”

“This is serious. Where I’m going … what we’re dealing with … it’s dangerous. More dangerous than you can imagine.”

“Jeez,” Palmer said, sighing out the word as he looked out the passenger window at the desert whipping by at eighty miles an hour. He looked back at Begay. “Not this again. What did that guy say to you in that hut?”

“Hogan,” Begay corrected. “It’s not a hut … it’s called a hogan.”

“Whatever,” Palmer said. He didn’t really care if he was offending Begay right now by calling a mud hut by the wrong name. “You let that guy, Billy Nez, spook you.”

Begay gave a slight shake of his head. “I’ve known it all along; I just didn’t want to admit it. But I know it now. What we’re dealing with, it’s bigger than you can imagine.”

Palmer tried hard to control his temper. “I want you to draw a map for me and my men. Right now. Pull over right now and draw that map.”

Begay glared at Palmer again, but not with hatred. This time there was sadness in his expression, like he was looking at some kind of farm animal that couldn’t possibly ever hope to understand him.

Palmer didn’t like being looked at like that.

“I’m going out there alone,” Begay said. “I’m not bringing my men with me. I’m not going to risk their lives over this. You can go with me if you want. If not, then I can drop you off at the gas station and I’ll have someone come get you.”

Palmer chuckled. He couldn’t believe this shit. “I don’t think you should be giving me orders. I have jurisdiction on this case. The FBI has jurisdiction when it comes to murder cases here. I think you already know that.”

Begay looked back at the road as he drove, still gripping the steering wheel tight with both hands. But he didn’t explode with anger at Palmer’s words. When he finally spoke, his words were soft, almost conversational. “Yes, you are correct about the FBI having jurisdiction, but I don’t care. We’re doing things my way or I drop you off. You choose. I don’t imagine that your superior is too happy right now that you’re down here and that you’ve abandoned your crime scenes up in Colorado. I don’t think your superior is too happy that you’re down here chasing a bogeyman with me instead of letting Klein and the other agents down here handle this. And I also don’t think your superior would be too happy to hear that you’ve been stumbling around down here with vodka on your breath the whole time.”

Palmer bristled. Begay was right, Cardenelli wouldn’t be happy about a report like that at all. Cardenelli wasn’t happy with Palmer at the moment, and if he got another report about Palmer’s drinking …

Begay softened even more and looked at Palmer again. “I didn’t want to threaten you, but this is important.”

Threaten? Palmer thought. Begay had probably threatened someone earlier to find Billy, and then who knew what threats Begay had made in that hut—in the hogan—to get that map from Billy? And here he was, threatening him. No, Palmer was pretty sure that threats were a part of Begay’s normal everyday police procedure.

“What we’re facing is dangerous and powerful,” Begay said.

“Yeah, you’ve already said that.”

“But you don’t seem to understand what I’m telling you. I know deep down inside you know this. I know you or your forensics teams can’t explain what happened to those archaeologists at the dig site, or David’s parents, or all those people up in Colorado. I know you don’t want to admit it, but you sense that there’s something strange and powerful happening here. Something … supernatural.”

Palmer wasn’t going to admit shit. He leaned his seat back a little, crossed his arms in front of his chest, and closed his eyes. Maybe he would nap on the way to the gas station instead of listening to Begay’s bullshit. He’d slept like crap last night because of the nightmare.

“Well?” Begay asked.

Who was the impatient one now?

“I’m in,” Palmer grumbled with his eyes still closed. “How long until we get there?”

“About a half hour to the gas station,” Begay said. “And then another two or three hours after that to Joe Blackhorn’s place.”

Palmer didn’t answer. He just kept his eyes closed. He was going to let Begay play the game his way, but when they found Stella and David, and whoever they were with, then it was going to be his show.

CHAPTER 63

Captain Begay pulled into the gas station. Palmer had been asleep nearly the whole time on the drive there. He’d been fidgeting in his sleep, mumbling, breathing hard. Having a nightmare, Begay thought. That made him think of what his wife had told him that morning about the nightmare she’d had.

He hated to wake Palmer up; he figured the man needed some sleep. He also loved the peace and quiet without Palmer talking the whole time. White men always talked and talked instead of remaining still and listening, without truly seeing things. Palmer didn’t want to see the truth; he wanted to see his own version of the truth. But Begay was afraid that Agent Palmer was going to see the truth soon—they were both going to see things that they couldn’t imagine.

Begay pulled up to the outermost pumps of the newer gas station and turned the truck off.

Palmer woke up abruptly, sitting bolt-upright in his seat, looking around.

“Getting gas,” Begay said.

Palmer nodded as he came fully awake.

“I recommend that you use the bathroom while we’re here if you need to,” Begay told him. “I also recommend stocking up on some snacks and drinks. If we break down out where we’re going, we could be there a while.”

“Lovely,” Palmer grumbled and got out of the truck and started walking to the gas station store.

Begay got out and walked to the back of his Bronco. He opened the back hatch and looked all of the supplies over. He usually kept spare gas cans, jugs of water, and food back here in case he ever broke down, and he’d made sure last night that everything was stocked up. Besides the basic supplies, he also had a handwoven blanket, two plastic tarps still sealed in plastic, a large first-aid kit, an additional spare tire along with a jack and four-way tire iron, a jump kit for the battery, a cardboard box of canned and boxed food, along with two can openers, six gallons of purified water, six emergency flares, a shovel and a pick, and a few pieces of scrap two-by-fours.

He also had a small duffel bag—his personal prep bag. It contained an extra pair of hiking boots, an extra pair of clothes, two pairs of socks, a wide-brimmed hat, work gloves, a rain slicker, a portable water filter, lighters, and two flashlights with an extra pack of batteries.

Begay also had a twelve gauge pump shotgun with a lock on the trigger and a full box of shells.

There were places out here in the remote corners of the Big Rez where he might not see another person for days … weeks even. There was no cell phone service in many of those areas. It would be crazy not to have some kind of provisions in his vehicle.

He grabbed the two ten-gallon gas cans. One still had about five gallons of gas in it, but he took both out and filled them up to the top and then returned them to the back of his Bronco, securing them to the side wall with bungee cords.

Next, he filled up the truck’s gas tank, using his fleet card to pay for it at the pump. After he was done, he walked to the gas station store at the other end of the concrete parking lot.

Inside the store, he saw Agent Palmer over by the coffee machine. He was preparing some kind of gigantic cup of coffee.

Begay went into the restroom and used the toilet. He washed his hands in the sink afterwards and stared at himself in the mirror for a moment. He searched his eyes, looking for fear in them. He wanted to walk into this without fear. He wanted the spirit of his warrior ancestors to guide him.

He thought back to this morning, back to his wife. She’d been scared; he could tell she was rattled even before she told him about her nightmare. She had seen visions before, visions that had come true, so Begay had to take her infrequent warnings seriously.

Begay was afraid right now, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him from doing his job. He would go to Joe Blackhorn’s place and confront this thing. He would save David, that poor boy, a boy who had endured so much tragedy already.

He touched the silver and turquoise charm that hung from his necklace.

To keep you safe, Billy Nez had said. Begay hoped it was true. He sang a quick prayer and then left the bathroom.

Palmer was already back inside the Bronco when Begay got to it.

“Packs of peanuts and protein bars,” Palmer announced, pointing down at a paper bag between his feet on the floorboard. “Also a six-pack of drinks.”

“You sure you’re ready for this?” Begay asked. He hadn’t started the truck yet. He still had the keys in his hand and Palmer still had a last chance to back out. “Once we get out there we’re going to lose all cell reception. We’ll be too far to drop you off.”

Palmer just glared back at him like he’d been insulted.

Begay wasn’t trying to insult Palmer; he just wanted to make sure that Palmer was absolutely ready for this.

“Just drive,” Palmer said. He unzipped the duffel bag next to him and pulled out the half empty pint of vodka and poured a little bit into his steaming cup of coffee.

Begay watched the agent spike his coffee, but he didn’t say anything. They were both breaking protocol and regulations right now … they had been all morning. They both had dirt on each other now.

CHAPTER 64

Zeke and Joanie had parked their RV on the hard-packed dirt out in the middle of the desert a few miles away from Piute Creek. They had been out here for three days now looking for meteorites on the desert floor and at the foothills of the mountains.

Zeke knew Joanie was already tired of wandering around the desert looking for space rocks or nuggets of gold or silver. These little nuggets were rare but they could bring big money, especially the meteorites. But what little they’d found so far had barely paid for their expenses on the last three trips out here.

But what else was he supposed to do? Zeke thought. Ever since his neck and back problems had placed him on permanent disability, it wasn’t like there were a lot of opportunities for him to make money. The disability payments damn sure weren’t enough to pay the bills and keep Joanie’s constant supply of liquor flowing freely.

At least the raggedy RV they drove was paid for, and so was the equipment they used. They just needed money for gas, food, and some extra cash for the liquor, cigarettes, and lottery tickets—which were also three of Zeke’s vices.

They were back in the RV now, taking what Zeke liked to call a siesta. They usually worked for a few hours in the morning and then for a few more hours in the evening because it was too hot to work underneath this sun during the middle of the day. Of course it was cold right now—a wicked cold front had come through last week, but at least it hadn’t snowed down here like it had up north where they’d had record snowfalls—but even through the winter Zeke liked to stay on their “siesta” schedule.

Joanie had already downed a shot of whiskey while Zeke cooked a lunch of canned tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for them. Their lunches usually became their dinner because they mostly snacked and drank in the evening. Joanie drank a lot more when they came out here in the desert than she did when they were at home, which was a modest singlewide trailer in an adult mobile home park. She said the loneliness got to her out here.

“You don’t need to be afraid,” Zeke had told her plenty of times. “You got me here with you.” But Zeke guessed that he wasn’t reassuring enough for her somehow.

Zeke was fine with the solitude of the desert; he’d never been a big fan of people, especially crowds. And the dream of finding that million-dollar meteorite or gold nugget was what kept him coming back out here over and over again. Eventually they were going to find something big, and then he and Joanie could buy a condo on the beach or whatever the hell she wanted.

He had just buttered four pieces of cheap white bread on a plate while the frying pan heated up. He slapped some American cheese on the pieces of bread and put it all together in the pan.

Then he froze for a moment. He swore he’d just seen something move on the cluttered countertop next to the small stove.

The RV rocked a little from a sudden gust of wind. It sounded like someone had just thrown a handful of sand against the side of their RV.

That was strange, he thought. The weather was supposed to be good … cold, but calm. The worst of the winter weather was already north of them now.

Zeke looked towards the front of the RV, but he had already pulled the shades over the windshield, blocking the light from coming in through the glass. He thought about going up there to remove the cardboard shades so he could peek out through the windshield and check on that wind, but Joanie was already stretched out on the tiny built-in couch a few steps away. Probably close to passing out for an hour, he thought.

The smell of the burning sandwich brought his attention back to the stove. He flipped the sandwiches over in the frying pan. They weren’t burnt too badly.

He heard a skittering noise from behind the bread and tub of butter next to the stove, and then he saw the source of the noise.

“Holy hell,” Zeke said, instantly taking a step back away from the counter.

A tarantula … a big hairy tarantula was inside their RV. It sat there for a moment right on the countertop, like it was watching Zeke, like it was daring him to try to kill it. And then it was gone, disappearing behind the loaf of bread and then the canisters.

Zeke moved some of the stuff around on the countertop, but he was tense, ready to jump back if he saw that thing again.

Where the hell did it go?

Then he heard the tarantula inside the cabinets. It was so heavy that he could actually hear the thumping of its feet along the wood as it ran around in there, and the tinkling of dishes as it disturbed them.

Damn, those things gave him the creeps. Spiders and snakes were some of the things he couldn’t get used to out here in the desert.

The smell of burning bread caught his attention again.

“Shit,” Zeke muttered as he turned the burner off and set the frying pan on the cold part of the stove. Now the sandwiches were really burnt … he could eat his, but he was sure that he’d have to make Joanie another one.

He spun around as he heard the spider crawling inside the cabinets across from him.

What the hell? How did the spider get from one side of the kitchen to the other without him seeing it? Were there two of them?

Like the first one, Zeke could actually hear the dishes rattling slightly inside the cabinet as the spider crawled around in there.

“What are you doing over there?” Joanie called out from the couch, already sitting up a little.

“Uh … nothing,” Zeke said. “Just burnt the damn sandwiches, is all.”

“I’m not eating a burnt sandwich,” Joanie said.

Of course not, Zeke thought. You’d rather drink your lunch anyway.

Another gust of wind hit the RV, shaking it.

“Is there a storm out there?” Joanie grumbled. She pulled down on the string, raising the cheap plastic blinds up over the window above the built-in couch.

And then she froze.

Zeke looked at his wife, frozen on the couch. Then he saw what she was staring at.

“Spiders,” she croaked.

If there was someone who hated spiders more than Zeke, it was his wife. He rushed a few steps over to her as she jumped up to her feet, still staring at the window, clutching at herself.

“Start the RV,” Joanie hissed. “Get us out of here.”

Zeke barely heard his wife as he stared at the window. It was covered with tarantulas. At least twelve of them, maybe fifteen of them, clinging to the window outside. But it wasn’t only tarantulas; there were other kinds of smaller spiders, two scorpions, and some other kinds of bugs.

What the hell were they parked on? Zeke wondered. There was some kind of infestation here.

“Move the RV!” Joanie screamed, pushing at Zeke. “Get this thing going!”

Zeke’s legs felt weak and numb, yet he also felt adrenaline pumping through him at the same time. It was like he had plenty of energy, but his muscles were turning to mush at the same time. It felt like a nightmare where he needed to run, but everything was in slow motion.

Joanie pushed at Zeke again, almost knocking him off balance.

He tore his eyes away from the window full of spiders. Joanie was nearly in a full-blown panic now—he needed to get her out of here.

Something was definitely wrong with this spot he had parked on. He didn’t know what it was, and he didn’t really care to know what it was, he just wanted to get away from here.

Zeke stomped through the galley kitchen on his way to the front of the RV, and then he thought about the two spiders climbing around inside of their cabinets.

Two of those spiders had already gotten inside of their RV. How many more were in here now?

It didn’t matter … they were leaving right now.

Zeke plopped down in the driver’s seat, the springs underneath the torn upholstery squealing for a moment. He had the ring of keys in his hand even though he didn’t remember digging them out of his pants pocket on the way to the driver’s seat. He stabbed the key into the ignition and twisted it.

Nothing.

What? his mind screamed.

He could hear the now-constant wind outside, shrieking as it grew stronger. He felt the RV shaking, rocking gently back and forth. But he also heard other sounds underneath that shrieking wind. One sound was a distant howl of a coyote a mile or two away, but the other sound was closer … right on the other side of the cardboard sun protectors stuffed up in front of the windshield.

He tore the cardboard panels away and his breath stopped for a second as he stared at the windshield covered with spiders, scorpions, and insects. He nearly screamed. He couldn’t remember actually ever screaming in his life, but he was about to scream right now, and he was afraid once he started that he wouldn’t be able to stop.

Joanie was yelling something from behind him, but he wasn’t listening; she sounded so far away even though he knew she was only a few steps behind him.

Start the RV, he told himself.

He twisted the ignition key again.

Nothing.

He twisted the key again and again.

Nothing.

“Start the fucking truck, Zeke!” Joanie screeched from right beside him. He hadn’t even heard her run up behind him.

“It won’t start!” he yelled back at her. He pumped the gas pedal with his foot as if that would help and he twisted the key over and over again, afraid he was going to snap the key off in the ignition in his panic.

“What … what do you mean …”

“It won’t fucking start!” he yelled at her. He didn’t know why it wouldn’t start and he didn’t really think they had a lot of time to sort through the possibilities. Right now they were under attack and they needed to get out of this RV. It was only a matter of time before those spiders and insects got inside. Maybe the cold was driving them in … he didn’t know.

Zeke popped up from his seat and pushed his wife out of the way.

“What are you doing?” she yelled, her wide eyes rimmed in tears now as she followed him.

“We gotta get out of here,” he told her. “There’s some spiders in here already. They’re in the cabinets.”

She darted through the galley kitchen and clung to him as he pulled the shotgun out of the tiny closet that was right next to the doorway that led to their tiny bedroom at the back of the RV.

“We can’t go out there,” she said, already knowing what he was doing.

Zeke grabbed his coat and slipped it on. “We don’t have a choice. Those things are going to get inside!”

Now, even underneath the wind and the yips from the coyotes, Zeke could actually hear the spiders and other critters crawling over the metal shell of their RV, thousands and thousands of little legs skittering across the aluminum out there.

“Get your coat!” he yelled at Joanie.

They both screamed as something pounded on the flimsy aluminum door that led outside.

Someone was out there knocking on their door.

More knocking on their door. Who would be out there with all of those spiders and insects?

Zeke pointed his shotgun at the door and caressed the trigger with his finger.

Joanie screamed again and Zeke turned to her. She had just put her coat on and a dozen spiders and a few scorpions dropped out from underneath her coat, some of them clinging to her pants on the way down. She jumped around in a little circle, swatting at herself and screaming.

The door flew open, torn off its hinges by the wind.

But it wasn’t the wind that had torn the door away. When Zeke saw what waited in the doorway for them, he finally screamed. The edges of his vision went dark and he knew he was going to pass out. He pulled the trigger of his shotgun and felt the weapon buck in his hands from the blast.

But the thing kept on coming …

CHAPTER 65

Joe rode his horse while Stella and Cole each drove a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle. David rode with Cole since Cole was much more experienced with the four-wheel ATV than Stella was. They had traveled in a pretty tight group from Joe’s property down into valleys and then up over the sandy hills, venturing deeper and deeper into the wastelands.

They had been traveling for almost an hour, when Stella brought her four-wheeler to a stop. She pulled her goggles up and stared at the horizon. Cole parked his four-wheeler right next to Stella. He looked at her, and then he looked to see what she was staring at.

Joe stopped his horse on the other side of Stella’s four-wheeler.

Stella stared at the black shapes on the horizon. The structures stood silhouetted on a flat expanse of land in the distance, with the line of mountains beyond them.

“That’s it?” Stella asked Joe without looking at him. “That’s the sacred place?”

Joe nodded and nudged his horse forward. Stella watched the old man for a moment as he rode away, then she pulled her goggles down over her eyes again and followed him.

*

Fifteen minutes later they pulled up to the structures and stopped their vehicles again. Joe pulled up slightly on the reigns of his horse. “Whoa,” he whispered, but his horse pranced around a little, jittery now that she was this close.

This was it? Stella thought. She looked at Joe. His horse still seemed to be agitated, seeming to sense the evil in the air all around them.

Joe looked back at her, reading her eyes. He nodded.

“I thought …” Stella said and looked back at the ghost town they were in front of. “I thought we were going to some kind of … of sacred place.”

“This is a sacred place,” Joe said.

“It’s a ghost town,” she said.

Joe nodded like that was obvious.

“This wasn’t built by the Anasazi or Navajo,” Stella said, her eyes still on the dusty street that split the town in half. There were dilapidated two and three story structures on both sides of the street, some so worn they looked ready to collapse. At the far end of the town, about five hundred yards away, was a white church.

Joe nodded again like her statement was obvious. “I know you might have thought we were going to an ancient city built by the Anasazi, but this is still a sacred site, I assure you.” His horse was still prancing around a little, eyes wild. “We need to go inside that church down there. There are a lot of preparations we need to make.”

The old man didn’t wait for them; he was already riding his horse down the middle of the road through the ghost town.

Cole nodded at Stella and then he put his ATV in gear. David held on to Cole, but he stared at Stella for a moment, almost like he was making sure she was going to follow them.

The wind had picked up suddenly. Sand swirled through the air, pelting her skin. She pulled her goggles back down and followed Cole, David, and Joe. She looked at Cole and David who were off to her right a little and still in front of her. The tinny sound of their four-wheeler’s motor echoed off the skeletal buildings and petrified wood siding and shingles.

Porches and decks built in front of some of the buildings were crumbling away, not rotting in this arid weather, but just slowly disintegrating away to dust. Many of the windows had been broken out long ago, some of the pieces of glass hung there like sharp teeth; the broken windows allowed glimpses into the gloomy interiors of the buildings. This was a one-street town abandoned a long time ago, yet it felt like someone was here watching them.

It knows we’re here.

The wind gusted again.

The Darkwind, Stella thought. She sped her four-wheeler up a little more, getting closer to the others, staying in as tight a pack as she could. She could imagine that dark, constantly re-forming mass of tentacles and alien-like feelers materializing out of the wind and sand, gaining substance and pushing its way into this world as a solid form. Maybe it could only stay solid in this world for a short time. Maybe it needed to be inside something. She didn’t know. She didn’t understand it. She would never understand it. She just wanted David to send it back to where it belonged and then close that door forever.

The front of the church looked like it had been painted white when they’d been farther away from it, but now that they were right in front of it she saw that a lot of the old paint had chipped and peeled away a long time ago and the wood underneath had been bleached white from the sun and wind. But at least the structure still looked solid; at least it looked safer than the other buildings in this long-forgotten dead town. The church’s double doors still had a little bit of red paint left on them, some of the paint had soaked into the dry wood over the decades, darker down in the cracks. A corroded metal bell still hung high up in the steeple above them and the stained glass windows were cracked but mostly intact.

Joe got off his horse and whispered something into her ear. He gave his horse a kiss on her nose, and then patted her shoulder. The horse looked relieved to take off; she ran back down through the town the way they had come.

“I can’t leave her outside for that thing,” Joe explained, and he seemed to be close to tears. “She’ll find her way home.”

Stella didn’t want to ask how Joe planned on getting back home—she assumed that she and Joe would ride the four-wheeler back together. Or maybe he didn’t plan on all of them going back. But she didn’t want to think about that.

Cole cut the engine of his four-wheeler and Stella killed hers too. They all got off the vehicles and unbuckled their helmets and pulled off their goggles, setting the equipment down on the seats.

Joe had his pack of supplies slung over his shoulder as he walked up the path through the rock garden that led up to the wood steps and the double doors of the church. He opened the doors, pushing them all the way open. He looked back at them, waiting for them to follow him inside.

Stella looked back at the ghost town. Joe’s horse was already beyond the town now, in a full trot across the desert. The wind was kicking up again, howling down through the buildings. Something, a loose piece of siding or a shingle perhaps, flapped loudly.

She looked back at the church and followed the others inside. The inside of the church was empty except for a layer of debris and garbage all over the wood floor. It looked like the church had been stripped bare of the pews, stage, dais, and any other furniture or anything else a long time ago. A few bare studs stood at the far end of the left side of the large room like pieces of a skeleton, probably where rooms had been sectioned off before.

The ceiling was vaulted to a peak high above them and thin shafts of daylight streamed down through a few of the small holes—they looked like laser beams of light shooting down at the wood floor that was covered with dust, broken pieces of wood, scraps of debris.

Joe found part of an old bench in the middle of the clutter and he set it upright and laid his pack down next to it on the floor. He wasn’t wasting any time; he was already taking items out of his pack and setting them on the bench.

Cole, Stella, and David walked across the littered floor, skirting around the larger debris. They gathered around Joe, who was softly singing to himself in Navajo. He pulled out a clear Mason jar from his pack—it was filled with a thick dark fluid.

“Owl’s blood,” Joe said as he set the jar on the rickety bench. “I’m going to use this to paint the symbols on David’s face and hands.”

Joe set what looked like a bundle of feathers tied together next to the jar of blood—it looked like a set of rudimentary paintbrushes. He also set the spiral-bound notebook that David had drawn symbols in this morning near the brush and jar of blood. He took out a long wooden stick that had symbols carved into it. The stick had feathers, beads, and some kind of small dried bird claws tied to it with thin pieces of leather. Next, he slipped a necklace of beads and turquoise around his neck. And the last things he took out of his bag were four plastic containers of lighter fluid and two boxes of large kitchen matches. He picked up one of the bottles of lighter fluid and one of the boxes of matches and handed them to Cole.

“This is for the snakes and spiders if they get too close,” Joe explained.

Cole nodded like he already knew what to do with them, and then he stuffed the container of lighter fluid down into his coat pocket and shoved the box of matches down into his pants pocket.

The wind was getting stronger outside. Sand pelted the outside walls of the church and rattled the stained glass windows. The wood beams and walls creaked and moaned from the gusts of wind. And underneath that wind, Stella heard the howl of a coyote, and then another yip. She looked at the others—they’d heard the sounds too.

David grabbed Stella’s hand as he looked around at the church with wide eyes.

“I don’t understand,” Stella said as she held David’s hand while looking at Joe. David squeezed her hand hard, and she thought she could hear him breathing more quickly now. “You said we were going to a sacred site. What’s so sacred about a ghost town?”

Joe nodded at her. “I promise this is a sacred site. This is where we need to be.”

“But—” Stella began, but then David’s words cut her sentence short.

“I think I’ve been here before,” David said.

CHAPTER 66

The trail to Joe Blackhorn’s property

“There’s the truck,” Captain Begay said as he slowed his Ford Bronco down to a stop on the rutted trail that led to Joe Blackhorn’s property. He parked right behind the old blue pickup truck.

“That’s the truck they stole in Colorado,” Palmer said. “Matches the description that was sent in.”

They both sat in the Bronco for a moment, both of them watching the parked truck in front of them.

“Nobody inside,” Palmer said as he got out of the Bronco, dropping down to the ground from the high truck. He pulled his Glock 17 out from his holster just in case.

Begay got out from the driver’s side, but he didn’t pull out his gun.

Palmer looked around at the desert brush that stretched out to the mountains all around them. They were down in a depression in the land here—the trail continued on past the stolen pickup truck, rising up to a ridge in the distance, then disappearing over the top.

Palmer walked up to the rear of the pickup truck and glanced in the bed, holding his service pistol aimed down at the ground, but he had it ready if he needed it. There was nothing in the bed of the truck except a few pieces of construction debris scattered all over the place: scrap pieces of wood, stripped pieces of wiring, sawed-off metal pipe, a few rusted brackets.

“Hello?” Palmer called out just in case someone was lying low inside the cab of the vehicle. “Special Agent Palmer with the FBI.”

Palmer saw Begay on the other side of the pickup truck. He walked casually to the king cab back window and peered inside. “No one in there,” he said.

Palmer relaxed a little and walked up to the passenger door. He peeked in through the windows. No one in there like Begay had said. There was a large cooler in the back, along with a lot of other junk. The front passenger floorboard was littered with trash and fast food bags. The keys were still in the ignition.

He looked down at the front tire. “Tire came off the rim over here,” Palmer said as he holstered his weapon. “Front passenger tire.” The tire was eaten up, barely clinging to the rim, which looked bent and was dug down into the dirt.

Begay walked on ahead of the front of the pickup truck, studying the ground.

“Truck broke down,” Palmer said, re-creating the scene for Begay. “They must’ve left on foot from here.”

Begay didn’t respond. He walked on ahead a little farther, studying the ground for a while. “Tracks here,” he said. “They got into another truck over here.”

Palmer looked down at the ruts in the dirt trail in front of the truck, following them until he came up beside Begay. He saw the tire tracks in the dirt, but he couldn’t be so sure of what had happened like Begay seemed to be. But he wasn’t going to argue with the man’s tracking skills.

“What the hell’s that?” Palmer asked, pointing down at dozens of smashed spiders, scorpions, and two snakes among the tire tracks.

Begay walked over and stared down at the dead animals and insects. “The truck ran over them,” he said. “A lot of them”.

Palmer didn’t respond. He just watched as Begay walked away from the rutted trail. Palmer was ready to get back in the Bronco and continue on to Blackhorn’s property, but he didn’t say anything as Begay wandered around in the brush and sand. He watched Begay stop and crouch down, studying the ground for a few minutes. Something seemed to be bothering the captain.

“What is it?” Palmer finally asked. It didn’t seem like Begay was going to volunteer anything.

“Strange,” Begay said as he stood up and walked back towards the stolen pickup truck, staring down at the dirt like he was following a trail.

“What’s strange?”

“There are all kinds of animal tracks around here.”

Palmer just nodded. He wanted to point out that they were in the middle of the wilderness, but he didn’t say anything. He wanted to get to Blackhorn’s property before these guys got away again. But he’d learned so far that he wasn’t going to hurry Begay along until the man was ready.

“A lot of animals,” Begay said as he pointed down at the ground. “Coyote tracks back there all over the place. And there are snake trails everywhere.”

“Snake trails?”

“Looks like hundreds of them,” Begay said.

Palmer looked back at the two dead rattlesnakes in the ruts among the crushed spiders and scorpions. He felt a shiver dance along his skin, and he nearly trembled at the thought of hundreds of snakes crawling all over each other across the sand.

Begay walked over to the pickup truck. “Scratch marks all over this truck. Maybe from bird claws. More animal tracks, too.”

Palmer watched the captain for a moment. “What are you trying to say? A horde of animals and snakes came out of the brush?”

“Yes,” Begay answered and looked at Palmer. “It’s like they surrounded the truck.”

Begay pointed at disturbances all over the dirt around the truck, but Palmer couldn’t really see it. He’d had probably a total of a few hours at Quantico when it came to following tracks in the dirt, so he had to trust that Begay knew more about this than he did. Still, it was hard to believe that all of these animals and snakes had surrounded the truck.

“Is that normal?” Palmer asked.

Begay just stared at him. Palmer thought he was going to get a sarcastic remark from the captain. But Begay just shook his head and looked back out at the desert. “Rattlesnakes have been seen in large groups before, especially during mating season. Snake balls, some people call them.”

Again, Palmer shivered at the thought of a bunch of rattlesnakes writhing together in a giant ball, the cacophony of the shaking rattles filling the air.

“Let’s get to Joe Blackhorn’s place,” Begay said and started walking back towards his Ford Bronco.

Finally, Palmer thought.

CHAPTER 67

Joe Blackhorn’s property

Twenty minutes later Special Agent Palmer and Captain Begay saw Joe’s trailer and the other buildings down in the shallow valley below as they drove the trail up over a ridge.

Palmer was tense and excited. Maybe this was it; they were finally going to get these guys. It was how he always felt when he was close to collaring criminals. The place looked quiet and abandoned, but they could still be there, hiding out in that trailer or in one of the other buildings. His senses were on high alert and he noted everything in vivid detail. Time seemed to be slowing down a little. He noted the wood barn and fenced corral. He noted the mud building in the distance—a hogan, as Begay had called it. He noted the trailer and shed and greenhouse near it, the windmill generator in back. He noted the two pickup trucks parked next to each other, which looked like they ran, and the two older vehicles, which looked like they didn’t.

Begay pulled his Bronco up twenty feet away from the backs of the pickup trucks parked side-by-side near the front of the trailer. He shut the engine off, and he and Palmer got out of the truck at the same time.

“Joe Blackhorn!” Begay called out as he walked to the front of his Bronco. “I’m Captain Begay with the Navajo Tribal Police! We just want to ask you a few questions!”

No answer from the trailer. No sound at all except the freezing wind. Nobody came to the trailer door. Nobody peeked out the windows.

Everything was quiet, but then that silence was shattered when a barking German shepherd came bolting out from behind the trailer, running right towards them.

Palmer pulled his gun out of his holster, ready to shoot.

“Don’t!” Begay yelled and jumped in front of Palmer, staring at the approaching dog.

Begay yelled something in Navajo at the dog, a series of sharp and commanding words.

To Palmer’s amazement, the dog stopped in its tracks and stared at them. The snarling creature had become an adorable dog in a matter of seconds.

“He’s just scared,” Begay told Palmer without turning around to look at him, keeping his eyes on the dog the whole time. “He’s scared of something,” he said in an even lower voice. “I don’t think Blackhorn’s here.”

“Great,” Palmer said. A mist of his warm breath clouded up in front of his face as he said the word. “If this is even Joe Blackhorn’s place. Maybe Billy Nez tricked you again.”

Begay said something else in Navajo and the dog turned and ran towards the door of the trailer. Begay followed the dog.

Palmer followed Begay to the trailer.

The German shepherd hurried up the wood steps and waited at the door. Begay climbed the steps and stood beside the dog, knocking on the door.

No answer.

Begay waited a moment and then he twisted the doorhandle, testing to see if it was locked.

It wasn’t.

“What the hell are you doing?” Palmer hissed. He looked down at the German shepherd, expecting the dog to suddenly attack now that Begay was opening the door.

“I’m seeing if this is Joe Blackhorn’s trailer,” Begay answered simply.

“You can’t just … just go inside.”

“Of course I can,” Begay said. “Navajo leave their doors unlocked. We don’t steal from each other. If we need something, we ask and the other gives.”

“Well, in my world, we call this breaking and entering.”

“Stay out here if you want to,” Begay said.

After Begay opened the door all the way, the German shepherd darted inside like he was glad to get into the safety of the home. Begay didn’t try to keep the dog out.

Palmer sighed and looked around at the other structures in the distance. “I think I’ll take a look around out here,” he said.

“Suit yourself,” Begay said and entered the trailer, leaving the door wide open.

Palmer didn’t feel good about what Begay was doing. He just wanted to get away from the trailer and distance himself from the crime that was being committed. Begay could be ruining this whole case by entering a suspect’s home without a warrant.

He walked over to the two pickup trucks parked next to each other near the front of the trailer. He peeked in through the windows of each of the trucks but he didn’t see anything unusual.

He walked over to what looked like a small greenhouse. And sure enough it was loaded with plants on both sides of a wide aisle. It was still somewhat warm inside.

Next, Palmer checked out the hogan at the rear of the property. He wasn’t sure if a mud hut qualified as breaking and entering, but he pulled the wood door open anyway and peeked inside. He took a few steps inside the hogan. There was no furniture anywhere. The floor was dirt and there was a pit in the center of the hogan that was surrounded by a circle of rocks. The walls were constructed out of wood beams and filled in between with stones and mortar and straw. It was warm inside the hogan and there was the ghost of the smell of fires from the past in here.

The last place Palmer checked was the corral and the barn. Inside the barn he found stalls where two goats watched him. There were two other larger stalls, and a horse was in one of them. The other stall was empty.

“Horse is gone,” Begay said from behind Palmer.

Palmer whirled around, almost drawing his gun. He breathed out a sigh of relief. “You scared the shit out of me. I didn’t even hear you walk up.”

“Injun training,” Begay said.

Palmer ignored the man’s remark. “Anything in the trailer?”

Begay shook his head. “It’s Joe Blackhorn’s trailer,” he said, but didn’t offer proof of how he knew that. “He had some guests here. Looks like they had some breakfast and then left. There are some extra blankets and pillows in the living room.”

It was them, Palmer thought—had to be. Their stolen pickup truck was on the trail a few miles back and now this reclusive old man had entertained some guests.

“So they were here earlier and now they left,” Palmer said. “Where?”

“Someone took a horse,” Begay said, nodding at the empty stall in front of Palmer. “Looks like there’s space in the shed behind the trailer where vehicles used to be parked. Most likely four-wheelers. A lot of four-wheelers and dirt bikes out here.”

Palmer nodded. “So they left on a horse and on four-wheelers.” He looked beyond Begay and noticed that the German shepherd had followed the captain out here to the barn. The dog was sitting there watching them, like he was waiting to follow them wherever they went next.

Begay noticed that Palmer was looking at the dog. “Blackhorn’s got a doghouse for the dog behind the trailer,” he said, “but I don’t think he wants to stay there. He wants to follow us around. He’s scared of something here.”

Palmer nodded.

Begay walked past Palmer, entering the barn. The captain looked down at the dirt, studying the tracks left behind by the horse. He followed the tracks out of the barn and corral, and then to the shed behind the trailer. And then he followed all of those tracks towards the front of the trailer, and then he kept on walking past it.

Palmer followed Begay but he kept his distance, not wanting to unknowingly disturb any tracks. He’d probably already done some damage by walking around out here earlier.

The German shepherd stayed a few paces behind Palmer. He turned around and looked at the dog, holding the dog’s stare for a moment.

The dog growled at him, but he didn’t attack. He sat down on his haunches and refused to follow them any further.

“Don’t stare at him!” Begay called back over his shoulder without turning around.

Palmer turned back around from the dog and shook his head. He kept on walking, following Begay out into the desert.

Once they had walked a few hundred yards past Joe’s collection of structures, Palmer looked back at the dog. He had remained in the same place, just watching them.

Begay finally stopped walking and Palmer caught up to him.

“Dog’s afraid of where we’re going,” Begay said, as if Palmer had asked.

“Where are these tracks leading to?” Palmer could see the clear horse and four-wheeler tracks in the dirt now.

Begay pointed. “Over that ridge.”

“Yeah, I can see that. Is there somewhere specific they would be going to from here?”

Begay shrugged. “I don’t know. We can follow their trail as far as possible in my truck, but I have to assume that the trail gets too rough for a vehicle if they took four-wheelers and a horse. But I can get a lot farther in my truck than he could’ve gotten in his.”

“Why would Joe Blackhorn drive off into the desert with these three?”

Begay shrugged again. “He’s helping them.”

Here we go again, Palmer thought.

Begay looked at Palmer like he could read his mind. “This is the last chance,” Begay said. “They’ve gone somewhere out there to confront the Ancient Enemy. If you want to stay here, I can go alone.”

Palmer shook his head, tiring of Begay’s constant warnings. “I don’t think the German shepherd would be too comfortable with me hanging around here with him.”

Begay didn’t laugh at Palmer’s joke. He turned around and started walking back towards Joe Blackhorn’s place.

Palmer fell in step beside him.

CHAPTER 68

The ghost town

“What did you mean by that?” Stella asked David. “What do you mean, you’ve been here before?”

David didn’t answer.

“You’ve been here with your parents?” Stella asked him.

David shook his head no, but it seemed like he was confused, deep in thought. He also looked like he was on the verge of tears. “I haven’t really been here before,” he said. “But at the same time, it feels like I’ve been here before.”

Stella looked at Joe for help.

“Remember when I told you about a man in 1891 named Jed Cartwright who found a boy named David?” Joe asked. “And I told you that the boy’s family was slaughtered when Jed found him.”

Cole and Stella nodded. David squeezed Stella’s hand even tighter.

“I told you that Jed and David went to a town and that those people were wiped out by the Darkwind … this is that town.”

David said that he’d been here before.

“Everyone in town was killed?” Cole asked.

Joe shrugged. “There are different stories, but many believe that a yataalii, a Navajo medicine man, was here in this town—a relative of Billy Nez’s clan—and he helped David close the door on the Ancient Enemy.”

“If he defeated it, then why is it back now?” Cole asked.

Joe shrugged again. “Maybe they didn’t succeed, or maybe they didn’t kill it but only managed to send it back to its world, and now, one hundred and twenty years later, it has come back. Or maybe this is a different Darkwind this time.”

Stella thought about the time of one hundred and twenty years—a person’s life span. Was David somehow the reincarnation of the David before him, and the David before that? Was he somehow related to this ancient being?

She didn’t want to think about that. David was just a boy, she told herself. Just a little boy who needed help.

The wind rocked the side of the church, the wood creaking even louder. The ceiling above them groaned in protest. A howl sounded in the distance. The coyotes were closer now … all of the animals were closer.

“Come, David,” Joe said. “We have to hurry. It’s almost here. You know that, don’t you?”

David nodded and he pulled his hand away from Stella’s grasp.

Stella knelt down and grabbed David’s shoulders gently before he turned to walk to Joe. She locked eyes with him. “We’re going to get through this,” she told him. “You’re strong enough to beat this evil. You understand me?”

He nodded.

“You listen to everything Joe tells you. But you have to believe in yourself … you have to believe that you can do this.”

“I’m scared,” David whispered.

“I know,” Stella answered, and she couldn’t stop the tears from falling now. “I know you’re scared, but you’re stronger than that monster. You can hurt it. You can send it back. No matter what happens … no matter what happens to us …” She glanced at Cole who nodded in agreement, and then she looked back at David. “No matter what happens, you just concentrate on sending that thing back through the doorway. Back to its own world.”

David nodded and hugged Stella fiercely. She hugged him back. She was so sorry David had to go through this, but she wasn’t going to tell him that right now. She wanted him to stay strong.

She let him go and she wiped at her eyes. “Go to Joe,” she whispered. “Do what he tells you to.”

*

Forty-five minutes later Joe had the symbols from David’s notebook painted onto David’s face, hands, and arms. The symbols looked like perfect replicas of the ones in the notebook. They looked almost like dark red tattoos on David’s skin.

Joe used the rest of the owl’s blood to paint a large circle on the wood floor after Cole and Stella had helped him sweep the debris out of the way. He’d painted more symbols inside and outside the line of the circle. David now stood alone in the middle of that circle as Joe danced around the outside of it, waving his carved wooden stick, rattling the bird claws, beads, and feathers, singing a prayer in a low voice.

Cole stood the farthest away from the circle. He had his gun in one gloved hand, his finger caressing the trigger, his eyes on the double doors at the front of the church in the distance.

Stella stood halfway between Cole and the circle. Her gun was still in the waistband of her jeans.

The wind had remained constant over the last thirty minutes, howling and screeching around the eaves of the church. The building creaked, the stained glass windows rattled in their frames, the whole building seemed to sway a little from some of the stronger gusts.

Shadows flew outside the stained glass windows … birds, buzzards, and bats. Some of them bumped into the glass, like they were testing its strength. A few of the birds were already beginning to peck at the pieces of stained glass.

The howls outside from the coyotes were closer now.

The Ancient Enemy was closer now.

Cole and Stella had barred the front doors shut as best they could with some old pieces of wood and two-by-fours. Cole had managed to brace them against the doors at angles, but he knew the pieces of wood wouldn’t keep that thing out when it finally came.

A moment later something pounded on the doors from outside.

Then another pounding.

And another one.

It was here …

CHAPTER 69

Captain Begay drove his Ford Bronco as far into the desert as the big knobby tires would allow. They had driven for almost forty minutes, traveling deeper and deeper into the desert. The trail was easy enough to follow even from his truck, but then the trail ran up to some narrow passageways through sheer cliffs of rock. No way to get the truck through there. They could’ve backtracked and tried to find a route around the groupings of rocks, but they might drive too far out of the way and lose the trail for good.

“We’ll have to walk from here,” Begay said.

Palmer didn’t argue.

“Take some water with you,” Begay said.

Palmer had taken a few nips from his bottle of vodka on their bumpy ride through the desert, trying not to spill any of it, but he left that behind and took Begay’s advice; he slipped a bottle of water down into his outside coat pocket. He zipped up his coat and slipped his gloves on. He wished he had a hat but he would just have to tough it out.

Begay went to the back of his truck and grabbed a small backpack that was obviously loaded with supplies. Palmer watched him as he rummaged through the pack like he was performing a last-minute check.

“What have you got in there?” Palmer asked him.

“Just some extra water and some other stuff,” Begay answered without looking at Palmer. He buckled the straps and slipped the backpack on. Then he grabbed the shotgun, unlocked the trigger guard and shut the hatchback.

And then they started walking.

Palmer wasn’t exactly out of shape, but he was no athlete either, and twenty minutes into the walk he was breathing a little heavier and the muscles in his legs and lower back were already burning. He glanced at the captain who walked beside him, but the big man seemed to be breathing normally, having no trouble with their hike through these rocks even though he was probably a hundred pounds heavier than Palmer was.

Begay didn’t talk on their walk, and Palmer was glad because he was probably too out-of-breath to answer.

The groupings of rocks gave way to a gradual dip down into the desert floor that was a sea of brush and shrubs, some of them thorny and sharp, with dozens of trails through them. Palmer followed Begay as he wound his way through the paths through the brush, following the beaten-down trails left behind from the four-wheelers and the horse. Palmer kept glancing down at his feet, looking for any rattlesnakes in the brush. The thought of all of those snake trails near the abandoned truck they had seen had gotten to him and he wondered how many thousands of rattlesnakes were out here where few humans ever walked.

Ten minutes later Begay stopped. The vegetation had thinned out, and even though the sand was packed down a little harder in this area, the trail from both the four-wheelers and the horse was still evident.

“Look at that,” Begay said.

Palmer saw it—a horse was trotting up to them.

“That must be their horse,” Palmer said.

Begay nodded and clicked his teeth. The horse came right up to him.

This guy has some kind of way with animals, Palmer thought. A regular Dr. Doolittle.

The captain whispered into the horse’s ear, stroking the animal’s flank gently. The horse looked jumpy, staring at Palmer with wild eyes. Begay patted the horse and whispered to her again. The horse took off towards the sea of brush, following the trail they had just left behind.

“Why is their horse coming back without them?” Palmer asked.

Begay didn’t answer. He started walking again.

Twenty minutes later Begay stopped at the edge of the brush, which opened up to an expanse of open desert. In the distance was a line of structures that looked like dark shapes on the horizon with the mountains beyond them. Palmer could tell the structures were man-made.

As they got closer to the structures, Palmer realized that they were buildings in a ghost town. He’d heard of ghost towns before, but he’d never really seen one in person.

“Do you know this place?” Palmer asked. His breathing was better, his lungs more used to their hike and the altitude now.

Begay shook his head. “I don’t come out this way much. Nobody does. A lot of this land is sacred Anasazi land. Many Navajo don’t go to these places.”

“But why would a town be built here? That looks like a …” Palmer didn’t know how to phrase it exactly.

“You mean this is the kind of place white people might build?” Begay asked with a smile.

Palmer just sighed.

“There were towns all over here in the eighteen hundreds before the government sectioned off the reservations for the Navajo, Ute, Zuni, Hopi, and others. Many of these towns were built up during the silver rush, or as way stations along the way to the west coast. But just like towns are disappearing in the Appalachian valley now as the economy changes, people left these towns for the same reasons.”

A howl rang out through the air. Then another one.

Begay looked over at a ridge that ran along to their left, running all the way from the sea of brush they had walked through and then beyond the ghost town. “Coyotes.”

Palmer looked at the ridge and saw that it was dotted with coyotes. The animals stood there in a line like a regiment of soldiers. His skin crawled as he thought back to all of those animal tracks around the stolen pickup truck.

“Is that normal?” Palmer asked, nodding towards the line of coyotes in the distance. “All those coyotes up there on the ridge like that?”

“Nothing is normal about this,” Begay answered.

They followed the trail through the hard-packed sand to the edge of the ghost town as the wind began to kick up, nearly blotting out the ghost town now in the sandstorm. Palmer stayed tense, but he kept one arm shielded over his eyes. If something was coming for them in this sandstorm, they wouldn’t see it until it was too late.

They got to the edge of the town and the buildings lining both sides of the dusty street provided some protection from the swirling sand. Begay carried the shotgun as he walked down the wide street through the middle of the town and Palmer had his service pistol in his hand.

“They could be in any of these buildings,” Palmer said.

Begay looked down at the tracks in the sand. Palmer looked down at the dirt, too. The wind hadn’t blown the tracks away completely because of the buildings, but Palmer could barely see them anymore.

“Their horse came back from that church down there,” Begay said and pointed at the white church in the distance. “And their four-wheelers are parked there.”

Then that was probably where they were, Palmer thought. But they still needed to be ready in case a shot rang out from one of these decrepit buildings on both sides of them. He didn’t think he needed to tell Begay that.

More howls and yips sang out in the distance, and the wind shrieked down between the buildings as Palmer and Begay made their way down the dirt street towards the church like two gunslingers marching towards a shootout. Once they were in front of the double doors of the church, the wind was stronger, the sand swirling harder, pelting them like a dry stinging rain.

Palmer looked to their left and saw shadows moving towards them in the sandstorm. Some of the shadows were definitely coyotes creeping forward, their skinny bodies hunched low to the ground. But there were also some kind of birds flying through the swirling sand; some were large birds like buzzards, but others were smaller … maybe they were bats. And there were other creatures on the ground slithering towards them. Snakes—had to be snakes.

But there was something else out there moving around in the sandstorm—it looked almost like two people stumbling around out there.

Could it be Stella or the man she was with, or Joe Blackhorn?

Palmer was about to point the two people out to Begay, but then the two people were gone, lost again in the swirling sand.

Begay and Palmer got to the front doors of the church and Palmer pushed on the door. It seemed like it was locked or barred shut. He kicked at it as Begay turned around, his shotgun aimed at the swirling sandstorm and the shadows advancing towards them. He was singing a prayer under his breath as he held his shotgun steady.

Palmer kicked the door again.

Then another kick.

Then another.

Finally the doors splintered and broke open. Palmer pushed the doors open all the way, his gun aimed into the gloom. “FBI! Everyone down! Now!”

CHAPTER 70

The pounding continued on the front doors of the church.

Cole had his nine millimeter in his hand, the gun aimed at the double doors. His finger was on the trigger, ready to shoot.

David still waited inside the circle of owl’s blood Joe had painted on the floor. Joe danced around the outside of the circle, shaking his carved stick decorated with feathers, beads, and claws. He continued singing a prayer.

Stella was about to hurry towards Cole.

“Stay there,” he told her, his gun still aimed at the double doors.

Stella stopped—she trusted him.

Cole didn’t have time to explain, but he wanted to be away from Stella, David, and Joe when the Ancient Enemy came inside. He was willing to be the first one taken when that thing came, willing to buy David some time if he had to. But he had a surprise for the Ancient Enemy. He was going to shoot it, he was going to burn it, he was going to hurt it somehow before it took him. He was going to make it pay for what it had done to his brother. He wasn’t going out without fighting to his death.

And now the Ancient Enemy was here, pounding on the door, kicking it in.

Cole was ready.

But then he froze when he saw a man dressed in a dark coat and tie stumble inside the opened doors, a fog of swirling sand following the man inside.

“FBI!” the man yelled, aiming his gun right at Cole. “Everyone down! Now!”

Cole didn’t lower his weapon.

“Drop your weapons now!” the man yelled.

A split second later an even larger man entered the church right behind the man in the suit and tie. This man wore a bulky green Navajo Police jacket with a backpack over it. And he was carrying a shotgun.

Joe had stopped dancing and singing around the circle.

They all stared at the two men who stood in the doorway for a few seconds with the fierce sandstorm behind them.

The other man, the Tribal Police officer, closed the doors on the howling wind and stinging sand. He managed to prop up a few of the pieces of wood that Cole had used before, bracing the doors closed again.

“I’m not fucking playing around!” the FBI man screamed, still aiming his gun right at Cole and taking a step closer. “Lower your weapon now! Put it down on the floor and kick it away!”

“Joe Blackhorn?” the Tribal Officer said as he turned back around to face them, casually holding the shotgun in his hands, but not aiming at them.

Joe nodded. “I’m Joe Blackhorn.”

Palmer’s eyes shifted to Joe and then to David, who stood inside the circle of blood with red symbols painted all over his face and hands. “What the fuck is going on here?”

“I’m Captain Begay from the Navajo Tribal Police,” Begay announced, ignoring Palmer. “We’re here to apprehend these two and take David back to his family. This man with me is Special Agent Palmer from the FBI.”

Joe smiled and shook his head slowly. “You two came at a very bad time.”

Begay looked at Cole, locking eyes with him from across the room. “Sir, could you lower your weapon please?”

Cole didn’t lower his gun. “How do we know you’re who you say you are?” Cole asked them.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Palmer growled. “I’ll show you my ID and badge after you throw your gun down on the floor.”

“I’m not putting my gun down,” Cole said.

“Wait,” Begay said, looking at Palmer.

The Tribal Police officer seemed to be trying to calm the FBI agent down, Cole thought. He laid a big hand on the agent’s shoulder. “Just lower your weapon a little, please. We don’t want any accidents here.”

The agent glared at Begay: Don’t tell me what to do, his eyes said. Then he looked back at Cole. “You’re a suspect in twenty-one murders, two stolen vehicles, and one bank robbery.” He smiled like he was delivering information about Cole that the others might not know about.

“You need to get away from those doors,” Joe told the two cops.

Agent Palmer’s eyes shifted to the old man. “I’m not playing games anymore.”

“The Darkwind is coming,” Joe said, looking right at Begay.

“We need to brace those doors back up,” Cole said. “How many men you got outside?”

“None of your fucking—”

“We’re alone,” Begay said, interrupting Palmer. “We don’t want anyone hurt here,” he said again.

“You need to get away from those doors,” Joe said again.

The wind was shrieking outside. Sand pelted the walls and stained glass windows. More shadows moved past the windows outside—buzzards flying past the glass, their claws and beaks pecking at it on the way, punching out little holes in the colorful sections. Above them, more birds pecked at the holes in the roof, enlarging them.

Outside, coyotes continued their howling. Now it sounded like there were hundreds of them.

There was a pounding at the doors behind the two cops.

Palmer and Begay turned and pointed their weapons at the doors, backing up a few steps across the debris-littered floor. Then Palmer turned back around and aimed his gun at Cole again. “Who’s out there?” he yelled. “Who’s with you?”

“It’s the Darkwind,” Joe said.

Begay didn’t wait for Palmer; he backed up even farther away from the doors, moving closer to Cole and the others.

More pounding on the doors. It was so forceful, the doors barely holding.

“Get back,” Begay told Palmer. “Get back away from those doors right now!”

Cole moved farther away from Stella, Joe, and David, who had remained inside the circle of owl’s blood. Cole still held his gun steady on the FBI agent, but he wanted to be farther away from the others in case this madman started shooting at him.

“Agent Palmer!” Begay shouted.

Palmer looked back at the doors, aiming his gun. The doors were bulging in.

“It’s the Ancient Enemy,” Begay told Palmer.

Both men backed up towards Cole and all three of them aimed their weapons at the doors, which were still bulging inward like something heavy was leaning against them, pushing on them slowly.

“It’s here,” Joe said, and he began singing again in a low voice, shaking his feathered stick at the air as he danced around the circle of dried blood.

Stella looked at David. His eyes were wide with fear as he stared at the double doors of the church, watching them bulge inward.

“You can do this, David!” she told him. “You can stop it!”

Cole watched Stella and David for a second, but then he looked at the line of stained glass windows high up on the walls at the other side of the church. Tarantulas and scorpions were crawling all over the outside of the stained glass windows, somehow sticking to them in the sandstorm, and many of them were crawling in through the holes in the glass pecked away by the buzzards; dozens of the spiders and scorpions were falling down to the floor.

A rattlesnake wriggled its way in from underneath the bulging doors.

“No … no … no …” Palmer muttered. He shot at the snake, blowing the top half of it away in a spray of blood.

The doors burst open, both doors slamming into the walls, one of them falling off of its hinges from the force.

Two people stood in the open doorway with the swirling sandstorm behind them … the man and woman who used to be Zeke and Joanie.

“David,” the woman who used to be Joanie said, lifting a thin arm up like she was reaching out towards him. “We’ve come to take you back home with us.”

CHAPTER 71

Zeke and Joanie stood in the doorway of the church. From behind them, materializing from the sandstorm, snakes crawled inside the building. Spiders and scorpions skittered among the slithering snakes, some of the spiders darted across Zeke and Joanie’s hiking boots, but the man and woman didn’t seem to notice or care.

Zeke and Joanie were both dressed in soiled jeans and torn flannel shirts, but their faces weren’t their own anymore—their heads were covered with the dead faces and scalped hair of David’s parents. The skin was gray and mottled, their eyes rolling around loosely in the sockets behind their flesh masks. Their mouths hung open, teeth sticking up at odd angles, their tongues lolling around inside their mouths like the writhing snakes on the floor.

Both of them took a step forward in unison.

Stella and the others had seen that walk before—these were the dead controlled by the Ancient Enemy.

“Oh God,” Begay said. “That can’t be possible. Those are David’s parents’ faces.”

“Those two are already dead!” Cole yelled as he glanced at Begay and Palmer, who still held their weapons aimed at the slowly advancing couple. Cole looked at David, who stood inside the circle of blood, trembling with fear. “Those aren’t your parents, David!”

“What the fuck is this?” Palmer whispered from beside Begay, shaking his head slowly like he was trying to clear it.

“Those are David’s parents’ faces and hair on those people,” Begay said.

Palmer nodded like he remembered the corpses of David’s parents. Their faces had been skinned away, their hair scalped, all of the pieces missing. But here those pieces were … stuck on these two people in the doorway.

“Stop right there!” Palmer yelled at the man and woman. “FBI!”

The couple took a step forward, their tongues swirling around inside the mouth holes of their skin masks, their eyeballs so large they looked ready to pop out of their dead faces. They walked with the jerky movements of zombies in horror films.

“I said stop, or I’ll shoot!” Palmer warned. “I swear to God, I’ll shoot!”

The snakes slithered forward, passing Zeke and Joanie. The spiders, desert rats, and scorpions poured in through the doorway, marching onward like an army. More spiders, rats, and scorpions spilled in through the broken stained glass windows on both sides of the church.

“Shoot them with the shotgun!” Cole yelled at Begay.

Begay didn’t even respond or look at Cole; he slithered out of his backpack and let it drop down to the floor, and then he pumped his shotgun and fired. The buckshot tore the arm off the woman at her shoulder, the arm disappearing in a spray of blood.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Palmer yelled at Begay, horrified.

Begay didn’t answer. He pumped the shotgun again and blew part of the man’s leg off, the leg gone now below the knee.

But the man and woman kept stumbling forward.

“David,” the woman said in a guttural voice. “We want you to come with us. We want to show you things …”

“How … how can they still be walking?” Palmer asked.

“Because they’re already dead!” Begay yelled, pumping his shotgun again. “I know you don’t want to believe it, but it’s true!”

Joe took the bottle of lighter fluid out of his coat pocket. He pointed the bottle down at the floor in front of him and squirted the fluid all over the floorboards in a wide arc. He plucked one of the large kitchen matches out of his jeans pocket and struck it. The flame sparked into life, and he threw the burning match down onto the wriggling spiders and scorpions coming towards him in a crawling, living wave. Flames whooshed up on the floor, burning the closest creatures. The others backed away from the flames for a moment.

Cole glanced quickly at the flames and then he pulled the bottle of lighter fluid and the small box of kitchen matches out of his coat pocket that Joe had given to him a little earlier.

He squirted the fluid all over the closest line of spiders, scorpions, rats, and rattlesnakes. He plucked a long kitchen match out of the box, but his fingers were shaking so badly he almost dropped the match and the box. But he was finally able to strike the match against the side of the box.

It didn’t light.

The creatures were getting closer, glistening now with the lighter fluid all over them. Cole slid the match over and over against the side of the matchbox, but it still wouldn’t light. He wished he still had his brother’s Zippo lighter with him.

After one more strike the match lit. He tossed it on top of the wet snakes, rats, scorpions, and spiders in front of him. The flames rose up immediately, the fire racing across the animals’ backs. The rats squealed and the snakes hissed; the animals writhed in pain on the floorboards.

Cole took a step back. The fire was holding them back, but it would only work for so long … more of the creatures were coming right towards the wall of flames.

“I said stop fucking walking!” Palmer yelled at Zeke and Joanie.

The couple took another step forward, Zeke hopping on one leg now.

Palmer squeezed off a shot, hitting the man dead center in the chest, knocking him back a step. But then he kept on hopping forward again.

“David, we want you to come home with us,” the woman said, her voice just a gurgling grumble.

The Ancient Enemy could put human masks on these people to look like David’s parents, but it couldn’t mimic their voices. The voice always sounded the same … that same guttural growl.

Palmer shot three more times, knocking both the man and the woman back again, but neither one went down. “What the hell?” he muttered.

Begay blew a hole in the side of the man’s face, erasing part of it. The rest of the man’s face slid off of his red glistening skull like a latex mask, the hair sliding off behind him. All that remained was the meat and tendons on his face, with some pieces of white bone gleaming through. The one eye that was left rolled around wildly in the socket. His jaw had been broken in half from the impact of the buckshot, but he still tried to gnash the teeth together that he had left.

A new wave of spiders, rats, scorpions, and snakes were crawling in through the open doorway. More of them poured down from the broken windows. The buzzards and other birds and bats shattered the rest of the stained glass windows, pouring in and swirling above them, flying through the smoke from the fires that burned inside the church.

“David!” Stella yelled as she turned to look at him. “Do something!”

David closed his eyes, tears slipping out. He looked lost … hopeless.

Joe kept on singing his prayers, but he had another container of lighter fluid in his hand; he squirted the liquid towards the fire, fueling the flames, keeping the snakes, spiders, and other creatures back away from him and the circle.

“We’re going to take your friends, David,” Joanie said. “We’re going to take them all away from you. You’re going to watch them die one by one.”

Joanie looked at Palmer and Begay. “You can stop this, Palmer,” she said.

Palmer had a confused look on his face: How does she know my name?

“Kill the boy and all of this will be over,” Joanie growled at Palmer.

Palmer stared at the snakes slithering towards him. Some of the snakes had curled up into a coil, their rattles shaking, ready to strike—their combined rattling was like the sound of a million cicadas inside the church.

“Kill the boy!” Joanie screamed at Palmer. “Just kill the boy!”

“Don’t listen to them!” Stella told Palmer. “David’s the only one who can hurt it!”

Two tarantulas crawled over Palmer’s shoes and he pulled his feet away, backing up, but the spiders and scorpions were all around him and Begay now. He shot at a few of them, blowing them into bits until his gun clicked.

Then he reloaded.

The wind outside was even louder now, screeching in through the broken windows, bringing the stinging sand with it. The wood beams in the ceiling creaked and moaned from the strain, ready to give way soon.

“David, fight it!” Stella screamed over the howling wind, the rattling snakes, and the flickering fires.

“Last chance!” Joanie yelled at Palmer. “Last chance to kill the boy! We will win! We always do!” She opened her mouth wide and a fat hairy tarantula crawled out, dropping down to the floor at her feet in a pool of thick saliva.

Begay pumped his shotgun and blew the woman’s head off of her shoulders.

Zeke and Joanie, now without most of their heads, collapsed down onto the floor. Their bodies twitched and bulged. Something large moved around inside of their bodies, struggling to get out.

Cole squirted more lighter fluid at the line of fire in front of him, dragging the fire along with the stream of fluid. “Over here!” he yelled at Palmer and Begay. “Get behind the fire!”

But the fire wasn’t all the way around them yet, and now the crawling creatures were advancing from behind them, the snakes slithering quickly through the debris, their rattles shaking.

The wood floors began shaking, trembling underneath their feet like an earthquake.

Stella looked down at the floorboards beneath her feet and watched as they exploded. Skeletal hands reached up from underneath the floor, grabbing Stella’s ankles. She saw wide eyes in a skull staring up at her, a rictus grin in the darkness below.

“Come down here with us, Stellaaaa …”

CHAPTER 72

“No!” David screamed when he saw the hands from underneath the floor grab Stella’s legs.

Stella tried to pull her foot out of the skeletal hands’ grasp, but they were too strong. More floorboards exploded away. Spiders and scorpions fell down into the darkness below. The hole was getting bigger and Stella could see so many more bodies down there crawling all over each other, their eyes glowing in the darkness, their teeth gnashing.

“David, help me!” Stella screamed. She beat at the hands as she fell down onto her butt. The hands were dragging her towards the ragged hole in the floor.

“You can’t have her!” David screamed, and then his body went rigid, like he was going into a trance. The ancient writing that Joe Blackhorn had painted on David’s face and hands glowed bright red and seemed to move, coming alive on his skin. Threads grew from the symbols and crawled down David’s face, down his arms and hands, down his clothes, down to the floor. The threads grew thicker and wound together like vines, moving towards a black ball of darkness that was forming on the floor in front of David.

David’s eyes rolled back in his head and his body began to shake.

*

The ruined bodies of Zeke and Joanie were twisted together on the floor, their skin melting together for a moment, then pushing away as something inside forced its way out from underneath their flesh. Black tentacles and feelers poked out through their skin, whipping frantically in the air around them, and then changing form. A segmented leg that looked like a giant spider leg pushed out, but then folded back in on itself.

Begay pumped his shotgun again and pulled the trigger.

Nothing.

He pulled the trigger again and again.

Still nothing. He turned the weapon around in his hands, holding it by the barrel like a baseball bat, and he beat at the snakes all over the floor around him and Palmer.

But there were too many of the creatures. One snake shot out and sank its fangs into Palmer’s left calf. The FBI agent screamed. Another snake got him in the other calf. A tarantula crawled up his pants leg. And then another one.

Begay grabbed the rattlesnakes and tore them off of Palmer’s legs, ripping their fangs out of his flesh and clothing. He flung the snakes across the room into the fire in front of Cole.

Cole came over to help Begay, squirting lighter fluid all around them in a circle, dragging the line of fire he’d created over with him, then continuing it on around them in a big circle. The flames rose up in front of them for a moment and they couldn’t see the Ancient Enemy crawling out of Zeke and Joanie.

*

David stood in the circle of owl’s blood, his eyes still closed, his body still trembling. The spinning black ball that had formed on the floor in front of him crackled with electricity as it began to rise up from the floor, gaining mass and solidifying, hovering in the air and spinning faster and faster.

David opened his eyes. His pupils had rolled all the way back into his head, only the whites showing now. His hands were out at his sides, his head leaned back, mouth opened a little, his body shaking violently now. The painted symbols were all off of his skin, all of them turned into threads of electricity that crackled around the spinning ball that was getting bigger and bigger.

*

Stella beat at the skeletal hands grabbing at her from underneath the floor. More of the dead were pulling her down into the hole. She grabbed the gun out of the waistband of her pants and aimed it at the dead skeletal creatures that held on to her. She pulled the trigger over and over again, shooting at the dead things until the gun was empty.

But the bullets didn’t slow them down. When she blew one of the dead away, another would take its place, grabbing her legs and dragging her down into the hole. Her legs were almost down below the floorboards now. She dropped her gun and grabbed at the floorboards, her fingernails snapping off as she tried to dig them into the wood and hold on.

Joe was suddenly at her side. He grabbed at Stella’s wrists, pulling at her. He strained as he pulled at her, but he was losing this tug-of-war. The dead were too strong. There were too many of them. She was slipping farther down into the hole.

The birds and buzzards above swooped down around Cole, Palmer, and Begay, then flew away, pecking at them. Begay swung at one of the buzzards, connecting with it like a baseball bat with a ball. He knocked it away in a fluttering of feathers.

The spinning black ball in front of David grew bigger and bigger, spinning faster and faster, opening up into a void, like a hole in reality, sparks of lightning flashing out of it and through it, crackling in the air.

“Don’t look at it!” Joe yelled at Stella as he struggled to hold on to her. “Don’t look at David! Don’t look into their world!”

Stella wanted to look at David; she wanted to make sure he was okay. But she heeded Joe’s advice. She knew that one glimpse into their world might drive her insane. She closed her eyes and she could feel the electricity in the air all around her, she could feel the hair on her arms and her head wanting to stand up. But she concentrated on fighting to stay out of the hole in the floor.

*

As the flames around them died down quickly, Cole watched the Ancient Enemy rise up from the two dead bodies that had somehow twisted together in a melting of flesh. The thing unfolded itself from the two bodies, then refolded, then unfolded again, constantly reforming itself, changing constantly as it achieved solidity. And then the air around it began to shimmer and distort.

Oh God, Cole thought. It’s going to teleport away again like it did at the Mountainside Inn. It’s going to teleport away and we’re going to lose it.

*

Begay beat at the snakes and spiders and scorpions, but none of them attacked him—they only attacked Palmer and Cole. Palmer had been bit twice so far, maybe more than that, and Begay wasn’t sure if Cole had been bit. Begay had seen the black hole opening up in front of David, and he knew that David was fighting that thing across the room, drawing that thing back into its own world. Begay just needed to hold on a little longer … he just needed to give David a chance to defeat the Darkwind.

There was a screech in the air as the Ancient Enemy was drawn across the floor, its constantly changing form stretched out, tentacles and feelers trying desperately to hold on to the floor much like Stella was trying to hold on. But that thing seemed like it was losing the battle.

Was David winning?

*

Stella was almost over the edge of the hole in the floor now, her legs dangling down inside. She could feel more of the skeletal hands down inside the hole grabbing on to her. It seemed like they were making a last-ditch effort to pull her down into the darkness. She could feel Joe pulling on her wrists, but it felt like she was slipping away from him.

She looked up above Joe at the swirling birds in the smoky air. A few of the buzzards and bats were dive-bombing Joe, trying to get him to loosen his grip as they pecked and clawed at him. But he wouldn’t let go. He kept his head down, his teeth gritted, his eyes on her, and he would not let go.

But Stella saw something else above the birds and bats, something that concerned her even more—the church ceiling was shaking apart. Debris and pieces of wood and shingles were already raining down around them. Then she heard the popping noise of wood beams snapping, braces breaking loose.

And then part of the roof was caving in, collapsing down onto them.

CHAPTER 73

“Look out!” Cole yelled. He pushed Begay and Palmer out of the way of the large section of roof that was falling down on them—it was the size of a king-sized bed. He managed to get Begay out of the way, but the piece of roof fell down on top of Palmer, burying him underneath it in a cloud of dust and sand.

*

Stella pulled her legs as hard as she could, and Joe was helping, but it seemed like the skeletal things were still making one last massive effort to pull her down beneath the floor with them. She thought they were going to tear her legs off.

*

The Ancient Enemy tried to distort the space around it, trying to bend and fold itself around the shimmering air … but it was losing the battle. The alien thing slid across the floor towards the spinning vortex, screeching in fury and fear, twisting and writhing as it was dragged along, feelers and tentacles flapping around and slapping at the floorboards. The Ancient Enemy resisted, but the force from the spinning black hole was too strong, and it was sucked into the gaping hole in reality, back into its own world. With one last screech of anguish, the constantly twisting and changing black thing was gone.

*

Stella felt the grips of the dead hands loosen on her legs all at once. She saw the dead bodies rise up out of the holes in the floorboards like invisible cranes were picking up their bodies. The dead shot across the air towards the spinning black hole. She couldn’t help it, she turned to look.

“Don’t look,” Joe whispered. He was right there beside her, and he hugged her, shielding her from the sight as he held on to her.

*

Cole watched as the animals that weren’t on fire suddenly backed up away from them. If animals could’ve looked like they had suddenly woken up in confusion, then this was it. The buzzards, birds, and bats swirled above them in the smoke, and then they all shot up and out through the large hole that was in the ceiling now, escaping out into the sandstorm above. A few of them flew out of the broken windows, some of them colliding with each other in a panic, but then escaping.

Snakes, spiders, and scorpions skittered away from the fires that were dying down quickly, slithering and crawling back towards the open doorway like an army, and others escaped down into the cracks in the floor and at the edges of the walls.

Cole looked over at the black hole in front of David as the hole turned back into a spinning black ball crackling with electricity, getting smaller and smaller until it closed up on itself and disappeared into nothing.

The church’s walls were still rumbling and more of the ceiling was going to collapse soon. The storm outside was at its strongest now.

“Help me get him out of there!” Begay yelled at Cole.

Begay grabbed a corner of the large section of roof that had fallen down on Palmer, and Cole took the other. They managed to move the piece of roof back far enough to see Palmer underneath, unconscious now, but they had moved it enough to pull him out.

“We need to get him to the door!” Cole said.

Begay looked a little uncertain about that, but the snakes, spiders, and scorpions were almost entirely gone now, and the dead bodies of the man and woman had slipped into the spinning ball along with the Ancient Enemy that had been inside of them.

“It’s over,” Cole said. “David won. That thing is gone!”

Begay didn’t question it. He grabbed one of Palmer’s arms and Cole grabbed the other one. They pulled him through the debris across the floor.

“We gotta go!” Cole yelled at Stella and Joe, both of them crouched down on the floor together. Stella grabbed her gun and stuck it down into the waistband of her pants as she got to her feet. Joe helped her stand and they looked at David.

David had collapsed on the floor inside the circle; he was unconscious now. The spinning ball or hole in their reality or doorway, or whatever it had been, was gone now. There was only the ozone smell in the air from the crackling electricity.

The sandstorm was already dying down, but the building was still shaking, still ready to collapse.

“Get David!” Cole yelled at Stella. “We need to get out of here. This building’s going to collapse!”

Stella darted to the painted circle. She scooped David up in her arms, and Joe followed her through the debris as the roof caved in behind them, crashing down section by section as they both ran to the doorway.

All of them got outside of the church as large sections of the roof fell down onto the floor behind them. Cole and Begay dragged Palmer down the wood steps, and then down the path through the rock garden and into the dirt street of the ghost town. Stella cradled David in her arms, and then she dropped down to her knees and set him down on the sand near Palmer.

“Is he …?” Cole asked Stella.

“He’s still breathing,” she told him as tears streamed down her face.

Cole looked at Palmer. He was still breathing, too. But he had lacerations on his face and hands, and he looked pale from the snakebites.

A crashing sound from behind them turned all of them around to the church. The roof had caved in all the way, but the walls in front were still standing, and somehow part of the steeple had held up. From the front, it still looked almost like a regular church.

But they were out here now; they were safe.

“David won,” Cole said to Stella, and he realized he was crying too. “David beat it. He sent it back.”

Stella nodded. “It’s over,” she said. “It’s really over.”

Joe hugged Stella, and then he pulled away and smiled at her.

“I’m going to need you two to raise your hands up slowly,” Begay said.

Cole turned around and saw that Begay was pointing his service pistol at him.

CHAPTER 74

“What are you doing?” Stella yelled at Begay.

“He’s a wanted criminal.”

“He saved your life!” Stella screamed at Begay.

“It’s okay,” Cole told Stella and he raised his hands up a little in front of him.

“I need you to take your gun out and throw it over to me,” Begay told Cole.

Cole nodded, indicating that he understood. He reached inside his coat and pulled his gun out slowly and held it with two fingers by the barrel. He threw it across the sand to Begay where it landed with a thud.

Cole raised his hands again. “Take me,” he said. “I’m the one you want. Just let them go.”

“He was helping them get here,” Joe told Begay, “helping David get here so he could send the Darkwind back to its own world.”

“I didn’t kill those people,” Cole told Begay. “I helped rob that bank in Colorado. One of our guys killed that old man in the bank, not me. But they’re all dead now, including my brother. That thing … the Ancient Enemy killed all of them.”

Begay picked up Cole’s gun from the sand and stuffed it down into the waistband of his pants. He looked at Stella. “What about you? You have a gun?”

Stella nodded, already resigned to the fact that they were going to get nowhere arguing with this man. “I’ve got one in my waistband,” she said in a low voice. “It’s empty,” she added.

“Throw it over here. Move very slowly.”

The wind was dying down and the air was almost still again. The coyotes were gone. The spiders, snakes, and scorpions had all crawled away to their safe havens.

Stella pulled her gun out slowly and then threw it across the sand to Begay. “You don’t have to do this,” she said.

Begay didn’t answer.

“That man is dying,” Joe said, nodding down at Palmer. “We need to get him to a hospital.”

Begay looked at the four-wheelers parked near them, and then he looked back at Joe. “I have my truck parked a few miles away from here. I followed your trail, but I had to follow you on foot after the group of rocks.”

Joe nodded like he understood exactly where Begay was talking about.

“I have a large first aid-kit in the back of my truck. There’s anti-venom in there for rattlesnake bites. Agent Palmer will still need medical attention, but the anti-venom will help for now.”

Joe nodded again.

“I want you to take one of your four-wheelers and get the anti-venom for me.”

Joe didn’t move.

Begay lowered his gun and holstered it. “I’m not going to arrest you two,” he told Cole and Stella. “I just want to help Palmer and I want all of this to be over. I just needed to have your guns.”

Cole lowered his hands and nodded like he understood, but he still looked wary.

Joe walked over to his four-wheeler without another word. He started it and then drove off down the street towards the ghost town.

“What about the FBI agent?” Stella asked Begay. “How are we going to get him out of here?”

Begay just sighed … he didn’t have the answer.

CHAPTER 75

“Look what I found,” Joe said as he drove up on the four-wheeler with his horse following him. It had taken him nearly an hour to get to Begay’s truck and back. “We can put the agent on my horse and take him back with us,” he said as he smiled.

After the injections of anti-venom, Cole helped Begay load Palmer’s body up onto the horse, laying him facedown over the back of the horse. Joe got into the saddle, and rode the horse with Palmer’s body right behind him.

Cole drove one of the four-wheelers and he had Stella with him. Begay drove the other four-wheeler with David on the back. They all left the ghost town.

*

Thirty minutes later they were at Begay’s Ford Bronco. Begay and Cole laid Palmer down in the back seat. Palmer was somewhat conscious for a few moments, but he didn’t seem to know what was going on, and then he passed out again.

Begay looked at Stella and Cole. “When Agent Palmer wakes up, I’ll tell him that you two got away. But I have to take David back with me. He has an aunt who’s very worried about him.”

Stella nodded. She knew this was coming. She knew there would come a time when she would have to let David go.

Cole knelt down in front of David and gave him a hug. He wiped at tears in his eyes. “Thank you, David, for fighting that thing. For sending it back. For saving all of us.”

“Thank you for helping me,” David said, holding on to Cole tightly.

Cole stood up and then Stella knelt down in the sand in front of David. She was already crying, but she smiled at him. “You’re a special kid. Don’t you ever forget that.”

David cried harder. “I love you.”

“I know. I love you too, but I have to go now.”

David held on to her, sobbing.

“Okay,” Begay said and even his eyes were wet with tears. “We have to go. I need to get Agent Palmer to a hospital.”

David let Stella go. He climbed up into the passenger seat of Begay’s Ford Bronco.

“Buckle your seatbelt,” Stella told him, wiping away at her tears.

David smiled at her and then Stella shut his door. She watched David slip the seatbelt over him. Stella looked away from David.

Joe walked up to Begay. “Thank you,” he said. “You’re doing the right thing.” And then he said something else in Navajo that Stella and Cole couldn’t understand.

Begay looked down at his necklace and he took it off. “Billy Nez gave it to me before I came out here,” Begay answered Joe in English. “He said it would keep me safe.”

“May I open it?” Joe asked.

Begay handed it to him.

Joe studied the silver and turquoise charm on the necklace for a moment and then he twisted it open. He pulled out a small lock of hair tied in a tight braid, with a thin piece of leather string wrapped around it. He held it up so everyone could see.

“What is it?” Cole asked.

“It’s a lock of David’s hair.”

Cole looked confused. He glanced over at David who waited in Captain Begay’s truck.

“No,” Joe said, smiling. “This lock of hair is from the other David … the one before this David.” He looked at Begay. “This is what kept those snakes and spiders away from you. It’s what kept you safe on your journey to this ghost town. It’s been passed down in Billy Nez’s family for some time now.”

Begay nodded solemnly as Joe handed the necklace and lock of hair back to him.

“I will make sure it gets back to Billy Nez,” Begay said, and then he walked to his truck and got in the driver’s side. He started the truck and drove away.

*

An hour and a half later Stella and Cole sat in Joe Blackhorn’s trailer. They were both exhausted from their ordeal, but energized at the same time. Cole was ready to get on the road soon. He didn’t entirely trust Begay’s word that they wouldn’t come after him and Stella. And even if Begay’s word was true, Cole still didn’t trust the FBI agent. When Agent Palmer woke up, he would come after them for sure. But they probably had at least twenty-four hours before that happened … at least he hoped so.

Joe prepared a big dinner and they drank more tea and coffee.  Stella talked with Joe about archaeology and past civilizations and the history of the Navajo. She seemed surprised about some of the things she’d learned from Joe. It was a good dinner. For the first time in such a long time, they felt safe.

*

Later that night Cole and Stella lay on the living room floor, covered up with the blankets even though it was warm inside of Joe’s trailer. Joe had gone to the back to his bedroom, followed by his dog.

It was warm inside the trailer. It was quiet. They were safe. But Cole wouldn’t truly feel safe until he was out of the country.

He asked Stella what her plans were now, and he was surprised when she asked him about Costa Rica.

“What about your job?” he asked her. “Your career?”

Her head lay on the pillow, her blond hair spread out on it, her skin so white in the moonlight filtering in through the open blinds over the windows. She smiled in the darkness, her eyes twinkling. “My career is over. I’ll never get hired by another university after this. If I go back, the cops will arrest me. They will interrogate me until I give you up. They will ask me question after question about what happened and they’ll never believe me. They’ll charge me with something.”

Cole nodded. He agreed with her about that.

She smiled at him. “I don’t see that I have many other options besides running away with you … if you want me with you.”

Cole smiled and nodded at her. “I do.”

“So you feel like having some company?”

“More than you know,” he said and kissed her.

She kissed him back, and then they looked at each other for a moment. She smiled at him.

Moments later exhaustion took over and they both fell asleep in the darkness.

*

Cole and Stella got up early the next morning. Joe had offered one of his pickup trucks to them. He told them they could take it down to a small airport near Page, Arizona and leave it there. He would have someone pick his truck up for him in a few days.

On the way to the airport, Cole planned on calling V.J. and asking him to have a small airplane and pilot waiting for them. He would also have V.J. create a new I.D. for each of them so they could fly out of Phoenix down to Costa Rica. V.J. owed Cole a lot, and this would more than make them even now.

Cole left a pack of money hidden in Joe’s refrigerator, and they left Joe’s home as the sun was just coming up. They got into his pickup truck and started it, then drove down the long and rutted trail away from his place. They passed the pickup truck they had stolen and driven here. Cole maneuvered around the truck carefully on the hard-packed dirt, and then they drove away, leaving it behind.

Stella stared out the passenger window as they drove. She was happy now. Still tired and sore, but happy. She hoped David would do well. She knew she would never be able to have any contact with him again, at least for a while, but that was okay. She wanted him to have a normal life now, and she didn’t want her presence to ever bring back those terrible memories of his parents’ death and everything else that had happened afterwards.

She’d meant what she’d said about finding a new life down in Costa Rica. She felt the same way Joe did now, that science had let her down in some way. There was still so much out there in the world to see, so many things to discover, so many more mysteries that science didn’t have the answers to.

But she didn’t think she could completely abandon her love of archaeology. She could explore ruins in Central America. She could write papers and publish on websites. She could write books. For the first time in a long time she felt some hope, she felt like the future was wide open for her … and it felt good.

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER 76

Iron Springs—hospital

Captain Begay visited Special Agent Palmer in his hospital room. He was recovering fully from the rattlesnake bites—the anti-venom that Begay had given him had saved his life. The ceiling collapsing down on him was a different story; he had two broken ribs and he had bruises all over his body. But he seemed to be in good spirits despite his injuries.

Begay set a small potted cactus down next to Palmer on the table beside him. Palmer lay in the hospital bed watching him. The TV was on across the room, mounted high up on the wall, but Palmer had the sound turned all the way down. There was a view of the desert out the window.

“Thanks for the plant,” Palmer said.

Begay nodded. He smiled at Palmer. “They tell me that you’ll live.”

Palmer nodded. “Doesn’t feel like it,” he said and grinned.

The two men were silent for a long moment.

“What about Stella and that guy she was with?” Palmer asked.

Begay just stared at him.

Palmer sighed like he already knew the answer. “They got away, didn’t they?”

Begay didn’t confirm nor deny.

Palmer looked away from Begay at the window. He stared out at the desert for a long moment. “I saw some things I never would’ve believed,” he said. “I can’t explain what happened. I … I don’t even know how I could.”

Begay remained silent.

Palmer looked back at the big captain. “But if they got away, then they got away. I’m not going after them. There’s no evidence, nothing to tie them to the crimes. My guess is that they’re heading out of the country.”

Begay just shrugged. “Not my problem anymore.”

Palmer smiled. “Me either. I’m going to retire. My wife, she always begged me to retire before I killed myself with this job. Maybe she’s right. Maybe it’s finally time to quit.”

Begay nodded and stood up from the chair. “I have to go. I hope you get better soon.”

“I will.” He watched Begay walk to the door. “At least the nightmares have stopped.”

Begay stopped at the door and looked back at Palmer, waiting for an explanation.

“I kept having these nightmares,” Palmer said. “I saw that thing we saw in the ghost town … or just a glimpse of it … in my dreams. It was chasing me. And I had the feeling that if it ever caught me …” He let his words hang in the air.

“Well, it didn’t catch you,” Begay said and he left.

*

Begay left the hospital and got in his truck. As he drove, he thought of Palmer’s dream, of the Darkwind chasing him in his dream. And then he thought of his wife’s dream, the one she’d had before he had left with Palmer to go out to Joe Blackhorn’s property. It was like they’d had the same dream. The Darkwind had been coming for all of them … who knew what it would have done if David hadn’t sent it back?

Begay shuddered at the thought.

He drove out to David’s aunt’s house. He had called Awenita earlier to let her know he would be coming by. He just wanted to see how David was doing. She told him David was doing really well considering what had happened, but it would be a long road to full recovery. David was still quiet and withdrawn.

Begay parked alongside the road in front of Awenita’s home and got out. He went inside and talked with Awenita for a moment, and then he talked with David.

David was more talkative now, but he was still a quiet child. He was still scarred by what had happened. Probably always would be. Begay felt a profound sadness inside of him. Why did all of this have to happen to a little boy like David? Why did this kind of responsibility have to fall on the shoulders of such a small child?

Who knew the way the world really worked?

At least it was over. At least David was safe.

At least they were all safe.

*

Half an hour later Begay left David’s new home with his aunt. David surprised the captain by giving him a hug before he left. The boy squeezed him tight for a few seconds before letting him go. Begay smiled at David. He knew then that David was going to be all right someday soon.

Begay walked to his truck parked across the road. On the way to his truck he heard a noise in the desert brush. He stopped and watched as a coyote crept out of the brush. The coyote just stood there, watching Begay for a moment.

Was there a spark of intelligence in that coyote’s eyes? Begay wondered.

Was the Ancient Enemy back?

But then the coyote ran away, bolting back into the brush.

No, Begay told himself as he got into his truck. It was gone. The Ancient Enemy was really gone.

PART 1

THE WOODS

CHAPTER 1

Arizona Badlands—1891

Jed Cartwright knew he and David were being followed as he rode his horse through the badlands. Scrub brush dotted the hills as far as he could see with a jagged rise of mountains lining the western horizon. The trail he followed led to a labyrinth of canyons down in the valley below. Buzzards circled the air above those canyons—there was something dead in there.

He turned around in his saddle to look behind him, the leather creaking in the silence of the desert. He didn’t see anyone, but he could feel them. They were out there somewhere in that vast wasteland, watching and following. They were skinwalkers. That’s what Red Moon had called them.

David, a Navajo boy, rode right next to Jed. He had found David in his home only a few hours ago. The boy’s entire family had been slaughtered, their bodies taken away by the murderers, leaving only blood and gore smeared all over the walls and floors of the home.

The skinwalkers had taken David’s family, the same skinwalkers that had killed Jed’s deputies and the prisoner that he had been transporting back to Smith Junction—Red Moon. And now Jed was sure those same skinwalkers were trailing them through the desert right now.

David had barely said anything except his name. He was traumatized after seeing what had happened to his family. Jed could only imagine the horrors the boy had seen—the same horrors Jed had seen up in those woods when his deputies were taken in the night, their bodies mutilated. It would take David a long time to get over the things he had seen in his own home . . . if he ever got over them at all.

Jed looked at David as he rode his horse. David stared straight ahead, his stare blank, his face expressionless; he was good with his horse, strong and confident in the saddle.

The sun hovered just above the line of mountains, there would only be a few hours of daylight left now. The air was cold, but it wasn’t freezing. They had ridden away from David’s house quickly after Jed found him hiding in his bedroom, but over the last few hours they had slowed their horses down. The horses were tired, and so was Jed. They would need to find a place to make camp soon.

Jed thought back to how this had all started—with the capture of Red Moon.

*

For eleven years now Jed had been a U.S. Marshal. He’d gone after plenty of bounties over the years, but the notorious outlaw Red Moon had to be one of the biggest bounties he’d ever chased down. Red Moon was as bad as they came; he was wanted for twenty murders, multiple robberies, and horse thievery. And he was going to bring a hefty bounty for Jed and his men: Roscoe and Dobbs.

Roscoe had worked with Jed on bounties half a dozen times, but Stephen Dobbs was a first-timer. Roscoe was much older than Dobbs, even older than Jed. His hair and mustache were completely gray. His clothes were always rumpled except where his shirt was stretched over his pot-belly. But Roscoe was quicker than most people expected, and he wasn’t afraid of much. He was an experienced tracker and a good shot. But most importantly to Jed, he was trustworthy and dependable.

Dobbs was young, only twenty-three years old. He’d come on a recommendation from one of Jed’s friends, and that was good enough for Jed. Dobbs had been nothing but respectful and eager to learn on this trip. He knew his place among Jed and Roscoe, and he’d been excited about being a part of the team that would be nabbing the notorious Red Moon. Dobbs was shorter than Jed and Roscoe, and much thinner, but he was strong for his size. He had a shock of bright red hair and a spattering of freckles across his face.

On a tip from a reliable source, Jed had found out that Red Moon was shacked up with a woman in a farmhouse. Jed, Roscoe, and Dobbs had staked the place out overnight and planned to storm the house as the sun came up.

That night, as they waited, Jed had fallen asleep. He had awoken in the darkness, biting back a scream. His skin had been covered with sweat, his muscles twitchy. He couldn’t remember the dream, but something had frightened him badly. All he could remember was the feeling of suffocating in the dream, like a living darkness had been smothering the breath out of him, holding him down so he couldn’t move.

Jed had stayed up the last few hours until morning, still shaken by the dream. He tried to tell himself that he was just nervous about apprehending Red Moon. Not scared, just nervous. Cautious. Any man who wasn’t a little nervous going up against a man like Red Moon was a fool. Yeah, maybe that nervousness—that cautiousness—had sparked the bad dream.

And maybe the rumors about Red Moon being a Navajo medicine man had spooked Jed a little, too. Some even said Red Moon was some kind of witch doctor. Jed didn’t believe in that kind of stuff, but the men who had told him about Red Moon seemed convinced of it. Jed was sure that the stories about Red Moon were just tall tales conjured up by people who didn’t even know him, rumors spread about a man whose culture they didn’t understand, a culture they didn’t want to understand. When it came to these gunslingers and bandits, some people liked to turn them into larger-than-life legends. Usually when Jed finally crossed paths with these “legends,” he found himself a little underwhelmed.

They stormed the farmhouse at dawn, kicking the door in and barging in with guns drawn. Red Moon was sleeping in bed with the woman he’d shacked up with, and he never even had a chance to go for his gun. He surrendered immediately. And Jed was glad he had surrendered so easily. Some wanted men went for their guns when they were cornered, preferring a shootout rather than facing the embarrassment of dangling from the end of a hangman’s noose in front of a town full of gawkers. Some wanted men preferred to go out in a blaze of glory.

In his years of chasing down wanted men, Jed had only faced five men who had gone for their guns rather than surrendering. He’d killed three of the men and wounded the other two. Most men though, like Red Moon, surrendered without a fight once they realized they didn’t have a chance in a shootout. Maybe they wanted those extra few days of life even if it was in a jail cell and a courtroom. They wanted to cling to those extra hours of life even though they knew the inevitable was coming soon. Maybe some of them regretted their decision of not shooting it out as they walked (or sometimes they were dragged) up the gallows steps, dishonoring themselves at the end by sobbing and begging with their hands tied behind their backs. Some of them, right up to the end, swore they had committed no crimes.

*

Jed slowed his horse down when they were closer to a group of boulders at the entrance to the narrow canyon. Buzzards still circled the air over the canyon in the distance, some of them diving down while others took flight. His horse was snorting and bucking just a little, spooked by something in that canyon, possibly picking up the scent of blood . . . and death.

“We have to ride through it,” Jed told David. “No other way around.”

David didn’t answer Jed, but he looked as nervous as the horses were.

Their horses clopped over the hard-packed dirt and rock as they made their way down into the canyon floor where the rock walls closed in, leaving a narrow passage to ride through. About halfway through the canyon, Jed saw the splashes of dried blood along the rock walls. It looked like someone had taken their blood-soaked hand and dragged their fingers along the face of the rock, the fingers leaving behind four long stripes of blood.

The blood trail on the rock wall ended, the long streaks of blood faded to nothing. On the dirt below was a severed hand, the wrist a ragged mess with a string of gristle trailing out. The end of a snapped-off bone gleamed white among the gore. The skin of the hand was light brown—like David’s skin. A little farther along the canyon floor there was a piece of flesh that was unidentifiable and riddled and pecked apart by the buzzards’ beaks.

Jed felt his stomach turning. He knew whose body parts those were—and he was sure David knew it, too.

“Come on,” Jed told David. “We need to keep moving.”

CHAPTER 2

As Jed and David rode away from the canyons, Jed thought back to when he had apprehended Red Moon, and he was suddenly there again, reliving those moments.

Red Moon showed no fear when Jed and his men captured him in the farmhouse. He showed no fear when they shackled his wrists together and sat him atop their spare horse. But after a few hours of riding, when they approached the woods, Red Moon finally showed fear and spoke his first words: “We should not go in those woods.”

Jed wasn’t going to let a prisoner dictate his travel route back to Smith Junction. When he got Red Moon there, the trial would be quick, and the justice even quicker; Red Moon would hang for his crimes.

According to Jed’s map, the woods were a shortcut—they were going to shave at least two or three days off of their trip.

The shortcut had seemed like a good idea at the time, but after a few miles into the woods Jed began to regret his decision.

Jed was sure they were being followed. He couldn’t see or hear anyone in the woods, but the feeling of being followed wouldn’t go away. He wondered if it might be claim jumpers waiting for the right time to ambush them and take Red Moon for the bounty. During his eleven years as a U.S. Marshal, Jed had never personally dealt with claim jumpers before, but he’d heard stories from other lawmen and bounty hunters about them. And the high price on Red Moon’s head would surely be a temptation.

Jed suspected that whoever was following them was part of Red Moon’s gang. Even though Jed was pretty sure Red Moon wasn’t with a gang at the moment, the outlaw had ridden with different gangs in the past.

Or it was always possible that the men following them were just run-of-the-mill bandits, highway robbers hoping to get whatever they could, ignorant of the bounty on Red Moon’s head.

Then again, maybe no one was following them. Maybe his nerves were getting to him. He didn’t usually get nervous. He’d been a lawman and a bounty hunter most of his life, beginning deputy work when he was eighteen years old. He’d worked with his father at first, but then he struck out on his own after his father had been killed a few years later. No, he didn’t usually get nervous, and he trusted his gut feelings that had been honed as sharp as a scalping knife over the years.

If he would have listened to his gut feelings in those woods, if only he would have listened to the warning from Red Moon, then maybe his men would still be alive. But Jed had been antsy to get Red Moon to Smith Junction, eager to collect his bounty and get this over with. He hadn’t even planned on spending much time in Smith Junction after he dropped Red Moon off, not even sure he would stick around long enough to watch the outlaw hang. He decided he would go back home even though no one was waiting there for him. His wife, Clara, had died five years ago from pneumonia. There was no one at his homestead now, no one except Chavez who came around a few times a week to do some work around the place, helping Jed out when he was away.

Jed glanced back at Red Moon as they rode deeper into the woods. Red Moon was a few inches shorter than Jed, but where Jed was gangly and broad-shouldered, Red Moon was thick with muscle. Red Moon wore a pair of wool pants, the bottoms of which were stuffed into a weathered pair of cowboy boots. His leather shirt was greasy and old. He wore very little jewelry except for a rawhide necklace with a silver charm dangling from it. His long dark hair was parted in the middle and hung loose down to his shoulders. He had a scraggly goatee with just the first strands of gray showing. He rode easily in the saddle, a natural horseman. He was an intimidating man, but in these woods, Red Moon was scared—Jed could see it.

They stopped their horses when Jed saw something dead in the clearing up ahead. Even from thirty feet away, he could tell that something wasn’t right about the carcass. The thing in the trail looked almost like the chopped up remains of an animal, like something on a butcher’s table. But with the sharp points of broken bones sticking out from the bloody flesh and the ribs exposed on the outside, it looked like the animal had been turned inside out somehow.

“You reckon it’s a deer?” Roscoe asked as he rode his horse up next to Jed’s.

“Maybe a cougar got to it,” Dobbs suggested.

Jed didn’t respond to either of them. There was no telling what kind of animal the thing was anymore, but he didn’t think this was something a bear or a cougar would have done. And a bear or cougar certainly wouldn’t have left this much meat behind to spoil in the sun.

“Look at the bones on the outside of it,” Roscoe said. “It looks like it was chewed up and spit out.”

“I can’t tell where . . . where its head is,” Dobbs said. “You reckon it’s gone?”

Dobbs was right. Maybe the head had been taken. Or maybe it was hidden somewhere inside that mound of glistening meat and bone.

“Someone’s following us,” Jed told the two men as he turned towards them.

Roscoe and Dobbs stiffened in their saddles. Dobbs looked around at the woods as if he might spot their pursuers.

“How do you know we’re being followed?” Roscoe asked. “You see ‘em?”

“I didn’t see anybody,” Jed told him. “But I believe we’re being followed.”

Roscoe didn’t argue.

Jed could tell that Roscoe and Dobbs were running the possible suspects through their minds like he had done earlier: claim jumpers, Red Moon’s gang, highway bandits.

“I just want you two to stay alert,” Jed told them, but he was focusing mainly on Dobbs.

Both men nodded, their faces grim.

Jed looked back at the obscene carcass down the trail.

“An animal did not do that,” Red Moon said.

Roscoe turned his horse around to face Red Moon. “You know who did?”

Red Moon didn’t answer.

Roscoe glanced at Jed. “Maybe he knows who’s on our trail.” He looked at Red Moon again. “You know who’s following us?”

Red Moon sat motionless in his saddle.

Jed didn’t think the Navajo was going to bother answering Roscoe, but then Red Moon spoke: “Yenaldooshi.”

“What the hell’s that?” Roscoe asked Red Moon.

Red Moon didn’t bother translating the word.

“I think that Injun knows who’s following us,” Roscoe said, nudging his horse closer to Jed’s. “I think it’s some of his men.”

“That true?” Jed asked Red Moon. “Are your men following us?”

“I have no men with me,” Red Moon said. “What follows us is much worse.”

“What do you mean by that?” Jed asked.

“He’s just trying to scare us is all,” Roscoe said and spit out a long stream of tobacco juice. “Whoever it is, we’ll be ready for ‘em.”

“You cannot be ready for the yenaldooshi,” Red Moon said.

“What is that?” Jed asked. “What’s that word mean in English?”

“Skinwalkers,” Red Moon answered.

CHAPTER 3

It was getting later in the day as Jed’s horse veered towards a group of rocks off to their right, the canyon with the body parts and smears of blood on the walls long behind them now. Jed allowed his horse to head towards the rocks; he looked at David who followed along. “They probably smell water over there,” Jed said, but the boy didn’t answer.

When they reached the rocks Jed spotted small pools of water, probably rainwater collected in the holes and depressions in the rocks, but the water could have come from an underground reservoir.

Jed dismounted and let his horse drink from the pool of water, patting the horse’s shoulder for a moment. This wasn’t his horse; both of these horses were from David’s home—they were his dead father’s horses. Jed’s horse had been taken in the woods last night. All of their horses had been taken.

“We’ll rest here for a few minutes,” Jed told David. “Go ahead and walk around a little. Stretch your legs.”

David dismounted while his horse drank from a pool of water among the rocks. David walked away, but not too far. He looked up at the endless blue sky—there were more buzzards circling in the air high above them.

Jed filled up his canteen. He took a few long swallows—the water was cold and clean. He held his canteen out for David. “You want some?”

David walked over to Jed and gently took the canteen from him. He used both hands to lift it to his lips, drinking the water and spilling some of it down his chin. After he was done, he handed the canteen back to Jed.

“It’ll be dark soon,” Jed said as he filled his canteen back up again. “We need to find a place to camp for the night.” He looked around. Now that they were out of the low canyons and up on higher, flatter ground, there wasn’t much in the way of cover for a camp.

A few minutes later they were back on their horses. As they rode away from the scattering of rocks and boulders, Jed’s mind began to slip back to the woods yesterday, and soon he was there again.

*

Jed and his men ventured deeper into the woods, getting farther and farther away from that strange inside-out carcass they had seen on the trail earlier. They found a large clearing to camp in; it was the biggest one they’d seen so far in the woods. The trail they had been following through the woods picked up again on the far side of the clearing. To the left of the clearing, a rock wall rose up thirty feet and ran along for at least three hundred feet. From its highest point the rock wall sloped back down to the forest floor on both sides. At the bottom of the rock wall, right in the middle, there was a dugout large enough for a man to stand up inside; the rock wall hung over the dugout like a porch roof. The dugout looked almost like the entrance to a cave, but it only went back about five feet underneath the rock wall. It would provide a nice place to camp and protect their backs; they couldn’t ask for better in the middle of these woods.

Roscoe built their campfire at the edge of the rock overhang while Dobbs tied their horses to a few trees that were bunched together where the rock wall came back down towards the ground. The horses were farther away than Jed would’ve liked, but they were still within fifty yards of their camp.

Red Moon was a little closer to them, only thirty yards away from the camp in the other direction. Jed had wrapped a length of chain around the base of a tree and locked it to Red Moon’s shackled wrists in front of him. The chain would keep the Navajo outlaw from running in the night, and Jed thought it was more humane than tying the man’s legs together all night. There was enough slack in the chain around the tree so that Red Moon could lie down if he wanted to—Jed brought him an extra blanket, a bowl of beans with jerky in it, and some coffee. But Red Moon had left the blanket rolled up beside him and he ignored the bowl of food and cup of coffee. He sat there with his back against the tree, not moving a muscle.

Jed was about to walk back to the camp, but he looked at Red Moon. “We both know what’s going to happen to you when we get to Smith Junction. No sense making things worse. If your men are following us, then just tell me now so we can be ready. You could call them off when they get close enough. I don’t see any reason for anyone to get killed tonight.”

“They are not my men,” Red Moon answered. “I told you that.”

“Skinwalkers, huh?” Jed said.

Red Moon nodded. “The same ones who turned that animal inside out on the trail. They will do the same thing to us. You cannot stop them. I cannot stop them. No one can.”

Jed was done with Red Moon’s fairy tales. He left the man alone in the darkening woods and went back to the campfire.

The horses were a little jumpy as the night fell quickly, the darkness covering everything except their little beacon of campfire light. The four horses snorted and whinnied in the dark, perhaps sensing something close by—if not Red Moon’s men, then maybe a bear or a cougar.

“What about what that Indian said earlier?” Dobbs asked after they were quiet for a moment. He had finished his beans and cradled his coffee cup in his hands like he was trying to warm his fingers up. He sat cross-legged, close to the campfire. His eyes were wide in the darkness, his skin so pale it almost seemed luminous.

“Skinwalkers?” Roscoe asked. He leaned back on his pack underneath the rock overhang, lost in the shadows it created. He took another sip from his whiskey flask.

“Yeah,” Dobbs said. “What are they supposed to be? I mean, I know they’re not real, but . . .”

“Just a legend, kid,” Roscoe said.

They were quiet for a moment. Jed watched Dobbs, and he could tell that the boy wasn’t going to let the idea of skinwalkers go. It was almost like Dobbs wanted to hear a ghost story by the campfire.

“Yeah, but what is the legend?” Dobbs finally asked.

Roscoe didn’t answer.

“If you’re too scared to talk about them—” Dobbs began.

Roscoe sat up quickly. “I ain’t scared of nothing.”

Dobbs smiled, knowing he had riled Roscoe. “So what are they?”

Roscoe shrugged.

Jed was pretty sure Roscoe was stalling because he really didn’t know what skinwalkers were. He’d heard the name before and knew that they were some kind of Navajo legend, but that was probably the extent of his knowledge on the subject.

“I heard they’re witches,” Jed said, rescuing Roscoe from stumbling through an explanation, part of which he would probably just make up anyway. “Witches that can transform into animals.”

Dobbs considered the idea for a moment.

“Like shapeshifters,” Jed went on. “You ever heard of shapeshifters?”

Dobbs just shrugged. “I guess not.”

“Shapeshifters are men that can turn into animals like wolves or bears, and then turn back into men again. Sometimes it happens during a full moon.”

Dobbs stared up at the moon at the edge of the trees, the moon not quite up over the clearing just yet.

“What about werewolves?” Jed asked Dobbs. “You ever heard of werewolves?”

“Yes,” Dobbs answered, his face brightening a little. “I heard of them.”

“Well, skinwalkers are supposed to be kind of like werewolves.”

Dobbs looked out at the darkness of the clearing, staring at the woods at the other side.

“Look at his face,” Roscoe cackled. “You got him scared of werewolves now.”

“I ain’t scared of no werewolves,” Dobbs grumbled.

“I don’t know too much else about skinwalkers,” Jed admitted. “I heard they’re like witches, though. I heard they can put curses and spells on people. Like black magic.”

“But none of that’s true,” Dobbs said almost like he was trying to reassure himself.

“It is true,” Red Moon said from the darkness, his deep voice carrying easily across the clearing. “To become a skinwalker, a man must murder his own family. He must take one of the dead bodies of his family to another skinwalker. And then he must learn to raise the dead.”

Dobbs sat very still next to the fire, his eyes wide, the cup of coffee clenched in his hands.

“Don’t listen to him,” Jed told Dobbs. “He’s just trying to scare you.”

“I know,” Dobbs said and swallowed hard, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat.

“Maybe his people really are skinwalkers,” Roscoe said, moving closer to Dobbs. “Maybe they’re all out there right now in the woods, watching us.” He cackled again and took another sip of whiskey from his flask.

“Skinwalkers are not my people,” Red Moon said. “Once they are skinwalkers, they are not Diné anymore. They are no longer men at all.”

Jed looked over at Red Moon, barely able to make him out at the base of the tree in the darkness. It looked like he hadn’t moved a muscle the whole time.

“Skinwalkers are monsters,” Red Moon continued. “They can raise the dead. Make them walk and talk again.”

“That’s enough,” Jed called out to Red Moon.

A coyote yipped from somewhere in the woods.

Jed tensed at the sound. Roscoe and Dobbs were motionless, both of them listening.

A wolf howled from far off in the other direction.

Roscoe moved closer to the dying fire. He had his Winchester repeater in his hands now. Jed was glad to see him alert after all of the whiskey he’d had in the last hour and a half.

“Just a wolf,” Dobbs said as if the sound needed an explanation.

“Skinwalkers can sound like animals,” Red Moon told them from the darkness. “They can sound like any animal they want to.”

A rattling sound came from the brush at the other end of the clearing—a rattlesnake.

Jed scooped a few handfuls of dirt onto the campfire, snuffing it out.

The three of them sat in the darkness for a few minutes, listening for any other sounds. The horses were snorting now, moving around as much as they could on their hobbled legs, pulling at the ropes tied to the tree trunks and branches.

An owl hooted from somewhere nearby. Another animal grunted in the brush a hundred yards away, then crashed through the undergrowth.

“It is them,” Red Moon said, his voice low but still carrying easily across the forest floor towards them.

“Just stay ready, boys,” Jed told Roscoe and Dobbs. “We’ll sleep in watches tonight. Dobbs, you take the first watch.”

Dobbs nodded.

Jed wanted to give Dobbs the first watch because he didn’t trust him to stay awake as the night grew long towards the dawn. “Wake me up in three hours, or if you see anything.”

Again, Dobbs nodded. He looked too scared and nervous to fall asleep anytime soon. He had his gun belt on, his hand down by his six-shooter.

Jed lay down with his head on his pack, tipping his hat down low to cover his eyes, resting his hands on his belly, his Colt .45 within easy reach. But he didn’t think he was going to sleep anytime soon.

CHAPTER 4

The sun was already touching the tops of the jagged mountains lining the western horizon. Jed and David needed to find somewhere to camp soon. He spotted a wash near a few boulders and copse of scraggily trees. It wasn’t the perfect place to camp, but it was the best he could find before it got dark. The boulders and trees would provide cover for their backs and help block the chilly wind. They only had an hour of daylight left now.

Jed ran a rope between two of the trees and then tied both of their horses’ leads to the line of rope. He wanted to keep their horses close to their camp tonight, especially with what had happened to his horses in the woods yesterday. After he was done hobbling the horses’ legs, he looked at David. “You want to find some kindling for a fire?”

David went to work right away, collecting sticks for the campfire. Jed arranged some round rocks in a circle for their fire pit. He pulled out a metal grate from his pack to heat the pots on. A few moments later David brought Jed some sticks and a few larger pieces of wood. Jed used the kitchen matches he’d gotten from David’s house to start the fire.

A few minutes later the flames of their campfire were dancing inside the circle of rocks, pushing the cold and darkness back a little. As Jed cooked some beans and heated a pot of coffee, he tried again to talk to David, but the boy wouldn’t talk to him. Soon, Jed’s mind slipped back to the woods again.

*

Jed snapped awake in the woods and knew right away that Dobbs was gone. It was dark with their campfire out. Roscoe was lying on his back with his rifle across his chest, snoring.

Jed woke Roscoe up, nudging him. It sounded like Roscoe had choked on an intake of breath for a moment as he woke up. But a second later he was sitting up with his rifle in his hands.

“Dobbs is gone,” Jed whispered. Their horses were gone, too. Jed looked over at the tree he had chained Red Moon to and the Navajo was still there, just a dark lump in the darkness at the base of the tree.

Jed and Roscoe hurried over to where the horses had been. A few pieces of rope hung from the tree branches. Jed studied the ends of the ropes in the moonlight; they were frayed, not cut—almost like they had been snapped.

“Maybe Dobbs took the horses,” Roscoe said.

But Jed didn’t think so. The bounty for Red Moon was worth much more than the horses. And Dobbs was no criminal—Jed’s friend had vouched for Dobbs, and that was good enough for him.

They hurried back to the dugout just beyond their dead campfire.

Roscoe nodded down at the ground. “There ain’t no blood. No sign of a fight. And look over there; his guns and gun belt are still here.”

Jed knew Dobbs hadn’t run off—it looked like he had been taken.

“Cover me,” Jed said, already looking over at Red Moon.

Roscoe wasn’t happy about Jed going to check on Red Moon, but he covered him with his rifle. Jed ran across the clearing that seemed so bright now that it was bathed in the moonlight. He felt exposed in that moonlight, tense, sure that he might feel the bullet from a rifle or the tip of an arrow stabbing into his flesh and bone any second now.

“Dobbs is gone,” Jed told Red Moon when he got to him. “Our horses are gone.”

Red Moon just stared up at Jed; he was trembling so badly that he was rattling the chain around the tree and the handcuffs on his wrists.

“Did your men do this?” Jed asked Red Moon.

“Not my men,” Red Moon answered. “I swear to you.” He lifted his hands up as far as the chains would allow. “Please. Unlock these.”

Jed felt a pang of sentiment for just a moment—Red Moon’s face was pure fear. But Jed needed to think about this rationally. It had to be Red Moon’s men out there.

“Those skinwalkers out there are not my people,” Red Moon said. “They will come for me just like they will come for you.”

“Did you see what happened to Dobbs?”

Red Moon shook his head no. “I was asleep. I just woke up now.”

Jed gave up questioning Red Moon; he went back to their camp where Roscoe was waiting with his rifle.

“What did he say?” Roscoe asked.

“He said he was asleep when Dobbs left.”

Roscoe was about to respond, but his words were cut off when they heard a long, continuous scream from the woods.

It was Dobbs.

The scream turned into what sounded like words, but the words were unintelligible, like Dobbs was trying to say something while he screamed. Maybe he didn’t even have a tongue anymore. Jed had heard stories about some of the tortures Native Americans could inflict on their prisoners.

Jed and Roscoe called out to Dobbs as they ran up into the woods beyond the rock wall that they had camped in front of. They climbed higher into the hills, aiming their weapons into the woods where the moonlight filtered down through the tree branches. And then they froze when they saw what was left of Dobbs.

It looked like a man was strung up between two thin trees, but even from where Jed stood, even in the dark, he could tell that it wasn’t a man up there . . . not a man anymore.

Jed had to force himself to put one foot in front of the other, to keep pushing forward another few feet, pushing the plants and tree branches aside. Roscoe was right behind him, stumbling through the brush, his rifle in his hands.

The only thing left of Dobbs was his skin. The entire skin of his body had been strung up between the two thin trees—each arm pulled out wide and tied to the thin trunks of the two trees with what Jed had thought at first was cord, but then realized were pieces of intestines tied around each wrist, the skin of Dobbs’ hands hanging down like white gloves. The way the skin had been tied up made it look like Dobbs was hanging between the trees with his arms out wide, like he’d been crucified, but not on a cross, just hanging there in the night air. The skin from Dobbs’ head and his entire face was being held up by something propped up inside of him. A stick maybe, but Jed thought he’d caught the gleam of bone. The features of Dobbs’ face were flattened like a mask, much of the skin sagging in some places now that they didn’t have muscle and bone to adhere to anymore. Dobbs’ skin seemed to be in one whole piece, not a slit anywhere that Jed could see—maybe there was a long slit up the back—but the front of the skin was pristine, not even a spot of blood on it, like the skin had been washed clean with care before being suspended between the two trees. Dobbs’ skin looked like a ghost floating in the woods.

Roscoe vomited. It was a noisy sound, and Jed thought he’d heard choked sobs between each round of retches.

“They . . . they took his skin off,” Roscoe said, his words coming out in a rushing, wheezy breath; it was like he had no air left in his lungs.

“Get your rifle up,” Jed snapped at Roscoe.

Roscoe sniffled and raised his rifle, aiming it at nothing in particular, but ready if something moved in the woods.

“We need to get back to camp,” Jed said. At least at the camp they had their backs protected by the dugout in the rock wall. Here in these woods, they were sitting ducks.

As they hurried back down through the woods to their camp, Jed wondered if Dobbs was still alive somehow. Could he still be alive for a while without his skin? Was he somewhere, shaking uncontrollably from shock, his heart ready to give out as his tormentors poked at his exposed muscles and nerves with sharpened sticks?

Skinwalkers, that’s what Red Moon had called them.

Maybe this group was a rogue band of Navajo that believed they were skinwalkers, believing they had special powers. Jed had heard of some tribes skinning their victims with amazing speed and skill, but what he had just seen up in those woods seemed almost impossible.

No way Dobbs could still be alive. No way.

Jed and Roscoe hurried down to the bottom of the hill, crashing through the brush, no longer worrying about making noise now. Jed just wanted to get back to the dugout. He wondered if Red Moon was gone now. He wouldn’t be surprised to find Red Moon free from his chains. And truthfully he wouldn’t even care at this point. If Red Moon was all those men in the woods wanted, then Jed would let him go if he and Roscoe could somehow survive this night.

After Clara had died, there was a long period of time where Jed didn’t care whether he lived or died. But he had gotten over that in the last few years. He still wasn’t afraid to die—he knew he would be with Clara again when he went—but he didn’t want to go through what Dobbs had just gone through. No, he’d make sure to save a last bullet for himself before he would let them do something like that to him.

Roscoe was breathing hard when they got back to their camp and the dead fire. He wiped at the last bits of vomit around his mouth, his breaths coming out in blasts of mist in the cold air, his eyes wide with shock.

“Wait here,” Jed told Roscoe as he looked over at the clearing where he had chained Red Moon to the tree. Red Moon still seemed to be there, just that same dark lump against the base of the tree.

“Where are you going?” Roscoe asked.

“I need to check on Red Moon.”

“Hell with that Injun.”

“Just cover me,” Jed told him and then he ran across the clearing in the moonlight, feeling exposed out there again.

A moment later Jed was right beside Red Moon. The Navajo was still in the same position against the tree, his knees drawn up, his hands in his lap, his head down. He was chanting softly.

“How many of them are there?” Jed snapped at Red Moon.

Red Moon looked up with tears in his eyes. “I do not know.”

“What do they want? Do they want you? Do they want the bounty on your head?”

Red Moon didn’t answer; he began chanting again, whispered words that Jed couldn’t understand.

Rage burned inside of Jed. It took everything he had not to shake Red Moon or try to beat the answers out of him.

“Please,” Red Moon said after he stopped chanting, looking up at Jed again. “Kill me.”

Jed aimed his Colt .45 at the side of Red Moon’s head. “You want me to kill you?”

Red Moon gave the slightest of nods, closing his eyes, remaining still, waiting for the bullet to enter his brain.

Jed lowered his gun a little. He realized that Red Moon was serious—he wanted to be killed. Maybe Red Moon was telling the truth; maybe whoever was out there wasn’t trying to free him. But Jed still thought he was lying.

“Who are they?” Jed asked with his gun still aimed at Red Moon.

“I already told you. They are skinwalkers. You cannot stop them. Your bullets will not kill them.”

“How do we stop them?”

“Magic.”

“What kind of magic?”

“Strong magic. Shaman magic.”

“What about you?” Jed asked. “Aren’t you a shaman? People say you’re a witch doctor.”

Red Moon shook his head and sighed. “I am not.”

Jed didn’t want to keep proceeding with this conversation. He didn’t believe Red Moon. Bullets could stop those men out there in the woods. Bullets could stop anything. “You don’t want to help me, then you can stay here and wait for your men.”

Red Moon lowered his head and began to chant again.

Jed hurried back to the camp where Roscoe waited.

He and Roscoe decided to stay awake the rest of the night and walk out of the woods in the morning with just their guns, canteens, and anything they could carry in their pockets.

CHAPTER 5

Jed sipped his coffee as he stared at the campfire. David was lying down on his bedroll now, about to go to sleep. He had the photo of his family in his hands, staring at it, his eyes glassy and his expression blank.

Jed didn’t know what to say to David, didn’t know how to comfort him. Instead, he said nothing and drank his coffee, hoping it would help him stay awake for much of the night.

As he sat there he remembered waking up this morning in the woods and finding Roscoe gone. Roscoe’s pack was still there, his rifle, even his whiskey flask, but he was gone.

Just like Dobbs.

Jed had looked over at the tree and saw that Red Moon was still there. He had rushed out to the Navajo, afraid he might already be dead, his throat cut while chained to the tree. But Red Moon was still alive when Jed got to him, still whispering his chants.

He had questioned Red Moon, threatening him, even pressing the barrel of Roscoe’s rifle against Red Moon’s drawn-up knee.

Jed finished his coffee and threw another piece of wood on the fire. He sat back down on his bedroll again, leaning back against his pack. He remembered the conversation with Red Moon this morning, and soon he was back there in those woods again.

*

“Where did Roscoe go?” Jed asked Red Moon, still aiming the barrel of Roscoe’s rifle at his knee. “What did they do to him?”

“He got up and walked into the woods,” Red Moon said.

“Why would he do that?”

“Skinwalkers can get inside some men’s minds, make them do things. Skinwalkers can . . . can call them and they will walk to them.” It seemed like Red Moon was getting frustrated as he tried to translate what he wanted to say into English.

Jed walked away from Red Moon, staring at the woods. “Roscoe!”

Roscoe didn’t answer. There were no sounds from the woods except for a few birds tweeting in the early morning light.

Jed walked back to Red Moon.

“Please,” Red Moon said. “You are taking me to a town where the people are going to hang me. Please kill me. I am going to die anyway. I am not afraid of death and what is beyond. But the skinwalkers, they will not let me die. They will not let me pass into the next world.”

Jed ignored Red Moon and yelled at the woods. “Roscoe! Bring him back!”

“You do not want him back now,” Red Moon said. “You do not want to see what he has become.”

Jed was about to ask Red Moon what he meant by that when a sudden wind shook the tree branches above them, rattling the leaves. Red Moon looked up at the tree above him. “The Darkwind,” he whispered. “It is here.”

“What’s the Darkwind?”

“Powerful magic,” Red Moon said, still looking up at the rattling leaves.

Jed had to walk away from Red Moon again before he attacked him. He went back to their camp, searching the ground for Roscoe’s tracks. He saw Roscoe’s footprints leading away from the camp and into the clearing, but then the tracks ended and there was no telling which way he had walked after that.

Roscoe was dead—Jed had to admit that now. He couldn’t wait around much longer. If he was going to get out of these woods before dark, then he would need to start walking soon.

But what about Red Moon?

Jed had an idea. He rummaged through all of their packs, collecting the things he would need to take with him: extra bullets, a small cloth sack of jerky, his canteen of water (which he had filled up all the way from Roscoe and Dobbs’ canteens). He already had his map, the compass, the wanted poster of Red Moon, and an extra pair of handcuffs in the pockets of his pants and coat. At the last moment he stuffed Roscoe’s metal whiskey flask into his inside coat pocket.

After he had gathered all the supplies he could carry, he hurried over to where their horses had been tied last night. He untied a piece of rope from one of the branches—it looked about the right length for what Jed needed. He took the rope over to Red Moon and crouched down in front of him, tying the ends of the rope around each of Red Moon’s ankles, leaving a foot of rope in between so he could still walk, but not run.

“They will not let us walk out of here,” Red Moon said.

Jed ignored Red Moon as he unlocked the chain around the trunk of the tree. He stood Red Moon up and wrapped the chain around his waist, then he locked the chain to the handcuffs; this kept Red Moon’s wrists chained to the front of his body, not giving him too much room to lift his hands up from his waist.

“Walk,” Jed told him.

Red Moon just stood there. “Shoot me.”

Jed took a deep breath, forcing himself to remain calm. It felt like a clock was ticking in his mind, counting down each minute they stayed in these God-forsaken woods. “If those skinwalkers come after us, I promise I’ll shoot you. But I can’t shoot you right now. I can’t carry you or drag your body without a horse. I need you to walk with me as far as we can.”

Red Moon still didn’t move.

“You either walk with me, or I have no choice but to leave you chained to the tree. I’ll go get help and be back as quickly as I can. You’ve got my word on that.”

Real fear crept into Red Moon’s eyes. “I will walk with you.”

They walked for hours, Jed checking his compass every so often to make sure they were still heading north. The trail pretty much went north, but it zigzagged a little in some places. But if the map was correct, they would be out of these woods in the next two hours or so, definitely before nightfall.

The walking had been slow because of Red Moon’s hobbled ankles, but he shuffled along as fast as he could, never complaining, chanting quietly.

“Is that magic you’re singing?” Jed asked him.

“Yes.”

“Is it strong magic?”

“The strongest I know.”

They were quiet for a moment as they walked, and then Jed said: “I heard rumors that you’re a medicine man.”

“I already told you that I am not a medicine man.”

“But you know magic prayers.”

“Are you able to pray?” Red Moon asked.

“Yes.”

“But you are not a priest.”

“It doesn’t matter. Anyone can pray to God. You don’t have to be a priest to pray to God.”

Red Moon said nothing, his point made.

They were quiet for a while as they walked.

“If these skinwalkers are real—” Jed began.

“They are real,” Red Moon interrupted.

“If they are real,” Jed continued, “then how could God let something like them exist?”

“They are like demons,” Red Moon said. “Your God allows angels to exist along with demons.”

Jed didn’t say anything else. He felt outmatched in a theological discussion with Red Moon who had obviously done a lot of studying, not only of his own religion but others as well.

“Why’d you kill those twenty men?” Jed asked, changing the conversation.

“They were in the way of what I wanted.”

Jed wondered what had turned Red Moon to a life of crime in the first place, but then discovered that he really didn’t care.

They walked in silence for a few minutes. Jed began to get the feeling that they were being followed. He didn’t hear any noises from the woods or see any movement, but he could feel their pursuers. And he was sure Red Moon could feel them, too.

Red Moon began to chant again, the melodic prayers uttered in whispers. Jed thought about praying. He’d never been a truly religious man, and after Clara had died he had turned his back on God for a while, angry at Him for taking the love of his life away. But Jed prayed now. A foreboding feeling was blanketing him again, a hopelessness that he couldn’t shake. He’d always been a strong and capable man. He’d always been able to tough things out, stand up to anyone, solve most problems, but he felt overwhelmed by these skinwalkers. They truly seemed magical, like they floated through the forest, waiting for the right time to appear and swoop down. And if these people were magical, if this was some demonic thing like Red Moon seemed to believe, then Jed felt it wouldn’t hurt to pray right now.

Jed felt uncomfortable praying to God. He never prayed when he confronted a wanted man. But now he was truly scared. Dobbs had been taken, but Dobbs had been a greenhorn, maybe easily tricked. Roscoe was another story—he was a seasoned bounty hunter and shouldn’t have been easily overtaken. If these skinwalkers could swoop in and take Roscoe away without a trace—or worse, cast some kind of spell on him—then Jed was no match for them. The most he could hope for was that he would be able to pick them off one by one when they finally showed themselves. He believed in God, but he also put much of his faith in guns and bullets.

The woods had gotten thicker now, the undergrowth growing over the trail. Red Moon was having an even tougher time walking with the ropes hobbling him. Jed considered untying the ropes so they could make better time, but he still couldn’t trust Red Moon completely.

An hour later they had made it through the thickest part of the woods. Now the trail had opened up, growing wide and easy to traverse. Even Red Moon was walking easier now.

And then Red Moon stopped.

The woods were darker now, the trees closer together and the brush between them thicker even though the trail was cleared in this area.

“What is it?” Jed whispered from behind Red Moon, Roscoe’s rifle in his hands.

“Up ahead,” Red Moon said.

Jed stared at the trail ahead, the path disappearing around a thick stand of trees. “What’s around the bend?”

The woods were deathly quiet.

Red Moon still hesitated.

“Keep walking,” Jed told Red Moon, nudging him forward with the barrel of the rifle.

“Remember your promise,” Red Moon said. “If they come, you said you would shoot me.”

“Get moving or I won’t waste a bullet on you.”

Red Moon began walking towards the sharp bend in the trail.

Jed knew there was something very bad waiting for them around that bend, but they had to get past it to get out of these woods.

When they were a few feet closer to the bend, Jed heard whispering from the other side of the brush. At first he thought it was Red Moon chanting again, but Red Moon was silent now.

There was another sound along with the whispering—a buzzing sound. Flies. Something had been left on the trail for them, something dead and rotting like the animal they’d seen yesterday, the one that had been turned inside out.

Jed and Red Moon stepped around the bend, and then they both froze, staring at what waited for them on the trail.

CHAPTER 6

Jed sat up, nearly drifting off to sleep as he’d been thinking about what he and Red Moon had seen waiting for them on the trail. He looked over at David and saw that he was asleep on his back with the photograph of his family on his chest. He had been holding it until he fell asleep.

Jed got up and laid a large piece of wood on the campfire. He walked over to David and picked up the photograph—he didn’t want it to blow away in the night. He went back to his bedroll and lay down, stretching out and staring at the photo. David was in the photo with his older brother and their parents. There was a speck of dried blood on the edge of the photo; Jed chipped it away with his thumbnail and then shoved the photo down into his pants pocket. He would give it back to David in the morning.

He turned over onto his side and stared at the fire. He didn’t want to think about what he’d seen on that trail in the woods this morning, but he couldn’t help thinking about it—he couldn’t get it out of his mind.

*

Dobbs sat in the middle of the trail, facing north with his back to them. The red skinless flesh of Dobbs’ body glistened in the midday sunlight that shined down brighter onto this wide part of the trail. Every muscle showed on Dobbs’ body along with the small globules of yellowish fat clinging to his sides. Thick purplish-black veins crisscrossed over some of his mucus-covered, striated muscles. His skinless head was bent forward, like he was looking down at something in his lap. Jed knew Dobbs wasn’t dead because he could see the slight movement of his back as he drew in a breath and slowly exhaled.

What was in his lap? What was he holding in his hands?

“Jed,” a voice called out, but it wasn’t Dobbs speaking. Jed knew that voice—it was Roscoe’s voice.

“Jed,” Roscoe said again, drawing the word out.

“This . . . this can’t be real,” Jed whispered. He looked at Red Moon—he needed to look at the Navajo now, he needed to see something he knew was real, something to ground him in this new nightmarish world he suddenly found himself in.

Red Moon’s dark eyes were wide, bulging from his face, his mouth drawn down into a severe frown with dried spittle at the corners of his lips. “Shoot me now,” he grunted as he tried to raise his shackled hands up as far as he could. “You promised.”

Jed looked back at Dobbs who still hadn’t moved; he was still sitting in the middle of the trail and staring down at something in his lap, his hands there like he was cradling something. And Jed already knew what was in Dobbs’ hands.

“Jed,” Roscoe called out again. “They won’t let you die. They will keep you alive, and it just goes on and on and on.”

“Shoot me!” Red Moon shouted. He was still frozen in place, not even bothering to try to run, his only hope that Jed would keep his promise.

Jed ignored Red Moon. He turned back to Dobbs and it felt like his legs were moving on their own as he walked towards the creature that used to be Dobbs, giving him a wide berth and keeping his rifle aimed at the skinless man. He moved all the way around until he was in front of Dobbs—he had to see what he was cradling in his hands.

“No,” Red Moon whimpered. “Do not look at it.”

Jed had to see.

And there it was—Roscoe’s severed head was cradled in Dobbs’ skinned hands. He held the head gently like it was a baby. Roscoe’s face stared up at the sky, his head of gray hair touching the shiny slab of Dobbs’ abdomen muscles that were sectioned off with what looked like lines of gristle. The end of Roscoe’s neck ended in a ragged stump of meat. Tattered pieces of skin and a line of vertebrae trailed out like little white knuckles, the piece of spine somehow managing to stay together. There were two large holes in the stump of his neck, one where his esophagus had been severed, and the other was his windpipe, which fluttered slightly. Roscoe’s eyes were wild, his blue eyeballs flicking back and forth, his mouth twitching every time a fly landed on his face. The stink of decaying flesh was even worse now that Jed was so close.

. . . can’t be real can’t be real can’t be real . . .

The strength drained out of Jed’s body. He lowered the rifle. He felt the weapon slip out of his fingers. He heard it hit the hard-packed dirt with a thud. It didn’t matter; Jed realized that the weapon was useless now. Roscoe and Dobbs couldn’t be killed. They should already be dead. Maybe they were dead.

They get inside a person. That’s what Red Moon had said before, his words echoing so loudly in Jed’s mind that he swore Red Moon was speaking them again. They can raise the dead. Make them walk and talk again.

These skinwalkers could do anything they wanted, Jed saw that now. Were the skinwalkers approaching at that very moment, ready to attack from the woods?

Why would they need to? The skinwalkers could cast their spells from afar and perform their magic from where they hid in the woods. Why bother showing themselves now?

“Jed,” Roscoe said again, a fly crawling inside his mouth as he spoke. He rolled his eyes down, looking down his nose at Jed.

Dobbs stared straight ahead, his eyeballs like perfect round orbs in his face, ready to spill out of the sockets. His teeth looked too big in his skinned face. His ears were gone, just black holes where they used to be. He sat perfectly still, breathing slightly, his neck muscles like cords of thick rope. Flies and gnats flew around, landing and then taking off again from his body.

“Jed,” Roscoe said. “Leave your prisoner with us.”

It took a moment for Jed to understand what Roscoe was telling him to do. He could feel his mind wanting to break, and he swore he heard the cracks inside his head like an ice-covered lake suddenly thawing.

“Do what he asks,” Roscoe said. “Give him what he wants and he will let you live.”

“Jed!” Red Moon shouted, drawing his name out in a sob, like this was his one last chance to get through to him, one last plea for mercy, one last reminder of a promise.

“No,” Jed croaked. “No. This can’t be real.”

“It is real,” Roscoe snapped and then smiled, his mustache twitching up with his grin. “It’s so real. And you’ll feel it too if you don’t do what he asks of you. You have to give him what he wants. There will be other things he asks of you soon.”

Jed realized that he was backing away from Dobbs and Roscoe’s head cradled in his hands. He was backing up along the trail, heading north, the way out of these woods. He was leaving Red Moon behind.

“Marshal!” Red Moon sobbed. “You promised!”

Jed wasn’t listening to Red Moon anymore. He saw the rifle on the ground a few feet in front of Dobbs, but he didn’t go back for it. All he could think about now was getting away from this monstrosity that used to be two people he knew.

Jed turned and ran. He hadn’t run this fast since he’d been a boy. He never even turned around to see if the skinless Dobbs had gotten to his feet to chase him, carrying Roscoe’s head by his gray hair, the head swinging back and forth as he ran. He didn’t even care if he was being chased. He didn’t care if the skinwalkers were gliding through the forest like ghosts. All he cared about, all he could focus on right now, the only thing his mind could handle at this moment was running.

Fifteen minutes later Jed slowed down. He was breathing so hard he thought he might pass out. His thigh muscles burned and his feet throbbed from running in his cowboy boots. His skin was slick with sweat despite the chilly air.

When was the last time he had run like that? The last time he’d run that far?

He wanted to keep running, but he had no choice but to stop; if he didn’t, he was going to collapse. The trail was still somewhat wide, but much narrower than the clearing where Dobbs and Roscoe had been.

Once he was out of the woods, Jed rested against a tree. He took a few sips of water from his canteen and his hands were shaking so badly he spilled some of the water down his chin and onto his shirt. His feet were throbbing, his back and legs sore. He needed to rest for a few seconds; he was afraid that if he tried to run down the hill he would fall and break his leg or arm.

He checked his compass and map as he waited by the tree, making sure he was still heading north. If he followed the trail down the hill he would be heading northwest, but he would eventually veer north again. He stood up on trembling legs, looking around. There was nothing in front of him except the rolling hills and the jagged mountains in the distance. The sun was still high in the sky, but night would come quickly out here.

Realizing that his trip to Smith Junction was going to be much longer and more arduous on foot, Jed checked his map for any towns that were closer. There was only one—the town of Hope’s Spring. It was a tiny town, but it had grown quickly when silver and copper had been discovered in the nearby hills. But as quickly as the metals had been discovered and the town built, the silver and copper had dried up. Now the town was dying, and many called it Hope’s End.

Jed realized that if he couldn’t find a horse between here and Hope’s End, then that little town was going to be his best chance. He started his journey, hurrying down the hill into the valley below. He climbed the next hill, and when he was at the top of it, he saw a house in the valley below, far off to his left. There was no smoke rising from the chimney, but the place didn’t look abandoned. Near the house there was a barn, and another building inside a corral that had to be a horse stable. This would be his best chance to borrow a horse.

Hope spurred Jed on as he walked down the hill a little quicker than he should have. He lost his balance a few times on the way down, falling once and sliding down the dirt and brittle grass on his butt, but he didn’t hurt himself.

Twenty minutes later he stood at the edge of the homestead.

Everything was quiet and Jed found it odd that there weren’t any people working in the corrals or at the barn and stables. There were some sheep farther out in one of the corrals, with some cows a little closer inside another fence. There were horses in the stables, Jed could hear them nickering and snorting in there.

But where was everyone?

Maybe no one was home.

Or maybe whoever lived here had seen him coming. Maybe they were waiting inside the house with their rifles ready.

Jed started walking slowly towards the house. He didn’t want to survive the horrors he’d been through up in those woods just to be shot by some nervous ranchers now.

Everything was still quiet. He didn’t see any movement from the house, which was a large adobe structure with a porch running along the entire front of it. A stack of firewood was piled up at the side of the home, between the house and the corral fence on that side.

“Hello!” Jed called out, walking slowly towards the house.

No answer. He didn’t even hear a dog barking.

“Anyone here?” Jed called.

Still no answer. Everything was silent; no noises except the cold breeze whistling through the group of trees to his left, rattling the leaves like the scraping of thin, dry bones. A horse snorted from inside the stables.

“I’m a U.S. Marshal,” Jed said, holding up his badge that he had dug out of his pants pocket. “I’m a lawman. My name’s Jed Cartwright. My men and I were robbed by bandits. They stole my horse and pack. Killed my men.” A white lie, but the truth would be a little too complicated to explain right now.

No one answered from the house.

Jed still had his badge in his hand, both of his hands raised halfway up in surrender. “Please don’t shoot. I just need some help.”

A few moments later Jed stood in front of the porch steps. He studied the front windows, but didn’t see any movement behind the glass. There was some kind of Native American weaving attached to the front door of the home, and bone chimes hung from the edge of the porch roof on leather strings.

Jed figured the family that lived here was Navajo. Many of the Navajo had been given small plots of land by the government recently after the years of battles throughout this region. Many Navajo had built homesteads and even small villages around here—places that wouldn’t be on any map. Many Navajo herded sheep or raised cattle and traded horses.

“Hello,” Jed called out. “Ya-tah-hay,” he said, calling out the greeting in Navajo, not even sure if he was saying it correctly. It was one of the few phrases he knew how to say in Navajo. Maybe the people inside were nervous as they watched him walk up to their home with his badge in his hand—maybe being a U.S. Marshal wasn’t doing him any favors right now.

“I don’t mean you any harm,” Jed said as he stepped up onto the front porch, still looking for the glint of a rifle barrel in the windows. “I just need some help.”

Maybe there were only women and children inside, the men having gone off to tend to a herd or sell part of it. Maybe the women and children were too scared to open the door for him. Maybe they didn’t speak English.

The front door opened by itself, just a crack, the hinges creaking, the sound so loud in the silence.

Something was wrong here. At first Jed thought the feelings of fear and dread were just hangovers from what he’d felt up in those woods, and that would be perfectly understandable. But that wasn’t the case. He felt something terrible had happened here—something like what had happened up in those woods. Now that the front door was open, he could smell the blood and gore from inside the house . . . the smell of death.

CHAPTER 7

Jed jumped awake, sitting up on his bedroll. He looked around, not remembering where he was for just a second. He saw the dying fire, then he saw David sleeping nearby. He saw the shapes of the horses in the darkness just beyond the light of their campfire.

He let out a slow breath, shuddering a little. He had fallen asleep. He’d been dreaming about being inside David’s house again. He lay back down and tipped his hat down low onto his forehead, shivering a little in the cold.

A moment later he closed his eyes, and he was back on the front porch of David’s house.

*

Jed was beside the front door in a flash, staying to the right side of it in case shots were fired. He drew his Colt .45 and hugged the wall beside the door. “Everyone okay in there?”

No answer.

The smell of blood and death was stronger now, like the smell of the dead animal they’d seen on the trail in the woods, the one that had been turned inside out. Or the smell of Dobbs.

“I’m coming inside,” Jed yelled. “Please don’t shoot. I’ve got a gun with me, so don’t shoot.”

Jed kicked the door all the way open and then backed out of the way.

The smell was even stronger with the door all the way open. He heard the sound of flies buzzing around inside. He had given enough warnings to whoever was inside the house. If someone in there was hurt, then he needed to get inside to help them. He rushed in through the doorway with his Colt .45 in his hand.

The house was a wreck. Furniture was tipped over, paintings torn off the walls, a handwoven Navajo blanket ripped to shreds on the wood-planked floor. Broken bits of glass and pottery littered the floor along with the smears of bright red blood. The walls had more blood on them, splatters of it everywhere. Among the debris on the floor were what looked like small bits of meat. It seemed like someone’s body had been dragged across the floor over and over again, leaving trails of blood behind. And there were trails of blood on the walls, too.

Jed almost retched. His stomach convulsed, his mouth beginning to water as his digestive system readied itself for the vomit to come up. But he managed not to throw up. He pulled his bandana up over his mouth and nose with his left hand while still holding his gun in his right hand. The bandana only helped a little with the smell.

Several people had been murdered here. Maybe a whole family. Something had happened in this house that was as bad as what had happened up in those woods.

Jed fought against the voice in his mind screaming at him to leave. He remained in the house, taking a few steps deeper into the living room, his boots crunching over the broken bits of glass and pottery. He did his best not to step in the large swaths of blood, but it was difficult to avoid all of it.

“Hello?” Jed called out, clenching the handle of his Colt even tighter. He felt a little silly calling out to the empty house, but he had to see if someone was still alive.

The kitchen area off to the left of the living room was divided by a stone fireplace that was cold and black inside. The kitchen was as ransacked as the living area was. The kitchen table and chairs had been smashed to bits, dishes shattered. The potbelly stove was tipped over onto its side, the exhaust pipe torn from the wall leaving a circle of daylight invading the kitchen through the adobe wall.

There was more blood in the kitchen, like someone had splashed buckets of blood around.

But no bodies.

Maybe the bodies were in the bedrooms.

That creepy-crawly sensation was moving along Jed’s skin again, that sensation that he’d come to know so well. His mind was buzzing with panic, his muscles twitchy.

Jed went back to the living room, his boots thudding on the wood floor. His path towards the other side of the house disturbed the flies that hovered over the bloody smears, the flies scattering. An archway in the far living room wall led to the two bedrooms.

A wide trail of blood led into the small hall area beyond the archway. Hundreds of maggots wriggled around in the blood. The doors to two bedrooms were almost all the way shut. It was darker back here in the small hall area, colder, and the smell was just as bad.

He checked the bedroom to his right first, pushing the door open with the barrel of his gun. The room was as destroyed as the rest of the house: furniture broken apart, blankets and clothing torn to pieces, glass shattered, feathers from the pillows everywhere, some of the feathers stuck in the bloody smears like it was tar.

But there was no one hiding in the bedroom. No bodies.

He checked the other bedroom, pushing that door open slowly. This was obviously a boy’s bedroom judging from the broken bits of wooden toys all over the floor. The bed was flipped up against the wall.

There was no blood in this bedroom—the bloody smears stopped at the doorway.

Jed stood there for a moment, staring down at the floor. But he had to make himself turn away. He was sure the skinwalkers had done this—they had wiped out an entire family. It was time to leave now. He would take a few supplies and a horse and saddle.

As Jed turned to leave, he heard the whimper of a child. He turned back around and looked at the bed leaning against the wall—the place where the whimpering had come from.

Someone was still alive.

Jed took a step into the bedroom, but then he froze. He thought of the hooting owls and howling wolves in the woods; he thought of Red Moon telling him that skinwalkers could mimic any sound, transform into any animal they wished. Could it be a skinwalker behind that bed making the whimpering sound of a child? Could a skinwalker be trying to draw him closer? Were there more skinwalkers right outside the house, inhabiting the dead bodies of the family, controlling them? Were the dead stumbling towards the front door right now?

“Come on out,” Jed said, aiming his gun at the bed.

The whimpering stopped.

Jed’s blood froze in his veins. He was suddenly sure he was being tricked.

“Show yourself!”

A boy poked his head out from between the leaning bed and the wall. He looked to be eight or nine years old.

“Come on out,” Jed told the boy, still aiming his gun at him. “I don’t mean you any harm. I just need to see who you are.”

The boy just stared at him, still cowering in the shadow of the upright bed. He looked to be full-blooded Navajo, and there was a chance that he didn’t even understand English.

“I won’t hurt you,” Jed said. “I’m a U.S. Marshal.” He pulled his bandana down so the kid could see his face. He dug his badge out of his pocket and showed the boy. “See? I’m a lawman.”

The boy came all the way out from behind the bed. He was dressed in wool pants and a button-down shirt that looked too big for him, most likely a hand-me-down from an older brother.

An older brother who was dead now.

The boy’s hair came down to his shoulders, and his dark eyes were wide with fear. There was a chance the boy was too traumatized to speak.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Jed said in a softer voice. He lowered his Colt, but he didn’t holster it yet.

The boy stood very still in front of his tipped-up bed.

“What’s your name?”

The boy wouldn’t answer.

“Do you understand English?”

The boy nodded.

“What’s your name?” Jed asked again in a gentle voice.

“David,” he whispered.

Good, at least David could understand and speak English. “Who did this to your family?”

David shook his head, refusing to talk, on the verge of tears.

Jed decided on a different line of questioning. “The ones that did this to your family, are they gone now?”

David nodded.

“Okay,” Jed said more to himself than to David. “Did anyone in your family get away? Could they be hiding somewhere else around here? Hiding like you were?”

David’s chin trembled and tears pooled up in his eyes. He shook his head no.

“The bad people took your family, didn’t they?”

David nodded.

Jed sighed. He wasn’t going to get too far with this conversation with David. Jed still felt nervous—downright scared—but for some reason he felt braver now that he had someone to look after. He had no choice now but to master his own fear so he could take care of this boy. Jed had lost a lot up in those woods, but it was nothing compared to what David had gone through in this house. And those skinwalkers weren’t done yet—they could be back at any moment.

You have to give him what he wants. Roscoe’s words echoed in Jed’s mind.

Jed didn’t want to think about what he’d seen in those woods. Right now he needed to clear his mind of fear and those rambling memories, right now he needed to focus on the task at hand like he’d always done. The skinwalkers hadn’t only kept to the woods, they’d been down here in this valley at some point, slaughtering David’s family and dragging their bloody bodies throughout the house and then taking the bodies with them.

Why had the skinwalkers taken David’s family? To make grotesque trophies out of them like they’d done to Dobbs’ skin? To reanimate them? To send them back to ask for things?

Judging by how tacky the blood was Jed guessed that the murder of David’s family had happened at least twenty-four hours ago, maybe even longer. That meant that those skinwalkers might have come down to this valley to kill David’s family before they even attacked him and his deputies in the woods. Maybe there were two groups of them, one group down here and one group in the woods.

Why would they kill David’s family? David’s family had nothing to do with Red Moon, did they? And why spare David?

They spared me, Jed thought. They told me to leave Red Moon for them. And I did.

It was early afternoon now, maybe only five hours left until sundown. Staying the night in this house was out of the question. They needed to get to a town, a place where they could get some help and send men back here. But first they needed to take two horses and some supplies.

“We need to leave, David,” Jed told him. “Those people that hurt your family, they could be back at any time.”

David nodded.

“I need to take two of your pa’s horses, okay? I’m a U.S. Marshal. Remember? I’m just borrowing the horses so we can get away.” Jed wasn’t sure if the skinwalkers were mounted or not—he hadn’t heard the sound of horses in the woods at all—but at the very least he had to assume that some of them had his and his men’s horses. “I’ll leave a note behind, okay?”

The boy stared at him blankly.

“You got some paper I can write on?”

David didn’t say anything or make a move.

“You just wait here,” Jed told David. “I’m going to get us out of here. I’m going to protect us from those people that did this to your family. I’m just going to go and get a few supplies together to take with us. Do you have a pack you can get together?”

David stood there for a moment, but then he bolted over to the other side of the bedroom where shelves were built onto the wall. The shelves had been hidden by a blanket before, but the blanket and some of the shelves were down on the floor now. David pulled a canvas pack out from the mess.

Good, the boy understood him. “That’ll do fine, David. I want you to put a change of clothes in there. Just one. Don’t make your pack too heavy. If there’s something else you want to bring along, a special toy or book, you can bring that, too.” Jed glanced down at the broken and battered wood toys—nothing really looked salvageable. “Or if there’s something special you want to keep from your ma and pa.”

David gave Jed a slight nod.

“We’ll be back,” Jed said. “We’re just going to go and get some help. Bring back more lawmen like me. I can’t leave you here by yourself. You understand that, don’t you?”

David nodded again, and then he bolted to a small dresser, opening the top drawer. He was hurrying, shoving a shirt and a pair of pants down into the canvas pack—obviously ready to get as far away from this house as possible. He dropped the pack on the floor and opened up a wooden box on top of the dresser. He pulled out a fat pencil that was whittled to a point. He held it out for Jed to take.

“Thank you, David. That will help quite a bit.” Jed advanced slowly towards David, taking the pencil from his hand gently.

David followed Jed as he went through the living room and then into the kitchen. He didn’t really want the boy to see all of the blood and bits of meat inside the house, but there was going to be no shielding him from the horrors out here.

Jed looked through the pantry in the kitchen and found an old flour sack. He looked around for supplies they could use, but there wasn’t much. He found a tin can on its side that was half full of coffee. He closed the lid tightly and added it to the flour sack. He grabbed a pack of kitchen matches, a dented coffee kettle, and a small metal cooking pot. He also found a sack of dried beans and an extra canteen for David, some eating utensils, and a stack of Navajo flatbread.

The flour sack was half full but not too heavy. He used a scrap piece of butcher paper to write a note on:

Had to borrow 2 horses and some supplies. Will return them. Family murdered here.

Jed Cartwright   U.S. Marshal

Jed left the note behind, holding it down with a broken piece of pottery.

He hurried back to the living room. Even though the bodies weren’t inside the house anymore, the smell was still nauseating and Jed had his bandana up around his face again, covering his mouth and nose.

David stood in the living room with his canvas sack, which didn’t look too heavy. He bent down and picked something up from the floor amid the shattered glass—it looked like a piece of paper.

“Can I see?” Jed asked as he approached David.

The boy held out the photograph to Jed. David was in the photo along with his mother, father, and an older brother. Jed felt a pang of sorrow knife through him, his throat choking up with emotion. He handed the photo back to David who folded it in half and stuffed it down into his pants pocket.

“Did . . . does your pa have a gun?” Jed asked David as they hurried to the front door. “A rifle or a shotgun?”

David nodded.

Jed stopped and looked at David. “I didn’t see one in the house.” He thought the gun might have been taken along with the bodies, but he didn’t want to say that to David. “Does he have it stashed somewhere else?”

David didn’t answer.

Jed didn’t want to waste too much more time inquiring about a gun. There weren’t any bullet holes or shotgun blasts anywhere in the house—only blood and small pieces of flesh. Maybe David’s father kept a shotgun in the stables, hidden somewhere.

“Just wait here a few seconds while I have a look around outside,” Jed told David at the front door.

The boy looked panicky.

“I’ll be right back in. I’m not leaving you. I just want to make sure those (he almost said skinwalkers) men aren’t out there anywhere waiting for us.”

David nodded. He hadn’t spoken a word except for his name so far, but at least he was communicating.

Jed stepped out through the front door with his cloth bag in one hand and his gun in the other. He slipped all the way out onto the front porch, closing the door behind him. He walked to the end of the porch, trying to look everywhere at once. He didn’t see any movement anywhere, and he didn’t hear any noises. He still had a feeling of dread weighing him down, that creepy-crawly feeling dancing along his skin, a feeling he’d come to know so well in the last twenty-four hours.

He stood at the edge of the porch, hesitating for just a moment. Something was bothering him about the front porch and the field of dirt beyond it. And then it hit him: there wasn’t any blood on the front porch, and there were no drag marks in the dirt. How had the skinwalkers gotten the bodies out of the house without dribbling any blood? Of course there was so much blood in the house that maybe there hadn’t been any left in the bodies, but Jed didn’t think that was the answer.

For just a second it seemed like the whole world had shifted slightly, everything tilting just a bit. A wave of light-headedness washed over Jed as he stared down at the bone-dry floorboards of the front porch. For the first time in his life, he felt small and weak, like everything he’d always known was suddenly beyond his control, like he was a piece of wood floating helplessly down a raging river, carried along through this horror whether he wanted to go or not.

A noise from behind him spun Jed around with his gun aimed. David had stepped out onto the front porch with his canvas bag in his hands.

Jed exhaled a long breath. “Come on. Help me pick out two horses. Show me which one you usually ride.”

David hurried towards Jed and they walked together to the stables. Inside the stables, David walked up to a small mare that was obviously his horse. Jed didn’t have to show David how to mount the horse; David was familiar enough with them.

There were a few bedrolls on a shelf, rolled up tightly and tied with twine. Jed tied one of them to the back of David’s saddle and one to the back of the saddle of the horse he was going to take, the better of the two horses that were left. He let the other horse out into the corral and left a large pile of feed by his pen, leaving the stall door open. He wasn’t sure why the skinwalkers hadn’t taken the horses after taking David’s family, but he was sure they had a reason for it. Jed couldn’t help feeling that the skinwalkers were doing certain things purposely, like they had a plan they were laying out. He couldn’t help feeling like he was being herded somewhere . . . herded into a trap.

Jed’s horse was a little nervous, but Jed rode him around the corral for a few minutes to calm him down, and then they were ready to go.

They rode away from David’s house, north into the badlands of northern Arizona. And soon they would camp for the night.

CHAPTER 8

Jed’s eyes popped open in the darkness. Their campfire was out, but the darkness wasn’t as complete as the darkness in the woods had been; a full moon provided plenty of light for Jed to see the man seated at the other side of the dead campfire.

For a moment Jed didn’t know where he was. He had awakened in a state of grogginess, more confused than afraid at first as his conscious mind tried to catch up to what his eyes were seeing.

He wasn’t in the woods anymore—he knew that right away. He was in the desert with David. They had camped out for the night.

And now Red Moon was here by their dead campfire, sitting cross-legged and naked under the moonlight. His head was bent forward, his long hair hanging down over his shoulders, his face hidden behind his hair and the shadows.

Suddenly all of the memories of the last thirty-six hours came back to Jed: Dobbs’ skinned body, Roscoe’s severed head, David and his slaughtered and missing family. And he had left Red Moon behind in those woods.

Jed sat up on his bedroll and stared at the Navajo who sat only ten feet away from him. Jed glanced over at David who was curled up on his bedroll, his eyes closed; he was either sleeping or pretending to be asleep. Jed looked over at the stand of trees where he had tied their horses. Both of them were still there, both jittery and snorting, their legs still hobbled. He looked back at Red Moon.

Red Moon sat very still, his head still bent down like he was looking down at his lap. It looked like Red Moon’s skin was rippling, like something was moving just underneath it, little lumps sliding back and forth under his skin.

“He is going to want something from you,” Red Moon said in a deep, guttural voice. He still hadn’t looked up at Jed yet, his face still in shadows, the moonlight shining down on the top of his head and shoulders.

Jed couldn’t respond; his throat had locked up with fear. His Colt was within easy reach. He could shoot Red Moon right now if he had to. But he knew that it wouldn’t do any good, so he left his gun alone.

Save the last two bullets for me and David. I won’t let us end up like this.

“He is going to want things,” Red Moon said again in his gravelly voice. “You give him what he wants, and he will let you live.”

Jed was going to ask Red Moon what “he” wanted, but he still couldn’t get his voice to work. He had been afraid many times in his life, but never like this. He’d never faced something so powerful that it made him feel like giving up.

The lumps under Red Moon’s skin were moving around faster now, and there were more of them. One of the lumps pushed through the skin of Red Moon’s shoulder, and a black beetle wiggled out, its shell shiny in the moonlight. Once the bug was free from Red Moon’s skin, it skittered down his chest and into the shadows of his lap.

Another beetle pushed itself out of Red Moon’s skin, and then another one. And another. Dozens of beetles were pouring out of Red Moon’s skin, racing down his flesh like an army of ants. The beetles were merging together, forming into a bigger organism, an amoeba-like being.

Red Moon raised his head, his face coming out of the shadows. “Remember what I said. When the time comes, you give him what he asks for.”

How was Red Moon speaking? He had no face—there was just a deep black hole where his face should have been, a giant cavern with edges of ragged flesh and bits of torn, gleaming skull.

Jed snapped awake, jumping to his feet beside the bedroll. The sky was lightening up in the east, and it was only a half an hour until sunrise. The campfire was long dead. The air as cold, the coldest it had been all night. He was shaking, a feeling of dread blanketing him.

Red Moon.

He looked where Red Moon had been sitting next to the campfire last night.

It was just a dream, Jed told himself. Just a terrible nightmare. But he saw a slight indentation in the sand where someone had been sitting last night. Another chill ran across his skin.

They needed to get out of here.

Red Moon had told him in the woods that the skinwalkers were witches that could cast spells. Had they cast a spell on him in those woods? Had they made him see things that weren’t there? Were they still making him see things right now?

At least both of the horses were still there. And David was still asleep on his bedroll. If Red Moon had truly paid him a visit last night, then Jed felt sure the skinwalkers would have taken the horses, and maybe even David. But it felt more like Red Moon had been sent to send him a message, one last warning from the skinwalkers.

Give him what he wants.

But Jed didn’t know what he, or they, or whatever they were, wanted. And he couldn’t concentrate on that right now.

Focus on the task in front of you. He repeated the mantra in his mind that he had told himself for years.

“Just a dream,” he muttered as he gathered a few sticks of dried wood from the small group of trees the horses were tied near. It was still early morning, the world not fully lit up yet; many parts of the land were still hidden in shadows. He tore some of the bark away from a tree, peeling fibers of wood back, lighting the dry fibers with a kitchen match to get the campfire going again. He watched the flames as they spread along the kindling.

Ten minutes later he started a pot of coffee with some water from his canteen. His hands shook as he poured the water; he tried to make them stop shaking, but he couldn’t. He felt a strong urge to wake David up at that moment, pack up their camp, get on their horses and ride away as fast as they could. He had originally planned on going to Hope’s End because he’d been on foot, but now that he and David were on horseback, they could make the trip all the way to Smith Junction where they would be safe.

Nowhere is safe, a voice in his mind whispered. He could ride all the way to the Canadian line and it still wouldn’t be safe.

Jed woke David up after the coffee was boiling. The boy woke up easily, his eyes popping open. He didn’t smile and he didn’t say anything, he just sat up on his bedroll. Jed handed David a tin cup of coffee.

“We need to get going soon,” Jed told David. “If we get a good day of traveling in, we could be in Smith Junction by tomorrow afternoon.”

David didn’t say anything, didn’t seem to care. He didn’t even look at Jed; he just cradled the cup of coffee in his hands like he was trying to warm them up.

Jed bit off a few pieces of jerky and handed a piece to David who took the dried meat without a word. They would save the rest of the beans for tonight.

Thirty minutes later Jed and David were on horseback and riding away from the dead campfire. Jed cooed at his horse, stroking his mane, trying to get the animal relaxed. Moments later a group of coyotes began yipping on the horizon.

CHAPTER 9

The coyotes followed them throughout the day, yipping and staying out of sight most of the time.

Until now.

Now Jed saw ten of them lined up on a hill in the distance, they stood like a sentry of soldiers. Not only that, there were buzzards circling in the air above. He’d also heard the rattling of rattlesnakes several times, but he’d never seen any of them. All of this made him think of the animal noises he’d heard in the woods: the hoots of owls, the howls of wolves, the rattling of snakes.

Maybe there was something dead around here, something big enough to attract scavengers like buzzards and coyotes. But the coyotes on the hilltop in the distance didn’t seem to be hunting or scavenging—they seemed to be watching him and David as they rode by.

Jed and David rode down into a little canyon, and now the coyotes were out of sight. Jed heard the bubbling of a stream splashing across the rocks. He got off his horse to stretch his legs. He grabbed the reins and led his horse to the stream. David got off of his horse and did the same. It was almost afternoon now so Jed broke a piece of jerky apart so he and David could share it. David bit a small piece of the dried meat off and chewed, and then he walked away from the stream and looked back at the canyon floor that they had just traveled through.

Jed walked over to see what the boy was staring at.

More coyotes had gathered in the distance a few hundred yards away. The coyotes were just thin, dark shapes on the horizon, but Jed could tell that they were sitting on their haunches and watching them. A chill ran through him—animals didn’t act like that. Jed had never been afraid of coyotes—they were skittish animals and scavengers of opportunity. Even wolves didn’t scare Jed that badly, unless it was a pack of them. Wolves only became dangerous when they were more hungry than scared. Bears and cougars concerned him a little. Cougars liked to sneak up behind a man, especially at night, or attack from above, perched on a rock or a tree branch. But Jed didn’t usually see too many cougars in this area. Both cougars and bears could be scared off by loud noises or gunshots. But those coyotes at the other end of the canyon were spooking him; they weren’t acting the way coyotes were supposed to act. Skinwalkers could supposedly transform into animals. Could that line of coyotes be the skinwalkers? Could they have transformed into coyotes?

That was ridiculous, and Jed pushed that thought out of his mind. He was still jumpy and tired, his mind entertaining strange thoughts. He knew he had seen some strange things in those woods, things he couldn’t explain, perhaps hallucinations, but he wasn’t going to accept the idea of a man changing into an animal.

Yes, maybe he’d just hallucinated some of those things in those woods, the delusions created by stress. It was possible. And the visit from Red Moon last night had just been a vivid dream, nothing else. He knew stress could bring on vivid dreams. He knew a few men who had fought in the Civil War and they had admitted to horrible nightmares, some of the dreams so terrifying that they would jump out of bed and run smack into a wall, trying to flee the terror they’d seen in their sleep. One man told Jed that he had attacked his wife several times while he was asleep. He’d almost killed her once. She went back east to live with her mother’s family.

Jed hoped no more nightmares were coming for him. He didn’t want to experience any more nightmares like he’d had last night.

The horses had had their fill of water. It was time to move on. Jed looked up at the sky. Buzzards still circled in the air above the canyon walls, but they stayed above the line of coyotes in the distance. The sky was a deep blue, but storm clouds were beginning to move in quickly.

“Come on, David. We need to get moving.”

*

After they’d gotten out of the canyon, there was no doubt that a bad storm was on the horizon—a wall of black clouds rushed towards them like a tidal wave. The wind was already beginning to pick up. Maybe the storm was what had been making those coyotes and buzzards act so strangely.

Jed halted his horse and checked the map. They were only an hour or two away from the town of Hope’s End. He had planned on going as far as they could and then camping tonight, then reaching Smith Junction by tomorrow afternoon or early evening. But with the storm moving in, he really had no choice but to try to make it to the closest town. There was nothing but hilly land and scrub brush as far as he could see once they’d left the canyons behind—no shelter of any kind from the storm.

“We’re going to have to ride to the closest town,” Jed told David as he folded up his map and tucked it back into his shirt pocket. “Storm’s coming, and it’s going to kick up some sand. We’re going to have to ride fast. Okay?”

David just nodded, the reins gripped in his small hands.

“That storm comes, you pull your bandana up over your mouth and nose,” Jed told him. He pulled his own up so David understood what he was saying.

Again, David just nodded.

Jed nudged his horse forward and David fell in beside him, their horses trotting now like they could sense the dangerous storm coming.

As they raced across the desert, Jed swore he could hear the coyotes yipping somewhere in the distance. It almost sounded like the animals were laughing, like they were happy that he and David were being forced towards Hope’s End.

PART 2

HOPE’S END

CHAPTER 10

Jed and David saw the small town of Hope’s End on the horizon as the storm raged right behind them.

“Just keep my horse in sight!” Jed yelled at David over the wind as he pulled his bandana up over his face and drew the string of his hat tight underneath his chin.

David watched him as he rode his horse, doing the same thing Jed did.

“It’s going to get hard to see!” Jed told David. “You just keep my horse in sight!” he said again.

The boy didn’t nod, but he kept his horse right to the side and slightly behind Jed’s.

The storm was whipping the sand up into a frenzied swirl, a blizzard of sand all around them. Jed knew the storm was going to be bad from the looks of the clouds that had covered the horizon, but this was worse than he had expected. The wind howled and the sand stung his flesh through his shirt. He could imagine the pain and terror David was going through right now. Even though there was no rain, lightning flashed every few seconds, the ground rumbling with thunder, static electricity crackling through the air.

The edge of town was just a series of dark shapes in the blurring sandstorm, and Jed kept his horse racing towards those black blobs. He peeked to his side to make sure David was still there. The boy was keeping up just fine.

Jed had been to Hope’s End a few times, just passing through, never staying long. It was a one-street town, the street cutting a straight and wide path through the two and three story buildings lining both sides of the street. From what he remembered there was a large white church at the other end of town. But Jed wasn’t sure if they could make it all the way to the church; he remembered a hotel not too far down the street. He steered his horse to the right after they passed the first few buildings, all of which looked dark. But at least there were lights inside the hotel windows to guide their way.

“In here,” Jed yelled at David as he turned his horse into an alley between the hotel and the building next to it. As soon as he was between the buildings, the pelting sand stopped and Jed could see again. He pulled his bandana up to his eyes and rubbed them with the cloth, trying to get the sand out of them. He opened his eyes wider after lowering the bandana back down to his neck, his eyes watering just a bit.

David was in the alley with him. Both of their horses were squeezed in close to each other, both of the animals wild-eyed and snorting, both glad to be out of the stinging sandstorm.

“Well now,” Jed said. “That was something.” He couldn’t help smiling; he was as happy as the horses to be out of the storm.

David didn’t smile or say anything. He just watched Jed.

Jed got down off of his horse and grabbed his coil of rope. He tied the horses’ leads to the rope several feet apart, pulled his bandana up over his mouth and nose, and then dashed out into the storm to tie the other end of the rope to the hitching post in front of the hotel. The length of rope kept the horses tied, but allowed them enough room to remain tucked inside the narrow alley and out of the storm.

After Jed was back inside the alley, he pulled his kerchief back down off of his face. He took his hat off and smacked it against his thigh to get the sand off of it.

David mimicked him, rubbing his own eyes and then smacking his hat against his leg.

It was all Jed could do not to laugh. “No sense getting too clean,” he told David. “We still need to get to the hotel doors.”

David just nodded as he put his hat back on and drew the string up underneath his chin.

“You ready?”

The boy nodded again.

“Just follow me,” Jed said, and he was off and running, darting out of the alley and down the wood-planked walkway. At least the porch roof protected them a little from the sandstorm.

Lightning struck somewhere close by, a flash seen out of the corner of Jed’s eye. Thunder rumbled two seconds later, the ground shaking.

Their boots thudded on the walkway as Jed reached the double doors of the hotel. The doors had glass panels in them with the words MOODY’S HOTEL AND SALOON painted in fancy script on them.

Jed turned the brass doorknob and pushed the door open, the wind catching the door as he did so, fighting him. He held the door open so David could dart inside along with a scattering of sand and a blast of cold air. He slammed the door shut on the howling wind.

The hotel lobby served as the establishment’s saloon. It was a big room with a set of stairs running up the wall to Jed’s left. The set of stairs turned sharply at a landing and then continued on up to a balcony that ran across the second story of the saloon. No one was up on the balcony right now, but there were doors that led to hotel rooms up there. Another hallway disappeared around the corner to the left at the top of the stairs.

A slim woman in a green dress played a piano that was shoved up against the wall on the left side of the room by the stairs. She stopped playing for a moment when Jed and David entered the saloon. Even from the front doors of the saloon, Jed could tell the woman was attractive. She had red hair—but not a fiery red like Dobbs’ hair had been—her hair was more like a strawberry blond. She smiled at Jed and David, and then she began playing the piano again.

Between the stairs to the left and the massive bar to the right, there were half a dozen tables. Only two of the tables were occupied. A cowboy or ranch hand sat at the table closer to Jed and David; he was tall and lean, his skin tanned from years under the Arizona sun. And from the way he was drooped in his chair, Jed was sure the young man was drunk. A bottle sat on the table in front of him, most of its contents gone. The bottle didn’t have a label—probably some homemade hooch that the owner of this saloon had concocted; probably watered-down whiskey cut with God knew what to cut costs and increase profits.

A woman, most likely the hotel’s prostitute, hovered beside the cowboy. She wore a revealing dress and fishnet stockings. Her blond hair was pulled up into a bun, held there by a long wooden pick. Jed guessed that the woman was probably helping the cowboy with his bottle of whiskey as she tried to coax him upstairs so she could part him from more of his wages.

The back of the saloon underneath the balcony and upstairs rooms looked smaller and darker because of the lower ceiling. There were a few tables back there and an older Navajo sat at one of them. Right behind the man was a window, the world outside almost as dark as night from the storm. The Navajo man didn’t look up as Jed and David entered; he seemed to be concentrating on a bowl of stew in front of him. He wore layers of clothing and a big coat dotted with different colored patches. He had a dirty white bandana wrapped around his forehead with a black felt hat over that. An eagle feather poked out of the hatband. His long hair flowed down over the shoulders of his multi-colored coat.

Jed stomped his boots on the wood floor near the door where he stood, taking his hat off again and brushing the sand off as best he could.

Once again David mimicked Jed’s actions, swatting at his clothes with his hat and then stomping his boots on the floor.

“Take a seat over there,” Jed whispered to David, pointing at a table closer to the piano and farther away from the drunk cowboy and the prostitute.

As David walked towards the table, the prostitute watched him, smiling at him and giving him a small wave of her fingers. David glanced at the woman and then he sat down at the table. The woman leaned down towards the cowboy and whispered something in his ear. They both laughed. Jed was sure the woman had made some kind of obscene comment, or perhaps an Indian joke.

Jed turned his attention to the bar at the other side of the saloon; it was a mahogany behemoth, running from the windows that looked out onto the street all the way to a potbellied stove with its exhaust piped into the wall. Two doors were tucked underneath the balcony above, leading to rooms built in that far corner of the saloon. There were a few barstools in front of the bar, but all three men at the bar chose to stand there—two of the men stood close to each other by the windows. Both of them turned and faced Jed. The two men were dressed like businessmen, both in their early to mid-forties. One man was stick-thin and balding; the other man had a full head of dark hair and a protruding belly.

A lone man stood at the other end of the bar with his back to Jed. He never turned around to look at Jed. He leaned on the bar with one foot propped up on the brass foot rail that ran the length of the bar. Jed didn’t like the way the man was standing, relaxed but tense at the same time. And he didn’t like the pistols that the man wore low on his hips like a gunfighter, pearl handles sticking up out of the holsters. The man’s clothes looked new and expensive. Jed caught the man’s reflection in the mirrors behind the bar, but the man kept his head down, his black hat pulled low.

Three large mirrors made up most of the wall behind the bar, each mirror held against the wall in a network of ornately carved wood frames. On each side of the wall of mirrors were two wall sconces, both lit, both attached to the wall amid garish wallpaper that would have looked more at home in a New York City hotel rather than a dusty Arizona town. Shelves to the right of the mirrors held bottles of liquor, and there were more bottles and glasses lined up on the counter in front of the mirrors. To the left of the mirrors were some wooden cubbyholes for correspondence and keys to the rooms upstairs.

The other wood-planked walls in the saloon not covered with the ugly wallpaper were decorated with framed photos and paintings. A stuffed buck’s head with a huge rack of antlers was fastened to the wall just below the balcony, and on another wall there was a rattlesnake skin stretched out and mounted to a wood plaque. A massive chandelier of oil lamps hung from the high ceiling above the main part of the saloon.

“We don’t usually let children in here,” the larger of the two businessmen said in an Irish accent as Jed approached the bar after hanging his coat on the coatrack. “But I’ll make an exception on account of the storm.”

“Much obliged,” Jed said to the man he assumed was the owner. He stepped up to the bar in a spot that was equal distance between the lone man and the two businessmen. He shifted his gaze to the mirror, focusing on the lone man’s reflection, but the man still kept his head down, the brim of his hat hiding part of his face as he cradled a shot glass in his hands.

Jed knew that man, but from where?

“Hell of a storm,” the thin man at the end of the bar next to the saloon owner said with a lilting, singsong Swedish accent. The man’s skin was ghostly pale which made his sapphire blue eyes stand out even more. The hair that he had left looked bleached white.

“Yes it is,” Jed replied.

“That storm came out of nowhere,” the Swede said.

The barkeep approached Jed from behind the bar with a customer-friendly smile underneath his gigantic walrus mustache. He was dressed in a crisp white button-down shirt and a red bowtie, his uniform another attempt at trying to pretend this place was a high-class establishment and not a dusty saloon in a dead-end town. “What’ll it be?” the barkeep asked, his mustache moving as he spoke like it was a small living creature attached to his upper lip.

“Whiskey,” Jed said, tapping two fingers on the battered and dented bar top, where battle scars from countless drunken patrons and bar fights covered the mahogany. “Not that house brand. I’ll take some from that bottle over there.” Jed pointed at one of the bottles on the shelves in front of the third mirror.

The barkeep hesitated for a moment.

Jed pulled out a coin from his pocket, and then he pulled out his U.S. Marshal badge from his shirt pocket and pinned it to his shirt.

“Yes, marshal. Right away.” The barkeep dashed over to get the bottle and a shot glass.

Jed glanced at the young man to his left, gauging his reaction now that he knew a lawman was in the saloon. But the man stayed relaxed, still cradling the empty shot glass in front of him on the bar top, moving it around in a small, slow circle.

The barkeep poured Jed a shot of whiskey.

Jed downed the shot and tapped the bar for another drink.

The barkeep poured another one.

Jed drank the second shot slowly. He could already feel the warmth of the whiskey spreading in his gut, his nerves calming just a bit. He realized that he was very hungry, and he was sure David was hungry, too.

The Irishman moved down the bar to Jed, proffering a hand in greeting. “A U.S. Marshal, I see. Glad to make your acquaintance.”

Jed gave the man’s hand a shake—the man’s grip was firm and dry.

“My name’s Allen Moody,” the Irishman said. “I’m the owner of this fine establishment.”

“Jed Cartwright. What’s on the menu today, Mr. Moody?”

The Irishman broke into a grin, showing good teeth for a man his age. “Please. Just call me Moody. Everybody just calls me Moody.”

“What have you got on the menu today, Moody?” Jed looked to the barkeep for an answer if Moody wasn’t going to provide one.

“We have lamb stew in the pot,” the barkeep said.

“You got bread and butter to go with the stew?” Jed asked.

“Yessir,” the bartender replied with most of his smile hidden under his gigantic mustache.

“Karl’s wife made the bread,” Moody said, hitching a thumb back towards the thin Swede who was nursing a drink in front of him. “That’s Karl Andersson. He’s from Sweden. Owns the general store if you’ll be needing anything.”

“I’ll take two bowls of that stew,” Jed told the barkeep. “Two hunks of bread to go with it. You got any buttermilk for the kid?”

“Sorry,” the barkeep said, swallowing hard. “No buttermilk. We’ve got coffee, tea, and beer from the keg.”

Beer was out of the question, and Jed was sure David was probably tired of coffee by now. “Give me a cup of tea for the kid.”

“Right away, sir.”

“Where you headed, marshal?” Moody asked. Jed could tell the man was dying to ask him why he was traveling through a sandstorm with a Navajo kid, but he didn’t.

“Smith Junction.”

“Well, if you need to stay the night, I’ve got plenty of rooms available.”

“Good to know.”

“Rose could draw you a bath if you like,” Moody said and looked over at the woman who was still hovering beside the cowboy.

“We’re going to wait the storm out,” Jed said as he watched the barkeep ladle stew into two bowls. But Jed’s eyes kept shifting to the young man at the other end of the bar who had barely moved a muscle so far. The man made no attempt to meet Jed’s eyes.

“If you change your mind—” Moody said.

“You’ll be the first to know.”

“That’s Esmerelda playing the piano,” Moody said.

Jed didn’t bother glancing behind him at the woman at the piano. “She plays mighty fine.”

“She tells fortunes, too,” Karl said, leaning towards them, slurring his words even more.

Jed looked at Moody beside him. “You’ve introduced nearly everyone here. What about this fella at the other end of the bar here?”

Moody swallowed and smiled. “Oh, he’s just a man passing through. Taking shelter from the storm, like you.”

Jed kept his eyes on the mirror, watching the man’s reflection, waiting for him to make a move. “I know who he is.”

Before the man could even turn, Jed had his gun drawn and aimed at him. “Yes, I know who you are, Sanchez.”

CHAPTER 11

For the second time in the span of a few minutes, the piano playing stopped.

Sanchez turned towards Jed, but he froze with his hands down by his guns, only inches away from grabbing the pearl handles of his pistols when he saw that Jed had already drawn his Colt.

“Don’t do it,” Jed warned.

“What the hell are you doing?” Moody yelled from behind Jed. Karl had retreated away from the bar, knocking a barstool back, its legs scraping against the wood floor.

“This man is Juan Carlos Sanchez,” Jed announced. “He’s wanted for a murder in Smith Junction.”

“That was self-defense,” Sanchez answered. He stared at Jed, his body still tense, ready to strike like a rattlesnake.

Now that Jed saw Sanchez’s face, he realized that the man was much younger than he’d thought, maybe barely twenty-one or twenty-two years old. Jed knew he had to be careful—Sanchez would be fast even though Jed had the jump on him.

“Tell it to the judge,” Jed said as he kept his Colt aimed at him. “My job isn’t to try you, just to bring you in.”

Everyone watched them. The barkeep had moved as far back behind the bar as he could, ready to duck down when the shooting started.

For just a moment Jed was sure Sanchez was going to go for his gun, sure that he would be the sixth man he’d faced who would rather go out shooting than take that walk up the gallows steps.

But Sanchez remained still.

“You listen closely, Sanchez,” Jed said. “I want you to unbuckle your gun belts with your left hand.”

Sanchez waited a few seconds, staring at Jed. And Jed could feel the man searching his eyes, searching for a weakness, for an opening. But then Sanchez moved his left hand slowly to his belt buckle and loosened it. The gun belt, holsters, and pistols dropped to the wood floor in a crash among the sawdust and tobacco stains.

“You’re doing the right thing, Sanchez. Now take five steps back away from your guns and keep your hands up.”

Sanchez’s mouth was a straight line underneath his thin mustache. He backed up three steps, keeping his hands up in front of him in a half-hearted surrendering gesture.

Jed kept his Colt .45 aimed at Sanchez—he couldn’t relax now; Sanchez might have another pistol tucked away on him, even a two-shot Derringer.

“Moody, you got any rope?”

“Uh . . .”

“Rope.”

“Yes. I think there might be some in the storeroom.”

“Good. I need you to get me a few lengths of it.”

Jed didn’t see Moody nod at the barkeep, but a few seconds later the man with the walrus mustache bolted out from behind the bar and kept close to the wall and wood-burning stove as he made his way towards the two rooms. He ducked inside the room to the left, leaving the door wide open.

“You’re making a mistake,” Sanchez told Jed. “I shot that man in self-defense. He drew on me. I was just protecting myself.”

“I’m sorry if that’s true,” Jed said. “Like I said, you’ll have to tell that to the judge.”

“I’m certain I’ll stand a fair chance in front of a judge in Smith Junction,” Sanchez said sarcastically.

Jed didn’t answer, and Sanchez gave up on his pleas, seeing it wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

The barkeep was back with a few lengths of rope.

“You got any other pistols on you?” Jed asked Sanchez.

Sanchez gave a slight shake of his head.

“Turn around,” Jed said as he walked towards him, scooting Sanchez’s guns back even farther away on the floor with his foot. “Get down on your knees with your hands behind your back.”

Sanchez hesitated for another moment, but then did as Jed instructed.

Jed fished out the pair of handcuffs from his jacket pocket with his left hand and snapped a cuff on Sanchez’s right wrist while still holding his pistol aimed at the man, and then he cuffed the other wrist, shackling his hands together behind his back. Jed holstered his weapon. “Get on your feet.”

Sanchez stood up. Jed patted Sanchez down quickly, but the man had no other weapons on him.

“Go and sit in that chair over there.” Jed pointed at the closest table.

The cowboy sat up straight now at the next table with Rose right behind him, watching everything with wide eyes, sobering up a little. Esmerelda had turned around on the piano stool, watching. Even the Navajo in the back room was watching.

Sanchez plopped down in the chair, and Jed adjusted his arms so that they were behind the back of the chair, Sanchez winced a little as Jed forced his arms there.

“The rope,” he told the barkeep.

The barkeep snapped out of his daze and looked down at the coil of rope in his hands like he’d forgotten about it. He hurried over to Jed and handed it to him.

Jed used part of the rope to tie the chain of Sanchez’s handcuffs to the spindles at the back of the chair, and then he used the rest of the rope to tie Sanchez’s ankles together. He stood up and stared at Sanchez.

Moody rushed into action now that Sanchez was tied to the chair. He picked up Sanchez’s gun belt and pistols from the floor. “I’ll lock these in my office.”

Jed nodded at Moody and watched him head to the other doorway to the right of the storeroom where the barkeep had gotten the rope.

“You got a sheriff in this town?” Jed asked the barkeep.

“No,” the barkeep answered. “Not anymore.”

“A lot of people left after the mines around here dried up,” Karl offered. “Sheriff left, too.”

“You got a sheriff’s office with a jail cell?” Jed asked.

“Yes,” Moody answered as he came out of his office, walking towards Jed, taking over the conversation.

Jed figured he could put Sanchez in the jail cell if he had to stay the night, but he wasn’t walking him anywhere through that storm out there.

“I’ll take one more whiskey and those bowls of stew I ordered,” Jed told the barkeep.

The barkeep had remained at the end of the bar, still frozen for a moment. He jumped at Jed’s command, seemingly eager to do something. “Right away, marshal.”

After the barkeep set the bowls of stew on the bar top, Jed took a bowl of stew with a chunk of bread sunk down into it and a cup of tea to the table where David sat. “You eat up,” he told the boy.

David had taken off his coat at some point and slung it over the back of his chair. He pulled his hat back and took a bite of the stew. He tore off a piece of the bread, devouring it.

Jed went back to the bar to get the other bowl of stew.

“Uh,” Moody said, approaching Jed. He couldn’t seem to hide his curiosity. “Is there some reason you’re traveling with that Indian boy?”

Jed didn’t answer for a moment as he stood in front of the bar with the bowl of stew on it. “I found him in his home. His parents and brother were murdered.”

Moody’s eyes widened in shock. “You know who did it?”

Jed hesitated again. He shook his head. “I was taking Red Moon in for a bounty when me and my men were ambushed.”

“Red Moon?” Moody asked in a whisper of awe. “You caught Red Moon?”

“He got away. He might’ve killed that boy’s family. He killed my two deputies and stole our horses. I think his gang attacked us.”

“And Red Moon got away,” Moody whispered.

A memory of Red Moon flashed through Jed’s mind. He saw Red Moon staring at him with his bound hands shackled in front of him, arms straining, his eyes wide with fear. Shoot me. You promised.

“Red Moon and his men may be around,” Jed said as he looked at the others in the saloon. “We all need to stay alert.” He looked right at Sanchez. “What about you? You riding with Red Moon’s gang?”

Sanchez didn’t answer. He sulked in the chair.

“You hear anything about Red Moon’s gang?” Jed asked Sanchez.

“I don’t ride with any gangs,” Sanchez answered. “I’m not an outlaw. I was on my way back to Mexico. Back to my family.”

Jed turned back to the bar and downed his glass of whiskey. He left his bowl of stew at the bar as he walked past Sanchez towards the Navajo in the back room. “What about you, fella?”

The Navajo looked up at Jed, watching him approach. He was an older man, maybe in his late fifties or early sixties. His tanned face was a map of wrinkles, his dark eyes set deep under his brow.

“You know anything about Red Moon’s gang?”

“Because I am Navajo, you think I know every other Navajo in the world?”

“That’s not an answer to my question,” Jed told him.

“I have heard of Red Moon,” the Navajo man answered. “But I do not know him. Or his men.”

“That’s Nez,” Esmerelda said, standing up from the piano stool and staring at Jed. “I don’t know his full name, but everyone just calls him Billy. He comes into town a few times a month to trade.”

Jed looked at Esmerelda. Now that he was closer to her, he thought she was even more striking in a strange way. Not beautiful, but the word exotic came to mind. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Esmerelda smiled at him and sat back down on the piano stool.

Jed was about to return to the bar. He saw that David was turned around in his chair, watching him talk to Billy. Jed looked back at Billy. “You know this boy?”

Billy looked across the room at David for a long moment.

Jed swore he saw recognition in Billy’s eyes, but finally the old man shook his head. “No. I do not know him.”

Jed nodded at the Navajo man and started walking to the bar again, but this time Billy’s words stopped him.

“The Darkwind is powerful magic.”

“What did you say?” Jed asked Billy Nez as he turned back around to look at him.

“I said the Darkwind is powerful magic.”

Darkwind. Red Moon had said that same word. The wind had blown suddenly in the woods, shaking the tree he was chained to. He had looked up and called it the Darkwind.

“The Darkwind is out there now,” Billy said, nodding towards the saloon doors at the other end of the room. “And it brings something evil with it.”

“He’s right,” Esmerelda said. “I can feel something real bad out there.”

“It’s just a storm,” Jed told Esmerelda, and then he looked at Billy. “Besides, I don’t believe in that stuff.”

Billy Nez studied Jed for a long moment, and then he nodded like he’d reached some kind of conclusion he’d been internally debating. “You have already seen the Darkwind. You have seen what it can do.”

“I didn’t see anything,” Jed snapped. He could feel the skin on his face and neck heating up with the lie he was telling. “All I know is some Indians were pretending to be skinwalkers and they killed my men.”

The saloon went silent again for a moment—there was nothing but the sound of the howling wind outside.

Billy stared at Jed for a long moment, his dark eyes never looking away. “Yenaldooshi,” he whispered.

“What the hell’s a skinwalker?” the cowboy slurred as he turned around in his chair to stare at Jed with drunk eyes and a lopsided smile. Rose broke into nervous laughter beside the cowboy, spurring him on.

The tension in the room was broken by their laughter.

“Red Moon’s men might be out there,” Jed said, ignoring the cowboy’s question. He looked at Moody, Karl, and the barkeep, walking back to them. “We all need to stay alert.”

Jed pulled up a barstool and began to eat his stew.

Moody, buzzing with nervous energy, walked to the front doors of the saloon and looked out through the glass at the swirling sandstorm.

“One more,” Karl said to the barkeep.

The bartender came over and poured a shot of whiskey for Karl.

“I hope this storm lets up soon,” Karl said. “I don’t want Ingrid to get worried about me.”

“I’m sure she knows where you are,” the barkeep joked.

Jed looked back to check on David and make sure he was eating his stew. David was watching Rose and the cowboy as they giggled. Rose whispered something into the man’s ear. He nodded and jumped to his feet. She hurried for the stairs, her low-heeled ankle boots clicking on the wood floorboards. The cowboy grabbed his bottle and raced after Rose up the stairs. At the top of the steps, they disappeared down the other hall to the left and out of view from the saloon. David watched them the whole way. Upstairs, a door slammed shut.

There was a whoop from the cowboy upstairs, and Esmerelda began playing the piano again to mask the sound.

Jed turned back to his stew. The stew was good, the bread even better. He felt a little better, even though the sadness and strangeness of what had happened to Roscoe and Dobbs still weighed on him. But at least he could bring Sanchez in for a bounty, making up for some of his lost money. It was little compensation, but Jed didn’t care. He just wanted the storm to end soon so he could get Sanchez and David on the trail up to Smith Junction and put all of this behind him.

CHAPTER 12

Two hours later night had come. An hour after sunset the sandstorm died down suddenly, the wind ceasing almost instantly. For a moment the silence inside the saloon was eerie. Esmeralda had quit playing the piano an hour earlier, helping the barkeep clean up the dishes and put away the food.

The barkeep had lit more of the lanterns on the wall sconces and the ones inside the wooden chandelier as soon as night came.

Karl paid his bar tab as soon as the storm was over, slapping two coins down on the beaten-up bar top.

The only other sound inside the saloon was someone singing lowly. Jed turned and stared at Billy who was still seated at the back table. He was chanting, and his chants sounded similar to the ones Red Moon had sung in the woods. Billy had the eagle feather from his hatband in his hand, waving it around slowly in front of him with his eyes half closed.

Jed walked over to David’s table. The boy looked exhausted, ready to fall asleep right there in the chair. “Get your coat on, David. We’re heading out soon.”

“You’re leaving now?” Moody asked. “In the dark?”

“Yessir. We’ll make camp a few miles north of here.”

“I don’t know why you won’t take a room for the night,” Moody grumbled.

Jed didn’t feel like explaining himself to Moody. He looked at Sanchez who was slumped down in his chair, doing his best to get comfortable after being tied to the chair for the last three hours. “Where’s your horse?”

“Livery,” Sanchez answered.

“Where’s the livery?”

Sanchez stared at Jed, declining to answer.

Jed looked at Moody, waiting for directions to the livery.

“It’s just beyond the buildings across the street, back by the miners’ cabins.”

Karl grabbed his overcoat from the coatrack and slipped into it. His pale face was red from drinking too much. He went to the double doors to go outside.

Jed walked over to the bar. “Barkeep, I’d like one bottle of whiskey to take with me. And I’d like some of that tea for the boy. Do you have any sugar for it?”

“Certainly. I’ll put some tea and sugar in a glass jar for you.”

“Much obliged.”

The barkeep went to work pouring the tea.

“How about some hard candy and some jerky?” Esmerelda offered as she walked over to where the barkeep had just been behind the bar.

Jed glanced back at David who had a hopeful look about the hard candy. Jed turned back to Esmerelda and nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

The double doors of the saloon crashed open as Karl rushed back inside.

Jed’s hand automatically went for his pistol, ready to draw.

“What is the matter, Karl?” Moody asked.

Karl stood at the doors, one of them still open. He looked like he was confused about something. He stared at Moody. “The whole town is dark. Not a single lantern lit anywhere.”

“What do you mean?” Moody asked, already walking towards Karl.

“Every building . . . no one has a lantern lit at all. Not a sound out there, either.” Karl’s voice was rising, the pitch higher, his bright blue eyes wide.

Jed’s stomach twisted into a knot, and that now-familiar feeling of oppressive dread weighed down on him. This was the same way he’d felt when they had first entered the woods. It was the same way he’d felt when he’d woken up and found Dobbs gone. And then Roscoe. This was the same way he’d felt when he had opened the door to David’s house and smelled the stench of blood and rotting meat. It was the foreboding feeling of danger, but not just any danger, something beyond that, something so bad that he couldn’t fathom it, something beyond his understanding.

Moody brushed past Karl and stepped out onto the front porch of the saloon, leaving the door wide open. Karl followed him back outside.

Jed left his goods on the bar top, grabbed his coat, and walked to the double doors, stepping out onto the wooden walkway, pulling the door almost all the way shut behind him. An energy buzzed through him, an electrical tingling on his skin as he stood there in front of the doors to the saloon. His right hand twitched slightly, nerves already firing in his body, already preparing for danger and waiting for his mind to catch up. That same feeling he’d had in the woods came back to him, that feeling that a rifle shot or an arrow was going to stab him from the dark at any second. He felt like a man at the edge of a thunderstorm and exposed to a lightning strike. But now that lightning storm

(Darkwind)

was gone, and it had left nothing but silence and darkness in its wake.

The floorboards of the deck in front of the saloon were still scattered with sand and bits of broken twigs and dead leaves from the scrub brush shaken apart by the winds and blown down the main street of the town. Light poured out of the saloon’s front windows, the building so brightly lit compared to the other dark buildings in the town.

Karl was right—there wasn’t a single lantern or candle lit anywhere in town.

Jed looked to his left, towards the end of the wooden deck. The lights from the saloon windows along with the full moon provided enough light for Jed to see that the rope he had tied to the end of the hitching rail wasn’t stretched towards the alleyway between the two buildings anymore. Now the piece of rope hung down from the end of the hitching rail.

“Our horses are gone,” Jed said.

“You left them out in the storm?” Karl asked as he turned around to look at Jed. His words were slurred slightly.

Jed glared at Karl. “No, I had them tied to the end of that hitching rail down there, but I left enough slack so they could stand in the alley and be protected from the storm.”

Moody walked past Jed and Karl. He opened the saloon door and poked his head inside. “Get me a lantern out here!”

Jed didn’t wait for the lantern. He marched to the end of the walkway and hopped down onto the dirt, searching the darkness of the alley. But he already knew the horses were gone. He didn’t see them. He couldn’t hear them. He couldn’t smell them.

He walked the few steps to the end of the hitching rail and inspected the rope he had tied there hours ago. He picked up the end of it and studied it for a moment. The rope looked just like the one in the woods had looked, not cut but snapped. Torn apart.

A thundering of footsteps approached.

Jed looked at Moody and Karl as they hurried towards him, Moody holding an oil lantern by a wire handle.

“Horses are gone,” Jed said, still holding the remaining length of rope in his hand as evidence.

“The storm,” Moody said.

Jed shook his head. “Someone took them.” He offered the end of the rope to Moody as evidence.

Moody took the rope and looked at it for a moment, but Jed could tell the man didn’t understand what he was seeing.

“You think someone stole your horses during the storm?” Karl asked.

Moody let the rope drop out of his fingers.

“They could’ve run off,” Karl suggested. “The storm might have spooked them, and they snapped the rope.”

Jed didn’t bother answering Karl. He looked across the street at the line of dark buildings silhouetted against the night sky. There were still no lanterns or candles lit in any of the windows or outside the doors on the porches. No one was coming out of the buildings. “How many people live in this town?”

“Why do you ask, marshal?” Moody wondered.

Jed stared at Moody.

“About forty,” Moody answered and looked at Karl like he was double-checking with him. “Maybe forty-two or forty-three. I don’t know. I haven’t taken a headcount recently.”

Jed looked beyond the two men at the rest of the town that disappeared into the darkness, the line of buildings on both sides of the dirt street stretching towards the white church, its steeple a black spire pointing up at the sky. The moon’s light splashed down on the shingled roofs of the buildings and the part of the street that the buildings’ deeper shadows didn’t touch.

“The mines all shut down about nine months ago,” Moody said as if he needed to provide an explanation of why so few people lived in the town. “Silver and copper ran out. The miners and prospectors moved on, taking a fair share of the merchants with them.”

Karl nodded in agreement, his vivid blue eyes rimmed in red and moist in the lantern light.

“I couldn’t leave,” Moody continued. “I have everything I own tied up in this saloon and hotel.” He looked at Karl.

“Me too,” Karl said. He glanced down the street where Jed was still staring, itching to get down to his store and his wife and boys.

“It’s a rough situation,” Moody said. “But we get by. Help each other out. I believe prospectors will come back. Probably a bigger mining company, one that can spend the money to drill deeper into the mountain. I believe there’s still plenty of silver and copper in those hills. I’m certain of it.”

“Forty people,” Jed muttered.

“At least forty,” Moody corrected.

“Awful quiet for forty people,” Jed said.

“You mind if I borrow your lantern, Moody,” Karl asked. “I need to get down to my store.”

“I’ll go with you,” Jed told Karl.

Esmerelda and Billy Nez came out of the saloon with David. “He was worried about you,” Esmerelda explained.

David dashed over to Jed’s side.

“We’re going to check on Karl’s store,” Moody told Esmerelda. “We’re going to make sure Ingrid and Karl’s boys are okay.”

“We’re coming, too,” Esmerelda said.

“Wait a minute—” Moody began.

“Free country,” Esmerelda said, cutting his words off. “We can go where we please.”

“But the boy?” Moody asked.

“He’s staying with me,” Jed told him.

“There could be danger out here,” Moody argued with Jed. “Why, you just said yourself that Red Moon’s gang could be around.”

“Could be,” Jed agreed. “Could also be another gang of outlaws. Could also be nothing.”

“We need another lantern and another gun,” Moody said, rushing back inside the saloon.

The barkeep watched Moody as he approached.

“We’re going down to Karl’s store,” Moody told the barkeep. “Get me that lantern back there and the shotgun from behind the bar.”

The barkeep set the lit lantern on the bar top in front of Moody, then bent down and got the shotgun from underneath the bar.

“You keep an eye on the marshal’s prisoner while we’re gone,” Moody told the barkeep.

The barkeep’s eyes grew big, and they darted to Sanchez tied to his chair.

“He can’t go anywhere,” Moody grumbled as he took the lantern and shotgun with him back to the double doors.

As soon as Moody was back outside, all of them stepped down off of the wooden platform, down to the dirt street.

Six people and a child, Jed thought. One pistol and a shotgun. He didn’t like those odds . . . not after what he’d seen in the woods.

Coyotes yipped in the distance.

“Storm got the coyotes stirred up,” Moody said.

Jed didn’t like the sound of the coyotes. It sounded almost like they were communicating with each other, like they were talking in some strange language. And laughing.

The seven of them walked down the street, their boots and shoes scuffing across the sand, the glow of the lanterns lighting their way.

A few minutes later, Karl stopped in the street. He stared at the dark two-story general store. “That doesn’t make any sense at all,” he said.

CHAPTER 13

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Karl said again as he stared at the two-story building in front of them. “Ingrid would have lit a lantern by now.”

Like the saloon and hotel, the general store had a front walkway with a porch roof built over it that hid the front doors and windows in shadows so deep they reminded Jed of the bottom of a well. A hitching rail ran along in front of the porch and a wooden sign supported by a few lengths of chain hung from the edge of the roof; Jed couldn’t make out what was engraved and painted on the wood sign.

“Look at the windows upstairs,” Karl said in a shaky voice, the slur gone from his words now as he sobered up immediately. “There aren’t any lanterns lit.”

“Maybe they just fell asleep,” Moody suggested.

Jed watched the upstairs windows—they were black rectangles against the wood planked exterior wall. There was no light in those windows, no sign of movement, no sign of life.

Karl didn’t wait any longer—he took off for his store, marching across the dirt street. “Ingrid! Boys!”

No answer from inside the general store and the apartments above it.

Jed had that prickling feeling on his skin again, like a creepy-crawly sensation after a terrible nightmare. Nobody had come out into the street yet. There were still no lanterns lit inside any of the buildings. With all of the noise they were making and with Karl shouting, surely someone would have come outside by now. Or someone would have at least come outside to survey the damage done from the storm.

Jed touched David’s shoulder, nudging him forward just a little. “Let’s keep up with them.”

Karl was already at the double doors of his general store as the others were walking up the wide wooden steps. Jed noticed that all of the rocking chairs along the walkway were tipped over.

Could be from the wind, Jed thought. But then he noticed that the last chair at the far end of the porch had been smashed to pieces.

Karl froze as he reached for the door handle. Both doors to the general store were ajar, a black line of darkness between them.

“Maybe we’d better let the marshal go in first,” Moody said as Jed and David walked up the steps to the porch.

Karl didn’t wait for Jed; he exploded into motion, pushing both doors open and rushing inside the store. The top of one door struck a little bell above it when Karl opened the doors, the bell making a jarring, ringing sound. The glass panels in the doors shuddered in their frames from the force of Karl pushing them open. Karl was immersed in a bubble of light inside the darkness from the lantern he held. He was already several feet inside the store.

“Oh God,” Esmerelda whispered with her hands up to her mouth. She was still on the walkway and staring into the open doorway.

Jed saw what she was looking at. Even from the front walkway, Jed could see that the general store was a wreck inside; contents of the store had been destroyed and strewn across the floor.

Moody went in after Karl.

“No,” Karl moaned from inside the store. “No. No. No.”

Jed and David followed Moody inside the store, their boots crunching on the broken bits of glass and ceramic and smashed pieces of wood.

Tables in the store had been tipped over, wooden bins broken apart, glass panels shattered, jars and plates shattered. The floor was a mishmash of goods: ripped-up pieces of clothing, candies, soaps, candles, bits of wood. And splashed here and there among the debris were dark smears of blood. There was more blood on the walls where pictures and artwork had been knocked down.

“Ingrid!” Karl screamed. “Boys!”

No answer from Ingrid and the boys.

They were all inside the general store now, Billy stayed close to the double doors. Moody handed his lantern to Esmerelda so he could use both hands to hold his shotgun, his body tense, his eyes wide and alert.

Karl darted around a wood counter that had been splintered apart. He tripped over the destroyed contents of his store behind the counter, stumbling over the debris like he was walking across deadfalls in the woods. He headed towards a doorway where a curtain had been torn down.

Moody hurried to catch up to Karl as he disappeared into the doorway. “Wait for us, Karl. We shouldn’t split up.”

Jed felt that Moody’s warning was meant for all of them, and he and David fell in behind Moody, walking as carefully as they could over the broken and smashed bits and pieces of what used to be the goods in Karl’s general store. Billy and Esmerelda brought up the rear with the other lantern.

Moody followed Karl up the set of narrow steps, the walls close, like a claustrophobic tunnel up to the second floor.

Upstairs, they checked all three bedrooms. All of them were destroyed. There was no sign of Ingrid and her children . . . no sign except for the smears of blood everywhere.

Just like David’s house. Just like David’s family.

Ingrid!” Karl screamed even though she was obviously gone. “Ingrid!”

Billy Nez plucked the eagle feather from his hat as they all stood in what used to be Karl and Ingrid’s bedroom. He waved it back and forth, chanting softly.

Karl glared at Billy, his blue eyes rimmed in red, the little bit of bleached-blond hair he had left sticking out in wild tufts. “Stop doing that!” He rushed at Billy.

Moody stepped in between Billy and Karl, holding Karl back. Billy made no move to defend himself, and he kept his eagle feather in his fingers.

“They’re gone,” Moody whispered to Karl, still holding on to him.

Karl stopped struggling with Moody. He looked around at the wrecked bedroom as tears fell from his eyes. “How? How can this be?”

Moody looked at Jed. “Someone took them.” He stared at Jed like he was waiting to be backed up by an expert.

Jed didn’t answer.

“You think it was Red Moon’s gang?” Moody asked Jed, his words more forceful now. “You think they took Ingrid and Karl’s boys?”

Jed still didn’t answer.

Moody looked at Billy like he might have an answer for him.

Karl walked away from Moody, stopping at an overturned bureau, the drawers pulled out. He sank down to his knees and set the lantern down on the floor beside him. He searched through the clothing all over the floor. He pulled a pistol out from the clothing and checked to make sure the cylinder was loaded with bullets.

“They didn’t take anything,” Jed said.

Everyone except Karl looked at him.

“They tore everything apart,” Jed continued. “But they didn’t take Karl’s gun. And it looked like they left behind plenty of supplies downstairs.”

“They took my wife,” Karl said from the floor. “And my boys.”

“Yes,” Jed agreed. “But they weren’t robbers. They came here only to take your family.”

“And your horses,” Moody reminded him.

It sounded like an accusation to Jed, like Moody was trying to blame him for the plague that had descended upon their town. And maybe it was true.

“They came with the storm,” Esmerelda said in a whisper, her face lit up from the lantern in her hands.

Moody glanced at her but didn’t bother to ask what she meant by it. He looked back at Jed again. “We should check the other buildings.”

Jed just sighed—he already knew what they were going to find: more wreckage, more splatters of blood, but no bodies.

Moody hurried over to Karl who was still on his knees, cradling his pistol in his hands, his face a scowl, an equal mixture of rage and sorrow. “Come on, Karl. We need to search each building and look for Ingrid. Maybe she took the boys and ran. Maybe they’re hiding somewhere.”

Jed didn’t think so. He looked at the smears of blood on the walls and knew there was little hope of finding Ingrid and her sons alive. About as much hope as finding David’s family alive.

“I’ll kill them,” Karl said through clenched teeth as he wiped at his eyes. His face was red from crying, the skin underneath his eyes baggy and purple. He found a small box of bullets under some clothes and slipped it into his pants pocket.

“Let’s go back down there and look,” Moody said as he helped Karl to his feet. Moody picked up the lantern and ushered Karl towards the doorway.

“Something’s wrong here,” Esmerelda whispered to Jed as they followed Moody and Karl out to the hallway.

Jed didn’t reply.

Downstairs, Moody walked Karl out onto the front porch. The buildings across the street were still shrouded in darkness, the town still deathly quiet. Karl held the lantern in one hand and his pistol in the other. Billy and Esmerelda were the last two out of the general store, Esmerelda’s lantern adding to their little bubble of light as they gathered together on the walkway.

“No blood out here,” Billy said. At some point he’d stuck the eagle feather back into the band of his hat.

“He’s right,” Esmerelda said, shining the lantern down towards the floorboards. “No blood out here at all. How did they get the . . . how were they taken out of there without a drop of blood anywhere?”

Jed remembered thinking the same thing when he had stood on David’s front porch yesterday.

“No tracks in the dirt,” Billy announced.

“We’re not accomplishing anything by standing here,” Moody snapped, already moving towards the other end of the walkway where another set of steps led down to the dirt street. “Let’s check the dining hall next door.”

Moody and Karl were already on their way, Karl’s lantern lighting up their path to the doorway of the building next to the general store. That building was just as dark as the others.

Jed nodded at Billy and Esmerelda and then guided David towards the end of the walkway.

Moments later they all stood inside the dining hall. Like Karl’s general store, the dining hall was wrecked. Tables and chairs were smashed to pieces, even the counter at the other end was destroyed, like someone had taken an ax to it. More splashes of blood were smeared along the walls and floors, even a splatter along the ceiling ten feet above them.

“It doesn’t look like anything was taken in here either,” Esmerelda said. “Just destroyed. What kind of outlaws don’t steal anything?”

“The kind that just want to kill,” Jed said.

“Ingrid!” Karl called out, walking deeper into the darkness.

“Mary!” Moody yelled for the owners of the dining hall, following Karl. “Charlotte! Anyone here?”

No one answered from the doorways that led to the back. Moody and Karl ducked through the doorway, the light from the lantern fading as they worked their way deeper into the building, looking for any survivors.

“Look,” Esmerelda whispered to Jed. She pointed at the wall closest to them where four finger marks of blood trailed along the wall, the blood growing fainter as the streaks went along the wall boards. The streaks of blood went up and then down in another area, curving, almost like someone had tried to form letters, or words. They walked over to the wall, Esmerelda shining her lantern onto the wall so they could see better. “You think they were trying to spell something?” she asked him.

Jed stared at the bloody streaks, trying to make sense out of what the person might have been trying to spell. “That looks like it could be the letter C, and then an O.”

“Yes,” Esmerelda nodded. “I see it now. And then an L and an E. I think that word is Cole—like someone’s name. And this other one. That looks like an S and then a T.” She frowned, studying the squiggles of blood on the wall. “Maybe the name Stella.”

“Is there someone named Cole in this town?” Jed asked her. “Or Stella?”

She shook her head. “No one that I know of.”

Jed wondered why someone would write these names on a wall. Were they written by the victims? The murderers? But one of the names was a woman’s name—she wouldn’t be one of the murderers, would she? And certainly the skinwalkers wouldn’t have these names. But the names must mean something, yet it wasn’t making sense to him. He stared at the woman’s name a little longer. The letters written in blood were smeared. Maybe it wasn’t Stella, but some other word. He stared at the word for a long moment.

“I don’t understand how they took everyone out of here,” Moody said as he and Karl entered the dining hall again from the back rooms.

Jed and Esmerelda turned around and looked at Moody and Karl as they approached in their sphere of light. And then Jed noticed that David wasn’t standing near him anymore.

“Where’s your boy?” Esmerelda asked. “And Billy.”

They were gone.

CHAPTER 14

They all stared at the open door of the dining hall, the darkness outside the door seemingly impenetrable.

Panic blanketed Jed immediately, the weight of it heavy on his lungs, making it difficult to draw in a full breath. That tingly feeling of fear danced along his skin. His mind buzzed with panicky thoughts. How had David disappeared? How had he not seen David leave? Or heard him? He wondered for just a second if he had blacked out for a moment while staring at those words written in blood on the wall; he wondered if he had blacked out just long enough for David to walk out the front door.

Karl was in his own catatonic state of loss now; he stood right behind Moody. Jed wondered if Karl was in the process of blacking out at this very moment. Was Karl standing there with his mouth open, still breathing, his heart still beating, his bodily functions still working . . . but his mind was blank?

The skinwalkers can get inside a man’s mind, Red Moon had said. They can make a man do things. They can call him, make him walk towards them.

Were the skinwalkers really witches? Were they casting spells? How much was real, and how much was a hallucination?

Billy was gone. Had Billy walked away in a trance like David had? Was Billy a living puppet now, controlled by the skinwalkers? Again Jed thought of what Red Moon had said when Jed had asked him what had happened to Roscoe in the middle of the night.

He walked into the woods, Red Moon had said.

Had Billy and David just walked away like Roscoe had done? Or was Billy going to hurt David?

Jed ran for the door. Esmerelda was right behind him. Moody was trying to get Karl moving again. They shouldn’t split up, but Jed wasn’t going to wait for Moody and Karl—he couldn’t leave David outside alone.

Oh God, I’m supposed to protect him.

Jed rushed out onto the walkway in front of the dining hall and stopped cold.

Billy stood in the street ten feet beyond the dining hall’s walkway. And standing a few feet in front of Billy was David. Both of them were facing the same way, both of them staring down the street towards the white church in the distance.

Jed rushed down the steps. He passed Billy and went right for David. He grabbed the boy’s shoulders, afraid that he would see the milky eyes of a zombie rather than David’s dark eyes. But David was alert. “What’s wrong, David?”

David stared at Jed with fear in his eyes.

“What are you doing out here?” Jed snapped at David. “You can’t go off by yourself, you hear?”

David didn’t respond.

Jed let David’s shoulders go. He walked the few steps back to Billy, ready to blame Billy for David being outside. “You take him out here?”

Billy stood with his arms down by his side, his body loose. “No,” he answered simply.

The others rushed up to them, bringing the light of their lanterns with them.

“I followed David out here,” Billy said.

Jed stared at Billy. “Followed him out here?”

Billy didn’t offer an explanation. Jed looked at David who was staring at the church in the distance again. The walls of the church were ghostly white in the moonlight, its steeple the highest point in town, a cross on top, reaching up into the night sky.

“What are you two doing out here?” Moody asked Billy, moving closer to him. “We need to search the other buildings. Look for the others.”

“They are all gone,” Billy said.

“You don’t know that,” Moody answered, his face scrunched in disgust.

For just a moment Jed thought Moody was going to strike Billy with the butt of his shotgun.

“There might be some survivors,” Moody said. “There could still be some people hiding in the buildings. Maybe they’re in one of the abandoned buildings.”

“They got them all,” Billy said in his deep voice, his eyes back on the church in the distance.

“No way that’s true.” Moody barked the words out, spittle flying as he yelled. “No way they could have gotten them all.” His voice was rising, his Irish accent even thicker now.

Billy didn’t answer Moody. He walked forward to stand beside David.

Jed had his Colt .45 in his hand, his eyes darting around at the buildings, looking for any sign of movement. But he already knew he wasn’t going to see the skinwalkers. A coyote yipped and cried somewhere in the hills outside of town.

“Don’t you walk away from me, Indian!” Moody yelled at Billy.

“Moody, wait,” Esmerelda said, trying to grab Moody’s arm, trying to keep him away from Billy.

Moody brushed her off of him and stomped towards Billy.

Jed had been standing next to David, and he stepped in between Moody and Billy. “Nobody’s fighting right now,” he told him.

Moody stopped. He looked ready to explode with rage.

“We need to be careful,” Jed said. “Whoever did this could be watching us right now. They could start picking us off at any time.”

The anger melted from Moody almost instantly. He looked at the dark buildings all around them, clutching his shotgun even tighter. “So what do you suggest, marshal?”

“I think we need to get back to the saloon. It seems to be the only safe place in town so far. We hole up there for the night and wait for daylight, wait until we can see what’s going on.” He looked at Karl. “I know you want to look for your wife and sons, but we need to be cautious right now.”

Esmerelda walked up to Billy and David, standing beside Billy with the lantern in her hand.

Jed turned and watched the three of them. They were all staring at the church now.

“You see it, too?” Billy asked Esmerelda.

She just nodded.

“See what?” Moody asked.

Jed and Moody stood next to Esmerelda. Jed looked at the church in the distance for a moment, and then he finally saw it. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it before.

“What is it?” Moody asked again, an edge of panic in his voice. He looked at Jed for an answer.

“Looks like someone’s hanging above the church doors,” Jed told him.

CHAPTER 15

They hurried down the dirt street to the church. Once they were past the last of the town buildings, Jed saw other small houses and shacks dotting the hills in the distance. Those shacks and homes had been rented to the miners and prospectors when the mines had been active. Now those abandoned buildings were just black shapes along the landscape, which was colored dark blue by the moonlight. Stands of trees stood here and there in the distance, but most of the vegetation was scrub brush. It looked like the land went on forever in every direction.

The closer they got to the church, the more Jed saw the details of the person hanging in front of it.

The “front yard” of the church was a large grassy area planted with small shrubs and flowering plants. A wide gravel pathway cut through the middle of the lawn and led to a large gravel area in front of the wide steps that led up to a landing, and then to the double doors of the church, both doors painted red. Above the doors, hanging upside down by his feet, was a man dressed in a black coat and pants. His arms weren’t bound, they just dangled down. The man’s head was mostly bald, and Jed couldn’t see his face. But the man was wounded somewhere because blood trickled down from underneath his coat sleeves, dripping down his hands and onto the floorboards of the wood platform.

“It’s Pastor Starke,” Esmerelda said in a whisper.

“Who would do this?” Moody asked.

Karl brushed past them with his gun in one hand and the lantern in the other, his face set in grim determination. “We need to look inside. Ingrid and my boys could be in there.”

Jed turned to Billy and Esmerelda. “Let me use that lantern,” he asked Esmerelda, and then he looked at Billy. “You and Esmerelda stay out here with David.”

Billy nodded as Esmerelda handed the lantern to Jed.

Karl had already opened both doors of the church, pushing them all the way open, the light from his lantern only penetrating so far into the darkness. He was about to rush into the darkness, but Moody’s words stopped him.

“Maybe we should let the marshal go inside first.”

Karl waited beside the doorway.

Moody was halfway up the steps with his shotgun aimed at the doorway, skirting the puddle of blood from the pastor.

Jed could already smell the stench of blood and flesh from where he stood. He had the lantern in one hand, his Colt in the other. He already knew what they were going to find. He pulled his bandana up over his mouth and nose as he followed Moody up the steps and to the doorway.

Karl didn’t wait for Jed; he rushed inside the church, plunging into the darkness, murmuring to himself.

Moody waited just to the side of the doorway where Karl had been a moment ago as Jed entered the church next. Jed walked a few steps inside, his boots clomping on the wood floor. “Whoever’s in here, show yourself!” he yelled. “I’m a U.S. Marshal!”

There was no one in here . . . no one alive. The lantern light was weak, but it provided plenty of light to see the horrors that waited just a few feet away where the last row of pews began.

The smell was worse now that he was inside the building, like an invisible wall assaulting him. It was the same smell he’d noticed at David’s house when he had opened the front door—that scent of blood and rotting flesh. But the smell inside the church was much worse.

Forty times worse.

Jed held his lantern out in front of him, his hand trembling, the glass in the metal frame jiggling just a little from his tremors. He crouched down slowly and set the lantern on the floor right beside a large smudge of dried blood. His breaths were rapid and loud in his ears even though his breaths were muffled slightly by his bandana.

In front of him, all over the pews and in the aisle between them, were bodies. At least forty of them. Many of the bodies were naked, but some still had their clothing on, most of the clothing torn to shreds, just tatters and rags hanging down from their pale bodies.

Jed kept his Colt aimed forward. He looked at the sea of dead bodies in front of him.

Karl darted ahead of Jed, rushing down the aisle between the pews, searching for the bodies of his wife and sons.

The whole town was inside the church: men, women, and children. Their bodies looked like children’s toys thrown about, discarded things. A few bodies and pieces of the bodies were in the aisle that ran down through the middle of the pews towards the other end of the church where the pulpit was. A stained-glass window was built into the wall above the pulpit. Moonlight filtered in from the other stained-glass windows at the sides of the church, the moonlight that came through the window was colorful with hues of yellow, orange, green, and red. To the left of the pulpit was a dark shape that must be a piano.

Esmerelda probably plays that piano during services, Jed thought. He didn’t know why that thought had popped into his head.

He took another step forward.

Jed had seen dead bodies plenty of times in his life, but never anything like this. He’d heard stories from the old-timers about massacres, whole families of settlers found dead, their bodies sprawled out and naked along the prairie grass, bloody, some chopped to pieces as the remnants of their covered wagons smoldered in the background. Everything that the families had taken with them from the east was either dead or burning, all of the horses gone. Jed had never seen a massacre of people before, never could’ve imagined the sight, the smell, the coppery taste of blood on his tongue.

He didn’t want to, but Jed took a few steps closer to the pews. He stared at an older man who had been slung over the last pew, his naked body bent backwards over the back of it, his exposed skin so pale in the darkness. His face looked long and thin, his cheeks and eyes sunken in, eyeballs white and glassy, mouth open. It didn’t look like the man had any teeth—either he’d lost them through the fifty-odd years he’d lived or they had been taken. The man’s ribs stuck up inside his torso from where he had been bent backwards over the pew, the ribs snapped in the violent act, poking up at his flesh like poles inside a tent. His thin arms hung down, one hand nearly touching the floor, the other hand gone, ripped off at the wrist, just the end of two forearm bones sticking out of the shredded mess of flesh there. A strand of skin hung down from the end of his wrist like a loose string. A puddle of dark blood had formed underneath the man like a big oil slick.

There were other sights just like the older man, other people bent violently backwards over the pews. There were pieces of people on the seats, an arm here, a leg there. A woman’s button-up shoe sat by itself in the middle of the aisle with a shard of bone poking out of it like a broken stick—the rest of the foot probably still inside the shoe.

Jed heard the sound of footsteps behind him—Moody approaching slowly, but he didn’t stand beside Jed; he waited right behind him.

“Oh . . . God,” Moody whispered.

Karl gave a muted cry from halfway down the aisle. The cry was something a wounded animal might make, a cry of anguish and fear, a moan of sorrow so hopeless that it made Jed’s soul ache. Jed knew Karl had found Ingrid and his boys . . . what was left of them.

Jed caught a glimpse of Karl’s ghostly-white face as he stared down at Ingrid and his boys. He stood so still, holding the lantern by the wire handle, his mouth open like a sob was stuck in his throat.

Jed pulled his bandana down from his mouth and nose as he looked back at Moody. “Don’t let David in here.” He was about to add that David had already seen enough horror, but his throat locked up with emotion and he didn’t dare attempt to utter the words.

“They’re still out by the steps,” Moody said.

“Keep an eye on them, but don’t let them come inside,” Jed instructed.

Karl was still moaning, saying something in Swedish that Jed didn’t understand, a mumbling of words mixed with a gut-wrenching sob.

“Who could’ve done something like this?” Moody asked in a whisper, his voice thick, like he was doing his best to hold down the surge of vomit that was surely threatening.

Jed didn’t answer.

“This . . . this is impossible.”

“They’re all dead,” Jed told Moody without turning around, still watching Karl as he bent over the dead bodies of his family with his gun in his hand. “We need to get back to the saloon.”

“The other buildings—” Moody began.

“Nobody’s left,” Jed said as he holstered his Colt .45. He turned around and looked at Moody. “Everyone in your town is in here.”

“But there could be a few of them left. A few still hiding.” Moody’s voice trailed down to a whisper, his face falling into a frown like he couldn’t even convince himself of that.

Jed didn’t want to argue about it.

Karl was still lowing out moan after moan, still mumbling to himself in Swedish. Jed didn’t think it was a good idea for him to have a gun right now.

Light footsteps turned Jed to the doorway where Billy Nez stood, a motionless silhouette with an eagle feather poking up from his hat.

“We need to leave,” Jed told Moody who stared at the display of dead bodies. “Whoever did this is most likely still around. Probably watching us right now. We need to get Karl out of here.”

“There is something you need to see,” Billy said.

Jed’s heart fluttered in his chest. What now? he wondered. His anxiety was bordering on panic now. “Karl,” he barked. “We need to go. Right now.”

“Min Ingrid,” Karl moaned. “Min älskling.”

“What is it?” Moody turned to look at Billy.

“Come outside and see,” Billy said and turned. He walked away, shuffling down the church steps.

“Get Karl out of here,” Jed told Moody, and then he rushed for the door, drawing his Peacemaker again.

Outside, Jed rushed down the steps, skirting around the large puddle of blood from the hanging pastor.

Billy was with David and Esmerelda now, all three of them huddling together on the gravel. Jed should have seen it right away, but he was too concerned with David, not paying enough attention to his surroundings.

All three of them were staring down the street at the town. The whole town was dark now—not even the lanterns in the saloon were shining anymore.

CHAPTER 16

Moody had to practically drag Karl out of the church. “It’s not safe in there,” Moody growled at the Swede as he ushered him down the stairs. Moody was much larger than Karl, but Karl seemed unwilling to be led away from the terrible sight of his wife and children inside the church. Karl struggled with Moody, nearly dropping the lantern he held in the process. As soon as they were outside the church, Karl stopped resisting; his shoulders slumped, his arms hung down by his sides, his gun held loosely in his hand.

Jed turned and watched Moody and Karl approach. “He’s in no shape to hold a gun right now,” he whispered to Moody.

Moody nodded and easily pried the gun out of Karl’s hand. He held it out to Jed.

Jed took Karl’s gun and slipped it down into his holster.

Moody took the lantern from Karl’s other hand and handed it to Billy. Now Esmerelda and Billy each held a lantern, freeing up Moody’s hands to hold his shotgun.

“What did you want us to see?” Moody asked Billy.

Billy pointed at the dark town. “The lanterns in the saloon are out.”

Moody exhaled a wheezy breath. “Good God.”

No more words were exchanged. All of them hurried down the dirt street. Even Karl had snapped out of his mourning, his sense of preservation taking over now as he kept up with them, not wanting to be left behind.

They hurried past the line of buildings on both sides of the street that were swallowed in shadows. Another coyote yipped in the night. Another answered. Jed swore again that the animals were talking to each other somehow in some secret language.

They gathered in front of the saloon.

“Wait over there,” Jed told Esmerelda and David, taking the lantern from her. He pointed at the corner of the saloon. “Get down low in case there’s any shooting.”

Esmerelda took David with her to the corner of the building at the edge of the walkway and crouched down with him.

Jed had the lantern in his left hand, his Colt in his right. He looked at Moody, then at Billy. “You open the doors,” he told Billy. “I’ll go in.” He looked at Moody. “You get ready with your shotgun, but don’t fire unless I tell you to. It’s dark in there and I don’t want to be hit with buckshot.”

Moody nodded.

A moment later they were standing on the saloon’s walkway. Moody waited at the side of the left door with his shotgun while Billy opened the door on the right, pushing it all the way open. He backed out of the way as Jed rushed inside, shining his lantern and aiming his pistol.

There was no smell of blood or flesh—a good sign—but the saloon was quiet. And it was so dark, not a single lantern lit. He couldn’t even see the red glow of embers behind the slits in the metal door of the wood stove from where he stood.

“Is someone in here?” Jed called out.

No answer.

“Barkeep! Sanchez!”

As Jed ventured deeper into the darkness, moving towards the bar, a table and a set of chairs materialized from the blackness in the light of the lantern. His mind swam with nightmarish images of skinwalkers transforming themselves into animals, some kind of human/animal hybrid waiting in the dark, breathing silently through an opened, bloodstained mouth of sharp teeth. He imagined that they had eyes that could see in the dark, eyes that were watching him right now. He imagined the things were waiting in the dark until he was close enough for them to reach out with their claws. Jed wasn’t an imaginative man, and these horrors he pictured were just at the edge of his capabilities to conjure up in his mind, unnamable and indescribable beings that floated in the air, defying reality—sights that would drive him mad if he saw them.

Jed’s breaths quickened as he took a few more steps towards the bar that he still couldn’t see. He waited for that first touch of cold flesh against his face. He kept his Colt aimed in front of him, his hand trembling. The weapon felt silly now, a weapon he had always trusted and relied upon, a weapon he had trained himself to be an expert with, and now that weapon felt like a mere toy against these creatures that Red Moon called skinwalkers.

For the last twenty-four hours Jed had tried to convince himself that a lot of what he’d seen in the woods hadn’t been real—they’d been the result of a nervous breakdown, hallucinations brought on by extreme stress. But now, here in the darkness, he was a believer once again, even wondering if Red Moon had been right about the skinwalkers’ ability to cast spells.

The memory of Dobbs and Roscoe waiting for him on the trail in the woods popped into his mind; Dobbs sitting patiently with Roscoe’s head in his lap. Were they waiting for him now by the bar? Would Jed’s lantern shine on Dobbs’ skinless body, the muscles glistening in the lantern light? Would Dobbs be holding Roscoe’s head by his gray hair like a suitcase, Roscoe’s eyes bulging, his mouth pulled up into that severe smile, the strings of gore and knuckles of vertebrae hanging down from the bottom of his raggedly severed neck?

Jed tried to push that image out of his mind.

Even though panic was threatening to take over, Jed moved deeper into the saloon. The others outside the saloon doors were counting on him. Besides, if he ran right now, where would he go? Outside? Into the desert? Into those endless, brush-covered hills? There was nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide. Nowhere was safe. Not even this saloon was truly safe.

A few steps farther . . . and then Jed stopped. He looked down at the floor, seeing what he’d been afraid of—blood. Only this wasn’t the splash or smears of blood he’d been expecting; this was just a few dark spots of blood, like someone had cut themselves or had a nosebleed.

But even though there wasn’t much blood, Jed knew the men were gone. The barkeep, whatever his name had been, he was gone. And Sanchez, he was—

Movement from Jed’s left, a rustle of clothing, a grunt.

Jed turned to his left, aiming both his Colt and the lantern in that direction. He was a second away from pulling the trigger and firing blindly into the darkness.

“It’s me,” a voice called from the dark. “It’s Sanchez.”

Jed moved towards the voice, moving past the table he stood near. The next table and chairs materialized out of the dark in the lantern light. Sanchez was at the other end of the table, tied to the chair just where Jed had left him. He was sitting as far up in the chair as his bonds would allow, his arms straining behind him, his eyes wide, his hat on the floor like he had knocked it off while thrashing.

“Where’s the barkeep?” Jed asked.

“Untie me.”

“Where is he? Is he dead?”

“You have to untie me. You can’t leave me in this chair.”

Jed’s heartbeat and breathing were beginning to slow down a little. He could hear the others at the saloon’s doors. A lantern was there now, lighting up the doorway. Moody and Billy were entering the saloon.

“Is there anyone else in here?” Jed asked as he turned back to Sanchez.

Sanchez swallowed hard and shook his head. “I don’t know.” His words came out in a rush of breath.

“How did all the lanterns go out?”

Sanchez shook his head again, more vigorously this time, his face scrunched up in frustration. “I don’t know.”

Moody and Billy were at Jed’s side now.

“Where’s Lawrence?” Moody asked.

“Is that the barkeep’s name?” Jed asked.

Moody nodded. “Yes.”

“I don’t know,” Jed answered. “Sanchez here hasn’t been much help with information so far.” He glanced up at the chandelier of lanterns hanging above them from the ceiling. “We need to get these lanterns lit again. Get everyone inside.”

Moody went to work on that, hurrying to the bar with his lantern. He went around to the other side and looked through some wooden boxes until he found a few long kitchen matches. He lit a lantern on the wall sconce to the left of the mirrors behind the bar, and then he lit the other lantern on the other side of the mirrors.

The saloon was brightening up now with four lanterns lit. Jed could see most of the saloon now—only the back room, the stairs, and part of the balcony above were still hidden in shadows.

“Is your barkeep back there behind the bar?” Jed called out to Moody.

“No.”

“Any blood?”

Moody looked around at the floor behind the bar, studying it for a moment. “I think there might be a few spots. Can’t tell if it’s blood or dirt.”

Jed looked at Billy while Moody grabbed a long wooden pole with a wick on the end to light the lanterns in the chandeliers. “Take my lantern and get the others in here. Then close the doors. Lock them if you can.”

Billy nodded and took the lantern. He hurried across the saloon to the open door.

Jed watched as Billy ushered Esmerelda, Karl, and David into the saloon. Billy closed the doors once everyone was inside, and then he locked the doors and pulled down the shades over the windows. He hurried to both windows and drew the curtains shut.

Esmerelda led David to the same table he’d sat at before, whispering at him to sit down. Karl followed like a zombie and sat down at another table by himself, laying his head down on his arms, emitting a low moan.

Moody had the chandelier lit, all of the lanterns brightening the whole saloon up now. He took the pole back to the bar and extinguished the flame on the wick. He set the pole against the wall near the stove, and then he added a few pieces of wood to the stove, lighting a piece of paper to get them started. The flames flared up inside the stove, and Moody closed the little metal door on the front, the hinges squeaking slightly.

Jed pulled Karl’s gun from his holster and walked over to the table where Billy and David sat. He checked Karl’s gun for bullets, opening the cylinder. Each chamber was loaded with a bullet. He snapped it shut. It was an older gun, an 1870 Smith & Wesson .44 caliber, but it looked clean and well taken care of. He handed the pistol to Billy. “You know how to use this?”

Billy nodded and accepted the pistol from Jed, laying it down on the table in front of him with a thunk.

Jed walked back to Sanchez. “Tell us what happened in here. What happened to the barkeep?”

“Untie me. You can’t keep me like this. Not with . . .”

“Not with what?”

Sanchez snapped his mouth closed. He swallowed hard.

Esmerelda went behind the bar.

Moody, still tending to the fire in the stove, watched her. “What are you doing?”

She didn’t answer as she grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the shelf. She lined up some shot glasses on the bar near the pile of supplies the barkeep had put together for Jed earlier. She poured shots of whiskey into each glass.

Jed walked away from Sanchez, giving himself a chance to think. He walked over to where he’d seen the spots of blood on the floor. Just a few spots. They seemed to lead over to the bar. These were spots of blood, not splashes or smears like they’d seen before in the general store and the dining hall . . . and in David’s house. He followed the spots of blood over to the bar. Two more spots of blood dotted the top of the bar. And Moody had already said there might be a few spots of blood behind the bar.

Esmerelda watched Jed with a shot glass in her hand. She downed the drink and poured another. She picked up the jar of tea and the shot of whiskey. She brought the jar of tea to David and set it down in front of him. “Here, David. You must be thirsty.”

He nodded and whispered a thank you.

Esmerelda brought the shot glass of whiskey to Sanchez. “You want a drink?” she asked him.

Sanchez nodded. “Could you get my hat from the floor?”

Esmerelda picked up Sanchez’s hat and dusted it off. She placed his black cowboy hat on his head and then positioned the shot glass in front of his mouth, ready to pour. “Open up,” she told him.

Sanchez opened his mouth and tilted his head back a little. She poured the whiskey into his mouth slowly. He swallowed the liquid down and then sighed, closing his eyes for a moment.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Moody asked, stomping over to Esmerelda and Sanchez.

“He needs a drink,” Esmerelda said. “We all do.”

“Well, the drinks aren’t free, just so you know.”

“I’ve got money,” Sanchez said, addressing Esmerelda rather than Moody. “Inside my coat pocket.” He glanced at Jed who was still by the bar. “I won’t be needing the money much longer.”

Esmerelda reached into Sanchez’s coat pocket and pulled out a long leather billfold. She opened it and pulled out a bill. She handed it to Moody.

Moody’s eyes lit up—it seemed like the bill would be enough to cover the rounds of whiskeys. He shoved the bill down into his pants pocket.

“You want another drink?” Esmerelda asked Sanchez.

“Yes. Por favor.”

Esmerelda grabbed another shot glass full of whiskey. She was about to bring it back to Sanchez when Jed put his hand out in front of her, stopping her.

“Wait a minute, please,” Jed told her and took the glass of whiskey gently from her hand. He sat down at Sanchez’s table and set the glass of whiskey in the middle of it. “You can have this drink. But first you’re going to tell us what you saw.”

Sanchez stared at Jed defiantly.

“If you’ll be honest with us,” Jed said. “If you’ll help us, I’ll be sure to put in a good word for you with the judge. You’ve got my word on that.”

Sanchez looked at Esmerelda who was still by the bar, then he looked over at David and Billy, then at Karl beyond them sitting at the next table with his head still down on his arms like he was sleeping. He looked back at Jed, but he didn’t say anything.

“Please, Sanchez,” Esmerelda said. “We’re all in trouble here. We need to know what you saw.”

Sanchez stared at Esmerelda for a moment, and then he looked at Jed.

“Just tell us what you saw,” Jed said.

“Give me that drink and I’ll tell you,” Sanchez said.

CHAPTER 17

Esmerelda helped Sanchez with his drink again, holding the shot glass for him while he drank the whiskey down in two swallows. He sighed softly and then closed his eyes, looking a little more relaxed now.

Billy had pulled his chair around so he faced Sanchez, watching him. Moody brought Karl a shot of whiskey, but he didn’t drink it. Moody left him alone and sat down at Billy and David’s table, facing Sanchez. Esmerelda sat down near Jed.

They were all waiting for Sanchez to speak. The saloon was quiet—no wind from outside, no sounds except for their breathing and the occasional creak of a chair or the rustling of cloth from fidgeting.

Jed was sure Sanchez was going to back out on his promise now that he’d gotten his whiskey, or maybe even hold out for another drink, or bargain for his legs to be untied so he could stretch them. But Sanchez stayed true to his word and began talking.

“After you left the saloon, me and the barkeep were alone in here. He stayed behind the bar. He was nervous. He wasn’t talking. We didn’t hear anything outside. And then, about ten or fifteen minutes after you were gone, all of the lanterns blew out. All of them at the same time.”

“How?” Jed asked.

Sanchez shrugged. “I don’t know. There was this . . . this wind. Like a sudden wind was inside the saloon, and then all of the lanterns went out.”

“Darkwind,” Billy whispered.

Sanchez looked at Billy, but he didn’t say anything to him.

Jed ignored Billy, focusing on Sanchez. “You say this wind blew all of the lanterns out. And you felt this wind?”

Sanchez shook his head no. He looked a little frustrated again, like he was having difficulty putting his thoughts into words. “No. I don’t remember feeling it. I heard a rushing sound, like the wind. And then the lanterns were out, and it was dark.”

“And what happened after the lanterns went out?” Jed asked.

“Right away, the barkeep screamed. At first I thought he was screaming because it was dark, like a child scared at night. But then I knew that something was happening to him.”
“What?”

“I don’t know. His scream was cut short. And then it sounded like he was choking. Like someone was choking him.”

“Did you see anyone?”

“It was dark.”

“Did you hear anyone besides the barkeep? Did anyone say anything? Did you hear other people walking around?”

“No. Just the barkeep choking.”

“That’s the only thing you heard?” Jed asked, leaning forward a little. “Think, Sanchez. Think back to that moment. Anything could help. You didn’t hear any other sounds?”

Esmerelda got up and went to the bar. She grabbed the bottle of whiskey and a few more glasses.

Moody grabbed the bottle when she set it down on the table, serving himself a shot first and downing it quickly. “For Lawrence,” he said, lifting his empty glass up in salute.

Jed grabbed the bottle after Moody was finished with it and his toast. He poured another shot and slid it towards Sanchez, but he didn’t lift it up to him yet. “What else did you hear?”

Sanchez shook his head slightly, his face still scrunched a little in concentration. “I think his feet were kicking at the floor. Like when a man gets hanged, his feet kick while he’s choking to death.” Sanchez stared right at Jed. “You’ve seen that before, am I correct?”

Jed wondered if Sanchez was lying, concocting these details because he knew he would be hanging from the end of a rope soon. “Maybe the barkeep ran away,” Jed suggested to Sanchez.

Moody looked suddenly hopeful. “You think there’s a chance he ran away?” He stared at Sanchez. “Maybe that’s what you heard, a man running, not thrashing.”

“No. His feet were kicking at the floor.”

“But things can sound tricky in the dark,” Moody said. “Your mind can play tricks on you.”

“I know the difference between a man running and a man’s feet kicking at the floor,” Sanchez said, eyeing Moody for a moment. He looked back at Jed. “You wanted to know what I heard, that’s what I heard.”

Moody turned his attention to Jed, not willing to give up the hope that had been kindled in him now. “You think it’s possible that Lawrence ran? Maybe he got away somehow.”

Jed glanced at the bar, then down at the floor with the spots of blood on it. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s strange. Your barkeep is gone like the others were, maybe taken. But the saloon hasn’t been torn apart like the general store and the dining hall were.”

Moody’s eyes lit up with surprise. “Yes, that’s true. There is a difference.”

The church hadn’t been torn apart either, Jed thought. The church’s pews, podium, and piano hadn’t been destroyed, only the bodies that had been piled on them had been damaged. But he didn’t think he needed to mention that detail right now.

“But there are the spots of blood on the floor to consider,” Jed said. “And there are a few spots on top of the bar. The line of blood leads from behind the bar, over the bar, and then towards the saloon doors.” He looked at the saloon doors. “But the trail of blood stops well before the doors.”

“Maybe he hurt himself in the dark,” Moody suggested. “Maybe he panicked. Went looking for us. He wouldn’t stay here to protect the likes of him.” Moody nodded at Sanchez.

“But how did all of the lanterns go out?” Esmerelda asked.

Moody shook his head. “I don’t know. He said it was the wind. Maybe the doors blew open, a draft came in, blew the lanterns out.”

“That ever happen before?” Jed asked.

Moody didn’t need to answer.

“There was no wind,” Esmerelda said. “No wind at all since that storm died down.”

“Maybe Lawrence extinguished all of the lanterns himself,” Moody said.

“That’s not what Sanchez said,” Jed reminded him.

“Maybe he’s lying through his teeth,” Moody answered. “He’s an outlaw. A gunfighter. You said a band of outlaws killed your men. Maybe Sanchez is in that same gang of outlaws. You said that gang might have rescued Red Moon. Well maybe they’ve come here for another member of their gang. Him.”

“If that’s so, then why didn’t they take him instead of your barkeep?”

“I’m in no gang,” Sanchez said.

“Maybe Red Moon is after you,” Moody told Jed, ignoring Sanchez. “Maybe he’s after you and that Navajo boy you’ve been riding around with. Maybe they are trying to kill off all of the witnesses.”

“An entire town?” Esmerelda asked.

Moody looked at her. “Red Moon killed twenty men, I don’t think forty more would bother him any.”

“Men did not do this,” Billy said.

Moody stared at Billy. “We’ve enough worries without your mumbo jumbo adding to it.”

“You think men did this?” Billy asked with a smirk. “You think men took everyone in town to the church without leaving a drop of blood in the dirt? Without leaving a track in the sand? You think men pulled everyone apart like that?”

Karl let out another low moan from the far table.

“I don’t think some of us need reminding of the damage done,” Moody said and poured another shot of whiskey. He got up and took it to Karl, sitting down beside him, coaxing him into drinking it. Karl still didn’t take the drink; he looked close to passing out.

Jed looked beyond Moody and Karl at the stairs that led up to the balcony and second floor. He looked back at Sanchez. “You didn’t hear the barkeep go upstairs?”

Moody looked at the steps ascending into darkness.

Esmerelda’s eyes grew wide with horror.

“I told you what I heard,” Sanchez grumbled. “If I heard someone go upstairs, then I would’ve told you that.”

“And you didn’t hear anyone come downstairs, either?” Esmerelda asked.

“I didn’t hear anyone on the stairs,” Sanchez said.

Esmerelda and Moody locked eyes from across the room, both realizing the same thing at the same time.

“Rose,” Esmerelda said. “We forgot that Rose was up there. She went up to her room with that cowboy earlier.”

CHAPTER 18

“Oh God, Rose,” Esmerelda whispered. “How could we have forgotten about Rose?”

All of them watched the stairs that led up into darkness.

Moody got to his feet with his shotgun in his hands. “We need to go up there and make sure she’s unharmed.” He rushed across the saloon and hurried around the bar to the wooden cubbyholes next to the mirrors. He pulled out a skeleton key attached to a flat wooden tab and hurried back to them.

“We shouldn’t split up,” Jed said as he got to his feet.

“Agreed,” Moody said as he joined them again at the tables.

“What about me?” Sanchez asked. “You can’t leave me here.”

“We can’t take him up there,” Jed said.

“You can’t just leave him here,” Esmerelda said. “He’ll be taken while we’re upstairs.”

“They didn’t take him before,” Jed argued.

“Well, this time it could be different,” she said. “You said so yourself that we shouldn’t split up.”

“You could untie his legs,” Moody suggested. “Leave his hands shackled, but untie his legs so he can follow us up there.”

Jed nodded. “Fair enough.” He crouched down in front of Sanchez. He looked up at him. “You kick me or try to get away . . .” He let his warning trail off.

Sanchez didn’t respond.

Jed untied Sanchez’s legs. Then he untied the rope attached to Sanchez’s handcuffs. Sanchez got to his feet quickly.

Moody had Karl on his feet. The thin Swede still looked like he was walking around in a stupor, living in a cocoon of sorrow and misery now. Moody had his lantern in one hand and his shotgun in the other, the barrel pointed down at the floor, his finger on the trigger. He went to the foot of the stairs. “Rose!”

No answer from upstairs.

“Rose! It’s Moody! Answer me!”

Still no answer from upstairs—no sounds at all.

That queasy feeling was back in Jed’s stomach. He already had a pretty good idea of what they were going to find up there in Rose’s room—but, like a bad dream, he seemed to have no choice but to move forward, to go up those stairs and see the terrible sights that were waiting for him . . . waiting for all of them.

Jed caught Billy watching him, but he ignored him, nudging Sanchez forward in front of him.

Moody went up the stairs first, followed by Sanchez and Jed. Esmerelda and David were right behind Jed, and Billy and Karl brought up the rear. Karl was mumbling something in Swedish.

The lanterns Moody and Jed held lit up the upstairs hallway when they were at the top of the stairs. Moody took a left, walking down the hall that ran towards the front of the building. There were three rooms down this hall, all of them on the same side of the hall. Each door had an even room number on them: eight, then ten, then twelve. All of the numbers were fancy brass pieces, probably ordered out of a catalogue. The doors were freshly painted, and there was more of the garish wallpaper covering the walls up here. The wall on the left-hand side had a few lanterns in sconces along with some framed paintings of desert landscapes. Moody didn’t bother lighting any of the lanterns up here.

“Rose!” Moody called out when he was in front of Room Number 10, halfway down the hall. “Rose, answer me!”

No answer from behind the door.

Moody set the lantern down on the floor next to his feet and tried the doorknob. It was locked.

The rest of them squeezed in around Moody. Jed held the other lantern and he already had his pistol out.

Moody tapped at the door with the barrel of his shotgun—it was a loud sound. “Rose!”

Still no answer. Moody tapped harder at the door with his shotgun. “Rose, if you don’t answer me, I’m going to have to unlock the door and come inside. A lot of people in town have been . . . they’ve been attacked. Killed. I need to make sure you’re unharmed.”

Still no answer.

Moody looked back at Jed like he had no other choice now than to enter the room. He slid the skeleton key into the lock below the doorknob, his hand shaking badly, the wooden tag with the number ten on it rattled as he twisted the key.

As soon as Moody pushed the door open, the smell hit Jed—the smell of blood and gore.

“Good God,” Moody said, backing up a step, almost bumping into Jed.

The room was dark, and the light from their two lanterns only reached so far into the room from the doorway.

“Wait out here,” Jed told Esmerelda, but what he was really saying was to keep an eye on David—don’t let him see what’s inside this room.

Moody picked up his lantern from the floor and stepped inside the room. Jed followed him with the other lantern and his Colt. They stopped when they were a few steps inside the room.

At first Jed thought there was only one person on the bed, but he immediately knew it couldn’t be right, because that person on the bed was larger than Rose or the cowboy had been. Had those two gotten away, and someone else was in here? The barkeep? No, this person was too large to be the barkeep.

The bed with the person on it was all the way across the room against the wall, right underneath the only window. The curtains were drawn over that window. There was a small dresser on one side of the room with a washbasin on top of it. Next to the washbasin was a silver tray with an array of small glass perfume bottles on it. A plain wood wardrobe stood against the opposite wall, one of the doors ajar. There were a few framed paintings and photos on the bare, wood-planked walls.

In the middle of the floor was a handwoven Navajo rug, and scattered across that rug and part of the floorboards were Rose and the cowboy’s boots and clothing, the clothes tossed aside in a fit of passion on the way to the bed. Both of the cowboy’s boots were lying on their side. Only one of Rose’s ankle boots was on its side, the other one standing up, just like the woman’s shoe in the church had been—the one with the shard of bone sticking up out of it.

Moody and Jed moved closer to the bed, their lanterns now lighting up the whole room. Jed glanced back and saw Billy standing in the doorway. Jed hoped he was standing there to block this sight from David and the rest of them.

Jed looked back at the bed and realized that it wasn’t one big body on the bed—it was Rose and the cowboy, both of their naked bodies twisted together like a big piece of taffy, impossibly intertwined, their flesh seemingly fused together. Bones had snapped in the twisting, sharp pieces of the shattered bones poking out through the flesh in some places.

The stench was nearly overpowering. Jed pulled his bandana up over his face. He could taste his whiskey-tainted breath; he could smell the sweat and sand imbedded in the cloth of the bandana, but it was better than the smell of dead flesh, blood, urine, and shit in front of him.

“Oh Mother of Mercy,” Moody whispered as he bent down a little to set the lantern on the floor so he could cross himself.

Jed still had his Colt aimed at the human abomination on the bed. He knew the intertwined people were dead, but he couldn’t seem to lower his weapon just yet.

There’s nobody else in this room, Jed told himself. Whoever did this, they’re gone now. They twisted these two naked people together somehow, and now they’re gone.

But not gone. No, they were out there in the desert somewhere, just outside of town—somewhere close, waiting to strike again, but not gone.

Nowhere was safe.

He’s going to ask for things. Roscoe’s voice echoed in his mind. And you need to give him what he asks for.

“How . . . how can this be possible?” Moody asked.

Jed heard Billy walk up behind them, his moccasins soft on the floor. He was whispering, chanting something in Navajo, a prayer to his gods, just like Red Moon had done in the woods.

And a lot of good it had done Red Moon.

Jed brought the lantern in his hand a little closer to the bed, the light creating strange shadows across the thing that used to be two humans.

“What are you doing?” Moody asked.

“Making sure they’re dead,” Jed answered him.

“Of course they’re dead,” Moody snapped.

You don’t know that for sure, Jed thought. He’d seen a man’s severed head talk to him not even two days ago. He’d seen a skinned man still alive, still breathing.

They won’t let you die. You just go on and on and on.

If they weren’t dead, Jed thought, if they were still moving slightly, still twitching, still moaning, he was going to put a bullet into their combined heads right here and now, he swore to God he was.

Now that he was closer, Jed saw this monstrosity more clearly. An arm of the cowboy was wrapped around the woman’s arm, shards of bone sticking out through the skin where the blood was dark and matted. Their fingers were twisted together. Their heads had combined into one large bulbous thing, both faces stretched and melted into each other. One of the mouths was wide open, teeth jutting out, the tongue swollen and purplish. There were tears along the skin where the violent twists had occurred; blood and other fluids had seeped out of those ruptures. Both sets of legs were twisted together to form two new legs, both ending with two feet at the end of each leg, the feet swollen and purple with trapped blood, the toes fat, like little sausage sections tied off from the foot. The toenails had either been torn off or turned black.

Moody rushed out of the room.

Jed followed Moody, and then Billy followed him, still chanting. Billy didn’t have his eagle feather in his hand now—he was still holding Karl’s Smith & Wesson.

Jed and Billy stepped out into the hall. Jed slammed the door shut.

“What is it?” Sanchez asked from farther down the hall. “Are they dead?”

“They’re dead,” Jed told him.

“It’s more than that,” Sanchez said. “I can see it on your faces.”

Jed imagined that his face was pure white with shock at the moment.

“There’s no hope,” Karl wailed. “They’re going to get all of us. They’re going to kill us all.”

CHAPTER 19

“We need to check the other rooms,” Jed said. He looked at Moody. “We need to make sure no one else is up here.”

“Like who?” Moody asked in a weak voice.

“Maybe your barkeep’s up here.”

Moody nodded like he hadn’t thought of that.

“Are the rest of these doors unlocked?” Jed asked Moody.

Moody hesitated for just a second, like he really had to think about it, like he was struggling to remember. “No one in the rooms except Rose. The others should all be unlocked.”

Jed didn’t wait for the others. He moved down the hall to the last room—number twelve.

He tested the doorknob. It was unlocked. He turned the knob and eased the door open.

“U.S. Marshal,” Jed said through the crack in the door. “Is anyone inside?”

No answer.

Of course there was no answer. No one was up here, no one alive anyway. And he was sure these skinwalkers, whatever creatures they were, weren’t huddled up in a room together, waiting for someone to open the door.

He didn’t need to worry about anyone shooting at him from the dark because from what he’d seen so far these skinwalkers hadn’t fired a single bullet or shot a single arrow. No, they killed in other ways.

Still, it made him feel better to check each of the rooms, like he was ticking off items on a list, one less thing to nag at him when they went back downstairs.

And yes, they would all be going downstairs together because who was going to stay up here in one of these rooms now after what had been done to Rose and the cowboy?

Jed opened the door to Room Number 12 wider, his lantern light flooding into the room. The room had two windows, one that looked out to the side (most likely a nice view of the building right next to the saloon) and one that looked out onto the street. Both windows were dark blue rectangles in the darkness; the glass panes reflected his lantern light back at him.

After the door was all the way open, Jed stepped inside. It only took a few steps to get to the middle of the room. There was a bed, a dresser, and an armoire. A lantern and washbasin sat on top of the dresser much like Rose’s room. There were a few touches of décor to make the room homier: a few paintings on the walls, a small rug on the floor, a quilt folded up on the bed, a cedar chest at the foot of the bed. The room smelled dusty, but Jed couldn’t get the smell of blood out of his nostrils, that reeking and rotten smell from the room right next door.

Even though the others were huddled together right outside the door in the hallway, Jed felt alone in this room, like he had just entered another world. He had an irrational fear of the bedroom door shutting by itself, slamming shut and locking him in here while his lantern went out.

That buzzing feeling of fear in his mind was proving to be too much. Jed dashed back out of the room and closed the door.

After Jed made sure the next room was empty, Esmerelda joined him inside. She swept past him and gathered up the blankets and pillows on the bed, bundling them up in her arms. Jed didn’t ask what she was doing—Esmerelda knew they were all going to spend the night downstairs in the saloon and that they would need the blankets and pillows from these rooms.

Moments later they all gathered on the balcony that overlooked the saloon below. Jed felt better now that he was out of that small hallway off to the left of the stairs; he felt better for some reason now that he had an open view of the saloon with the few lanterns burning below. He felt safer.

But it wasn’t safe; he had to keep reminding himself of that. The barkeep had been taken in the saloon. He’d been taken but Sanchez had been left behind. Why? Jed could also ask himself why he had been spared in the woods. He could ask himself why David’s whole family had been taken but David had been left behind. Was each of them being singled out for some reason that he couldn’t understand?

He wants things, and you have to give him what he wants.

Jed wondered if he had something special that the skinwalkers wanted, or what “he” wanted, whoever the skinwalkers referred to as “he.” What would he, David, and Sanchez all have that these witches would want? Because there seemed to be little doubt that the skinwalkers were leading up to something.

CHAPTER 20

They went downstairs to the saloon after all of the upstairs rooms were checked. Except for Rose’s room, the others were empty just like Moody had promised. Lawrence the barkeep wasn’t up there, and neither was anyone else. They all carried pillows and balled-up blankets downstairs with them. Even David offered to help carry some of the pillows.

Jed thought they might find the barkeep in one of those rooms, or what was left of him. Jed had been sure he would open the door to one of those rooms and find the barkeep’s mangled body, his remains twisted like a giant piece of taffy, just like Rose and the cowboy. But the barkeep was gone. Maybe he’d been taken to the church with the others. Or maybe he was being saved for something else.

They moved the tables and chairs to the back room so they could spread out blankets and pillows on the floor in the middle of the saloon, keeping all of the blankets near each other so they could stay close together. They left one table and a set of chairs closer to the saloon doors. Jed pulled a chair out for Sanchez so he could sit down.

Everyone else took a seat at the table except Karl. He had lain down on a blanket, curling up on his side. He was whispering to himself in Swedish. Maybe he was praying.

Moody set his lantern in the middle of the table next to the whiskey bottle and glasses. Jed pulled his Colt out of the holster and set it down on the table in front of him with a thud.

“I need to pee,” Sanchez said.

“Hold it,” Jed responded.

“I can’t hold it all night.”

Jed didn’t say anything.

Esmerelda stared at Jed. “You need to let him relieve himself.”

She had brought down two chamber pots along with the pillows and blankets from upstairs. Jed was glad she had thought of that because he didn’t particularly like the idea of going back upstairs to those rooms.

“I can’t cut him loose,” Jed said. “He’s an outlaw.”

“I’m no outlaw,” Sanchez said. “I killed that man in self-defense, like I already told you.”

“You can’t tie him back to that chair again all night,” Esmerelda said. “It’s against his civil rights.”

“He’s a criminal. He ain’t got no rights.”

Esmerelda sighed and sat back in her chair.

“Under normal circumstances I would’ve locked him up in your jail cell,” Jed told her. “Would you prefer that I march him down to the sheriff’s office? Leave him there?”

She didn’t respond, but she was still staring at him.

Jed tore his eyes away from Esmerelda’s brilliant green eyes. He looked at the two rooms across the saloon. “What about those rooms over there?”

“One’s my office,” Moody said. “The other one’s a storeroom.”

“Does the storeroom have a window in it?” Jed asked.

Moody shook his head no.

“I could lock him up in that room for the night if it makes you feel better.” Jed looked back at Esmerelda.

“No way you’re locking me up by myself in that room,” Sanchez said.

“You can’t do that, either,” Esmerelda finally said.

Jed stood up.

“What are you doing?” Esmerelda asked, alarmed by Jed’s sudden movement.

Jed looked at Billy. “Could you give me a hand?”

Billy didn’t even ask what Jed needed. He stood up with Karl’s gun in his hand. Jed helped Sanchez to his feet. He unlocked one wrist from the handcuffs, freeing it. The cuffs hung from his other wrist.

“Pick up the chamber pot,” Jed told Sanchez.

Sanchez followed orders.

Jed had his Colt aimed down at the floor. “Go to the storeroom.”

“You’re not locking me in there,” Sanchez warned.

“No, but I won’t have you relieving yourself in front of a woman and a child. You go in there, do your business, and then come back out.”

Sanchez stared at Jed for a moment, not sure if he was being tricked into the storeroom.

“I’m trusting you,” Jed told Sanchez. “I can trust you, can’t I?”

“Can I trust you?” Sanchez asked him.

Jed nodded. “You’ve got my word.”

Sanchez walked to the storeroom with the chamber pot. Jed and Billy followed him. They waited right outside the open storeroom door until Sanchez was finished. Sanchez left the chamber pot in the storeroom, and then Jed led him to the end of the bar.

“Sit down,” he told Sanchez.

“Here? On the floor?”

“I’m going to lock your wrist to the foot rail.”

“Marshal . . .” Sanchez began, but he didn’t bother arguing. He sat down on the floor and held his cuffed wrist to the foot rail. Jed clamped the other handcuff around the metal bar.

“There’s spit and tobacco all over the floor,” Sanchez muttered.

Jed almost told Sanchez that he was sorry he couldn’t make his accommodations more comfortable, but a vision of Red Moon at the base of the tree in the woods came back to him, and he said nothing. He brought Sanchez a pillow and a blanket.

Billy walked back to the table and sat down with the others. Jed joined them a moment later.

“Why don’t you just cut me loose?” Sanchez asked. He was sitting with his back against the front of the bar, his right wrist handcuffed to the foot rail right beside the end of it where it curved back into the wood so he couldn’t slide his hand out.

Jed didn’t reply, but Esmerelda watched him.

“You can keep my guns locked up,” Sanchez said. “I’m not going to run. Not with those . . . those . . . whoever’s out there doing this.”

“It is not a who,” Billy said. “It is a what. A monster. The Darkwind.”

“Do we have to listen to that again?” Moody asked. He was hunched forward over the table, his hands cupping a shot glass in front of him even though it was empty.

“I think Billy’s right,” Esmerelda said. “Whatever’s out there isn’t human.”

“Of course you agree with the Indian,” Moody said.

Esmerelda didn’t argue with him.

“You know it, too,” Billy said, staring right at Jed.

Jed felt heat flushing his face again, caught in a lie. He shifted his gaze to David. The boy was staring at him just like Billy was, interested in hearing his response.

“What did you see when your men were killed?” Billy asked.

Jed didn’t answer right away, but he saw no sense in pretending anymore that something supernatural wasn’t going on in this town, something beyond their understanding, beyond their control.

The others stared at him, waiting for his answer. Even Sanchez was watching him, his eyes saying: You felt free to interrogate me, now it’s your turn to be questioned.

“I didn’t see them,” Jed finally answered. “I never saw the skinwalkers.”

“You never saw any of them?” Moody asked with a sarcastic smirk and suspicion in his eyes.

Jed locked eyes with Moody. “I didn’t see any of them.”

“Your two deputies were taken, and you didn’t see who did it?” Moody asked, his voice rising a few octaves.

“They were both taken when we were in the woods,” Jed explained. “They were taken like Lawrence was. Like everyone in this town was.”

“But you said Red Moon got away,” Moody reminded Jed, reminding everyone else.

Jed glanced at Billy, then at Esmerelda. “I wasn’t being completely truthful about that.” Before Moody could protest, Jed went on. “Red Moon told me, promised me, that the men in the woods weren’t his men. He said they weren’t coming to rescue him. Of course I didn’t believe him. And when my men were taken, I thought for sure Red Moon was in on the whole thing.”

“You found your men,” Billy said. It wasn’t a question; it was a statement of fact. “It wanted you to find them.”

Jed nodded.

“What happened to your men?” Esmerelda asked.

Jed made a show of glancing at David, letting them know that the details weren’t proper for a young boy’s ears. “They were killed. Mutilated. A lot like your townsfolks were.” He hoped that was explanation enough.

“What about Red Moon?” Moody asked.

Jed wasn’t sure how much to tell. How could he tell them that he had left Red Moon behind? How could he tell them that his good friend Roscoe (only his head) had told him to leave Red Moon behind like an offering? How was he supposed to tell them that Roscoe said that “he” would want more things?

So he didn’t tell them any of that.

“They got Red Moon,” Jed finally said. “They had already taken our horses. I had my gun belt, my pistol, and whatever I could carry in my pockets. Then I ran.”

“Did you see Red Moon get killed?” Moody asked, that suspicion still burning in his eyes. “Did you actually see his dead body?”

Jed could feel his temper rising, getting close to boiling over. “I just told you they got him, didn’t I?”

Moody didn’t seem satisfied with the answer.

Jed reached for the bottle and a shot glass. He poured himself a drink and swallowed it down.

“Let’s not accuse anyone of anything,” Esmerelda said, trying to calm both of the men down.

“I’m not accusing anyone of anything,” Moody said. “I’m just saying that if our U.S. Marshal here didn’t actually see Red Moon’s body after he was taken, it could be Red Moon out there with his gang doing this.”

“Red Moon was scared to death,” Jed said. “He said those skinwalkers in the woods weren’t his gang.”

“Skinwalkers are no longer Diné,” Billy said. He was lightly caressing the silver charm hanging from his leather necklace. “Skinwalkers are no longer men. They are monsters.”

“That’s the same thing Red Moon said,” Jed told everyone. “He said the skinwalkers were no longer his people.”

“He could’ve been lying to you so he could get away,” Moody said.

“You can’t still think it’s Red Moon and his gang out there,” Jed said, looking at Moody. “After what you’ve seen tonight? After what you just saw up there in your own hotel room, Rose and that cowboy tangled and twisted together, their heads and faces melted together?”

Moody looked away.

Jed could tell that Moody was wrestling with the same feelings he’d had earlier, trying to rationalize, trying to come up with any other explanation rather than admitting the truth—that something unbelievable and unexplainable was happening.

“I’ve heard of skinwalkers,” Sanchez said. “Never seen one myself, but old women used to talk about them. They’re witches. They can cast spells and they can turn into animals.”

“But what is out there now are not skinwalkers,” Billy said.

Everyone looked at him.

“It is the Anasazi out there—the Ancient Enemy. Some call it the Darkwind.”

“What is the Ancient Enemy?” Esmerelda asked. “A demon?”

Billy shrugged. “You could call it a demon. A god. Something ancient and powerful. There are stories of the ancient people that vanished. There are stories of the ancient people eating each other, of bones crushed, bodies twisted together. No signs of attack from another tribe. There are stories of cities built into the sides of rock mountains, stories of all of the people disappearing.”

“We have those stories, too,” Sanchez said. “In Mexico, and farther south. They tell stories of old cities swallowed up by the jungle. Some say the people abandoned those cities that they built. But others say all of them were taken.”

CHAPTER 21

The saloon doors and windows were all locked, but Jed suggested that they barricade the doors and the windows as best they could. Moody grabbed a hammer and a can of nails from his office, but he didn’t have much in the way of spare wood. His office was a cramped little room with one small window, a desk, a chair, and a couch that Moody slept on most nights instead of sleeping in his home a mile away.

“We’ll have to use the tables,” Jed told everyone.

Moody wasn’t happy about that idea, but he knew they needed to do something about the doors and windows, something to protect themselves.

They broke the legs off some of the tables and used those as braces against the front doors, toenailing the ends of them to the wood floor. It wasn’t the most secure bracing, but it was better than nothing. They flipped four of the tables up onto their sides and shoved them against the windows. The tables were round and didn’t cover the windows completely, but they offered some kind of obstacle if anyone wanted to come through the windows.

“We’ll sleep in watches tonight,” Jed told them after they were finished barricading the windows and doors. “I’ll take the first watch.”

“Who’s going to be able to sleep?” Moody muttered.

*

Two hours later all of them were sleeping as Jed sat alone at the table, on watch. He had a cold cup of coffee in front of him. He wanted a few more shots of whiskey, something to take the edge off of his fear, but he couldn’t risk getting sleepy from the alcohol.

They had turned down most of the lanterns to save the fuel. Jed had a lantern on the floor closer to the door so he could see the doors clearly. The wood stove was still burning and provided just a red glow from that side of the saloon, but most of the saloon was hidden in shadows now.

Jed was getting tired of sitting in the chair. His back was beginning to ache, his muscles stiffening up from the cold. The saloon was quiet except for Moody’s snores and the heavy breathing of the others. There was a stale smell of body odor in the room, and the faint smells of piss and shit coming from the chamber pots just inside the storeroom. There were no noises coming from outside.

He knew there was a good chance he might fall asleep without even remembering it. Even as frightened as he’d been, he had fallen asleep twice in the woods.

Jed looked down at his Colt sitting on the table in front of him. The gun seemed like a foolish and useless thing now against whatever was out there, the Ancient Enemy as Billy called it.

All of this felt useless, but he couldn’t allow himself to wallow in despair—that was dangerous. If he gave up now then he might as well go outside and offer himself up to that thing out there. No, he needed to fight; it’s what he had always done. He was a lawman with a duty to protect these citizens in this saloon, and most of all David. The boy gave him a kind of strength, and he wondered if this is how a father would feel about his own son.

Someone was materializing out of the darkness, walking towards the table. At first Jed thought it was David, maybe because he’d just been thinking about him, but it was Esmerelda. She sat down in the chair next to him.

“I had a bad dream,” she said as if Jed had asked for an explanation. “It woke me up.”

Jed didn’t say anything.

Esmerelda looked back at the others hidden in shadows, all of them sleeping near each other in a big group except Sanchez who was curled up in front of the bar, his right wrist cuffed to the foot rail. Every once in a while, when Sanchez moved around in his sleep, the handcuff would clink against the metal foot rail.

Esmerelda looked back at Jed. “How did you find David?”

It was obviously a question she had wanted to ask for a while.

“After my men were killed in the woods, I walked out of there with just my pistol and whatever I could carry in my pockets. Like I told you earlier.”

She nodded, watching him.

“I figured I was looking at a four day walk to Smith Junction. Maybe even five days. But a few hours after I was out of the woods, I saw David’s house down below in a valley. It was a small spread with a few cows and some sheep. A house, barn, and stables with three horses.”

Jed paused and Esmerelda watched him.

“David’s ma and pa were killed,” Jed said in a low voice, almost a whisper. “His older brother, too. I found David in his bedroom, hiding behind his bed, so I took him with me. When we left, David took a photograph of his family with him, that’s how I knew who they were.” He remembered that he had stuffed David’s photograph into his pocket last night when David had fallen asleep with it on his chest next to the campfire. He pulled it out and showed Esmerelda.

She took the photograph and stared at it for a moment. She handed it back to him.

Jed knew he should give the photograph back to David, but he decided to slip it back into his pocket for safekeeping. “Their bodies were gone when I got there,” Jed told her. “But there was plenty of blood left behind. And . . . and some small pieces of them.”

“But they were taken,” she whispered. “Just like the people here.”

Jed nodded. “When I found David in his bedroom, I asked him what had happened, he didn’t say much. Still doesn’t. I couldn’t leave him there.”

“Of course not,” Esmerelda hissed, like his mentioning something like that had offended her.

“We borrowed two of his pa’s horses. I left a note. We rode north towards Smith Junction. But then that sandstorm sprang up and we had to come here.”

“What do you plan to do with him?”

“Take him to Smith Junction.”

“And then what?”

Jed shrugged. “I don’t know. I reckon the people there will try to find his kin.”

Esmerelda looked doubtful about that prospect. “You wonder why you weren’t taken in the woods? Why David was left behind in his house?”

Jed nodded. “And Sanchez. The barkeep was taken, but Sanchez was left behind. Sanchez was handcuffed and hobbled. Tied to a chair. He was easy pickings. Why not take him instead of the barkeep?”

Esmerelda nodded in agreement. “Sanchez was easy pickings like David was.”

And me, Jed thought.

“That Darkwind,” Esmerelda whispered. “The Ancient Enemy as Billy calls it. That thing, whatever it is, takes a whole town but leaves the few of us behind in this saloon.”

“This saloon isn’t any safer than any other building here. The barkeep was taken from here. And then there’s what happened to Rose and that cowboy she was with upstairs.”

“But it only did those things when we were gone,” Esmerelda said. “Not while we were here.”

“What are you getting at?” Jed asked her. If she was going somewhere with her questions, he wished she would get to the point.

Esmerelda didn’t answer him; she just stared at him like she was studying him, like she knew he was hiding information of his own.

And he was hiding something, wasn’t he? He was hiding what Roscoe’s head had told him to do.

“You tell fortunes,” Jed finally said. It almost sounded like he had accused her of something bad.

She nodded. “I read the cards. Doesn’t work all the time, but sometimes it does.”

Jed wasn’t sure if he wanted to know what those cards might say about all of their futures right now, but he asked anyway. “You can see the future without the cards?”

Esmerelda sat back, thinking for a moment. It seemed to be a question she’d never been asked before. Jed studied her in the low light of the lantern on the floor. She was a striking woman in a certain way, and he wondered why she wasn’t married.

“Sometimes I see things,” Esmerelda said. “The past. The future. Sometimes I see it in my dreams.”

“And your dream tonight? The bad dream you just had?”

She didn’t answer. She shook her head. “Just a bad dream.”

Jed felt sure she was sitting on her own information, protecting her own secrets.

“You might want to try to get some more sleep,” Jed suggested. “I’ll be waking Moody up in a few hours for his watch.”

Esmerelda stared at him like she knew that wasn’t true, like she knew that they would all be asleep and helpless when the Ancient Enemy came for them.

For a moment Jed thought she was going to tell him about her dream.

But she didn’t.

She went back to her blankets.

CHAPTER 22

Screams from outside woke Jed up. He was sitting in the chair at the table, hunched over it, his head on his arms. He jumped up when he heard the screams. He grabbed his Colt .45 off the table.

It was early morning, but light enough to see clearly inside the saloon. The double doors were wide open. The braces they had nailed in place earlier in the night were tossed aside on the floor. The screams were coming from outside.

There was movement from behind Jed, a shifting of clothing, footsteps. He turned and saw that David was sitting up on his blanket and staring at the doors. Moody, Billy, and Esmerelda were already on their feet. Sanchez was up on his knees, staring at the front of the saloon, his wrist still chained to the foot rail of the bar.

Karl was gone.

Jed bolted towards the doorway. Moody was right behind him with his shotgun, and then Billy with Karl’s Smith & Wesson.

They found Karl at the end of the walkway in front of the saloon, close to the corner of the building. He seemed uninjured, no blood, and he still had all of his limbs. He was flat on his back on the walkway, his arms up like he was trying to ward off something only he could see. Jed thought maybe the man was in the middle of a bad dream, but his eyes were wide open.

Moody crouched down beside Karl, using his shotgun like a walking stick to steady himself. Jed and Billy covered the two of them with their pistols, but there was no one in sight on the dirt street. Hope’s End looked like the ghost town that it had become overnight.

“What is the matter?” Moody asked, touching Karl’s bony shoulder.

Karl’s eyes shot to Moody, staring at him like he was trying to decide if he was real or not.

“You see someone out here?” Jed asked Karl.

Karl ignored Jed’s question, keeping his eyes right on Moody.

“Why’d you come out here?” Moody asked Karl in a softer voice.

Karl’s mouth was still wide open, his eyes bulging so badly they looked ready to pop out of his pale face. He had lowered his arms now, his hands clutching at his sunken belly.

“We should get back inside now,” Jed warned.

“My . . . my wife,” Karl finally said. “Min kvinna, Ingrid. I . . . I saw her. And my boys.” His words were coming out in a shuttering stutter, his teeth chattering. He was shaking all over. “She came to me. She reached for me with her arm, the only one she had left. The other arm was gone. Just a bloody stump. And my boys. Their legs were gone. They were crawling down the street towards me.”

Billy descended the steps to the dirt street below, studying it.

Jed followed Billy, covering him with his pistol. He watched the dark alley between the saloon and the next building.

“Why’d you come out here?” Moody asked Karl again.

“I . . . I don’t know,” Karl answered. “I . . . I don’t remember coming out here.”

Jed looked down at the dirt street, then at Billy. He was sure the Navajo saw the same thing he was seeing, the tracks in the dirt. Maybe Jed wasn’t quite the tracker that Billy might be, but Jed had learned how to follow tracks over the years as a U.S. Marshal.

Moody didn’t notice Jed and Billy; he concentrated on Karl. “What do you mean, you don’t remember coming out here? You think you were walking in your sleep?”

Karl didn’t answer.

Jed backed up towards the wooden walkway, climbing the stairs backwards up onto the walkway in front of the saloon. “Moody, get Karl up on his feet. We need to get him back into the saloon.”

Billy stared up and down the street, his breath clouding up in front of his face in the cold air. He looked east towards the end of town, the sun just up above the horizon, the sky there a blaze of yellow, orange, and red. He looked towards the other end of town, towards the church where the sky was still a deep, dark blue. He turned and looked at Jed, his eyes saying: Did you see that?

Jed nodded at Billy, indicating that he had noticed it. “Moody,” Jed warned.

“Come on,” Moody told Karl. “Up you go.”

“Ingrid . . . she . . . she came to me . . .”

“We can talk about it inside,” Moody told Karl, practically tugging the man up into a sitting position, spurred not only by Jed’s words but by the tone of his voice that said: Hurry the hell up because something bad is coming.

Jed walked towards Moody and Karl, his boots clomping on the floorboards, the sound echoing on the front walkway. He helped Moody get Karl to his feet, and then they practically dragged him to the saloon doors.

Billy had backed up to the steps of the walkway. He had his eagle feather in one hand, Karl’s gun in the other, but he seemed to take more comfort in the feather than the pistol. He looked up and down the street, scanning it for movement like he was waiting for a stampede of wild horses to come at any minute. He climbed up the steps backwards just like Jed had done, afraid to take his eyes off of the street.

“Billy,” Jed snapped as he and Moody got Karl inside.

Billy hurried across the walkway and rushed inside the saloon.

“What is it?” Esmerelda asked. She was on the blanket with David, an arm around his shoulders.

Moody helped Karl to the nearest table where Jed had just woken up a few minutes ago. Jed and Billy closed the saloon doors. Jed locked the doors as Billy retrieved the table legs from the floor. Jed grabbed the hammer and can of nails, then toenailed the table legs back in place, bracing the doors shut as best he could.

“Was that Karl screaming out there?” Esmerelda asked.

Moody nodded at her. “He had a bad dream.”

Sanchez watched from the floor in front of the bar, up on his knees, his arm that was handcuffed to the foot rail stretched out behind him.

Jed met Esmerelda’s eyes for just a second when Moody mentioned the bad dream Karl supposedly had had. He turned back to his task of nailing the table legs in place.

After Jed finished hammering the nails, he took the hammer and can of nails back to the table and sat down. Billy sat down in the chair next to him.

Esmerelda got up and went to the bar. She stoked the fire in the stove and set the coffee kettle on top. She went behind the bar and poured a cup of tea and set a basket of cornbread muffins on the bar top. She put a muffin on a metal plate and brought the muffin and the tea to David.

“How did Karl get outside without us hearing him open the doors?” Esmerelda asked. “We should’ve heard him knocking those braces away.”

Moody stared at the doors, and then looked at Jed. “She’s right.” Moody looked at Karl who sat beside him, slumped down in his chair, his arms on the table in front of him. He seemed to be studying his limp hands. “Karl, do you remember removing the braces from the door? Do you remember opening the doors?”

Karl looked at Moody—a blank stare. He shook his head slowly. “I . . . I woke up out there and . . .” He let his words trail off.

Jed remembered asking Red Moon what had happened to Roscoe in the woods. Red Moon had told him that Roscoe had walked towards the trees like he’d been in a trance. He didn’t believe Red Moon at the time, he didn’t believe in the spells Red Moon said the skinwalkers could cast. But now he was beginning to believe just about anything.

“It was morning already when I woke up,” Karl said. “I saw Ingrid out there. I saw my boys.”

The saloon was quiet, all of them listening to Karl’s words. Esmerelda brought two cups of coffee to the table, setting one of them down in front of Karl. “Tell us everything you saw out there,” she told him in a surprisingly stern tone.

“My Ingrid,” Karl said, wrapping his fingers around the tin cup of coffee like he was trying to warm them up. “I saw her.”

“There was more,” Esmerelda said, almost like she was accusing Karl. “Tell us everything.”

Jed noticed the fear in Esmerelda’s eyes, but she didn’t look at him—she kept her eyes on Karl, waiting for his answer.

“Ingrid only had one arm. My boys, they didn’t have their legs. They were crawling in the dirt, crawling behind her. They looked just like they did inside the church, arms and legs gone.” His face scrunched up in agony, tears slipping from his intense blue eyes. He shook his head like he was trying to shake the images from his mind.

“What happened next?” Esmerelda prodded.

Esmerelda knows something, Jed thought. She’s hiding things just like I am.

Karl rubbed his hands on his face, turning his pale skin red in seconds from the friction and from his crying. “They were dead. I saw them inside the church.” He looked at Moody, then at Esmerelda. “You all saw them. They were all dead. But they came back to me this morning.”

“What was Ingrid doing?” Esmerelda asked Karl. “Did she say anything to you? Do anything?”

“It wasn’t real,” Moody snapped at Esmerelda, and then he looked at Jed. “It was just a bad dream, that’s all. And completely understandable considering the terror we’ve all been through.”

“What did she do to you?” Esmerelda asked Karl as she ignored Moody. “Did she touch you?”

Karl had his hands over his face again. He nodded vigorously.

“She did more than just touch you, didn’t she?” Esmerelda said.

Karl pulled his hands away and inhaled a big breath, sniffling at the same time. “She . . . she touched my shoulder. Grabbed it hard. Her fingers digging into my skin. I was on the ground. She leaned over me and . . . and she kissed me.”

“That’s quite enough!” Moody said. “He had a bad dream. No need to make the man re-live every second of it.” He glared at Esmerelda.

“She forced my mouth apart with hers,” Karl continued. “I . . . I could feel her tongue inside my mouth, going all the way to the back of my throat. Her tongue was longer than it should have been. Like some kind of . . . like a snake.”

“That’s enough,” Moody told Karl. “It wasn’t real.”

“It was real,” Billy said.

They all looked at him.

“There are tracks in the dirt,” Billy told them.

Everyone was quiet.

Moody and Esmerelda looked at Jed.

Jed nodded in agreement with Billy. “He’s right. There are a lot of tracks in the street. Looks like the whole town walked down that street.”

CHAPTER 23

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Moody asked.

“There’s a lot of foot traffic out there,” Jed said simply. “And drag marks. Like some of the people were dragged.” He looked to Billy for conformation.

Billy nodded.

“But . . . but all of that could’ve already been there,” Moody argued.

“Sandstorm would’ve blown everything clean,” Jed told him. “Those tracks out there now are fresh.”

“Then the tracks are ours,” Moody said. “We went to Karl’s store last night, then to the church. Then we came back here. We walked right down the middle of the street.”

“There are many more tracks than ours,” Billy said.

“Which direction did the tracks come from?” Esmerelda asked, but it looked like she already knew the answer to her own question.

“From the church,” Jed told her. He had a picture in his mind of a whole town of dead people walking past the saloon, some of the people hobbling, some of them missing their arms and legs, some of them missing their heads.

“You’re trying to say those tracks are from the dead in the church?” Moody asked. “You’re trying to say dead people walked right down through the middle of town?”

Nobody answered him.

“Maybe the tracks are from whoever is doing all of this,” Moody offered. “Whoever killed your men and took Red Moon.” He stared right at Jed. “The skinwalkers you keep talking about.”

“There’s something else,” Jed said. He looked at Billy who nodded.

“What?” Moody spat out. “You two keeping secrets now?”

“The church,” Jed said. “The pastor’s body isn’t hanging from the front of it anymore.”

Moody looked suddenly twitchy, like he was about to rush to the doors and kick the braces away so he could go outside and see for himself. There was also a hint of embarrassment that he hadn’t noticed that the pastor was gone.

Karl laid his head down on his arms.

Esmerelda went back to the bar to get more cups of coffee. She gave a cup of coffee to Sanchez along with a cornbread muffin. He shoved the muffin in his mouth, eating it in two bites, chasing it down with the coffee.

She brought the basket of muffins and another cup of coffee to the table where Jed and the others sat.

Moody looked at Jed like a thought had occurred to him suddenly. “You were on watch last night. You were supposed to wake me up for the next watch.”

Jed didn’t say anything.

“You fell asleep,” Moody sneered. “You fell asleep at this table when you were supposed to be protecting us.”

“We all fell asleep,” Esmerelda reminded him.

“No,” Moody snapped and then looked back at Jed. “You fell asleep on your post.”

“A sleeping spell,” Billy said. “The Ancient Enemy is a powerful force.”

“I don’t believe in that,” Moody grumbled.

“You will,” Billy told him.

Karl moaned. He kept his head on the table but moved his hands below it, holding his stomach.

“What’s wrong?” Moody asked.

“My . . . stomach . . . it hurts.”

Moody got up and gently pulled Karl up onto his feet. “Come on, let’s get you lying down on your blanket.”

Karl stood up, but not all the way; he was hunched over and wincing in pain. He shuffled over to his blanket and lay down with some effort, Moody guiding him all the way.

Jed watched as Allen Moody tried to soothe his Swedish friend who had curled up in a ball on his side as he did so often lately, only now he was groaning lowly in pain, his red face shiny with perspiration even though it was cold in the saloon.

And then Jed’s eyes shifted to David when he heard a hiss of air and David’s cup of tea fall down onto his blanket where the crumbs from his cornbread muffin were scattered. But David didn’t seem concerned about the crumbs or the spilled tea—his eyes were on the saloon doors. Now it seemed like David was holding his breath as he stared at the doors.

Esmerelda noticed David staring at the doors; she was beside him in a flash, not bothering with the cup of spilled tea—her eyes were on the doors, just like David.

Jed’s skin prickled with fear, the nerves just under the skin buzzing with energy—an all-too-familiar feeling these days. He glanced at the doors, then at Billy. The Navajo stared at the doors just like David and Esmerelda were—he could feel something out there, too.

“What’s wrong?” Jed asked as he drew his pistol from his holster. He didn’t cock it yet, but he wanted it in his hand. He looked at David, directing his question to the boy. “What is it?”

“He’s out there,” David whispered.

“Who?”

“The one who wants things.”

Moody was on his feet, leaving Karl in his fetal position. He was across the room in a flash, his shotgun in his hands. “What’s that mean?” he asked, but he kept his eyes on the doors.

You know what it means, Jed almost said, but he remained quiet; no use wasting breath on words right now.

Everyone except Karl was watching the double doors now, even Sanchez who was up on his knees, his right arm stretched out behind him. “Uncuff me, marshal,” he snapped. “Give me my guns. I can help you.”

Esmerelda met Jed’s eyes. “Maybe he can.”

Jed didn’t bother answering her. He rushed to the window, the one to the left of the saloon doors. He feared a burst of gunfire, but at the same time he knew it wasn’t coming.

They don’t need to shoot at us—they can do so many other things.

Jed looked out the window at what was in the street, and then he looked over at Moody who was already at the other window with his shotgun ready. The Irishman stared out the window for a long moment, his face falling slack in both fear and confusion. His body seemed to go limp, his arm dropping down as he barely held on to the shotgun. Jed thought Moody was going to drop his weapon, maybe even faint. Moody shook his head, muttering to himself as he stared out the window.

“Hey!” a strong, deep voice called to them from outside. “Come outside!”

“Who’s out there?” Esmerelda asked.

Jed looked at her, and he swore she already knew the answer. Chances were she recognized the voice, but he was convinced she already knew who it was before she even heard him speak.

“It’s Pastor Starke,” Moody answered without turning around to look at Esmerelda.

CHAPTER 24

“He was dead,” Moody muttered to himself. “Pastor Starke was dead. We all saw it.”

Jed remained by the window to the left of the doors, his Colt .45 in his hand, but the pastor wasn’t coming towards the saloon. Pastor Starke didn’t have a weapon, he wasn’t making any kind of a threatening gesture—he was just standing patiently in the dirt street. But Jed could feel that there was little patience in the being that stood out there.

“Who else is with him?” Esmerelda asked. She was still beside David on the blanket.

Billy seemed to appear right beside Jed with Karl’s Smith & Wesson in his hand; Jed hadn’t even heard him walk across the room.

“He’s alone,” Jed told Esmerelda. “Nobody else is out there with him.” He looked at Moody who still hadn’t torn his eyes away from the window he stood in front of. Jed knew Moody was wrestling with what he was seeing out there in the street, trying to understand it.

“Maybe he wasn’t dead,” Moody said, and he seemed to be talking to himself, trying to convince himself. He looked Jed’s way, hoping for agreement. He turned around and looked at Esmerelda.

“He is dead,” Billy said as if he’d been asked personally.

“We all saw him,” Esmerelda nodded in agreement with Billy. “We saw him hanging upside down in front of the church. We saw his face, the blood. His eyes were wide open. He wasn’t breathing.”

Jed felt that seductive pull of rationalization trying to tug at him. He wanted so badly to believe that the pastor hadn’t been dead, only injured and in shock. He’d heard of men surviving hangings, gunshot wounds, and falls. Maybe the pastor had untied his legs from the rope that suspended him in front of the church, maybe he’d gotten down somehow. Maybe he’d come to the saloon looking for help.

But deep down inside Jed knew none of that was true. There was a dead man standing out there in the street right now, a puppet controlled by the dark thing Billy called the Ancient Enemy.

“Hey!” Another sharp yell from the pastor. “Come outside. We need to talk.”

The one who asks for things, that’s what David had just called him. He, or it, whatever it was, had asked for Red Moon when Jed had been in the woods. What would it ask for now?

Jed looked back out the window. “What do you want?” he yelled through the window at the pastor.

The pastor didn’t answer. He didn’t move. He remained fifteen feet away from the steps of the saloon’s walkway. A cold breeze ruffled the pastor’s suitcoat flaps and pants legs, even though they seemed stiff with dried blood. The pastor’s face was deathly pale underneath a black hat pulled down low. His eyes were sunken into his face, just dark shadows from this distance. His face was long and narrow, his body thin, with a malnourished look to it even though he was a tall man with broad shoulders. His arms looked a little too long, his hands a little too large, and those hands were covered with dried blood that looked like mud.

“I want to let you live,” Pastor Starke finally said. “He wants to let you live. He wants most of you to live.”

Most?

“But first there is a test you have to pass,” Pastor Starke said.

Esmerelda joined Jed and Billy at the window. Jed moved to the side a little so she could look out through the glass over the table top they had nailed to the bottom half of the window.

Sanchez rattled his handcuff against the foot rail again, pulling on the cuff, grunting with effort as he tried to break the metal rail away from the bar. He looked back at Jed. “Cut me loose. I can help.”

Jed didn’t answer Sanchez; he looked at Moody and saw the glimmer of hope in the man’s eyes, a look that said there could be a way out of this, a way to survive. But Jed also saw that Moody was still struggling to convince himself that Pastor Starke was alive, that he was some kind of messenger sent by Red Moon and his skinwalkers.

A skinwalker—that’s what Pastor Starke was now. Something had invaded the pastor’s body, walking around in his skin, using the dead man like a puppet.

“We should hear him out,” Moody said, looking right at Jed. “He said he’ll let us live.”

“He said most,” Jed reminded him.

“Does that mean he wants one of us?” Esmerelda asked.

“I won’t wait much longer!” Pastor Starke called out. His voice sounded so deep and loud, gravelly. “He won’t wait much longer. Either you give him what he wants, or bad things are going to happen to all of you.”

Everyone was quiet in the saloon now—even Sanchez had stopped rattling his handcuff against the foot rail, and Karl had stopped rocking and moaning on his blanket.

Jed stood close to Esmerelda. He could smell the faint scent of her perfume. It was a normal smell, a smell of nostalgia for a normal world far removed from this hell they were trapped in now. He looked back out the window and watched the pastor.

The pastor hadn’t moved an inch; he was still in the same spot as before. There was nobody else within sight, nobody on the rooftops across the street, no one inside the buildings beyond the dark windows. Nobody anywhere . . . only the pastor.

“You have three seconds to decide,” Pastor Starke said.

In the silence of the saloon, a noise sounded from upstairs: the creaking of wood. There was a loud stomp up there, then another, then another, like something heavy was walking around up there.

It’s heavy because it’s two people twisted together, walking together, and it’s coming down here now.

Jed wasn’t going to watch that thing come down the steps. He kicked the table leg off of the door, the leg knocking loose easily. He kicked the other one free, pulling it loose from the saloon door. He had made everyone’s decision for them. He unlocked the saloon doors, opened them, and stepped outside. Esmerelda, Billy, and Moody followed him.

“We’re here,” Jed told Pastor Starke when the four of them had gathered on the front walkway. “Call off that thing upstairs.”

Pastor Starke smiled; it was a quick, emotionless smile, the same smile Jed had seen on Roscoe’s severed head, like invisible strings had jerked the corners of his mouth up.

Jed was tempted to stick his head back inside the saloon to make sure Rose and the cowboy weren’t coming down the steps, but he didn’t. He was sure the pastor (the Ancient Enemy) would keep his word, and he was also sure that if something like that was coming down the stairs, David would be out here in a flash.

Moody still had his shotgun and Billy still had Karl’s pistol, but both men kept their weapons down by their sides like they knew the guns were useless against what inhabited the pastor. Jed holstered his Colt.

“What did they do to you, pastor?” Moody called out to the man. “Are . . . are you dead?”

The pastor’s smile was still plastered on his face, the smile of a dummy controlled by a ventriloquist. “I’m both. I’m dead but still somehow alive. He keeps you alive for as long as he needs to. You feel the pain and the terror and the suffering. And it goes on and on and on. He won’t let you go.”

“You said you would let us live,” Moody said. His voice was shaky, and he seemed to be on the verge of tears.

The pastor’s smile drooped down into a frown, his face blank for a moment. Then the smile reappeared, the corners of his mouth jerking up, his dead eyes hidden under the shadow of his hat. “Yes. But you must give him an offering first.”

“And then we’ll live?” Moody asked.

“First the offering, and then he will decide.”

“What kind of offering do you want?” Jed asked.

“Before noon today, he wants a human tongue out here on the floorboards. It doesn’t matter whose tongue it is, as long as it is from a live person. If you don’t have the offering out here by noon, then bad things are going to happen. Such bad things.”

PART 3

BAD THINGS

CHAPTER 25

Two hours later they weren’t any closer to making a decision about the human tongue that Pastor Starke wanted in front of the saloon before noon, but at least they hadn’t heard any more shuffling sounds coming from upstairs. An hour ago they had gone upstairs and entered the room where the abomination that used to be Rose and her cowboy customer lay. Billy looped a rope around one of the twisted ankles and tied the other end to the leg of the bed while Jed kept his Colt .45 aimed at the double-headed thing in case it moved. Billy then looped another rope around the two arms twisted together, pulling it tight at the wrists, then he secured that end to the bed leg underneath the headboard.

“I don’t know if that will be enough to hold them here,” Jed said.

But it was all Billy was willing to do, as close as he or any of them were willing to get to the thing on the bed.

“Maybe we could nail the door shut,” Esmerelda suggested. “Bar it shut somehow.”

After getting the hammer and can of nails, Jed managed to toenail a few nails into the door and then into the frame. He also nailed a few slats of spare wood they’d gotten from some large crates in the storeroom across the door.

Jed still didn’t think it was enough to keep that monstrosity inside the room, but it was going to have to do.

Now Jed, David, Billy, Esmerelda, and Moody were all seated at the table. Karl was lying on his side on his blanket, moaning softly in a fitful sleep. Sanchez had switched positions on the floor in front of the bar he was chained to, but he still looked uncomfortable.

Moody poured his second shot of whiskey, but instead of drinking it, he curled his hands around the shot glass like he had a habit of doing, like the feel of the glass in his hands was as comforting as the whiskey inside of it was. He had taken his pocket watch out earlier and laid it on the table. “We have to do it,” he said, staring at his pocket watch. “You heard Pastor Starke, or whatever it is. It won’t let us live if we don’t give it what it wants.”

“We’re not giving it a tongue,” Esmerelda said.

Moody glanced at her like her opinion didn’t matter, then he looked at Sanchez.

Sanchez stared right back at Moody.

Moody turned back around and spoke in a low voice. “There’s only one person we can use, only one person we would all agree on.”

“No,” Jed said softly.

Esmerelda let out a long, slow breath of relief. She seemed worried for a few seconds that Jed might agree with Moody’s suggestion.

“Why not?” Moody asked, slapping a hand down on the table, making David jump. “You said yourself that Sanchez is an outlaw. A criminal. A killer. You’re taking him to Smith Junction where he’ll surely hang.”

“No,” Jed said again without much force, but it had a ring of finality to it.

“He’s going to die anyway,” Moody said. “We could use him now to save us all.”

“We don’t know if he’ll hang,” Jed said. “He hasn’t been convicted yet. He hasn’t been in front of a judge or a jury.”

Moody sighed like he and all of the others knew which way an Arizona judge and jury were going to side in a case against a Mexican outlaw.

“Maybe we could use Rose upstairs,” Esmerelda said. “Or the cowboy’s tongue.”

Jed saw their melted faces in his mind, their mouths melted together as one, bits of teeth and glistening meat twisted together, their tongues somewhere in that mass of flesh.

“The pastor said it had to be the tongue from a living person,” Moody reminded her.

Esmerelda sighed and everyone was quiet for a moment.

“So that’s it?” Moody finally asked. “Everyone’s made their decision? Everyone’s agreeing to just give up? We’re all going to put our lives at risk to save some murderer’s tongue?”

Jed looked over at Sanchez who was watching them intently. He didn’t look scared, he looked ready to fight to the death rather than let them carve his tongue out of his mouth.

“We could vote,” Esmerelda said.

Moody sighed loudly again.

Jed nodded. “That sounds good. Let’s vote. All who agree not to give that thing out there one of our tongues, raise your hand.”

Jed raised his hand, and he looked around the table. Esmerelda, Billy, and David raised their hands. He looked over at Sanchez who had his free hand raised. Karl was still in and out of consciousness, rocking and moaning in pain right now, not even listening to them.

“The boy doesn’t get a vote,” Moody grumbled. “And neither does the outlaw.”

“He’s got rights like any of us do,” Esmerelda said.

“Even if you discount David and Sanchez,” Jed told Moody, “and even if Karl could wake up and agree with you, then it would still be three to two against you.”

“Fine,” Moody said, throwing his hands up in disgust. “It’s getting close to noon. I suppose we’ll just sit back, relax, and see what bad things are coming for us.”

They were all quiet again. Moody poured his third drink, but he didn’t pick it up yet. He stared at the glass of whiskey as he spoke. “Why a tongue, anyway? What would that thing want with a tongue? It has all of those other bodies in the church to use.”

“It does not want a tongue,” Billy said.

They all looked at him.

“How do you know that?” Moody asked.

“It wants to see how far we will go,” Billy said.

“If it’s so powerful, if it can bring the dead back, then why doesn’t it just come in here and take us?” Moody asked.

“It wants us to do something for it,” Billy said.

“What?”

“It will tell us,” Billy answered him.

Jed watched Billy, and in that moment he was sure that Billy knew what that thing out there really wanted.

“It’s probably not going to tell us anything now,” Moody sulked. “Not if we’re not doing what it tells us to.” He checked his pocket watch again on the table. “Quarter to noon,” he announced.

Jed got up and walked to the windows. They had braced the doors shut again, but it probably didn’t matter anymore now if they did or not. He knew he was taking a chance by not following the Ancient Enemy’s orders, but he just couldn’t allow himself to tear someone’s tongue out of their mouth, whether they were a murderer or not.

In fifteen minutes they would find out. In fifteen minutes the monstrosity from upstairs might snap the ropes, crash through the door, and come down here. Or the dead townspeople might come crashing through the saloon doors and windows.

How could they stop that thing upstairs or the dead people in town? They couldn’t shoot them, that wouldn’t slow them down—they were already dead. Chop them up? Burn them? Maybe they could splash lantern oil on them and light them on fire. But they would probably burn the saloon down at the same time. Maybe even the whole damn town. And that creature would still be out there. The Ancient Enemy would just bring more dead people. Somewhere out there in the desert, Red Moon was waiting. And Dobbs. And Roscoe. And David’s family.

The saloon was safe for now, but deep down inside Jed knew it wasn’t. Esmerelda had said as much. What did she know that he didn’t? What did Billy know about this that he was keeping hidden?

The answer seemed close. It seemed like Jed should be able to see the answer. He was overlooking a vital clue or two, a piece of the puzzle that would bring the whole picture into view.

If Esmerelda and Billy really knew what was going on, if they really knew what that Ancient Enemy was after, then why were they keeping it to themselves? Why not talk about it so they could all put their heads together and come up with a plan to beat that thing out there? The Ancient Enemy was powerful, there was no doubt about that, but it was also hesitant about coming inside the saloon. Something in here scared the Ancient Enemy.

Jed felt like the answer was almost there, like something was materializing out of a fog and he could almost make out the edges of it, almost see it.

“No!” Esmerelda screamed.

Jed heard the clatter of the shotgun, the scraping of a chair on the floorboards, the chair tipping over and crashing to the floor. He turned around and saw Moody running at Sanchez with the shotgun in his hands, the weapon aimed at the outlaw.

CHAPTER 26

Jed drew his Colt and pointed it at the back of Moody’s head.

Moody stood in front of Sanchez, his shotgun aimed down at the man, his finger on the trigger.

“Don’t do it,” Jed growled at him. “What you’re doing right now is murder, and I’ve got the legal right to gun you down for it.” Jed felt a moment of calmness washing over him, a feeling he hadn’t felt in days. He was back in his element now, dealing with a problem he knew well, dealing with a problem he knew how to solve.

Moody trembled a little, but he still aimed the shotgun at Sanchez. “We need to do this,” he said without turning around to look at Jed.

“You kill him and we can’t use his tongue anyway,” Esmerelda said. “Don’t you see that?”

Jed figured Esmerelda was trying to rationalize with Moody. He didn’t look at her, but he could tell by the sound of her voice that she was still a few feet away from them. He also heard the sly movements of Billy getting into position with Karl’s Smith & Wesson. Jed knew Billy could be as silent as a cat if he wanted to, but he was letting his movements be heard not only by Jed, but by Moody.

“I’ll just shoot him in the legs until he lets us take his tongue,” Moody said.

“You fire that shotgun and you’ll have to reload,” Jed reminded him. “I’ll put a bullet through your brain before you can do that.”

Sanchez drew his legs up close to his body so Moody would have no choice but to kill him if he pulled the trigger.

That was smart, Jed thought.

Sanchez waited there, still showing no fear as he stared up at Moody without blinking, his dark eyes never wavering. He didn’t beg or cry; he just watched Moody. Jed wondered if Sanchez would walk up the gallows steps like that, silent and cold, confident that he’d done nothing wrong.

“We have to do this,” Moody said. He was trembling more now, beginning to cry.

“Just lower the shotgun,” Jed said in a softer tone of voice. “We’re all under a lot of pressure. We’re all scared.”

Moody started crying harder, lowering the shotgun in defeat. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I don’t know what else to do. I—”

Moody’s words were cut off as Jed struck him in the back of his head with the butt of his Colt. Moody dropped to the floor with a thud, already unconscious.

Esmerelda stifled a scream. Jed glanced back at her and saw that she had her arm around David, both protecting him and comforting him.

Billy stood a few feet away, backing Jed up with Karl’s pistol. He swooped in and grabbed Moody’s shotgun from the floor.

Jed hadn’t hit Moody that hard; Moody would be waking up in a few minutes so Jed went to work quickly. He dug the key to the handcuffs out of his pants pocket and unlocked the cuff from the foot rail of the bar, and then he unlocked the cuff from Sanchez’s wrist.

Sanchez looked shocked, but he didn’t say anything. He remained seated there in front of the bar.

Jed turned Moody over onto his stomach, wrenching both of his hands behind his back. Moody was already waking up, grumbling, but still too weak and stunned to fight back as Jed shackled his hands together. Jed stood up and holstered his Colt.

Moody flipped over onto his side, fully awake now and panicking, blinking in shock as he stared up at Jed. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Placing you under arrest for attempted murder,” Jed told him.

“I wasn’t trying to kill him, just wound him,” Moody argued. “I was trying to save our lives!”

Jed looked at Billy. The Navajo seemed to know what Jed wanted from him—he helped Jed get Moody up to his feet. They walked him to the table and sat him down in his chair.

“This is outrageous,” Moody said. “You can’t do this. I’m going to get a lawyer in Smith Junction and bring charges against you.”

Jed didn’t reply.

“This is my saloon,” Moody said. “My hotel.”

“It’s also American soil,” Jed told him. “American land with American laws.”

“He’s a murderer!” Moody yelled, rocking in his chair, nearly tipping it over as he turned around to stare at Jed.

“Do I need to tie you to the chair?” Jed asked him.

Moody stared at Jed like he was ready to catapult up out of the chair at him, but he remained seated and quiet, breathing heavily, his fleshy face red with rage and exertion. There was no blood in his hair from the blow Jed had landed from the butt of his pistol.

“Good,” Jed told Moody and then turned his attention to Sanchez who was still in the same spot in front of the bar even though he was free now. “You going to be trouble?”

“No,” Sanchez answered.

“Good,” Jed said again. “We’re all in this together. We’re not hurting each other or killing each other. Agreed?”

Sanchez nodded. Jed looked at the others. Billy and Esmerelda nodded.

“You,” Jed said, turning back to Sanchez. “Come over here and sit down at the table. You’re still a wanted man.”

Sanchez got up slowly. He stood for a moment on unsteady legs, like he was trying to get the circulation going in them again. Then he walked over to the table, pulled out a chair and sat down.

Jed wasn’t sure if Sanchez would be trouble or not, but at this moment he felt that he could trust Sanchez more than he could trust Moody. As long as Sanchez didn’t get a gun in his hands or run. But it didn’t look like Sanchez had any intention of running outside with that thing out there.

“Marshal,” Esmerelda said.

Jed looked at her. She had Moody’s pocket watch in her hand. “It’s noon.”

The saloon was silent.

Jed walked over to the window to the left of the door. Billy had slipped Karl’s pistol down into his belt among the layers of his clothing, and he still had Moody’s shotgun in his hands. He went to the other window and looked outside.

“What is it?” Moody asked. “What do you see out there?”

Jed stared out the window, keeping to the side of it as much as possible. He looked out at the street, at the buildings on the other side of the street, up and down the street as much as possible, but there was no one out there.

“You see anything?” Moody asked.

Jed turned around and looked at Moody, then at Esmerelda. “Nothing yet.”

“Unchain me!” Moody snapped. “You can’t leave me like this. I have a right to defend myself, damn it. This is my saloon.”

Jed looked back out the window, his hand on the butt of his Colt.

“I’m better now,” Moody said in a softer voice, turning to Esmerelda. “I swear it.” He looked at Sanchez across the table who was watching him with an expressionless face and cold eyes. “That outlaw’s going to grab a gun and shoot me.”

Several minutes passed as Jed stared out the window, watching for any sign of movement, listening for any sounds from out there. He also listened for any sounds coming from upstairs. But there was nothing but silence and stillness. He continued watching the street. When the pastor showed up, or whatever else might show up, Jed wanted to see which direction they came from. He wanted to see where they were hiding right now. Were they in the church down the street? He couldn’t see the church from the saloon windows, but he watched that direction, waiting for someone or something to come walking down the dirt street.

The saloon was silent again. No sounds except for Karl who had started moaning louder, rolling back and forth on his blanket.

“Something’s wrong with Karl,” Moody said.

Jed hated to move away from the window, but he walked back to the table. Billy followed him, standing beside him with the shotgun. They all stared at the Swede as he tossed and turned on the blankets, his eyes squeezed shut, his hands on his belly, his face redder now, sweatier.

David jumped to his feet from the chair beside Esmerelda. He ran around the table to Jed, clinging to him.

“What’s wrong, David?” Jed asked.

The boy didn’t answer. He stared across the room, watching Karl like he was afraid of him, like he was waiting for something to happen.

“Moody’s right,” Esmerelda said, standing up from her chair and backing away from all of the blankets spread out across the floor. “Something’s wrong with Karl. Look at his belly.”

Jed saw it now. Karl was a thin man. When he’d been out on the walkway this morning, his abdomen had looked sunken in while he held it. But now it looked bloated.

“Help him!” Moody shouted.

Esmerelda walked around the table, joining Jed and David, getting as far away from the moaning man on the blankets. She looked at Billy.

Billy walked past the table and crouched down beside Karl. He laid Moody’s shotgun down on the floor.

Karl was moaning louder, a scream caught in his throat. He thrashed back and forth, his hands clutching at his swollen belly.

As he drew a knife from the sheath on his belt, Billy whispered words in Navajo that sounded like a prayer.

“What the hell are you doing, Injun!” Moody screamed. He looked at Jed. “Get that savage away from Karl!”

For just a moment Jed thought Billy meant to scalp the Swede, even though the Navajo weren’t known for scalping. Besides, Karl didn’t have much hair left to scalp.

“We need to see,” Billy said without turning to any of them. He kept his head down, his eyes on Karl.

Jed started towards Billy and Karl, but then he felt a tug at his waist. He looked down at David who stared up at him—the boy shook his head no slowly.

“You keep away from him!” Moody yelled at Billy as he stood up from his chair, knocking it backwards onto the floor.

Jed was about to tell David that he needed to go and help Karl, but David kept his small hand on Jed’s belt, his fingers curled around it, trying to hold him back.

Billy used his knife to cut Karl’s shirt open, pulling the torn fabric aside to reveal Karl’s distended belly. It looked like Karl was pregnant.

There was something moving around inside of Karl’s belly, things moving around just underneath his skin . . . lots of things.

CHAPTER 27

“You keep your filthy hands off of him!” Moody roared as he stood beside the table, right in front of his tipped-over chair.

Billy continued whispering in his language, but he had backed away from Karl as he slid his knife back into the sheath on his belt.

Karl was still on his back on top of the blankets. He thrashed, but it seemed like it was too painful for him to roll over onto either side anymore. His belly swung back and forth with each movement like it was full of liquid. The pain seemed unbearable to Karl now as he groaned and grunted. Veins and tendons stood out on the sides of his thin neck like cords. His eyes bulged, threatening to pop out of his face. He gritted his teeth, spittle flying out from between his lips. He tried to form words in his groans—they sounded like gibberish, a mixture of English and Swedish.

Jed couldn’t take his eyes off of Karl’s belly—that distended mound of pale flesh. The skin of his belly rippled, sucking in for a moment in some places and then pushing back out, like rats were squirming around under there.

And Jed knew what might be underneath Karl’s skin because he’d seen this before when Red Moon had come to visit him in the desert. He’d seen Red Moon sitting there in the darkness as the beetles moved underneath his skin; he’d watched those beetles bore out through holes, dropping down into his lap, melting together, becoming some other kind of animal, forming into something much bigger.

“Help him!” Moody screamed again, but he backed up a step.

“I don’t know what to do!” Esmerelda yelled back, close to tears.

With a roar, Karl sat straight up, his eyes wide, his mouth open in a scream. Then he flopped back down onto his blankets, his head crashing onto the floor, the blankets barely buffeting the back of his head. The movement inside of his belly was now traveling up to his chest, then up to his neck which bulged like an overfilled sausage casing. Karl’s mouth opened wide again, and even his face seemed fatter now, like pressure was building up inside of his head, pushing against his flesh. His eyeballs were close to popping out. He no longer made a noise, unable to scream because something was blocking his throat. Karl retched, his mouth open so wide it looked like his bottom jaw had come unhinged and was ready to detach from the rest of his face. There were loud popping sounds of snapping joints and bones, a sound like dry chicken bones breaking. A clear, foamy fluid spilled out of Karl’s mouth followed by large dark wriggling shapes in the thick liquid. The shapes unfurled their legs as they escaped his mouth in a torrent, becoming tarantulas as they crawled all over each other in the mucus. Some of the spiders landed on Karl’s chest, others on the blankets, and then they skittered away, leaving trails of shiny ooze behind.

Esmerelda screamed and backed away from Jed and David.

Sanchez shot up to his feet, knocking his chair backwards. He backed away from the table, joining Billy who was near the window now with Moody’s shotgun in his hands.

“Help me!” Moody yelled as the spiders darted across the blankets towards him. He tried to back up, but he tripped over his fallen chair and crashed down to the floor onto his side. He kicked his legs, trying to push himself back as dozens of spiders raced towards him.

For a moment Jed was paralyzed with shock, unable to take his eyes off of Karl. The Swede’s belly was small now, but still a lot bigger than it should have been. There were still more tarantulas inside of him—maybe hundreds more.

Karl had passed out, or maybe even died. His eyes had rolled back, only showing the whites. His head was turned to the side as more mucus and spiders poured out of his wide-open mouth. There was a wet ripping sound as Karl’s belly split open from the waist of his pants almost up to his sternum, like an invisible knife had cut his flesh open from the inside. Through that large slit, hundreds of tarantulas squirmed out, crawling all over each other and dropping down his sides to the blanket, crawling down his pants legs.

“Help me!” Moody cried. He’d given up on trying to stand with his hands cuffed behind his back; he was still trying to push himself away, kicking at the floor as the wave of spiders crawled towards him.

Jed sprang into action. He raced over to Moody and got behind him, grabbing him underneath his armpits and pulling him backwards across the floor away from the quickly advancing spiders.

Moody struggled in Jed’s hands, kicking at the first of the spiders that had reached him. Some of the spiders crawled all over his shoes, and a few of them crawled up underneath his pants legs. Moody kicked his legs, stamping his feet, managing to crush a few of the spiders, but there were too many of them. The spiders seemed to be working together like a hive mind, like ants or bees, all of them with a singular purpose.

The other spiders skittered across the floor towards Esmerelda, Sanchez, and Billy.

“Hold still,” Jed told Moody.

“Help me,” Moody squealed, still kicking his legs at the floor.

Jed had the key to the handcuffs in his hand, trying to unlock one of the cuffs to free Moody’s hands, but the man was thrashing and panicking too much.

“One’s under my pants leg,” Moody screamed. “It’s biting me!”

Jed almost lost the key in his fingers as Moody bucked back against him, but he held on to it. He managed to stick the key into the handcuff on Moody’s right wrist, unlocking it. Moody’s hand sprang away like an uncoiled snake striking.

Esmerelda had backed up towards the doors, stomping on the floor with her low-heeled ankle boots as the first of the tarantulas reached her.

Billy fired his shotgun down at the floor, killing a few of the spiders, but also blasting a huge hole in the floor. The shotgun was out of shells and he dropped it, pulling Karl’s pistol out and shooting a few more of the spiders, creating a few more holes in the floorboards.

Where was David?

Jed was about to yell for David, but then he saw him walk right in front of him and Moody. The boy stood there among the sea of spiders, but that sea of tarantulas suddenly halted, and then all of the spiders backed away from David in all directions at the same time. The spiders were going crazy, many of them curling up immediately into a ball and dying, their hairy bodies shriveling up. Many of the spiders raced to the holes that Billy had made in the floor with the shotgun and the pistol, crawling down into the holes and disappearing underneath the floor to escape.

David walked towards the table, then towards the double doors, the wave of spiders staying in front of him, trying to flee from him.

“Open the doors!” Jed yelled.

Billy and Sanchez were at the doors already, the wave of spiders racing towards them. They each grabbed a door handle and opened the doors wide. Sanchez ran back towards the bar where Esmerelda had retreated to, and Billy went to the foot of the stairs.

David walked past the table towards the doors. The wave of spiders in front of him backed up towards the doors, spilling out onto the walkway.

Jed looked over at Karl. His belly was sunken in again, his head turned to the side, his eyes and mouth still wide open. Blood and mucus were dribbling out of his mouth, and even more blood was leaking from the slit in his abdomen. But the spiders were gone. Many of them were curled up and dead on the blankets and floor, but most of the spiders had scurried out through the doorway as David slowly moved towards them.

David was driving the spiders away. They were afraid of him.

Moments later the spiders were gone. David stood a few feet away from the open doorway to the saloon, his eyes glazed over like he was in a trance.

“The doors!” Jed yelled as he pulled Moody up to his feet.

Billy and Sanchez hurried to the saloon doors, slamming them shut. Billy grabbed the table leg from the floor and jammed it up underneath the door handle and kicked it into place, keeping the door shut.

“How the hell did he do that?” Moody asked as he stood next to Jed, breathing hard and staring at David in shock.

CHAPTER 28

“How’d that boy do that?” Moody asked again. He stomped his feet, then he bent over and pulled his pants leg up, checking for spiders.

Jed looked down at Moody’s bare legs—there were two lumps already forming on his shins from spider bites.

David stood between the table and the saloon doors. He looked shocked and confused, like he had just woken up from a dream and he wasn’t sure where he was or what he had been doing.

“How’d he make those spiders go away?” Moody yelled again, letting his pants legs drop back down.

Karl groaned and puked up more clear mucus with globs of dark blood mixed in. He rolled over onto his side and moaned again.

“We need to tend to him,” Esmerelda said and raced over to Karl.

Billy and Sanchez were right behind Esmerelda as she knelt down beside him.

Karl still retched, vomiting up more thick globules of blood mixed in with the slimy mucus. His belly was flat again, but the tear in the middle of it was leaking more blood down onto the blanket . . . too much blood. His breaths were shallow, his skin paler than ever and glistening, his blond-white hair slicked back with sweat. His eyes were closed now, and he was trembling uncontrollably.

“He’s not going to make it,” Jed told them as he walked up to them. Moody was right beside him now. Jed knew this merchant was their friend, but there was no hope for the man now. He was losing too much blood, and God knew what had been done to his insides from those spiders. God knew how many organs were damaged or ruptured.

Billy nodded in agreement.

“We could use him,” Moody said.

They all looked at Moody.

“We could use Karl before he dies,” Moody said. “We could take his tongue out.”

Esmerelda stared at Moody in horror. It looked like she wanted to respond, but she couldn’t seem to get the words out, too shocked for a moment to speak.

“He’s going to die,” Moody said. “Like the marshal just said. But he’s not dead yet. We could still use him while he’s alive.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Esmerelda asked Moody.

“I’m just trying to save us,” Moody snapped at her. He looked at Jed beside him, then at Billy and Sanchez, and then finally at David. He looked back at Esmerelda. “That thing out there can do anything it wants to. We should’ve listened. We should’ve given him the tongue. And we could still do it. I know it’s after noon now, past the deadline, but maybe it will still accept the offering. Maybe it will realize that we’ve learned our lesson.”

“Our lesson?” Esmerelda asked, her face scrunched up in disgust.

“Yes,” Moody said. “We were supposed to give it an offering, or bad things were going to happen.” He glanced down at Karl who moaned softly. Karl seemed too weak to even writhe in pain anymore.

“You don’t understand, do you?” Esmerelda said with pity.

“I understand plenty now.”

“I don’t think you do,” Esmerelda said. “These spiders were already inside Karl since early this morning. Ingrid put them inside of him when she kissed him.”

“You . . . you don’t know that.”

“How do you think they got inside of him?” she asked him. “This bad thing was going to happen to Karl whether we gave that monster a tongue or not.”

“It does not want a tongue,” Billy said. “It will keep trying to frighten us so badly that we will do anything it wants. That is the story of the Ancient Enemy.”

“And you know what it wants,” Jed said to Billy. “Don’t you? You know what it really wants.”

Billy didn’t answer; he just stared right back at Jed.

Jed looked at Esmerelda. “And so do you. You and Billy, the two of you have known all along what that thing has wanted.” Jed suddenly saw the answer that he’d been missing the entire time, and maybe he had been trying to avoid the answer because he didn’t want to face the truth—the monster out there wanted David.

Esmerelda nodded slightly at Jed like she knew he had finally seen the truth.

“He’s dead,” Sanchez said, nodding down at Karl.

They all looked down at Karl. His body was still, his eyes half open, a line of bloody drool leaking out of the corner of his mouth.

“We need to get him outside,” Jed said.

Moody stared at Jed. “We shouldn’t open those doors right now.”

“We’ve got two dead people upstairs to deal with,” Jed reminded him. “We don’t need another one right here in the middle of the saloon that can turn against us.”

“He is right,” Billy said as he moved towards Karl.

Esmerelda got up and moved out of the way as Sanchez helped Billy with Karl’s blanket.

“Move back,” Jed told Moody. “Let them get Karl out of here.”

Moody tried to stare Jed down, but he gave in and moved out of the way. “We should say something for him,” he said. “He was a Christian.”

Sanchez pulled out a gold crucifix from under his shirt and held it in his fingers. He began praying in Spanish. Everyone was quiet as Sanchez finished the prayers. He tucked the crucifix back inside his shirt.

“Thank you,” Esmerelda told him.

Billy grabbed one corner of the blanket at the end of it, and Sanchez grabbed the other corner. Jed opened the saloon doors for them so they could drag Karl outside. He had his Colt in his hand, ready to cover them as they dragged Karl’s body down the walkway to the edge of it. Billy folded the rest of the blanket over Karl’s body, covering him up, whispering his own set of prayers as he did so.

Jed looked up and down the street, but he didn’t see the pastor or anyone else around. He didn’t see any of the spiders out here either.

After they went back inside the saloon, Billy helped Jed brace the doors shut again. The table legs braced in front of the doors seemed like a joke; if the Ancient Enemy wanted to get inside of the saloon, then it would.

Esmerelda already had a broom and a bucket of water, cleaning up the dead spiders all over the floor.

“We should get those holes in the floor patched up,” Jed said.

Billy and Sanchez followed Jed to the storeroom to find a few more pieces of wood from the crates that they could use on the floor. After Jed had handed a few scraps of wood to Billy, he went into Moody’s office and came back out with Sanchez’s guns and gun belt in his hands. He handed them to Sanchez. “Can I trust you with these?”

Sanchez nodded and took his guns and belt.

“You’re giving that criminal his guns back?” Moody asked, shaking his head.

“We’re all in this together now,” Jed told Moody, then he looked back at Sanchez, hoping he wasn’t making a mistake. “We all need to help each other.”

CHAPTER 29

David helped Esmerelda clean up the dead spiders, and then he helped her carry the bucket of water so she could get as much of the blood cleaned up on the floor. Most of Karl’s blood had been soaked in his blanket, but there was still some on the floor. After they had cleaned up as best they could, David helped Esmerelda get some food ready for supper. She heated the leftover pot of stew on top of the stove.

Jed watched David as he helped Esmerelda, and he swore he saw a smile on the boy’s face a few times after she had whispered something to him. David seemed more at ease now that he had a chore to do, something for his mind to focus on besides the horrors that waited outside the saloon doors.

After the stew was warm, Esmerelda and David dished up bowls and brought them to the table along with the rest of the cornbread muffins. David drank another cup of tea while the rest of them sipped on coffee.

Moody declined the food, opting to drink two more shots of whiskey instead. After he had drained the two whiskeys, he cradled the glass in front of him like he usually did, staring down at it.

None of them felt like eating, and only Billy and Sanchez ate half of their meals. Esmerelda barely touched her bowl of stew, but she tried to encourage David to eat his. He slurped down a few bites of stew and nibbled at the muffin.

They were all quiet now for a moment as they sat at the table. Moody was brooding, and Jed watched him for a moment, but Jed was thinking about the Ancient Enemy and what it really wanted—David.

“It wants David,” Jed said. He looked at David who sat right next to Esmerelda.

David stopped eating, his spoon still in his hand.

“It killed David’s family, but not David,” Jed continued as he looked at Esmerelda. “Not because David was hiding, but because it couldn’t kill him. Right?” He looked at Billy. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

Billy nodded. “It wants us to kill the boy for it.”

“I don’t think this is something we should be talking about in front of David,” Esmerelda said.

Jed nodded. “I agree, but we don’t have a choice right now. We can’t split up.” He looked at David. “We’re not going to do anything to you,” he said. “You hear me? You have my word on that. We’re not giving you to that thing out there.”

David barely nodded, still clutching his spoon and staring at Jed with wide eyes of fear.

“But why?” Moody asked, finally lifting his head up from his shot glass and looking at them through red-rimmed eyes. “That thing out there is powerful, we’ve all seen that. It killed an entire town. Why can’t it kill some little Indian boy?”

Billy stared at Moody. “Because David is a shaman.”

“Like a medicine man?” Jed asked. He really didn’t know what the difference between a shaman or a medicine man was.

Billy didn’t bother answering Jed, but he continued on: “David is a shaman, but he does not know it yet. He is able to do things that he does not understand.”

“Like a natural ability,” Esmerelda said, trying to help Billy with his explanation. “He’s a natural shaman, but he doesn’t quite know how to use those powers yet.”

Billy nodded. “Yes. There is always a balance between the dark and the light. When there is something evil and powerful, like the Ancient Enemy, there is always something to . . . to fight back.”

“And the boy can fight back,” Sanchez said.

Billy frowned. “It is not so simple.”

“How about this?” Moody said, eyeing David for a moment. “Maybe that boy’s in league with the devil out there. You ever think of that? Maybe that’s the devil and his demons out there, and that boy is part of it.”

“If that was true, we would already be dead,” Billy said.

Moody sat back in his chair, the wood creaking under his weight. He blew out a frustrated sigh.

Esmerelda stared at Moody. “Suddenly you’re religious? Suddenly you believe in God and the devil?”

He didn’t answer her.

“So, that thing out there needs us to kill David for it,” Jed said, getting back to his point.

David moved closer to Esmerelda like he was suddenly wary of everyone else in the room. She put her arm around him.

“We’re not going to do that, David,” Jed assured him. “But we need to talk about this. We need to understand what’s going on. Okay?”

David barely nodded.

Jed’s throat closed up with emotion as he thought of what David must’ve already gone through. He tried to spit the next words out, but he choked up a little. “It . . . that thing out there . . . it might have tried to get David’s ma and pa to kill him. Maybe his own brother, too. And when they wouldn’t kill him . . .” Jed let his words trail off, wondering again what horrors David had already seen. No wonder the boy hardly ever spoke, he was traumatized by what he’d already seen inside his own home.

“If all of this is true,” Moody said, “then why did it kill everyone else in town? Why not keep a lot of them alive so they can kill David for it? More people, more chances to kill the boy.”

“Because it only needs one of us,” Billy explained. “And it needs us to be so frightened that we will do anything it asks of us. Even kill a boy.”

“It drove you here,” Esmerelda said, looking right at Jed. “First it drove you to David’s house, and then it drove you here to this town.”

Jed was about to argue with Esmerelda, but then he thought back to the morning they had captured Red Moon. He thought back to when they had been about to enter the woods. He had wanted to take a shortcut through the woods that morning, but why? Why had it been so important that he travel through the woods just to save a day or two of traveling? He’d told himself at the time that he wanted to get back to Smith Junction as quickly as possible and collect the bounty. He wanted to get back to his place before winter set in.

But what had been the hurry? He didn’t have anything to go back to. Clara had been dead five years now. He had no wife, no children. His small ranch was a disaster, and if it weren’t for Chavez helping him out, all of his horses and cattle would probably be dead by now.

So what had been his hurry to go through those woods?

Red Moon had tried to warn him not to go into those woods. As soon as they were inside the woods, Jed had known something was wrong—he knew they were being watched, being followed, yet he hadn’t turned around while they still had the chance. He’d known deep down that there was something terrible waiting in those woods, but he hadn’t believed it, chalking his fears up to Red Moon’s mumbo jumbo or Red Moon’s gang trying to rescue him.

A wave of guilt washed over Jed. He’d gotten Roscoe and the Dobbs boy killed. He should’ve known better, he should’ve trusted his instincts.

“If it drove me here,” Jed finally answered Esmerelda, “if I didn’t have any control over what I was doing, then that’s a frightening thought.”

“You have control, but you also do not,” Billy said.

“More Injun nonsense,” Moody muttered as he poured himself another drink.

Jed ignored Moody and looked at Billy.

Esmerelda turned her attention to Sanchez. “You were drawn here, too.”

Sanchez shook his head. “No, señora. I came here because I saw the sandstorm on the horizon.”

“The Darkwind,” Billy said.

“You were diverted here,” Esmerelda told Sanchez. “You were drawn here because you’ve killed before.”

“That was self-defense,” Sanchez said.

“But you’ve still killed, and the Ancient Enemy wants people who have killed before.”

“Like me,” Jed said.

“But not all of us,” Moody snapped. “I’ve never killed a man.”

“But you could,” Jed argued.

Moody smirked. “You don’t know me, marshal. You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you were willing to shoot Sanchez with your shotgun earlier,” Jed told him. “You were willing to take his tongue.”

Moody looked away.

“You were also willing to take Karl’s tongue while he was still alive.”

Moody still looked away, not bothering to respond to Jed.

Jed looked back at Esmerelda. “If the Ancient Enemy needed a killer to kill David, then why not just send Red Moon instead of me?”

“I don’t know,” Esmerelda answered. “Maybe the Ancient Enemy was afraid Red Moon would kill himself too quickly.”

They looked at Billy for an answer.

“Could be that David has something to do with it,” Billy told them. “The Ancient Enemy can only push so much against David’s pull.”

“So you’re saying David has a choice in who comes here?” Jed asked.

“No,” Billy said. He seemed to be getting frustrated, like he was having trouble expressing what he wanted to say in English. “A force works through David, a bigger and stronger force. It works with David, but it also works through David at the same time.”

“Like God,” Esmerelda said.

Jed felt that Esmerelda understood what Billy was trying to say better than he did.

“We make our own decisions,” Esmerelda continued. “But at the same time God works through all of us.”

Jed looked at David to see if he was following the conversation, but David didn’t even seem to be listening. David had pulled away from Esmerelda, staring at the saloon doors.

Jed turned towards the doors where the sharp afternoon light was coming through the windows around the shades and curtains. He looked back at David. “Is he out there now?”

David nodded.

CHAPTER 30

Jed could hear the pastor calling them now.

All of them got up from the table together, all of them walking towards the saloon doors.

Jed drew his Colt. Sanchez had his guns belted around his waist, both of them slung low; he was tense, ready to draw. Billy had Karl’s pistol tucked into his belt and he was holding Moody’s shotgun, which he had reloaded with two more shells. Jed had gotten another box of shells from Moody’s office and gave them to Billy earlier. Jed wasn’t giving the shotgun back to Moody—he couldn’t trust the saloon owner with it now.

“We all go out there together,” Jed said as they gathered in front of the saloon doors. “We keep David close to us, and we all stay together.”

Esmerelda kept her arm around David’s shoulders.

Jed opened one door, and Sanchez opened the other one. They all stepped out onto the wooden walkway underneath the porch roof of the saloon.

The pastor stood in the same spot in the street, fifteen feet away from the saloon’s walkway. There was nobody else around, only the pastor. A cold breeze blew down through the middle of the town and the sky was so blue above the buildings beyond the pastor. The sun was getting lower in the west, the shadows lengthening along the buildings.

“I’ve been calling you,” the pastor said with that strange smile on his face. His eyes were just dead shadows beneath the brim of his black hat.

Jed looked at the edge of the walkway where they had left Karl’s body. It was gone now, and there were only a few smears of blood left behind on the floorboards.

“He warned you that bad things would happen if you didn’t give him what he wanted,” the pastor said.

“We know what he wants,” Jed yelled at the pastor. “We’re not giving it to him.” He shifted his eyes to the left and then to the right, waiting for dozens of the dead to stumble out of the buildings from across the street.

The pastor stood still for a long moment, like he was deep in thought, his head slightly cocked like he was listening to something they couldn’t hear. His smile slipped into a deep frown. “Kill the boy,” he said in a deep, guttural voice. “Kill the boy and he will let all of you live. All of this will be over. He will let you live. He will let you leave. He will let you stay so you can rebuild your town.”

“You swear that’s the truth?” Moody yelled at the pastor with a hopeful look in his eyes.

“He’s lying,” Esmerelda whispered to Moody, but her eyes shifted to Jed to make sure he understood her. She still held David around his shoulders.

“You have until sunup tomorrow,” the pastor said. “Make your decision or more bad things will happen. Things you won’t believe. Things you can’t even imagine.”

The pastor turned and walked away, heading back towards the church.

Sanchez caressed the handles of his pistols, ready to draw.

“Don’t bother,” Jed told him. “He’s already dead. Won’t make a difference.”

They all went back inside and closed the saloon doors. Jed locked them and shoved the table legs under the door handles as a brace.

They all sat back down at the table.

“We need to talk about it,” Moody said after downing another drink.

“Talk about what?” Jed asked him even though he knew perfectly well what he was referencing.

“If all that thing out there wants is the boy,” Moody held his hands up, “which is not what I’m suggesting we do, then he said he would let the rest of us live.”

“He’s lying,” Esmerelda said. “If we give him . . . give it what it wants, then that thing wouldn’t have any use for us anymore. It would slaughter us just as quickly as it slaughtered the rest of the town.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” Moody said.

“Yes, I do.” She looked at Billy who nodded in agreement.

“Doesn’t matter,” Jed said. “We’re not killing David. We’re not giving him to that thing out there.”

“So what are we going to do?” Moody asked.

“David is the only thing protecting us,” Esmerelda told Moody, but she looked at the others to make sure they understood. “It’s not this saloon that has protected us, it’s not this building or the guns we have that have protected us. The only thing it’s afraid of is David.”

“But the boy doesn’t know what to do with his . . .” Moody waved a hand in the air as he searched for the right word. “His power.”

“There has to be some way we can fight back,” Jed said and looked at Billy for help. “You know more about what’s out there than any of us. Does it have a weakness besides David? Is there any way to kill it?”

“I do not know if it has a weakness besides David,” Billy answered.

“Can David kill it?” Jed asked Billy.

Billy shrugged. “I believe David can hurt it, but I do not know.”

“Well, we need to know more about that thing out there,” Jed said, still looking at Billy. “Tell us everything you know about the Ancient Enemy.”

CHAPTER 31

“The story of the Anasazi—the Ancient Enemy—is an old one,” Billy said. “A long time ago the ancient people lived in cities south and east of here. They built great cities and roads, some of them lived underground. But every one hundred years a demon came to ask for things. This demon could control the wind, animals, and sometimes even people. The demon was always changing its shape and it could inhabit dead people, making them alive again. The demon was very powerful and evil. The demon loved to kill and no one could stop it except one person. The demon would ask for things. Many in those great cities south of here thought the Ancient Enemy was a god at first, an angry god asking for offerings. They gave the god the offerings, but it did not appease the god. It always asked for more. If they refused to give offerings to the god, bad things would happen. There are stories told of whole cities being destroyed, of everyone in those cities being killed.”

“I have heard of those stories, too,” Sanchez said. “My grandmother told me similar stories even though my mother and father didn’t like her talking about those kinds of things. She used to tell me about the Maya and other ancient civilizations, people who seemed to have vanished overnight, like they walked right into the jungle and left their cities behind that they had worked so hard to build.”

Billy nodded. “Yes, the Ancient Enemy is found in many places.”

“Where did it come from?” Jed asked Billy.

Billy shrugged. “Some say the Ancient Enemy came from the stars when the Star People first came here. Others say the Ancient Enemy came after the Star People were already here. Some even say that this was the Ancient Enemy’s home long before the Star People came here and gave birth to man and woman; some say that we invaded its home, and every one hundred years we must make offerings and sacrifices to it so that we can stay here.”

“And this time that sacrifice is a little boy,” Jed said.

“It has always been a little boy,” Billy answered.

Jed felt a chill dance across his skin. “What are you trying to say, that this happens every one hundred years? That someone like David is born and this thing needs to kill it?”

Billy shrugged again and sighed. “Every one hundred years a boy is born. He will grow up to be a very powerful shaman, maybe powerful enough to kill the Ancient Enemy. The Ancient Enemy wakes up and it must kill the boy before he can grow up and become too powerful.”

“So this has happened over and over again, every one hundred years,” Esmerelda said. “How far back?”

Billy shook his head. “I do not know. A very long time.”

“How do we fight it?” Jed asked Billy. “You say David is some kind of natural shaman, but he doesn’t know how to use his powers yet. Can you teach him?”

“I am not a shaman,” Billy told him.

“But I’ve seen you praying,” Jed said without thinking about it. He remembered Red Moon explaining that a person didn’t have to be a shaman or a priest to pray to their god.

“What about your prayers and songs?” Esmerelda asked Billy. “Can they help?”

“I believe all of our faiths together could help,” Billy answered her. “But I cannot be sure.”

“What if we ran?” Jed asked, trying to steer the ideas back to practical ones. “What if we took David with us and ran? We could all stay together.”

“Where would we run to?” Billy asked. “We have no horses.”

“We could go to Smith Junction,” Jed told them. “It’s probably only a two or three days’ walk from here.”

“And then it would follow us,” Billy said. “It would kill everyone in Smith Junction when we got there.”

Jed hadn’t thought of that.

“That thing out there would probably pick us off one by one before we even got close to Smith Junction,” Sanchez said.

“You just don’t want to go anywhere near Smith Junction,” Moody said, sneering at Sanchez.

“Sanchez is right,” Jed said. “That thing would just get all of us one at a time. Just staying close to David wouldn’t be enough. It hadn’t been enough for David’s mother, father, and brother.”

“So, we can’t run,” Esmerelda said. “We have no choice but to fight. We just need to figure out how to fight.”

“I’m sure everyone in town was thinking that last night,” Moody said.

“They were taken by surprise,” Jed told him. “We know it’s coming now. And we know when it’s coming.”

“Yeah, and we know why it’s coming,” Moody said, cutting his eyes to David for a second.

David shrank back from Moody’s stare.

“I know you said you’re not a shaman,” Esmerelda said to Billy, “but there has to be something you could teach David. There must be something you could show him. Anything might help.”

Billy nodded solemnly. “I could try.”

Jed watched the old Navajo—he looked grim, like a man about to face death. But Billy wouldn’t go kicking and screaming to his death, he would be resigned to his fate, welcoming the next world that waited for him.

And Jed decided right there on the spot that he would do the same; he would fight like hell, but when the time came he was going to die with dignity. He’d seen too many men crying and begging when they met their end, and he wasn’t going out like that. There wasn’t much hope of him living past tomorrow morning, and he couldn’t see any other conclusion besides all of them dying for defying that thing’s wishes. But he would save a bullet for himself. Earlier he had promised to save two bullets, one for himself and one for David, but now that he knew that the Ancient Enemy was afraid of David, then at least he wouldn’t have to take David’s life.

Maybe Esmerelda was right, maybe there was something Billy could teach David, or maybe David would instinctively know what to do when the time came. He remembered the way the tarantulas had scattered away from David, hundreds of them curling up and dying. There was no denying that David had some kind of power, maybe even as much power as that thing out there did. It was a longshot that David could beat that thing, but maybe it was possible.

Jed looked at David. The boy still looked scared, but now his attention was on the saloon doors again. Jed turned and looked at the two doors. The setting sun was shining a golden-orange light around the drawn shades. Shadows were beginning to form in the back room of the saloon and up on the balcony above them. The light was sharp but warm at the same time, a fleeting thing as the night slowly took over outside.

Sanchez was tense, his hand down by the butt of his pistol. He was half-turned in his chair, ready to spring into action.

“You hear it?” Jed asked Sanchez.

Sanchez just nodded, not bothering to waste a bit of energy on words.

Everyone else was quiet, all of their eyes on the saloon doors now.

“It sounds like a stampede out there,” Esmerelda said.

CHAPTER 32

Jed heard the sound more clearly now. It sounded a little like a stampede, but also different. There were footsteps out there, but they sounded heavy and slow, not running. More like a march of soldiers.

Sanchez got up, and Jed was right behind him. Billy popped up with Moody’s shotgun in his hands and Karl’s .44 stuck in his belt.

Jed hurried to the window to the left of the saloon doors. Sanchez was at the doors, and Billy was at the window to the right. Sanchez pulled the shade of one of the doors to the side so he could look out through the window, and then he froze.

Even though Jed already had a pretty good idea of what he was going to see out there in the street, even though he had tried to mentally prepare himself, he still wasn’t ready.

Every dead person in town was walking past the saloon like a big herd, all of them moving in the same direction, all of them heading down the street towards the church.

Jed had seen the tracks in the dirt street this morning—he’d known what those tracks were; he’d seen the footprints and the drag marks. All of those tracks had been heading in the same direction: away from the church and to the other end of town, like everyone had left the church together, left the town and walked into the desert. It had been bad seeing those tracks and imagining the dead walking, but it was worse actually seeing them walk.

The sun was still bright enough to illuminate the march of the dead. The dead kept their faces forward, their eyes towards their destination. Even the pastor was among them, at the head of the group, leading this macabre congregation back to the church. The pastor hadn’t turned towards the saloon as he walked past, hadn’t even looked their way or called out to them; he didn’t have that strange smile on his face now. All of their expressions were dead blank.

Jed saw two boys near the back of the group; neither one of them had their legs anymore. They crawled along as quickly as they could with their forearms, dragging their torsos behind them with guts trailing and glistening with dried blood. They were Karl’s boys.

A one-armed woman shambled not too far in front of the boys. She wore a plain dress that was stained with blood. Her blond hair looked sticky with blood, some of it matted to her neck and face. She stumbled forward, swinging her good arm wildly to overcompensate for the stump on her other side. That arm looked to have been torn off, leaving only ragged flesh and the splinters of bone sticking out like a broken tree branch.

Even Karl was among the dead now, the newest of them. He stumbled along with his mouth hanging wide open now, like his jaw was distended when the tarantulas had poured out of his mouth. His shirt hung down from his waist in tatters from when Billy had cut it away. Karl’s torso was pale; the horrific slit in his abdomen crusted with blood and dried mucus. His belly was swollen again now, and there were things moving inside, pushing against his skin. A spindly spider’s leg poked out from the slit in his belly, and then another leg, but these legs were huge—they belonged to a much larger spider than a tarantula.

It was almost too much for Jed to bear, but there were more sights to see. There was a headless woman who carried her head by the long hair, much of the hair tangled up in her fist.

Other dead people limped along on one leg; others had chunks of their bodies torn away. One man was missing the skin and flesh on one side of his face, the bits of skull that were exposed gleamed in the sun like bleached-white paper.

Three shirtless men with no arms walked in a line. There was a hole in the second man’s belly and a long string of his intestines had been pulled out and wrapped around the neck of the man in front of him. The third man had his intestines pulled out of his belly and wrapped round the neck of the second man like a leash.

But every dead person in town wasn’t out there, Jed told himself. There were two people missing from this march through town—Rose and the cowboy. They were still upstairs in the hotel room. Maybe they weren’t out there because they were still tied to the bed, or maybe because they might not be able to walk very well because of the way they were twisted together. But Jed couldn’t help thinking that maybe the Ancient Enemy was saving them for something special when the sun came up.

Jed heard an intake of breath beside him. He turned and saw that Esmerelda had come to stand beside him. He’d been so focused on the dead outside that he hadn’t even heard her walk up beside him.

She didn’t meet his eyes. It was like she couldn’t look away from the show the Ancient Enemy was putting on for them outside.

It’s giving us one last warning, Jed thought. One last spectacle to remember throughout the night, one last incentive to kill David.

Where was David? He wasn’t beside Esmerelda.

David screamed just as Jed turned away from the window.

Moody was behind David with a hunting knife up to the boy’s throat. He pulled David back with his other arm around David’s shoulders, pulling him back deeper into the saloon past the table and chairs.

“Don’t come any closer,” Moody said. “I’ll slit the boy’s throat.”

CHAPTER 33

Jed dropped his hand down to his Colt .45, ready to draw.

“Don’t,” Moody warned. “Don’t any of you move.” He had the Bowie knife up to David’s throat, the edge of it digging into David’s skin a little. Moody’s other arm was around David’s upper arms and chest, holding him close.

“What are you doing?” Esmerelda yelled.

Moody’s face scrunched up with emotion for just a second. He looked like he was on the verge of a sob. “You saw what’s out there. We can’t defeat that. No way. Neither can this kid. We’ve only got one choice—we need to give it what it wants.”

“Be careful,” Esmerelda said. “Moody, just stay very still and think about what you’re doing right now. You’re about to cut a child’s throat.”

“You think I want to do that? You think I want to kill a child? I don’t. But there’s nothing else we can do.”

“We can fight back,” Jed said with his hand still hovering over the butt of his pistol.

“No, we can’t,” Moody snapped at him. “And this Indian boy isn’t going to save us. Billy’s not going to train him in one night to become some kind of medicine man to defeat . . . whatever that thing is out there.”

Just keep him talking, Jed thought. He’d been in negotiations like this before, and he knew the longer he kept the attacker talking, the better his chances were with either reasoning with him or finding some way to get the jump on him.

“The boy has power,” Jed told Moody. “You have to see that. You saw what happened with the spiders. If David hadn’t helped you, those spiders would’ve been all over you. All over both of us. You might have died if David hadn’t helped you.”

Moody’s face scrunched up again as he teared up. He pulled David back even deeper into the saloon, closer to the blankets laid out on the floor. “I don’t want to do it, but it’s the only thing we can do to save our lives.”

“Just let him go,” Esmerelda said. “We can talk about this.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Moody snapped, holding on to David even tighter, the knife’s blade digging in just a little more. “Let me ask you a question, Esmerelda.”

“Anything.”

“Have you seen the future? Have you laid out the cards and seen our futures? Have you seen our future in your dreams?”

Esmerelda didn’t answer.

“Because you can’t see it,” Moody said. “You haven’t dreamed about it because we don’t have a future, do we?”

Esmerelda still didn’t answer.

Moody sighed, shuddering at the same time. He stopped moving backwards with David, standing his ground at the edge of the blankets now. His eyes darted from Esmerelda to Billy. “Drop that shotgun, Billy. And take Karl’s pistol out of your belt nice and slow.” He looked at Sanchez and then at Jed. “You too, Sanchez. And you, marshal. I want your guns on the floor. Use your left hand to unbuckle your gun belts.”

Jed and the other two hesitated.

“You kill David and it will be instant death for all of us,” Esmerelda warned Moody.

“You don’t know that,” Moody answered in a soft voice.

Keep him talking, Esmerelda, Jed thought. Keep him distracted.

“I’m serious about this,” Moody said as he looked back at Jed. He held David even tighter. It was impossible for David to move without Moody cutting into his throat. “Drop your guns right now. All of you.”

“Okay,” Jed said. He was running out of ideas. “Just stay calm.”

“Now!” Moody yelled. “Right now. Three . . . two . . .”

Before Jed even started to unbuckle his gun belt, he heard the sound of metal sliding out of leather, then a gunshot. In that same instant a hole opened up in Moody’s forehead. His body went limp instantly, the knife slipping from his hand and then dropping to the floor. David bolted away from Moody.

For a few seconds Moody stood there, his face slack, his eyes glazed over already. A trickle of blood leaked out from the bullet hole in his forehead along with a tiny wisp of smoke drifting up.

The back of Moody’s head had exploded with the gunshot, the blankets behind him sprayed with a splattering of blood, hair, and bits of bone and brain. Some of the gore dripping down Moody’s back plopped down onto the floor right behind him. And then Moody collapsed like some invisible strings holding him up had just been cut. His legs splayed out and he fell forward, his arms straight out to the sides, his face hitting the floor with a sickening crunch. The back of his head looked like bloody hamburger with jagged shards of skull sticking up through the hair.

“David!” Esmerelda yelled as she ran across the room to him. She hugged him, but then pushed him back and checked his throat.

Jed was right beside Esmerelda a moment later. The wound on David’s throat looked like a red line with just a few spots of blood dripping from it, but it wasn’t deep enough to be concerned about. A sudden anger welled up inside of Jed as he turned to Sanchez who still had his pistol in his hand.

“I had to do it,” Sanchez said, his eyes wide as he stared right at Jed. “We couldn’t give our guns to Moody. He was going to kill the boy anyway.”

Jed stared at Sanchez, saying nothing, fuming.

“He is right,” Billy said.

“You might’ve missed,” Jed told Sanchez.

Sanchez gave the slightest of shrugs, but he still kept his pistol steady and his eyes on Jed. “I might have, but I didn’t.”

Jed knew he should demand Sanchez’s gun right at that moment as a U.S. Marshal, but he also knew that he no longer had any authority as a marshal. They were all in this together now; there were no laws or jurisdictions anymore, just survival.

“Are we good?” Sanchez asked.

Jed nodded. He had to admit that Sanchez had done the right thing, and he could also admit to himself that as good of a shot as he was, he never could’ve made the same shot Sanchez had just made. “Yes, you did the right thing.”

CHAPTER 34

Jed and Sanchez rolled Moody’s body onto a blanket. Billy opened the saloon doors and stepped outside to cover them with the shotgun as they dragged Moody’s body out onto the walkway. They dragged him to the far corner of the walkway, near the edge of it by the street, leaving him in the same place they had left Karl’s body.

Jed covered Moody’s body with the rest of the blanket as best he could. He stood up and looked up the street towards the church. There was no one in front of the church, no one anywhere that he could see. The sun was setting the horizon on fire with bands of red, yellow, and orange.

They went back into the saloon. Esmerelda had lit the lanterns in the wall sconces, and the two lanterns they had been carrying around with them. She had already balled up the other blanket that Moody’s blood had splattered, and it was now stuffed into a corner in the back room.

“I will need some paint,” Billy said.

They all looked at him.

“I need to paint some . . .” He tried to think of the right word in English. “Some symbols.”

“I think I saw a few cans of paint in the storeroom,” Jed said.

Jed and Billy searched the storeroom, but all they could find was a small can of red paint and a frayed paintbrush. “It will have to do,” Billy said.

Billy set the can of paint and the brush on the floor near the saloon doors. He walked back to the table with his knife out of the sheath, gripping it in his hand.

“What’s the knife for, Billy?” Esmerelda asked nervously.

“I need to take a piece of David’s hair. I need to cut a piece for all of us.”

David looked scared.

Jed nodded at David. “It’s okay.”

Billy walked over to David. The boy was tense as Billy took the end of David’s long hair in his hand and cut off a small hunk of it. He handed the piece of hair to Esmerelda. “Keep this on you somewhere,” he told her.

He cut off more small hunks of hair, handing one to Sanchez and the other to Jed. He cut the last piece of the hair off for himself and stuffed the hair into the silver charm on his necklace that opened up. He twisted the charm back into place and holstered his knife on his belt.

Billy said something in Navajo to David that Jed couldn’t understand, and then he motioned at David to follow him. They walked over to the saloon doors. Esmerelda brought them a lantern as Billy emptied a few herbs into a bowl from a leather pouch he pulled out from one of his coat pockets. “I do not have everything I need,” Billy said. “But I will have to use what I have.” He lit the herbs in the bowl on fire and dipped the brush in the can of red paint. David sat on his knees, watching Billy work. As Billy started painting the first of the symbols on the wood floor, he began talking to David in Navajo, his words rambling on and on. David only said a few words back to Billy every so often, nodding at other times, his eyes on the older man the entire time.

*

Hours later Jed sat at the table with Esmerelda and Sanchez. Esmerelda had brought them another pot of strong coffee and poured some into all of their cups. David had listened to Billy as he painted his symbols on the saloon doors and the floor, but now he was exhausted and lying on a blanket.

“He needs to rest now,” Billy had said when David went to lie down. “He needs to enter the dream world to learn more.”

Now Billy sat alone near the saloon doors. He was down on his knees, his eagle feather in his fingers, waving the feather around slowly. Billy told them that he was going to perform something he called the Blessing Way ceremony, but he was also going to perform another ceremony called the Enemy Way.

Would it help? Jed wasn’t sure, but he found himself oddly comforted by the low sounds of Billy’s chanting. He looked from Billy to David, watching him for a moment as he slept. He wondered why a child would be saddled with this kind of power and responsibility.

Sanchez was toying with the gold crucifix around his neck as he sipped his coffee.

Jed looked at Esmerelda. “Can you shoot a shotgun?”

“Just point and shoot,” she said with a small smile.

“It’s got a kick to it.”

Esmerelda nodded. “I’ve shot one before. Purvis showed me how.”

Jed didn’t bother asking Esmerelda who Purvis was. “You’ll use the shotgun when the time comes. I found another box of shotgun shells in Moody’s office. Billy can use Karl’s gun.” Jed had his Colt .45, and of course Sanchez had his pair of expensive pistols.

“So that’s the plan?” Esmerelda asked. “Just shoot at them until we run out of bullets?”

Jed shrugged. “Maybe each of us should save a bullet for ourselves.”

No one said anything for a moment.

“I don’t want to be one of those things out there,” Jed explained. “I don’t want to be kept alive and made to do those things.”

“Their spirits have moved on,” Billy said.

Jed whirled around in his chair. He hadn’t heard Billy walk up to the table; he hadn’t even realized that he had stopped chanting.

“They are not alive anymore,” Billy said.

“I agree,” Esmerelda added. “I don’t think anyone out there is alive anymore. I can’t . . . I can’t feel anything from them except . . .” She hesitated.

“Except what?” Jed asked her.

“Nothing except darkness from them. A void. Nothingness. But there’s something else out there, an evil like I’ve never felt before.”

“Like the devil,” Sanchez said, still rubbing his crucifix with two fingers.

“They’re just empty bodies now,” Esmerelda said. “Empty shells to be filled with that thing’s evil. They are puppets in every sense of the word. That thing controls all of them, bits of itself inside each one of them. It wants us to believe they are still alive and suffering. It wants us terrified of being trapped between life and death, but it’s all a lie. Billy’s right, everyone out there is already dead.”

“We don’t save a bullet for ourselves,” Sanchez said. “We all fight to the death.”

Jed felt a twinge of anger at Sanchez’s words, feeling slighted in some way like Sanchez was calling him a coward for suggesting that they take themselves out. Saving a bullet for oneself had been a common practice for some time now instead of being captured alive by a tribe like the Apache or Comanche. A bullet in the brain was much preferable to a torturous death that could last for days or even weeks.

But Jed let his anger slip away. He held Sanchez’s stare for a moment and then nodded. “Then we fight. We use every last bullet.”

“I want to see my family again,” Sanchez said. “I want to go back home to Mexico and see my mother and father again, and my brothers. But I came here on this adventure knowing that I may not make it back, knowing that I could die at any time.” He shrugged. “I’m ready to die if it comes to that.”

Sanchez had already been facing a certain death swinging from the hangman’s noose in Smith Junction, Jed thought. Even if none of this would have happened here in this town and Jed had turned Sanchez in, he could see that Sanchez would not have gone to his death kicking and screaming, crying and begging. He pictured Sanchez on his walk to the gallows through an angry crowd of townspeople, Sanchez stoic and calm as people shouted and spat at him. He could imagine Sanchez climbing the gallows steps with his back straight and head held high above the hatred, not willing to make a fool of himself in front of the crowd, not willing to give them that satisfaction.

Billy went back to his lantern near the front door and the bowl of herbs that was still smoking and sending a slightly pungent odor their way. He crouched down with his eagle feather again, chanting softly.

“I guess you found your adventure,” Esmerelda told Sanchez, drawing Jed’s attention back to them.

Sanchez smiled at her. “My father is a very wealthy man, as was his father before him. My family owns ranches, farms, and mines. We employ hundreds of people. I am to inherit that fortune, along with my brothers. But first, I wanted to travel and find adventure before I found a woman to marry and settle down in that life.”

“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?” Jed asked.

Sanchez took a sip of coffee, taking his time before he answered. “When I was seventeen years old, my father hired a gringo to help protect him. The man was tall and thin. He looked like he was maybe forty years old. He didn’t look . . . what’s the word I’m looking for?”

“Intimidating?” Esmerelda offered.

Sanchez snapped his fingers and smiled. “That’s the word. He didn’t look intimidating, but there was this darkness about the man, something that made men shrink back without knowing what it really was. It was like everyone could tell that this gringo was dangerous, and that he had seen death. Not only seen death, but dealt it out many times during his life. I saw him practicing with his pistol one day and I approached him. I had heard rumors that the gringo used to be a lawman and a gunslinger before, and the way he was shooting, I could believe it. Some of my father’s men even said there was a bounty on the gringo’s head. But of course none of my father’s workers would dare cross my father by turning the gringo in, so he knew he was safe. He was an important man to my father, traveling with my father to protect him like a . . .” Again, Sanchez searched for the right word.

“Like a bodyguard,” Esmerelda said.

Sanchez smiled, bowing his head slightly. “That’s it exactly. Like a bodyguard. I was around the gringo often, and I asked him to teach me to shoot like he did. Of course he said no, but eventually my father allowed the gringo to teach me to shoot. But the gringo told me that he would only teach me if I agreed to one condition—I had to promise that I would only use my skill for good and self-defense. I made the promise and the gringo taught me and my brothers. My brothers grew bored quickly, but I was . . . fascinated. Obsessed. I listened to the gringo’s stories about his adventures in many places, from Texas to Montana. He told me stories about the famous lawmen he had worked with. And he told other stories of robberies and gunfights. Those stories seemed like fairy tales to me, beyond belief, but I told myself that I would one day travel north to see those lands and have those kinds of adventures.”

Jed was getting an idea of who the old man might be, but it couldn’t be possible, could it? “What was the gringo’s name?” he asked Sanchez. “Was his name Dave Mather? Mysterious Dave Mather?”

Sanchez smiled and shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter now, does it? The name he used in Mexico wasn’t his real name.”

“Who’s Mysterious Dave Mather?” Esmerelda asked.

“He was a lawman in Montana and Kansas,” Jed said. “He even worked with Wyatt Earp for a short time. But he was also a gunslinger and a criminal. Many claimed he got away with a lot of crimes through the years. He jumped bail around ’85 and was never heard from again.” Jed looked right at Sanchez.

Sanchez just smiled. “I kept my promise to the gringo,” he said like he was trying to change the subject. “I only used my skills for self-defense.”

Jed stared at him. He knew Sanchez wasn’t going to admit to who the gringo really was down in Mexico. Maybe the man was still there under the employ of his father. “What really happened in that shootout in Smith Junction?”

Sanchez sighed. He gave a wave of his hand. “What does it matter now?”

“Tell us,” Esmerelda implored.

Jed waited.

“A man was going to kill me,” Sanchez said.

“Why?” Jed asked him.

“For just being Mexican,” Sanchez answered. “He wanted my pistols. My boots. My silver coins. He wanted anything of value I had. He said a filthy Mexican didn’t deserve to have the things I had. He insulted me, and I challenged him on it.” Sanchez paused for a moment. “The man was drunk, but he took my challenge. We stepped out into the street. It was over in a few seconds. But the townspeople rushed at me, many of them already yelling that I had killed the man in cold blood. Others were running to get the sheriff and his deputies. My horse was nearby. I had no choice but to ride away. I rode east for a few days, staying in some small towns, and then camping out in the desert. I waited a few weeks until I was sure I had thrown them off my trail, and then I started heading south. And that’s when that sandstorm came. I saw this town on the horizon and here I am now.”

Jed nodded. “Yes, here we are now.”

CHAPTER 35

A few hours later Sanchez was asleep on his blanket. Jed wasn’t sure how the man could sleep when they might only have a few more hours of life left, but he was breathing deeply, curled up on his side, facing away from the table. David was still asleep. Even Billy looked like he had fallen asleep even though he was still sitting up on the floor. His head was slumped forward and he had stopped chanting. His bowl of herbs had burned out hours ago, but his lantern was still lit.

Jed took another sip of his coffee. It was cold, but it still tasted good and strong. The other lantern they had was sitting on top of the bar, lighting up that side of the saloon just a little, the lantern’s glow reflecting back at him from the mirror behind the bar. Esmerelda had stoked the wood stove before lying down on her blanket to try to get some sleep. The stove was still burning, but it didn’t seem to put out much heat. The rest of the saloon was swallowed up in darkness, the stairs just a shadow, the back room shrouded in impenetrable blackness. Everything was quiet; the only sounds were the heavy breathing and the occasional popping and creaking of the wood floors and walls. But at least there were no rustling sounds of movement from upstairs or any sounds from outside.

For a moment Jed thought that he might actually be asleep and dreaming all of this. Maybe the Ancient Enemy had put another sleeping spell on all of them. Maybe he was dreaming of being awake and sitting at this table right now. The thought of it terrified him for a reason he couldn’t explain, like he was helpless against those gods waiting out there—the Ancient Enemy, or maybe it was Billy’s Great Spirit, or Sanchez’s Christian God, or Esmerelda’s spiritual beliefs.

Jed took another sip of coffee just to prove to himself that he was still awake and in full control of his actions.

A shifting of cloth from the blankets alerted Jed. A moment later Esmerelda walked towards the table from the darkness. She sat down across from him. She looked tired, but still beautiful.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked her in a low voice.

She shook her head. “I guess you can’t, either.”

Jed shrugged. “I felt like I was close to nodding off a few times.”

They were quiet for a few minutes.

“You want some coffee?” Jed asked her.

She shook her head no.

Jed wanted to ask Esmerelda a question, and he could feel the urge building up inside of him. She had been looking towards the bar, deep in thought, but then she looked right at him like she was waiting patiently for him to speak.

“Was it true what Moody said?” he asked.

Esmerelda stared at him without answering.

“Moody said you didn’t read our futures because you already knew we didn’t have a future.”

“I . . . I don’t know. I haven’t read the cards.”

“You—”

“I don’t want to read them,” she said, cutting off his words.

Jed remained quiet.

Esmerelda’s face softened a little. “I’m sorry.”

“But you don’t have any feelings about what’s going to happen?” he asked, pressing. He needed to know. “You haven’t had any dreams or anything like that?”

Esmerelda didn’t answer for a long moment. She finally inhaled a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “I don’t see anything,” she finally said and shrugged. “I don’t feel anything.”

“So that means—”

“I didn’t say that,” she interrupted. “It just means that I feel like my . . . my senses are blocked somehow. I don’t know if that thing out there is interfering with my sense or not. Or maybe David might be interfering. Although he wouldn’t know it, just like he doesn’t know how he’s doing so many other things. Or maybe it’s both of them.” She let out a frustrated sigh.

Jed didn’t push any further. He took another sip of his coffee. His eyes burned like sand had been rubbed into them.

“I was just dreaming before I woke up,” Esmerelda said.

Jed stared at her, waiting for her to continue.

She glanced back at Sanchez and David like she was making sure they were still asleep, then she looked over at Billy who was still seated cross-legged on the floor, his head slumped forward, his hands in his lap. “I can’t explain the dreams,” she said when she looked back at Jed. “I saw strange things. I think they might have been from the future.”

“Our future?”

She shook her head no. “The far future. I saw what looked like these metal carriages that drove by themselves.”

Jed had heard rumors of inventors trying to put engines onto carriages and on bicycles, but he felt that kind of technology wouldn’t happen in his lifetime, maybe not even for another hundred years.

“And I saw flying machines,” Esmerelda said. “Metal machines. Like big metal pie plates in the sky.”

Jed just nodded, not knowing what to say.

“The dream was just bits and pieces,” she said. “None of it really made any sense. It moved from image to image. I saw a woman and a man. I think the man may have been some kind of outlaw. He had a gun, but his gun looked different.”

Jed didn’t interrupt her—she seemed like she was leading up to something.

“David was there.”

“In your dream?”

“Yes. He was with the man and the woman.”

“What were they doing?”

“They were scared. They were in a log cabin. And then the man and woman were in a small house in the jungle without David. The house was near the ocean. But even though David wasn’t there anymore, it wasn’t like he was dead.” She paused for just a second, staring at Jed. “You remember those names we saw written in blood in the dining hall?”

Jed nodded. He remembered.

“Cole and Stella,” Esmerelda said. “I think the man and woman I saw in the dream were Cole and Stella. I don’t know how that’s possible, but it felt so real in the dream. It still feels so real.”

“So you think those names on the wall are two people from the future?” Jed asked.

Esmerelda shook her head slightly, growing frustrated. “I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t make any sense. There were these feelings I had in the dream, feelings of darkness. I can’t remember exactly, but I think I saw a glimpse into a different world, a world so strange that if I stared at it too long I would go mad. That’s when I woke up.”

Esmerelda was trembling now.

Jed moved closer to her. He put his arm around her and it seemed to calm her down a little. “It was just a dream,” he told her, not knowing what else to say.

She nodded.

“How about that cup of coffee now?” he asked her.

Again, she nodded.

Jed got up and walked to the stove. He grabbed a ceramic cup and poured some coffee for her. He brought it back and set it down in front of her.

“Thank you,” she whispered and took a sip.

Jed sat back down in his chair, the wood creaking a little from his weight. “Who’s Purvis?”

Esmerelda smiled. “Oh, that was a few years ago.”

Jed waited—all they had right now was time.

“I grew up in Philadelphia,” she told him.

“I figured you were from back east.”

She nodded. “My mother died when I was very young. I barely remember her. According to my father, my mother was a medium and she could contact the spirits. He saw that same ability in me when I was a child, and he decided to profit off of it like he had done with my mother. We went from town to town, up and down the east coast. My father charged a pretty hefty fee for my services.”

Esmerelda paused for a moment like the rest of her story was difficult to tell. “I couldn’t always just summon my powers at will. After a few embarrassing séances, my father beat me. He never touched my face or hands, only places where the ‘rubes,’ as he liked to call them, couldn’t see my bruises. He told me that if I couldn’t see the rubes’ dead relatives, then I needed to learn how to make things up. Over the next few years I became adept at questioning the rubes and deciphering the clues they unknowingly gave me. Most times, if the questions were just right, the rubes would tell me everything I needed to know. I would ask a leading question and they would give me the answers that I needed.”

“But sometimes you could really contact the dead,” Jed said.

Esmerelda shrugged. “Sometimes. Not as often as my father would’ve liked or as much as he professed to people.”

“When you do contact the dead,” Jed started, and then his throat closed up a little. “What do they say to you?”

Esmerelda stared at him. “Clara.”

He nodded. “My wife. She died five years ago. She got sick for a few weeks. It got harder and harder for her to breathe. I . . . I tried everything I could think of. The doc tried everything. I was ready to haul her in the wagon up to Denver or down to Santa Fe if I needed to, anywhere where someone might know how to save her.”

“I’m sorry,” Esmerelda whispered.

“We never had any children. We always wanted children, especially Clara, but we just never did.” He took another sip of his coffee. “I used to be a god-fearing man. Used to believe. After Clara died . . .” He let his words hang in the cold air. “But now. After the things I’ve seen these last few days, there must be something.”

“There is,” she told him. She touched his hand, laying her small hand over his big one, her smooth skin touching his rough skin, her pale flesh contrasting his tanned flesh.

The touch from her felt good, and Jed was quiet again. He found it difficult to articulate what he wanted to say, that he had turned his back on God, on any supernatural things in the world. He realized now that he had been traveling through the world blind these last five years, blinded from reality by his grief and anger.

“The dead come to me from the light,” Esmerelda said as she pulled her hand away from his.

Jed stared at her.

“They’re in a good place,” she told him with a smile. There were unshed tears forming in her eyes. “There’s this feeling around them of warmth and safety. Of happiness. They want to see their families again, their loved ones, but they know that they will be with them soon enough.”

Jed was tempted to ask Esmerelda to contact Clara, but she just said that her powers were blocked right now. It made him feel good that the spirits she contacted were in a happy and safe place; it gave him an odd sense of hope that he might see Clara again in that place.

“Was Purvis your father?” Jed asked.

“No. I left my father when I was eighteen years old. He was getting more and more abusive. Drinking more—among his many other bad habits. He threatened to kill me if I ever left him, but I went far enough away so that he could never find me. My father controlled all of the money we made, but I managed to save up some over the years, hiding my stash until I had enough to leave. I’m sure it angered him that his source of income had abandoned him. I’m sure it also scared him, and I relished that fact. I could imagine him riding from place to place, asking everyone about me, his mind frantic as he wondered where the money was going to come from now, the money that he’d never bothered to save, the money that he had squandered on card games and prostitutes and drinking. Nothing left to show for it.”

Esmerelda took a sip of her coffee, thinking for a moment. “No,” she finally said. “Purvis came later. I made it as far as Ohio on the money I had saved. I started doing the only thing I knew how to do, giving readings and séances. After a few months I got the itch to move farther west, afraid that somehow my father would track me down. I met a man named Purvis at one of my readings. He was amazed at my ability, and he seemed fascinated with me. He was at least fifteen years older than I was, but he was handsome and dashing in his own way. He ran a traveling carnival and invited me to go with him. They were working their way to California. That sounded good to me—California seemed to be just about as far as I could get from Philadelphia. But as soon as we reached the next town, I realized that Purvis was not the man he pretended to be. I had joined a traveling carnival with a man just like my father. Worse than my father. He beat me. Abused me. Raped me. He kept all of the money that I made while I did as many showings as possible as we moved from town to town. Purvis went a few steps beyond my father. He rigged the table to shake and ectoplasm to form in the air around me. It became a theater show then, not spiritual contact anymore. Again, like history was repeating itself, I saved any tips I got until I had enough to leave. On the night I left, I stole more money from Purvis—money that was rightfully mine—and then I rode a horse into town. A woman at a hotel helped me get a stagecoach the next day. The stagecoach was headed for Denver, but I wouldn’t have cared where it was heading as long as it wasn’t east again. I had still planned to go to California from Denver even though Purvis’ traveling show was heading to California.”

“But you didn’t make it there,” Jed said.

“No,” Esmerelda sighed. “I ran out of money and ended up here. I started working with Moody, helping him with his saloon and hotel, mostly cooking and cleaning the rooms. I even started doing readings again, but I wasn’t going to part with all of my money this time. I only gave Moody his fair share.”

She stopped like she’d seen a reaction on Jed’s face that she didn’t like.

“Moody was nothing like Purvis or my father. He took his share and never treated me with anything but respect. That madman you saw, that wasn’t Moody. I just wanted you to know that.”

Jed nodded.

“This town had been thriving when I first got here, before the mines dried up. There were rumors of the railroad laying tracks through here, but those rumors died along with the mines.”

“Do you still want to go to California?” Jed asked.

Esmerelda nodded. “Yes, I would. I would love to see Los Angeles and San Francisco. Travel up the coast all the way to Canada. I’ve been saving the money I made here, waiting for the right time to leave.”

“Maybe you’ll still get your chance to see California,” Jed told her.

But Esmerelda didn’t look so sure about that.

CHAPTER 36

Jed snapped awake. He was still sitting at the table, leaning to the side in his chair, his chin on his fist. He had fallen asleep sitting at the table. It wasn’t morning yet, still dark. Very dark. Only the lantern at the bar was still lit, but the flame was low and it looked ready to wink out at any moment. Jed could barely make out the sleeping forms of David, Esmerelda, and Sanchez on the blankets.

Esmerelda must have gone back to sleep, but Jed couldn’t remember exactly when she had left the table. Had he fallen asleep in front of her? The last thing he could remember was that they were drinking coffee and talking. She had been telling him about her childhood, and then the traveling carnival with Purvis. And then . . .

He couldn’t remember anything after that. Maybe he had fallen asleep, drifted off right in this chair.

Something had roused him from sleep, but he wasn’t sure what it had been. Maybe a noise. A noise from outside. He felt jittery, his skin crawling, a nervous pit of nausea in his stomach, his mouth dry.

He was afraid of something in the darkness, he was sure of that. He looked over at the stairs, barely making out the sharp incline of the railing in the dark.

A noise outside the saloon startled him—it was like something had scraped against one of the windows, like tree branches scratching at the glass. His hand flew to the butt of his pistol as he turned around in his chair, staring at the saloon doors.

Footsteps out on the walkway, just beyond those doors. But those couldn’t be someone’s footsteps, they were too heavy. It sounded like a horse was walking around out there, but a horse on two legs—something massive with hooves. The footsteps were slow and deliberate, the sound thundering in through the glass of the windows and the doors.

The scratching noise was at the windows again, and then there was a scratching sound at the wood, like gigantic claws were pawing at the wood siding.

Jed looked back at the blankets again. None of them had moved in their sleep.

He got up and hurried to the bar, grabbing the only lantern left that was still lit. He brought it with him as he walked towards the saloon doors that swam out of the darkness the closer he got to them with the light.

When he was a few feet away from the saloon doors, the noises were louder, more frenzied. The locked doorknobs jiggled slightly, like someone was testing them.

It wasn’t supposed to come for us until sunup, Jed thought. It told us we had until sunup.

He went towards the window instead of the door, about to peek out and see what was out there, but Billy popped up in front of him, his face blank, his eyes cold, his breath warm and rotten. “Do not look out there,” Billy told him.

Jed froze in mid-step.

For just a moment Jed thought Billy was dead. He thought Billy had been killed in the night and now that thing was inside of him, controlling him. Jed’s fingers twitched, and he was ready to draw his pistol.

“If you look at it,” Billy continued in his low, monotone voice, “if you see what it truly looks like, you will go crazy.”

Jed took a step back from Billy. He heard a noise from the saloon doors and then saw a movement underneath them. Something long, thin, and black was wriggling underneath the door, squeezing in through the cracks like a flattened snake. The snakelike thing squirmed farther inside, thrashing from side to side on the floor for a moment and then rising up like a cobra. But it wasn’t a snake—there were no eyes, nose, or mouth, just a black shape that seemed to change form as soon as it was inside the saloon, growing bigger and rounder now.

“What is that?” Jed whispered to Billy. “Is that what the Ancient Enemy really looks like?”

“Only a small part of it,” Billy answered. “It is always changing.”

Both of them stepped back. Billy had his lantern in his hand, but the flame had been out for a while now. The wick in Jed’s lamp was very low. They needed to get the lamps lit again.

Jed heard sounds in the darkness behind them.

“What is it?” Esmerelda asked.

Jed turned and looked at her. He handed Esmerelda his lantern while keeping his right hand on the butt of his Colt, ready to draw at any moment if he needed to. “We need to get these lit.”

Esmerelda took Jed’s lantern, but her eyes had shifted to the tentacle flailing around underneath the doors. Another thinner tentacle had joined the first one, both of them whipping around blindly. The heavy footsteps still thudded from outside, stomping around on the walkway out there with no discernable pattern. The scraping at the wood walls and the windows was getting faster and louder.

“That’s . . . that’s what it looks like?” Esmerelda asked as she stared at the tentacles, but it sounded more like a statement than a question.

“Go,” Jed told her.

Sanchez hurried up to them, his body tense. He was ready to draw his guns, his eyes sharp even though he’d just woken up. “Is it dawn already?”

Jed shrugged. “Sun might be coming up now.”

Esmerelda stopped at the table on her way to the bar to check Moody’s pocket watch they had left there. She picked up the watch and brought it up close to the lantern so she could see it. “It’s dawn,” she told them. “Close enough, anyway.”

“We need to have some more light,” Jed told Esmerelda, trying not to shout at her. The lamp was almost out now and she stood in the little circle of light now, almost everything else in the saloon had faded away into darkness the farther she moved away with the dim light. Jed didn’t want to be trapped in this saloon in the dark, not with those tentacles thrashing around, pushing their way in more and more, whipping themselves against the bottom of the door where Billy had carefully painted his symbols.

David went with Esmerelda to the bar as she lit the two lanterns. She also lighted the ones on the wall behind the bar.

Now that it was brighter in the saloon, Jed looked back at the saloon doors. The two thin tentacles were still flailing around, and now they glistened in the light like they were coated with some kind of mucus—the film on the tentacles reminded Jed of the mucus Karl had thrown up with all of the tarantulas in it.

“The symbols,” Sanchez said as he stared at the saloon doors. The doors and the floor in front of it were covered in ancient writing that Billy had painted there.

“Those symbols aren’t working,” Jed said, glancing at Billy.

“Maybe they keep it from coming all the way in,” Billy said, defending his ceremony.

All of the noises outside stopped. The tentacles pulled back, disappearing underneath the door, back outside again. Everything was quiet for a moment.

“The boy,” a voice called from right outside the saloon doors. “Kill the boy!” It was Moody’s voice.

Sanchez drew his guns, lightning-quick.

“Wait,” Billy told Sanchez.

Sanchez cocked both pistols.

A loud crash came from upstairs. It sounded like the intertwined bodies of Rose and the cowboy had just torn free from the ropes and fallen out of the bed.

They all looked up at the ceiling.

Footsteps stomped across the hotel room floor above them.

“It’s coming,” Jed told them.

“Quick,” Esmerelda said as she reached for Jed. “We need to hold hands. We need to make a circle with David in the middle.”

The crashing from upstairs was louder now. The thing was busting through the door they had barricaded with the slats of wood.

Jed took Esmerelda’s hand and then he held Billy’s hand. Billy grabbed Sanchez’s hand after he had holstered his pistols. Sanchez grabbed Esmerelda’s hand, and now they formed a complete circle. It was like they were playing some kind of children’s game with David in the middle.

“We pray now,” Esmerelda told them, yelling over the sounds of the thumps and crashes coming from upstairs and outside.

“Kill the boy!” Moody’s voice screamed at them from outside.

Other voices were joining in with Moody as he chanted, only a few of the dead townspeople at first.

“Kill the boy!”

“Kill the boy!” More voices were joining in now outside the saloon doors.

“Kill the boy!” The whole town was yelling now, chanting the same three words over and over again.

The thumping sounds were in the upstairs hallway now—the door had broken free and the monstrosity was working its way to the top of the stairs.

“Kill the boy!”

One of the front windows shattered, then the other one. Arms reached in through the broken windows, hands grabbing at the air, hands formed into claws. Bodies thudded against the saloon doors, the weight of the bodies about to force the doors open.

“Kill the boy!”

Jed looked at Esmerelda—her eyes were squeezed tight, and she was whispering. Billy and Sanchez were doing the same thing in their own faiths. Jed looked down at David and locked eyes with the frightened boy.

God, Jed thought. Save us if you can, but please save David. Please let David live.

CHAPTER 37

“We’ve done enough praying,” Jed said, pulling his hands out of Esmerelda’s hand and Billy’s hand. “Now it’s time to fight.” He turned toward the saloon doors and drew his Colt, cocking it.

The monstrosity from upstairs was halfway down the steps now, still hidden in the early-morning shadows. As it descended, it was somehow untwisting itself back into two bodies, flesh pulling apart, skin stretching and snapping, blood oozing, bones and joints popping—the thing was forming back into two separate people, back into Rose and the cowboy, but now their bodies were shredded mounds of gore with blood running down the stairs like a river—yet the abominations were somehow still maneuvering down the steps.

The saloon doors gave way, crashing open. Wood splintered and glass shattered.

“You can’t have him!” Jed yelled at the approaching horde of the dead. A stench of rotting flesh and dried blood drifted towards him like a cloud of dust.

The pastor was the first one through the saloon doors, the whole town behind him, others crawling in through the broken windows, crawling right over the jagged shards of glass and pieces of broken wood, pushing the table tops away that blocked their way.

“One last chance,” the pastor said as he waited in front of the dozens of dead and mutilated people behind him. “Kill the boy.”

Jed didn’t bother glancing to his right and left, or at David behind him. He heard the windows in the back room and in Moody’s office shattering, wood splintering. The other dead townspeople were crawling in through those windows, pushing the tables away that were barricaded there. Jed kept his eyes on the pastor, his gun aimed right at the dead man’s chest. “No,” Jed told him. “We won’t kill David.”

The pastor’s smile slipped, his face blank for just a moment. All of the dead people had stopped, frozen for a moment in their tracks, all of their expressions blank. Then the pastor smiled, the corners of his mouth jerking up violently. “Then we will kill all of you. We will find others to kill the boy. We always have before.”

The pastor rushed at them, the others following.

Esmerelda was facing towards the back of the saloon. The ones who had gotten in through those windows were rushing towards her. She fired the shotgun at the closest man, the blast blowing off the lower half of one of his legs. The man fell forward, crashing down to the floor, but he began to crawl towards Esmerelda, leaving a trail of dark blood behind him.

Billy shot at the two things that used to be Rose and the cowboy. They were almost unrecognizable now, just shuddering mounds of flesh and snapped bones—they looked like they had been turned inside out. Billy emptied the bullets from Karl’s gun into those two things, but the bullets didn’t slow them down. He dropped the gun and pulled the eagle feather from his hat, waving it in front of him, chanting and singing, preparing for his journey into the next world.

Sanchez fired all of the bullets in both of his guns in less than ten seconds. They were all clean headshots that rocked the targets back. But those bullets didn’t kill them. The dead snapped their heads forward again and they kept coming.

Jed shot six times into the pastor’s head, blowing part of his face away. But he kept coming.

This was it, Jed thought. The dead were all around them now, reaching for them, about to tear them apart. He could try to reload his gun with the bullets in his belt, but why bother? They were seconds away from death now, all of them in a circle around David, but with their backs to David now, protecting him as best they could in these last few seconds.

“No!” David screamed and ran out from their circle, standing in front of Jed and Billy.

The dead stopped, some of them collapsing, their bodies contorting as things moved underneath their skin. A wind seemed to build up around them, spinning around them, Jed could feel the force of the wind blasting them. The dead seemed to be trying to back up, but it was like they couldn’t move.

David stood in front of Jed, his body trembling, his eyes rolling back in his head. Filaments were being pulled out of the townspeople’s bodies like iron filings being drawn towards a magnet.

Everything around them began to swirl, everything around them turning into a blur, like they were all in the middle of a huge tornado.

Esmerelda held Jed back as he tried to move forward to help David. “No,” she whispered into his ear. “We can’t help him. Not anymore. Let him do this.”

The black snake-like tendrils were pulled out of the people, the tendrils collapsing into black shapes that were constantly changing. The tendrils swirled around them like black streaks in the air, twisting and turning, intertwining with each other, trying to form shapes, trying to form arms and hands with claws, faces with open mouths of sharp teeth. But the shapes didn’t hold for long, disappearing back into the black ooze that swirled all around them in the air, moving up and over them, forming over top of them like some rapidly spinning dark cloud.

“Look,” Sanchez said, backing away.

Underneath David, a black space was opening in the floor. It looked like a black circle at first, then a deep hole. He stood over that hole like he was floating above the darkness. The spinning mass of darkness, the Ancient Enemy in front of him, was floating towards David as he stared at it, his hair blowing around, his mouth opening wide, his eyes entirely white now, the pupils gone. David levitated up above the black hole in the floor, that fathomless void. As he rose up higher into the air with his arms out wide, the black mass of the Ancient Enemy lowered down to meet him, beginning to swirl around David.

The thing screeched and screamed as it swirled around David, the hole from the floor rising up to engulf both the Ancient Enemy and David. Now David could barely be seen, there was only a black ball of energy spinning around above the hole in the floor, crackling with blue lightning.

They backed away from the massive spinning ball, from the crackling lightning, from the screeches that came from outside.

“David!” Jed yelled.

The ball of darkness was spinning faster and faster, but it was also getting smaller and smaller. It collapsed in on itself with a blinding flash of light, and then it was gone. The Ancient Enemy was gone.

David was gone.

*

Jed woke up. He didn’t know how much time had passed, but the saloon was much brighter with the morning light streaming in through the open doors and broken windows. He sat up on the floor and saw that Esmerelda was right beside him, still unconscious. Billy and Sanchez weren’t too far away, and both of them were beginning to wake up. Sanchez sat up and grabbed his pistols that were on the floor.

Esmerelda sat bolt-upright, drawing in a quick breath. All of them got to their feet and stared at the spot where David and the Ancient Enemy used to be. There was nothing there now, no void, no hole in the floor, no black shapes, nothing.

“He’s gone,” Jed whispered. “Where did he go?”

Esmerelda didn’t answer.

Jed looked at the dead people piled up inside the saloon, many of them heaped together and blocking the doorway. A few of them were stuck in the windows, one of them folded over the window sill with his arms hanging down. But none of them were moving—they were all dead now.

“He saved us.” Esmerelda finally answered Jed’s question with tears running down her face.

Jed looked at the floor where David used to be, then he looked back at Esmerelda and the others. “He gave his life for us.”

CHAPTER 38

Jed had to walk over the dead bodies to get out through the saloon doors. Their bodies squished under Jed’s footsteps as he walked over top of them, some of them piled two or three high in the doorway. He didn’t want to walk over them, but he had no choice, and he prayed he wouldn’t trip or lose his balance. He made his way slowly, his boots sinking down into flesh. He slipped once, almost fell, but he was able to catch himself at the last second.

Once Jed was past the bulk of the dead bodies, he descended the wooden steps from the walkway down onto the dirt street. The two boys without their legs were out in the street, frozen in the action of crawling towards the steps—Karl’s boys.

As soon as Jed was in the middle of the street and far enough away from the bodies, he felt like he could breathe again. But even from this distance he could still smell the stench of blood, guts, piss, and shit.

The sun was above the horizon now, lighting up the world and driving the freezing night air away. He trembled as he stood in the wide dirt street, his pistol in his hand even though he couldn’t remember drawing it from his holster. He was still scared, still afraid that this wasn’t really over, afraid that the Ancient Enemy was tricking them, letting them believe they were safe for the moment, and then the bodies would stir, the dead would stand up, the monster would be back and they would have no protection now that David was gone.

He heard the noise from the saloon, turned that way and watched Sanchez step across the bodies with far more agility and grace than Jed had shown, stepping across the dead like he was hopping over exposed rocks in a creek bed.

“Where’s Esmerelda?” Jed asked Sanchez when he was out in the street with him.

“Billy’s with her. She’s still upset.”

Jed nodded. He was upset about David, too. He hadn’t wanted the boy to die. It had been his mission to protect David since the day he had found him, and he had failed at that mission. He stared back at the dead bodies jumbled up in front of the saloon’s doors and windows like a logjam. He looked at Sanchez.

Sanchez was tense, ready to go for his guns if Jed gave him a reason to.

“I’m not taking you in,” Jed said.

“You believe me?” Sanchez asked. “You believe that I shot that man in self-defense?”

Jed didn’t answer. He knew he was shirking his duties as a marshal now. He was thankful that Sanchez had helped them, thankful that Sanchez had shot Moody before he could slit David’s throat, even though David was gone now.

But it didn’t matter. He couldn’t outdraw Sanchez ten times out of ten, and he could see now that Sanchez was not going to let him get the jump on him again.

It was more than that, though. Jed felt old and tired. He felt different, fundamentally changed in these last few days. He didn’t want to be a marshal anymore, weary of the responsibility that weighed him down now, weary of the violence that came with the job.

Did he believe Sanchez? Yes, he did. But that wasn’t his decision to make—it was the court’s decision, a judge’s decision, a jury’s decision. Would Sanchez get a fair trial in Smith Junction, Arizona? Probably not.

Sanchez watched Jed.

“I believe you,” Jed finally said.

Sanchez relaxed a little.

“Let’s get some of these bodies out of the way of the doorway,” Jed said as he pulled a pair of gloves out of his pockets and pulled his bandana up over his face.

*

Sanchez helped Jed pull the bodies away from the saloon doors, pulling some of them farther down the walkway to the edges of it, rolling some of them down into the street. Flies were already beginning to swarm around the bodies. Lifeless eyes of dead people stared up at the sky, mouths open, stumps and wounds glistening with dried blood.

Even though it was still bitterly cold, Jed was beginning to sweat a little underneath his clothes from the work he’d done so far.

Now that the path was clear, Billy and Esmerelda left the saloon and walked out into the street.

“We can’t leave them like this,” Esmerelda said as she looked back at the scattering of bodies all over the walkway in front of the saloon, the floorboards stained dark reds and browns, the clouds of flies visible from where they stood.

“What are we supposed to do?” Jed asked. “Bury them? We’d be here for the next three days doing that. Ground’s probably frozen anyway.”

Esmerelda didn’t say anything. She looked up at the sky, noticing the buzzards that were circling. “We can’t just leave them out here to be picked apart. This wasn’t their fault.”

*

Jed and Sanchez helped Billy build a travois so they could drag the dead bodies to the church. It was the biggest building, the only one that could house all of the dead. It was a place where the dead had already been.

They searched a few of the buildings for supplies. In the livery they found some long, thin wooden poles they could use as the framing for their travois, and they pulled them up from the ground. The livery was empty—no sign of the horses; no dead horses or even any pieces of them. The horses were just gone.

After the travois was built, the three men took turns dragging a dead body or two (or sometimes just pieces) up to the church in two-man teams. As they did that, Esmerelda cleaned up the saloon as best she could and started packing bags of supplies to take with them when they left.

She went out back behind the saloon to the small house she rented and packed her own bag. There wasn’t much to take, just a few sets of clothes and shoes, the few photographs of her mother that she still had, and the stash of money she had been saving up over the last two years.

When she was back in the saloon, she finished packing the rest of their bags: one for each of them. In each bag she included a blanket, a bag of jerky, a canteen of water, a bottle of whiskey, coffee beans, a few pots and pans, matches, a metal plate, a tin coffee cup, a fork and knife. She set the bags by the door. They were a little heavy, but they would need everything in them when they left.

Once the job of filling up the church with the dead was done, they closed the doors and barred them shut with slats of wood. All four of them stood there in front of the church doors.

“Should we write something on the door?” Esmerelda suggested. “Some kind of explanation?”

“How are we supposed to explain what happened here?” Jed asked.

No one had an answer for him.

Billy walked down the street to the saloon. A few minutes later he was back with the can of red paint and the paint brush. He handed it to Esmerelda and said nothing. He just stared at her like he knew she would do the right thing.

Esmerelda dipped the paintbrush into the can and wrote words on the slats of wood barring the red doors shut: DEAD INSIDE.

She set the paint can down on the bed of gravel in front of the church steps.

“Explanation enough,” Sanchez said.

“They will probably just blame this on Indians,” Billy said.

Jed tried not to laugh, but the laughter came out. It wasn’t funny in the least and he didn’t know why he was laughing. A few seconds later Esmerelda and Sanchez joined him in his laughter. Even Billy chuckled at his own joke, but his eyes said that he hadn’t been joking.

Jed wiped at his eyes and looked up at the sky. It was only an hour and a half away from dusk now—they wouldn’t have much light left to travel by. “We’d better get going,” he told them.

*

Jed knew it was going to be a long walk, and the four of them had only made it a few miles outside of Hope’s End before they had to make camp for the night. They had plans to head in different directions tomorrow, but tonight they would stay together.

They built a fire and ate some jerky and drank coffee. The fire was warm, but not as comforting as it should have been.

“I’m going back to my family,” Sanchez told them after they were all quiet for a while. He’d never taken his gun belt off the whole time, and Jed was sure that had as much to do with him as any other threat out here. “I’ve had my share of adventure now. I’m ready to go back home.”

Jed smiled and nodded. “I think I’ve had my share of adventure, too.”

Esmerelda watched Jed, staring at him in that strange way that made him feel like she was reading his mind.

Jed tore his eyes away from Esmerelda and looked at Billy. “What about you?”

Billy stroked the silver charm hanging from his leather necklace, the charm that held the lock of David’s hair inside. Jed knew that Billy would always keep that silver charm with David’s hair in it, just like Jed knew he would always keep the photograph of David and his family with him.

“I am going home too,” Billy said, but he didn’t expound on it.

*

Jed took the first watch while the others slept, but at some point he must’ve surrendered to pure exhaustion, nodding off during the night.

He woke with a start about an hour before dawn. He knew something was wrong as soon as he sat up. The campfire was low, but not out yet. It provided a little light in the never-ending darkness, and even less warmth. Jed looked around at the other three. They were still sleeping, breathing heavy, curled up under their blankets.

Jed thought of how the Ancient Enemy had made him and Roscoe fall asleep in the woods. The thought of it sent a spike of panic through his chest.

A scuffling noise in the sand from behind Jed whirled him around. Jed had his pistol in his hand.

A shadowy figure emerged from the darkness. Even before the man sat down in front of the embers of the fire between Sanchez and Billy, Jed knew it was Red Moon. The Navajo outlaw was naked, just like he had been the last time he had paid Jed a visit. Red Moon kept his head down, his hair covering that gigantic hole where his face used to be. The dying fire barely illuminated Red Moon, keeping him in flickering shadows. Things crawled underneath Red Moon’s skin: beetles and spiders—the Ancient Enemy itself.

“What do you want?” Jed asked, aiming his Colt right at Red Moon. Jed’s arm shook so badly he wasn’t sure he would be able to put a bullet into Red Moon even if he wanted to.

Red Moon didn’t answer.

A coyote called out in the inky-black distance, then another coyote answered the first one’s call.

Red Moon reached his left hand out towards Billy who slept on his blanket five feet away. Red Moon reached his right hand towards Sanchez. Red Moon’s arms were growing impossibly long, his fingers stretching to touch each man. Bones popped away from the joints inside of Red Moon’s arms as they grew longer, muscles and skin stretching and threatening to snap.

Jed pulled the trigger and . . .

. . . he jumped awake.

It was almost dawn, the eastern sky on fire with the first rays of the morning sun. Jed sat up and looked around, his hand on his gun. The campfire was out, just a pile of ash and partially burned sticks of wood now with a weak tendril of smoke rising up.

A hand touched Jed’s arm and he whirled around.

It was David.

Jed stared at the boy, his vision blurring as tears filled his eyes. “David . . .”

“I am safe,” David said. “I am warm and safe now.” David smiled at him.

Jed went to reach for David and then . . .

. . . he woke up. He sat up and stared at the campfire. It was out just like it had been in the dream.

A hand touched Jed’s arm. He turned, expecting to see David, but he saw Esmerelda instead.

“It’s over,” Esmerelda told him. “It’s really over.”

He stared at her for a long moment.

She scooted closer to him and hugged him. She held him for a while, and he held her. It had been a long time since he’d held a woman like this.

“I had a dream,” he whispered into her hair.

She nodded.

“I had a nightmare, but then I saw David.”

“I know,” she said. And that’s all she needed to say. Jed was sure that she had seen David in her dreams, too.

*

An hour and a half later, after they had eaten a quick breakfast and broke camp, they were ready to begin their long walk.

Sanchez left them first, walking south towards Mexico. He would have the longest journey of them all. Jed figured Sanchez would buy a horse with all of the money he seemed to have. Whether he rode to Mexico or walked there, Jed was sure that he would reach his destination. Sanchez was a fighter. He was a survivor. Any obstacles he faced along his journey now would be nothing compared to what he had already seen in Hope’s End.

Billy headed east. There were few words between the three of them when they parted, and soon they had nothing left to say to each other. Jed thanked him.

Before Billy turned to walk away, he stared at Jed for a moment. “David is not dead,” he told him.

Jed didn’t respond.

“He is in a different place now,” Billy added. “He lives there now.”

Jed nodded like he already knew that. And he swore he did. He had a feeling that Billy knew he had seen David in a dream—Billy knew things like Esmerelda knew things. He shook Billy’s hand and then watched him walk away.

Jed and Esmerelda headed north to Smith Junction. Unless they could borrow a horse along the way, their walk was going to be a long one—at least three days and two nights of camping. But Esmerelda was strong, and she never complained once.

“Billy’s right,” Esmerelda said six hours later when they stopped by a large grouping of rocks that Billy had told them about, a place where they would find pools of water in the rocks to refill their canteens.

Jed didn’t answer Esmerelda as he sipped water from his canteen.

“David’s not dead,” she said. “I can feel him.”

Jed just nodded at her. He believed her.

Later that night, as they camped, Jed asked Esmerelda what her plans were.

“I’ve been saving my money for years now to get to California,” she said, and then she was quiet for a moment. “I’ve had enough money to leave for a while now. I don’t know why I was putting it off for so long.”

Jed wondered if that was true. Maybe Esmerelda knew why she had put her journey off. Maybe deep down inside she knew that she needed to be in Hope’s End—she needed to be there to help David when the Ancient Enemy showed up.

“What about you?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Don’t really know. I don’t want to be a marshal anymore. I’m no good as a rancher or a farmer. I should just sell my place to Chavez.”

Esmerelda moved closer to Jed, snuggling up to him. “Go with me. We could go to California. Travel up to San Francisco. Maybe even farther north.”

Jed was quiet for a moment. And then he looked at her and smiled. “Yeah. Maybe we could.”

Esmerelda kissed Jed . . . a long, slow kiss. She backed away and stared at him. And then she kissed him again.

Jed felt better now than he had a long time. He wasn’t afraid now, and he wasn’t lonely anymore. For the first time in years he felt hope.

CHAPTER 39

Iron Springs, New Mexico—2018

David woke up, his eyes popping open in the darkness. For just a moment he wasn’t sure where he was, but then it all came to him in a rush. He was at home. Not his real home, he was at his Aunt Awenita’s house where he had been living these last seven years since his parents had been killed by the Ancient Enemy. It had been seven years since he had walked through the desert to the dig site without a memory of the journey, without really knowing how he had gotten there. He’d been in shock when Stella had found him with blood staining his hands and little flecks of blood on his face, neck, and the front of his coat. He’d known something terrible had happened to his parents, but his mind couldn’t seem to focus on it then. Or even now. The terrible things that had been done to his parents, the things they had done to each other, even now it was a red blur in his memory.

It had been seven years now since he had left that dig site with Stella, driving up into Colorado, into the blizzard, just trying to run and get as far away from the Ancient Enemy as they could.

It had been seven years since he had come back to New Mexico with Stella and Cole, seven years since they had found Joe Blackhorn and battled the Ancient Enemy in the ghost town that had once been the town of Hope’s End, a ghost town that was shunned by most Navajo, an ancient and haunted place.

Joe Blackhorn—he was gone, dead two years now.

David had been dreaming of Hope’s End tonight; not the ghost town it was now, but the town it was in 1891, the way it was when he had ridden his horse there with a U.S. Marshal named Jed Cartwright.

He sat up in bed and swung his legs over, sitting on the edge, breathing out a long sigh. He was about to turn on the lamp next to his bed, but he made himself sit in the dark. There was enough moonlight shining through his windows so that he could see well enough. He was still afraid of the dark, afraid of what could hide in the dark. Joe Blackhorn tried to teach him to fight his fear so he sat there for a moment, concentrating on his breathing.

The dream of Hope’s End came back to him, but the dream was really fragments of memories, memories of Jed, Esmerelda, Sanchez, and Billy Nez. Those memories were as real to him as the memories of Stella and Cole.

And as real as the memories of the Ancient Enemy.

David felt like two people at the moment even though he knew one life had ended and he’d woken up in this life, but he also felt like he was still there in that past life sometimes, like he was living both lives on two different planes of existence, one life in the past and one in the present. And sometimes, like tonight, when he dreamt, he was back in that life. And when he woke up he was in this new life. And the Ancient Enemy was there in both of his lives.

But not this time. The Ancient Enemy wasn’t in this life because David had defeated the Ancient Enemy seven years ago.

Had he defeated it? Joe Blackhorn’s words came back to him: “You sent it back, but I don’t think you killed it.”

“How am I supposed to know?” David had asked him all those years ago when he had begun training with the old man.

“Only you will know,” Joe Blackhorn had told him.

A shiver ran up and down David’s arms and neck. The wind kicked up outside for a moment, suddenly fierce. Sand blew against the glass of his window even though the moonlight was still bright and there didn’t seem to be a storm out there.

He turned and looked at his window but saw only the darkness pressing against it. He could see the silhouette of the jagged mountain range against the dark blue night sky.

The wind died down.

The Darkwind.

David grabbed the bottle of water next to the lamp and took a sip. He picked up his cell phone and lay back down on the bed. He pressed the button and the screen lit up. It wasn’t as late as he thought it was—he hadn’t been asleep that long. He scrolled to an internet news article he had come across a few days ago, one he had bookmarked.

He had stayed in contact with Stella over the last seven years. The first few years they had written letters back and forth. Her letters never had a return address on them and the letters he sent to her were addressed to a business, some kind of cantina in a coastal town by the Pacific Ocean. Stella and Cole (now Melissa and Travis) were very careful about their new identities, their new lives.

The first few months after the Dig Site Murders (as they had come to be known) the FBI had questioned him constantly, but they had never gotten very far with their pursuit of Stella and Cole, and David had a suspicion that Agent Palmer and Captain Begay had had something to do with throwing the FBI off the trail. Those two men knew the truth about what had happened to all of those murdered people, a truth no one would have ever believed, and they knew that it was all over now.

Eventually Stella got a cell phone under her new name, probably a “burner” phone like they were called in the action movies David watched. He and Stella talked once every month or so, and they had even communicated through Skype a few times. David had asked to go down there to visit her and Cole, but she always said that it wasn’t a good time. But at least she looked and sounded so much better. She seemed healthy and she seemed happy.

Everything had been fine until he had come across the news article from Costa Rica a few days ago. He had been looking up articles or any news about Costa Rica for years now, trying to learn as much about the area as he could. He knew Stella and Cole were safe and he knew the horrors of the Ancient Enemy were really over, but he couldn’t help checking the news articles just in case. Mostly the articles were about tourism or local stories, but then he had come across a news story a few days ago about a village where everyone had been slaughtered, hacked to death with machetes, mutilated beyond recognition. The savagery was so brutal, it was almost unimaginable.

David’s first thought was that the Ancient Enemy was back, playing its twisted games again, forcing the villagers to hack each other to death. He remembered Billy Nez in Hope’s End telling them that there were other Ancient Enemies in other places in the world. Sanchez had agreed, telling them about stories his grandmother had told them when he’d been a boy, stories about the mass disappearances of the Maya in their cities in the jungle.

Reading the article again, David lay in bed, still not turning on the lamp. The cell phone’s light in front of his face blocked out the rest of the bedroom around him, the darkness crowding the edges of his vision like a living, solid thing trying to surround him. In the article, the local authorities were blaming the villagers’ murders, all eighteen of them, on a drug cartel.

But David couldn’t help thinking that this was something much worse, and he couldn’t help thinking about how close Stella and Cole were to that village—only twenty miles away.

He set his phone back on his chest and stared up at the ceiling, wondering what he should do. Should he text Stella, warn her somehow? Should he call her tomorrow?

Hope’s End wasn’t the only thing he’d been dreaming about tonight, and the memories of Hope’s End weren’t what had scared him awake. There was another dream about a shadowy man, a killer who prowled the darkness like a jaguar.

But the killer wasn’t here, David knew that. The killer was in Colorado, far away, but still close enough, stalking his victims at this very moment. The killer’s mind was twisted, but he was smart and cunning, strong and merciless; he had begun killing not too long ago, and he wasn’t going to stop now.

Not until he finds me, David thought.

CHAPTER 40

Costa Rica—2018

“Get up!” Stella yelled at Cole, pulling the bedsheet off of him.

Cole sat bolt-upright in bed. Stella had turned the overhead light on, the one attached to the ceiling fan. He knew it was still dark outside, but he had no idea what time it was. It felt like he’d been asleep for only a few minutes, but when he looked at the alarm clock he saw it was only a few hours until dawn.

Stella’s eyes were wide with fear, her tanned skin paler than he’d seen it in years. He hadn’t seen her this frightened since . . .

Cole jumped out of bed. He wore only a pair of underwear. He grabbed his clothes he’d laid over the chair. Even though it was hot in the bedroom, the ceiling fan barely pushing the heat away, Cole felt a cold chill dancing along his skin, raising goosebumps. He suddenly felt like he was back in Colorado, back in that freezing cold with something dangerous and unimaginable waiting outside, something approaching their front door, something about to knock on the door and ask for things.

He’d been dreaming when Stella had shaken him awake. He’d been in the ghost town again in his dream, but the town was different; it was the town of Hope’s End. He was himself in that town, but he was also someone else. He waited in the saloon with a few others, all of them frightened of the Ancient Enemy that lurked out in the darkness, the monster that had slaughtered everyone else in town. He saw a woman named Esmerelda in the dream, a woman he had feelings for, but it seemed like the woman’s visage shimmered from Esmerelda to Stella and then back to Esmerelda again. There were other people in the saloon that he didn’t really recognize, but he knew them. And then there was David, and David looked exactly as he had seven years ago.

Cole was dressed in a few seconds, slipping his feet into a pair of boots and buckling the belt on his jeans at the same time. He pulled a T-shirt on and then grabbed his gun from the table beside the bed.

Stella was at the bedroom door, staring down the hallway; she was tense, ready to either run or fight.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s happening again,” she told him without taking her eyes off of the hallway, like she was watching and waiting for something to come down the hall. “The Ancient Enemy . . . it’s here.”

CHAPTER 1

Stella

Dig Site – Costa Rica

Stella saw him in the jungle hiding among the brush and palm fronds. For just a moment he’d been standing there, and now he was gone.

Maria came over. She’d been painstakingly brushing dirt away from a partially exposed femur buried centuries ago down in the pit. “Are you okay?”

Stella looked at Maria, then back at the edge of the clearing where the jungle began. They were working on excavating a massive grave, an ancient burial ground, the edges of it roped off. Small tents were set up at the other side of the clearing where supplies and gear were kept: toolboxes, plastic cases for artifacts, coolers of food and drinks, even two cots. The site of this burial ground was a natural clearing in the jungle, a dead spot where vegetation refused to grow; the edge of the jungle ended neatly all around them beyond the dig site. Maria had discovered this burial ground a year ago from information she had gotten from members of a local tribe, and now the glacial process of excavating the buried rock walls and the bones had begun.

The burial ground was a mystery. It was similar to another mass grave found a few years earlier south of this site, closer to the border of Panama. Hundreds of people had been buried in that mass grave: men, women, and children of all ages, all of them dumped into the pit with no ceremony. They were all apparently killed the same way—a clean round hole in the forehead. Was it from a spear? A hammer and metal chisel? A wooden dowel? It was definitely some kind of blunt force trauma to the head. But one thing was certain, those deaths weren’t natural in any way—those people had been purposely killed. Murdered? Maybe. Sacrificed in some long-forgotten religious ritual? That could also be possible.

Another interesting comparison Stella had realized was that the skeletons at this dig were similar to other sites in South America where entire villages of people had been found buried in gigantic graves, their bodies piled together. One of the most famous finds was near the Nazca Plains where the mysterious geoglyphs and lines in the desert were discovered in the early 1930s. There were mass graves at those sites, but there were also individual graves, people buried alone and ceremonially with their possessions. Even though the individuals had been buried in ceremony, many were missing their heads, or some of them had those neat round holes in the foreheads of their skulls about the size of a quarter, like something had been rammed through their heads and into their brains.

Of course there could be other reasons for the slaughter of the people found in these mass graves, Stella knew that. She knew far more mysteries and horrifying things existed in the world; she had seen those horrifying things.

“Yeah,” Stella finally answered Maria as she stood at the edge of the dig. “I’m okay.” She even tried a smile, but she didn’t feel like she was pulling it off, not judging from the concerned expression still on Maria’s face.

“Did you see something?”

Stella gave a slight shrug, still smiling. “I thought I saw something in the trees.”

“Like what?”

Stella knew as well as Maria the dangers in the jungle, most notably jaguars. But there were other dangers like robbers. Not treasure robbers, but robbers who would threaten them for whatever they carried on them and whatever supplies they had in their tents and vehicles. Stella always carried a gun now; Cole had made her take the gun with her when she started volunteering on this dig.

Maria’s eyes darted to the edge of the jungle, which was a wall of green vegetation thirty feet away. The vegetation from the jungle only crept into the clearing a little bit, like an invisible barrier held it back in every direction around the burial ground, like the dirt of this clearing wouldn’t support life of any kind, an infertile ground.

“Was it an animal?” Maria asked, still studying the jungle. She wasn’t going to let this go.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” But that was a lie. She was sure she’d seen a man standing among the palms and brush.

“Was it a jaguar?” Maria asked.

“No,” Stella said. “I’m sure it wasn’t a jaguar.”

Maria relaxed just a little.

“It’s nothing,” Stella said, but she could still feel a crawling sensation tightening her skin, a chill dancing along her flesh, a heaviness on her chest, making it difficult to breathe, the feeling of dread weighing her down.

“You’re sure?” Maria asked.

Stella nodded.

Maria went back to the pit, climbing back down the ladder into the gigantic hole that had been carefully dug over the last eight months. There were only three other people at the dig site, two men and a woman, all college students from Maria’s archaeology class at the university. Maria had kept this crew small and sworn to secrecy. This was going to be a big discovery for her, with book deals and speaking tours coming in her near future.

Stella had offered to volunteer with Maria at the university two years ago. She and Cole had been in Costa Rica the last seven years, and only in the last two years had Stella felt comfortable enough to volunteer and rekindle her passion for archaeology. Cole hadn’t been happy about her volunteering to help at the dig site, afraid of her being alone in the jungle or with only a few college students around, but in the end he had relented—he knew how much this meant to her, how normal it made her feel again. But he still made her take the gun with her.

She and Cole had healed quite a bit during their last seven years together in Costa Rica. They had flown down here from Arizona seven years ago after the horrors they had experienced in the cabin in Colorado and then in the ghost town in Arizona. They were still traumatized when they’d gotten here, hardly able to believe the Ancient Enemy was really gone. Cole drank a lot then. He slept during the day and stayed up all night, like he was on watch, her personal sentinel.

Cole had contacts everywhere in Central America, and he had used up all of the favors that were owed him, but now they had new IDs (Cole was Travis Hartwell and she was Melissa Burrows), and they had plenty of cash. The rent and food were cheap in Costa Rica, and they probably had enough money to last the rest of their lives.

For the first few months they were here they ate, drank, rested, and healed. Cole mourned the loss of his brother Trevor and Stella the loss of her friends at the dig site in New Mexico. She also missed David.

But this was a new life now. She couldn’t go back to her old life, back to being Stella Weaver, an archaeologist working out of Arizona State University. She had contacted Alice a few times when they first got down here, and Alice had let her know that she and Cole were still persons of interest, and that the murders had never been solved—many were calling them the “Dig Site Murders.” The press blamed the murders on a serial killer or a group of killers. Some suspected a cult. It was a modern-day mystery how a string of grisly murders had occurred in two states over the span of a few days and then suddenly stopped.

Some days it felt good to be somewhere new, to be someone new, to pretend that none of those horrors had happened. She wanted to go back home sometimes, but she was afraid the places familiar to her would always be tainted by what had happened—nothing would ever be the same again. She wished she could totally delude herself with the fantasy of a new life and forget every remnant of her old one, but there were two things holding that fantasy back: one was David, she still kept in contact with him every few months or so; the other was her love of archaeology, her passion for it. And she yearned to be in the field again, unearthing ancient cities and civilizations. And finally, two years ago, Cole had given in and she’d begun volunteering with Professor Maria Soto.

In these last two years Stella had begun to feel almost normal again. The beaches of Costa Rica were beautiful, the jungle and mountains breathtaking; it was like being on a never-ending tropical vacation. And she could almost allow herself to dive fully into the fantasy of a brand new life.

But then the nightmares had come back.

And Cole understood because he still had the nightmares too. They had fewer nightmares now than they used to, but they were still there. When they had first come down here, Stella would often wake up, choking back a scream. She would sit bolt-upright in bed and see Cole sitting in a chair with his gun in his hand, watching over her as she slept.

The first few weeks they were down here, the nightmares had been the worst. She and Cole had awakened in a panic, clawing at the air, screaming, punching and kicking at the other (they had both suffered a few nosebleeds and black eyes from their frenzied awakenings, trapped for a moment in that netherworld between sleep and full consciousness, fighting anything close to them). But as the years passed, the nightmares weren’t as frequent or as horrible.

She loved Cole. She was sure of that now. And she was sure he loved her. He could have left her so many times. He could have left her and David right after the cabin in Colorado, abandoning them as he drove away on the snowmobile. He could have left them at the Mountainside Inn or at the Navajo Reservation. Maybe he had stayed because he knew David was the only one who could protect them, but after it was all over, after David had sent the Ancient Enemy back to its own world in the ghost town, Cole could have left then. But he chose to take her down to Costa Rica with him. He had taken a risk. He was still a wanted criminal (and she was still a person of interest, according to Alice), so there was always the danger that she could talk. He could have left her here in Costa Rica at any time. He could have disappeared into the underworld of fake names and identities, and she never would have found him. No, he had stayed even though it probably would have been so much easier for him to leave.

After that first year here in Costa Rica, after they had fully grieved and healed and grown stronger, life had gotten somewhat normal again, somewhat pleasurable. They went to bars and restaurants at night and the beach the next day. She had even learned to surf. They bought food when they needed it, fresh fruit in the morning, grilled meat and salads at night, wine and tequila and cold bottles of beer. Cole still drank, but not as much as he used to. He looked healthier now, lean and muscular, tanned and energetic. He was seven years older now, but it seemed like he’d barely aged at all. Except for his eyes. They still looked old and haunted, his eyelids drooping slightly. Her eyes were the same. Even though she, like Cole, looked healthier and happier in the mirror, there was still that haunted look in her eyes, that same look she’d seen so long ago in the bathroom mirror of the gas station in Cody’s Pass, Colorado.

She’d done well to push those memories far back into her subconscious. They only surfaced in her nightmares from time to time.

As blissful as this tropical paradise was, Stella still began to yearn for more these last few years, her passion for archaeology coming back with a vengeance. She asked Cole to drive her miles away into the capital city of San Jose where she could finds books on archaeology and the local history and culture. The more famous Mayan ruins were far to the north, but there were still ruins here in Costa Rica; there were still mysteries to be solved and ancient cultures to be unearthed. She longed for a big discovery, like the one she had been a part of in New Mexico, where Jake had found the ancient Anasazi city hidden inside a cave along with the tablets of Anasazi writing. That discovery had been huge in the archaeological world, a piece of the puzzle to the mysterious past of the Anasazi, but of course all of it had been overshadowed by the mutilated bodies of the archaeologists found there—that’s all most people ever thought about; the archaeological discoveries there were always an afterthought.

And after Stella began volunteering with Dr. Maria Soto and her students, she poured herself into her work. It felt so good to be out in the field again, the tools in her hands. It was both familiar and new at the same time, familiar because this was what she had always done since high school, but new because she’d always worked in the southwestern United States and not the jungle.

Yes, it had been wonderful, but today it had all been shattered when she thought she had seen the man standing in the jungle watching her. It was devastating; it was like all the hard work she’d done had been swept away within minutes. She felt like the victim of panic attacks who had worked for years to get past them only to have one attack set back years of work. She was devastated, depressed, but most of all she was afraid now.

She hadn’t seen the man in the jungle too clearly, but she didn’t need to. She could tell who he was in an instant, she could tell who he was by the way he stood, the silhouette of his tall and lean body.

But maybe no one had been there in the jungle. Maybe it had just been her imagination.

“You sure you’re okay?” Maria asked one more time from the edge of the big pit. Even the three students had stopped working, all of their eyes on her.

“Actually, I don’t think I’m feeling too well,” Stella told Maria. “I think I need to go home.”

Maria nodded like she understood, but her eyes flicked to the wall of jungle for just a second.

Stella grabbed her pack and walked to her Toyota 4x4 truck parked next to the other two vehicles near the tents. Her truck was parked facing the narrow trail through the jungle that led back to the main roads.

She told herself that it was just her imagination. There had been no one standing in the jungle. It couldn’t have been him . . .

CHAPTER 2

Cole

Costa Rica

Cole was playing a card game in the cantina with a few of the locals when Stella rushed inside. He was surprised to see her back from the dig so early, but what bothered him even more was the expression on her face. She was scared.

He caught her glance from across the room, her blue eyes locked on to his dark ones for just a moment, and then she marched to the bar. She hadn’t even stopped at their house; she was still wearing her “work” clothes: khaki shorts, a pale blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, her hiking boots and a thick pair of socks. Her blond hair was pulled back into a tight bun, but a few stray locks of hair were hanging down in her face.

Cole’s hand dropped down to his gun in his ankle holster on instinct when he saw her, like his subconscious had recognized a danger before his conscious mind could. He had to stop himself from pulling his gun out. Even after seven years of living down here he didn’t go anywhere without his gun. It was that look on Stella’s face that had thrown him back into the past, back to the terror they had experienced together; it was her expression that had caused his instant reaction of panic.

Stella was at the bar ordering a drink. The bartender, a heavyset man named Pablo, set a bottle of tequila and a shot glass down in front of her.

Cole apologized to the other card players and folded his hand of cards. He collected his meager winnings and left the table, ignoring the teasing from the other guys. He got to the bar and Stella was already on her second shot, cradling the shot glass in her hands.

“Rough day at work?” he asked, hoping the joke might lighten her mood.

She didn’t answer. She downed her drink.

Cole joined her. He poured himself a shot, sipping his. He’d already had a few beers, but he was hardly even buzzed—he could handle a few shots of tequila right now.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her in a low voice. Pablo was at the other end of the bar, he was talking with a young couple who were obviously tourists even though this area was pretty remote and far from the usual tourist spots; only the more adventurous travelers ever came here.

Stella stared at Cole for a moment. “Let’s go home.”

They left the cantina and Cole drove Stella home, which was only three blocks away. The beach was only another block from their home, the blue expanse of the Pacific on the horizon. He drove around to the back of their house and parked the 4x4. He unlocked the back door of their house and entered with his gun in his hand. He told himself that he was just spooked by Stella’s expression, but that old fear was taking over now. Even after years of healing, that old fear could be summoned at a moment’s notice.

He knew something was wrong. Stella was scared of something; he could see it in her eyes. He hadn’t seen her frightened this badly since . . .

He didn’t want to think about that.

Cole mixed two drinks for them, making them pretty weak. Stella had already drunk more in the last ten minutes than she usually did in an entire night, but he thought another drink might help calm her down. She sat on the edge of their bed, hugging herself like she was cold even though it was hot and humid in the house.

“You want me to turn off the ceiling fans?” he asked her.

She shook her head no and accepted the drink he offered her.

He sat down in his chair in the corner of the room, the chair he sometimes still sat in when he couldn’t sleep, the chair he sometimes sat in when the nightmares plagued him. He sipped his drink and then set it down on the table next to the chair, waiting for Stella to tell him what was bothering her.

“Are the doors locked?” she asked.

He nodded. Cole always made sure the doors and windows were locked; some habits never died. He also had weapons strategically placed around the house: a handgun on the table next to their bed, a shotgun behind the couch in the living room, a 9mm in a drawer in the kitchen. And he had some other contingency plans in place.

“What happened?” he asked her.

“I thought I saw someone.”

“Where?”

“At the dig.”

Cole felt a shiver dance across his skin. “Who?”

“I thought I saw someone standing in the jungle,” she continued in a low, expressionless voice. “I was in the pit, at the higher end. I was working and it felt like someone was watching me.” Stella stopped talking like she was suddenly lost in thought.

“And?”

“I got out of the pit and walked to the edge of the dig, staring at the jungle. I saw a man standing in the trees. But then he was gone. He was only there for a second.”

Cole let out a long, slow sigh. This was the very thing he’d been afraid of. Jaguars, wild boars, spiders, snakes, and insects were bad enough, but the thing he feared the most was that a thug might try to rob them, kill them for the money they had in their wallets. “You had your gun with you, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You think it was someone casing the dig site? Someone wanting to rob you guys?”

She shook her head no. She was trembling now. “No. I know who it was.”

That stopped Cole for a moment. His mind was spinning as he tried to think of who she might know.

“It was Jim Whitefeather.”

Cole froze. He stared at Stella. “From the . . .?”

“Yes. From the dig in New Mexico. The first one taken.”

“But . . . You’re sure about this?”

Stella looked like she was about to burst into tears. She shook her head no. “I don’t know. Maybe it was just my imagination. But it seemed so real.”

Cole got up and went to the bed, sitting down beside her. “So, what was it? Did you see someone or not?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Maybe not. But it seemed so real.” She leaned her head on his shoulder.

Something had spooked Stella, and Cole thought he might know what it was. A story about a village twenty miles away was circulating around town—all eighteen people in the village had been slaughtered a few days ago. There had been a brief story on the TV news and in the newspaper about it. Stella had surely heard about the gruesome murders, and maybe they had triggered the fears in her subconscious, making her see the horrors from her past standing there in the jungle.

The local police and media were blaming the murders on a drug cartel. And that was definitely possible. But a day or two later all of the news of the slaughter was buried, which wasn’t a surprise. Tourism was Costa Rica’s number one industry, and they weren’t going to let a story like this ruin that for them. It wasn’t impossible that drugs were being transported through Costa Rica or that a drug deal had gone bad and people had to pay, these things could happen even in a paradise like Costa Rica.

“I’m going to take a few days off from the dig,” Stella told him.

Cole was surprised—but happy—to hear that.

“I’ll call Maria in the morning and let her know.”

“I think it’s a good idea,” he told her. “We’ll hit the beach for a few days and relax.” He pulled her head gently to him again and kissed her forehead, then her lips.

They would hit the beach, Cole was sure of that, but he wasn’t so sure they would be relaxing much—not now that the fear and the paranoia were back.

CHAPTER 3

David

Iron Springs, New Mexico

David woke up, his eyes popping open in the darkness. For just a moment he wasn’t sure where he was, but then it all came to him in a rush. He was at home. Not his real home, he was at his Aunt Awenita’s house where he had been living these last seven years since his parents had been killed by the Ancient Enemy. It had been seven years since he had walked through the desert to the dig site without a memory of the journey, without really knowing how he had gotten there. He’d been in shock when Stella had found him with blood staining his hands and little flecks of blood on his face, neck, and the front of his coat. He’d known something terrible had happened to his parents, but his mind couldn’t seem to focus on it then. Or even now. The terrible things that had been done to his parents, the things they had done to each other, even now it was a red blur in his memory.

It had been seven years now since he had left that dig site with Stella, driving up into Colorado, into the blizzard, just trying to run and get as far away from the Ancient Enemy as they could.

It had been seven years since he had come back to New Mexico with Stella and Cole, seven years since they had found Joe Blackhorn and battled the Ancient Enemy in the ghost town that had once been the town of Hope’s End, a ghost town that was shunned by most Navajo, an ancient and haunted place.

Joe Blackhorn—he was gone, dead two years now.

David had been dreaming of Hope’s End tonight; not the ghost town it was now, but the town it was in 1891, the way it was when he had ridden his horse there with a U.S. Marshal named Jed Cartwright.

He sat up in bed and swung his legs over, sitting on the edge, breathing out a long sigh. He was about to turn on the lamp next to his bed, but he made himself sit in the dark. There was enough moonlight shining through his windows so that he could see well enough. He was still afraid of the dark, afraid of what could hide in the dark. Joe Blackhorn tried to teach him to fight his fear so he sat there for a moment, concentrating on his breathing.

The dream of Hope’s End came back to him, but the dream was really fragments of memories, memories of Jed, Esmerelda, Sanchez, and Billy Nez. Those memories were as real to him as the memories of Stella and Cole.

And as real as the memories of the Ancient Enemy.

David felt like two people at the moment even though he knew one life had ended and he’d woken up in this life, but he also felt like he was still there in that past life sometimes, like he was living both lives on two different planes of existence, one life in the past and one in the present. And sometimes, like tonight, when he dreamt, he was back in that life. And when he woke up he was in this new life. And the Ancient Enemy was there in both of his lives.

But not this time. The Ancient Enemy wasn’t in this life because David had defeated the Ancient Enemy seven years ago.

Had he defeated it? Joe Blackhorn’s words came back to him: “You sent it back, but I don’t think you killed it.”

“How am I supposed to know?” David had asked him all those years ago when he had begun training with the old man.

“Only you will know,” Joe Blackhorn had told him.

A shiver ran up and down David’s arms and neck. The wind kicked up outside for a moment, suddenly fierce. Sand blew against the glass of his window even though the moonlight was still bright and there didn’t seem to be a storm out there.

He turned and looked at his window but saw only the darkness pressing against it. He could see the silhouette of the jagged mountain range against the dark blue night sky.

The wind died down.

The Darkwind.

David grabbed the bottle of water next to the lamp and took a sip. He picked up his cell phone and lay back down on the bed. He pressed the button and the screen lit up. It wasn’t as late as he thought it was—he hadn’t been asleep that long. He scrolled to an internet news article he had come across a few days ago, one he had bookmarked.

He had stayed in contact with Stella over the last seven years. The first few years they had written letters back and forth. Her letters never had a return address on them and the letters he sent to her were addressed to a business, some kind of cantina in a coastal town by the Pacific Ocean. Stella and Cole (now Melissa and Travis) were very careful about their new identities, their new lives.

The first few months after the Dig Site Murders (as they had come to be known) the FBI had questioned him constantly, but they had never gotten very far with their pursuit of Stella and Cole, and David had a suspicion that Agent Palmer and Captain Begay had had something to do with throwing the FBI off the trail. Those two men knew the truth about what had happened to all of those murdered people, a truth no one would have ever believed, and they knew that it was all over now.

Eventually Stella got a cell phone under her new name, probably a “burner” phone like they were called in the action movies David watched. He and Stella talked once every month or so, and they had even communicated through Skype a few times. David had asked to go down there to visit her and Cole, but she always said that it wasn’t a good time. But at least she looked and sounded so much better. She seemed healthy and she seemed happy.

Everything had been fine until he had come across the news article from Costa Rica a few days ago. He had been looking up articles or any news about Costa Rica for years now, trying to learn as much about the area as he could. He knew Stella and Cole were safe and he knew the horrors of the Ancient Enemy were really over, but he couldn’t help checking the news articles just in case. Mostly the articles were about tourism or local stories, but then he had come across a news story a few days ago about a village where everyone had been slaughtered, hacked to death with machetes, mutilated beyond recognition. The savagery was so brutal, it was almost unimaginable.

David’s first thought was that the Ancient Enemy was back, playing its twisted games again, forcing the villagers to hack each other to death. He remembered Billy Nez in Hope’s End telling them that there were other Ancient Enemies in other places in the world. Sanchez had agreed, telling them about stories his grandmother had told him when he’d been a boy, stories about the mass disappearances of the Maya in their cities in the jungle.

Reading the article again, David lay in bed, still not turning on the lamp. The cell phone’s light in front of his face blocked out the rest of the bedroom around him, the darkness crowding the edges of his vision like a living, solid thing trying to surround him. In the article, the local authorities were blaming the villagers’ murders, all eighteen of them, on a drug cartel.

But David couldn’t help thinking that this was something much worse, and he couldn’t help thinking about how close Stella and Cole were to that village—only twenty miles away.

He set his phone back on his chest and stared up at the ceiling, wondering what he should do. Should he text Stella, warn her somehow? Should he call her tomorrow?

Hope’s End wasn’t the only thing he’d been dreaming about tonight, and the memories of Hope’s End weren’t what had scared him awake. There was another dream about a shadowy man, a killer who prowled the darkness like a jaguar.

But the killer wasn’t here, David knew that. The killer was in Colorado, far away, but still close enough, stalking his victims at this very moment. The killer’s mind was twisted, but he was smart and cunning, strong and merciless; he had begun killing not too long ago, and he wasn’t going to stop now.

Not until he finds me, David thought.

CHAPTER 4

The Killer

Colorado

The killer waited in the darkness. He stood by a thick stand of trees near the edge of the woods. He watched the house that was built up on a slight hill a hundred yards away. The windows of the home were little squares of cozy yellowish light shining in the night. The couple who lived there looked so safe and snug in their home, but they weren’t safe at all. Not at all.

The killer had been in this area twenty miles south of Denver for a week now. He had killed his earlier four victims north of Denver, smaller towns where the murder of two older couples had shocked the residents there. The mutilated bodies, and what he had done to them, had made news all over Colorado, and then the country, and then the world. Because of the placement of the pieces of the bodies, the way the bones and organs had been arranged, the press wondered if the Dig Site Killer was back after all of these years.

He wasn’t the Dig Site Killer, but he wanted to pay homage to the person (for some reason he was certain it was only one person) who had done those things in that cave in New Mexico, and to what the killer had done to the bodies in and near Cody’s Pass, Colorado. The police and the FBI had never admitted that the killings in those two places were connected, but the killer knew they were—everyone knew they were. He wanted to re-create those mutilations. Of course he might never reach that level of skill, an almost supernatural skill, but he wanted to catch the attention of that killer; he wanted him to see him as a student of his work at first, and then maybe even an equal someday.

The killer had watched this house for the last three nights, waiting in the woods and watching each night, studying and deciding on the perfect time to strike. He knew the names of the couple inside the house—Harold and Marcie—but he didn’t know much else about the older couple. He knew they lived alone and that they didn’t have a dog or an alarm system. And he knew that they were going to help him make history tonight.

*

Harold watched TV in the living room as Marcie cleaned up the dinner dishes. Harold had told her to leave the dishes until the morning, but he knew damn well after twenty-six years of marriage that she wasn’t going to leave the dishes in the sink until the morning; she just couldn’t do it. Unlike Harold, who could easily relax even though the kitchen was a wreck, she couldn’t rest until the kitchen was clean.

Harold had the TV turned up so loud. His hearing was getting worse and worse. She begged him to go see a doctor, but he wouldn’t.

She finished up the last of the dishes, setting them in a strainer beside the sink. They had a dishwasher but she hardly ever used it because it was just so much easier to wash up the dinner dishes right afterwards.

She thought she might call Brian tonight, their son. He’d just gotten married and he had even less time for her and Harold now. Sometimes months would go by before he called or came by to visit. He only lived thirty minutes away. She tried to go see him, but every time she wanted to visit he told her that it wasn’t a good time. His excuse was always that his wife Amanda wasn’t feeling well or that the house was a mess. Or he would come up with some other excuse. Eventually she just gave up inviting herself over. She could tell when she wasn’t wanted. She could tell that Amanda disliked her and Harold for some reason. She had even asked Brian why Amanda seemed to hate them so much, but of course Brian said that Amanda adored them.

Yeah, right. Marcie could tell when someone hated her. And she was sure Brian had run right back to Amanda and told her everything she had shared with Brian in confidence. She had told Brian that if she and Harold had done something to make Amanda mad, then she should just tell them, just spit it out and get it out in the open. They had been nothing but polite to Amanda, overly-polite, bending over backwards and walking on eggshells around her.

Marcie thought that a person accused of hatred might run to the phone and try to straighten everything out, insisting that any suspicions weren’t true and apologizing for any misunderstandings. But there was no phone call from Amanda, and no phone call from Brian.

Marcie had already left three voicemails on Brian’s phone this week. Maybe she shouldn’t even call him tonight. Maybe she should just wait until he called her. That’s what Harold always said: Wait him out, don’t give in to him.

Brian was probably mad at her anyway. The last time she’d talked to him she had laid on the guilt trip pretty thick. “We’re not going to be around forever, you know. Once we’re gone, you’re going to be sorry you didn’t spend more time with us.”

She’d gotten a loud sigh from Brian on the phone, and then: “I gotta go, Mom. Love you.” And then a click as he hung up.

Yes, maybe she wouldn’t call him tonight. She would wait for him to call her, see how long that took.

*

It was time.

The killer smiled. The air was still fresh and cool at night even though it was almost summer. The moon was full and bright, hardly a cloud in the sky. The wind was almost non-existent, but a gust of strong wind had just blown through the trees, rattling the branches, leaves and twigs falling to the ground around him like snow. That wind felt ominous, it felt alive, washing over him and fueling him with a dark energy.

He had his tool bag beside him in the grass; it was really a black canvas duffel bag, but he called it his tool bag. He had hammers, saws, pliers, knives, various nails, battery-operated power tools, tarps, rope, tape, and other tools of his trade. The bag was heavy, but he needed it with him.

He wore black clothes: a thick black hoodie sweatshirt, black jeans, black hiking boots, thin black leather gloves. He had worn rubber gloves when he had killed the older couples, but the gloves had gotten too slick with the blood and they made his hands sweat too much. It was those little things he learned along the way that made him better. He tried to think ahead and he tried to be prepared as much as he could. He’d bought the hiking boots and the clothes he wore at a garage sale a few weeks ago—untraceable. The clothes would go into a cloth sack after tonight and he would toss them into a dumpster behind a store. The gloves would make sure no fingerprints were left behind tonight. And he would leave no stray hairs because he had shaved every hair on his head and body—even his eyebrows. He would leave no trace of himself behind.

He also wore a generic black ski mask that could be purchased just about anywhere in Colorado. He was now a black shadow in the darkness, a dark shape moving in the night.

The killer inhaled a deep breath, closing his eyes for a moment, and then he exhaled slowly. He picked up his tool bag. He had a gun shoved down in a shoulder holster inside his hoodie, and he had a Taser in his front pants pocket.

He was ready now.

CHAPTER 5

Marcie

Colorado

“What are you doing?” Marcie asked Harold as she came out of the kitchen with a dishtowel in her hands. She’d heard the doorbell ring while wiping down the counters, and now Harold was out of his chair and about to answer the door. Somehow, even with his bad hearing and the baseball game blaring from the TV, Harold had heard the doorbell. She wondered if Harold’s deafness was selective, his excuse to tune her out.

Harold was already at the door, unlocking it. She’d told him a million times not to answer the door without looking out through the living room windows first to see who was there, but Harold was set in his ways, still living in a world where you kept your doors unlocked at night and you trusted your fellow humans.

But Marcie felt like something was wrong. For a split second she thought Brian might be at the door, probably because she had just been thinking about him. But then she knew it wasn’t Brian. No, it was someone bad on the other side of that door. Someone real bad.

The recent murder of the older couples north of Denver came to her mind right away. They had been slaughtered like animals, their bodies mutilated and pieced back together in some kind of morbid artwork. And for some reason she felt that the killer was right on the other side of their door. Harold was always telling her that she was so negative, that she should try to look on the bright side of things. But tonight, right at this moment, she knew she was right to be afraid.

“Harold, no!” She ran into the living room to stop him from opening the front door.

Harold hadn’t heard her, or at least he had pretended not to hear her. He opened the door and then he was rocked back, a loud grunt escaping his lungs like he’d just been squeezed by a giant hand. He dropped to the floor, his arms and legs flailing in spasms.

A man dressed from head-to-toe in black stood in the doorway. He had something in his hand, some kind of Taser that he had just jolted Harold with. And in his other hand he held a gun. It was aimed right at her.

“Don’t move,” the man said. His eyes were wide and nervous behind the ski mask, his body tense. “Don’t scream. Don’t do anything. I don’t want to shoot you.”

Marcie didn’t have heart problems, but she felt like she was on the verge of having a heart attack right now.

The man slipped inside their home and closed the door behind him, locking it.

Harold tried to roll over onto his side, apparently able to control his arms and legs a little better now. He moaned, trying to get up.

The man was between Marcie and Harold in a flash, his movements quick and twitchy. He was trembling. “Turn that TV off,” he said over the baseball game blaring from it.

Marcie stumbled over to Harold’s chair on weak legs and picked up the remote control from the little table next to it. She pressed the power button and the TV turned off, the house silent now except for Harold’s moaning.

The masked man sighed, relaxing just a little. “Look, I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want to take a few things and then I’ll go.”

Marcie didn’t answer the man. She found that she was nodding her head without even meaning to, agreeing with what he was saying.

“What’s your name, lady?”

“Marcie,” she answered. Her name came out as a breathless whisper. She was having so much trouble catching her breath.

“Marcie. I’m sorry I tazed your husband. I . . . I just need some money. And any jewelry you have.”

For drugs, Marcie thought.

“Do you have any guns in the house?” the man asked.

Marcie wasn’t sure if the man in the ski mask was asking about guns because he was afraid they would use them on him or because he wanted to sell them, but she shook her head no—they didn’t have any guns. Harold had wanted a gun for years, but she had never allowed it; she’d always been too afraid of them.

Harold was up on all fours now, his head hanging low.

“Okay,” the masked man said to himself, glancing around their living room and then into the dining room like an idea had just occurred to him.

At least there was only one man, Marcie thought. He wasn’t the killer who had slaughtered two old couples up north, she told herself. He was just some junkie who needed money for his next fix.

The masked man darted into the dining room and shoved his pistol inside his hoodie jacket. He shoved his Taser down into his pants pocket as he grabbed two dining room chairs and brought them back into the living room. He set them right in the middle of the floor, side by side. “Sit here,” he told Marcie, but he made it sound more like an offer rather than a command.

Marcie knew that when the masked man had grabbed the dining room chairs it had been her chance to run, to bolt outside or to their bedroom for the phone. She could have gotten out a window. But she had been too frightened to move, her legs and arms felt impossibly heavy, even her mind was sluggish.

But the man would have easily caught her. He looked young and fit. And if she had run, then what about Harold? She was just going to leave him behind? No. Running was out of the question. Maybe she could just do what this man wanted, give him the money and the jewelry he wanted, and then he would go and leave them alone.

“Please,” Marcie managed to say. She could feel the stinging of tears in her eyes.

“I won’t hurt you,” the man said. “I promise. You let me tie your hands behind your back and sit in the chair. I’ll be gone in ten minutes. I swear.”

Marcie shook her head no, unable to utter an answer for a moment. She felt the helpless tears coming now. She looked at Harold—he was still trying to get up to his feet, still moaning in pain and shock. She looked back at the man. “You’ve already hurt us.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry about that. I didn’t know if he had a gun. Now that I know you two won’t shoot me, then I won’t hurt you. You let me tie you to the chairs, you tell me where your money and jewelry are, then I won’t hurt you. I swear.”

And if we don’t? But she didn’t ask that. “You won’t do anything else to us? You won’t blindfold us or gag us?”

“No. I won’t gag you, Marcie. I need you to tell me where your stuff is.” He even smiled a little behind the mouth hole of his mask, showing her how silly her fears were.

“I can’t have something over my mouth,” she told him. “I’ll panic. It will feel like I can’t breathe.”

“I told you I wouldn’t,” the man said. It was the first tinge of anger in the man’s voice, the first sign of his impatience with this negotiation. He breathed out a heavy sigh like he was weighing his options.

He could taze both of us, Marcie thought. He could taze us and tie us to the chairs if he wanted to. I can’t fight him off, and neither can Harold. We’re only going to make him more and more angry.

“Look,” the man said. “I’m wearing a mask. You haven’t seen my face. I’m wearing gloves. There won’t be a trace of me left here. No witnesses. I don’t need to kill you. I don’t want to kill you. I just want your stuff so I can go.”

Marcie didn’t say anything. Her mind was stuck on the word kill.

“Help your husband into the chair,” the man said, his voice a little harder now—he was done playing games. He still seemed twitchy, ready to grab one of the weapons he had on him.

To her amazement, Marcie found herself following the man’s orders. Harold was almost up on his feet now, on one knee, his body trembling with the effort. She took his hand and helped him all the way up, guiding him to one of the dining room chairs the man had set up for them. Harold sat down heavily in the chair. He seemed like he was half-asleep, still dazed, not thinking clearly yet.

“Now you,” the man told Marcie.

Marcie sat down in the chair next to her husband.

“Hands behind you,” the man said. He was right behind both of them now. She couldn’t see him anymore.

Again, Marcie followed orders without thinking about it. Just do what he wants and he’ll go away, she thought. It was a mantra she repeated in her mind. And what other choice did she have? She put her hands behind her, around the back of the armless chair. She felt a piece of rope winding around her wrists, binding them together. She winced; he had tied her wrists together a little too tightly. Was the rope going to cut off her circulation?

Then a terrible realization entered her mind: Where had he gotten the rope? He must have had it on him already—it hadn’t come from her house. Had he been expecting to tie them up? Had that been his plan all along? She feared this man wasn’t some junkie looking to score a few hundred dollars—this was something much more sinister than that.

Harold grunted as the man bound his hands behind his back and the chair, pulling the ropes tight. Then the masked man walked away from them, walking to the front door. He unlocked the door and opened it, ducking outside for just a moment. He came back in with a large black duffel bag.

The tightening in Marcie’s chest was back again, that pressure, the panicky sensation of not being able to inhale a complete breath.

Burglary tools, she told herself. That’s just a bag of burglary tools he brings with him. Or maybe that’s the stuff he’s already collected from other homes he has burglarized. He would have to have something to carry his stuff in, wouldn’t he?

The man locked the front door and walked towards them. It was a slow walk and he had a smile on his face underneath the mouth hole of his mask, like he was savoring the moment.

“What the hell do you want?” Harold growled, finally coming fully awake. But it was too late now. “Just take our stuff and get the hell out!”

The man didn’t respond. He set his duffel bag down on the floor in front of them. He unzipped it, revealing all the tools inside. He pulled off his ski mask. His head was completely bald, his skin pasty white, his somewhat handsome face screwed up by a cruel smile.

We’ve seen his face now. He’s not going to let us go. He was never going to let us go.

The man pulled out more lengths of rope from his duffel bag and walked behind their chairs to tie them up more securely.

CHAPTER 6

The Killer

Colorado

Hours later the killer sat on Harold and Marcie’s couch, relaxing. He had blood smeared all over him and now he was getting it all over their couch and the pillows. He looked down at the blood smeared all over his leather gloves and the chunk of flesh in one hand. There was blood on the front of his black hoodie and down the front of his pants, big spots of it on his hiking boots. His boots left bloody footprints all over the carpet and wood flooring in the dining room and kitchen.

Harold and Marcie Watson were dead now. He had tortured them, taking his time with them, trying to stretch out those precious few hours before he killed them, those precious few hours of their pain and their knowledge that their lives were going to end very soon.

Yes, they were dead now, still bound to the chairs with the extra ropes he had used because he knew they were going to struggle once the cutting started. Now that they were dead, the real work would begin: the cutting up of the bodies, the rearrangements, the positioning, the artwork. He remembered the articles and websites about the Dig Site Murders, how the pieces of the bodies had been placed together, pieces inside of pieces, a perfect flesh and bone sculpture. Some websites had leaked photos of the bodies from the cave, other websites had drawings and other artwork, others had detailed accounts; he studied them all. He only wished he had nine bodies to work with like at the dig site in New Mexico, but he was working up to that.

Right now he was hungry. He wanted to eat something before he got started.

Let’s see what Marcie Watson cooked for dinner.

The killer walked past Harold and Marcie, their bloodstained bodies leaning slightly forward into the ropes that kept them in their chairs. In the kitchen, he washed the blood off of the piece of flesh in his gloved hands. The water running off of his hands was red at first, then it turned pink, and then clear. Once the piece of flesh was clean, he set it on the counter to use later when he began to reconstruct Harold and Marcie’s bodies.

He wore his gloves the whole time, doing his best not to leave any evidence behind, but he knew he would eventually be caught. Serial killers never lasted long anymore; forensics was too good, there were too many cameras everywhere. Eventually a highway traffic camera would pick up the license plate on the back of his car, placing him somewhere in the vicinity of a crime scene. Or his image would be caught on a security camera in a corner store. A receipt would give him away. A waitress would remember him. All the little pieces of evidence would eventually come together and the police would catch him. He didn’t fear that day, he just accepted the inevitability of it. And until that day came, he would continue to hone his craft, to perfect his art, to take chances with it, hoping to be mentioned alongside the legends of serial killers one day.

After they eventually caught him, he had everything planned out. The police would want to talk with him; they would want to know everything, every detail about the crimes. But he wasn’t going to talk. He wasn’t going to reveal a thing. Sure, they would threaten him at first; they would try to bribe him. Psychiatrists would try to figure out what buttons to push to make him talk, even promising that he would be a legend like Ted Bundy or Henry Lee Lucas. Movies would be made about him, books written, maybe even classes taught at universities and at the FBI devoted to his methods and motives. Others had talked, they would tell him. Others had revealed their secrets, and look at them now—legends, modern-day monsters, the bogeyman hiding in the dark.

But they had it all wrong. Yes, those killers were legends, but there were other serial killers that had come and gone, their names no longer on people’s lips or in the back of their minds when they walked alone down a dark street or double-checked the locks on their doors at night. No, there was another way to be sure he would be immortalized, and that was to create a mystery that would never be solved. He would tell the police and the FBI and the reporters nothing. He would let all of them agonize over his methods and motives. The more he refused to talk, the stronger the mystery would get. And he would never give in, right up until the time they walked him down the hall to the room where they would stick a needle in his arm so he could pass away peacefully, he would never talk.

The killer pulled out a dinner plate from the refrigerator that was wrapped in tin foil. He set it on the countertop next to the piece of flesh he had washed in the sink. He pulled the foil off of the plate revealing a chicken leg and thigh with what looked like some kind of barbecue sauce concoction on top of it. A dollop of mashed potatoes and a serving of broccoli were next to the chicken. That was good enough for him. He was about to slide the plate into the microwave oven over the stove when he froze.

There was a noise from the living room, a creaking sound, like someone shifting in the wooden chair and pulling against the ropes.

He stood there for a moment. He couldn’t see into the living room unless he went out through the archway into the dining room. He just waited, listening.

Another creak of the ropes. Another popping of wood. Two loud thumps.

For just a moment the killer’s heart raced. Either Harold or Marcie was moving around out there, but that was impossible. They were dead. They couldn’t be alive, not with everything he had done to them, and all the parts he had taken away from them. And at the end, he had slit both of their throats, watching their eyes as the life faded from them (the one eye Harold had left, in his case). No, they had to be dead.

And that left only one other possibility. There was someone else in the house right now. Either someone had been hiding in the house or someone had just entered.

The killer set his plate of food down on the counter and reached inside his hoodie for the gun in his shoulder holster.

He froze again.

Someone spoke from the living room, the voice a guttural croak. The person was calling his name, a name he hadn’t used in a long time—his middle name. Only his mother ever called him by that name.

“Arthur.”

The killer felt frightened for the first time in his life, frightened that he had made a terrible mistake sometime tonight, frightened that someone had been watching him and followed him here. And yes, frightened that he was going to get caught, only because he wouldn’t be able to finish his work. He still had so much to do.

“Arthur, come out here this instant.”

It wasn’t his mother’s voice, but a growling parody of it.

With his gun in his hand, the killer rushed out into the dining room, racing towards the living room.

And then he froze.

Marcie stood in the middle of the living room, free from the ropes that had bound her to the dining room chair. Her battered and bloody body swayed just a bit. Her head was tilted a little to one side, the gash in her throat wider on that side, the frayed lips of the wound in her throat pulling apart like a fish’s mouth.

“Arthur,” Marcie said, and then she smiled. Her split lips pulled up at the corners like invisible strings had suddenly yanked them up. But her eyes were still dull and lifeless, no expression there.

“How . . . how do you know my name?” The killer still had his gun aimed at Marcie who swayed back and forth slightly eight feet in front of him. But he couldn’t kill someone who was already dead, and now the gun felt useless and silly in his hand.

“I know who you are, Arthur.”

“Who are you?”

“You know who I am. I’m the one who killed the people at the dig site.”

“You . . . you did those things to their bodies?” the killer asked. “How?”

“I will show you, Arthur. I will work through you.” Marcie walked towards the killer, dragging one leg behind her that had been stripped of much of its flesh, leaving a trail of blood behind on the carpet. “You will see and do things that no one will believe, that no one will be able to explain.”

“Yes,” the killer whispered, his arm dropping down to his side now; it felt like the gun weighed fifty pounds. He let the weapon slip from his fingers and it dropped to the floor, landing with a thud.

“But you must do something for me,” Marcie said. She stood right in front of the killer now, her smile gone, her face blank and expressionless under the mask of blood and gore.

The killer dropped down to his knees. “Anything.”

“There’s a boy in New Mexico. I want you to kill him.”

Marcie touched the killer’s shoulder and his body jolted with electricity, like he had been shocked by his own Taser. He saw a teenage boy in his mind, a tall and lanky boy with dark hair down to his shoulders. The boy wore jeans and a black hoodie with some kind of rock band on it. The boy was walking away from a house. The killer was ten feet behind the boy, following him across a front yard of nearly-dead grass, brown and weedy. A line of mountains dominated the horizon, their jagged peaks dark against the deep blue sky. The land was arid but beautiful, full of tenacious life.

The boy stopped walking and turned around, staring like he knew someone was right behind him, like he knew someone was watching him.

He can’t see me.

The boy stared at his home, still looking around for who was watching him, still feeling like he was being stalked.

No, this is not his home. Not his real home. The Ancient Enemy took his home away from this boy years ago.

The boy was still jumpy, but he turned back around and continued walking towards the driveway where he grabbed a bicycle that was leaning against a pole holding up a metal awning.

David. The boy’s name is David.

The killer turned away from David in the vision and looked at the house, staring at the house number.

And then he was back in Harold and Marcie’s house again, kneeling on the bloodstained carpet with Marcie standing right in front of him. She still had her hand on his shoulder, her grip getting harder and harder, but the killer didn’t pull away from her.

A long black tentacle slithered out of the wide gash in Marcie’s throat, slipping down to her chest like a long, mucus-covered worm. And then there were more of the thin tendrils slipping out of Marcie’s throat, her mouth, the wounds on her face and body that the killer had created only hours ago. The killer could feel the tendrils snaking over his body, finding their way into the cuffs of his hoodie, tunneling into his skin. It was a little painful, but also blissful in a way.

The last of the tendrils escaped Marcie with a wet, sucking sound. They joined the others, wiggling into the killer’s flesh. When it was over, the killer stood up. A new strength and energy coursed through him. The Ancient Enemy was inside of him, but only a small part of the being. Some of the Ancient Enemy was still inside Marcie, other parts of the Ancient Enemy were outside in the howling wind, and still other parts were in other places. There were thousands of them. It was one creature yet it was also many, like a hive of insects that could work individually or come together as one being, all with the same mind. It would have been difficult to understand, but the killer understood everything now.

He was ready to begin the real work with Harold and Marcie, ready to complete the arrangements now. He was going to paint the walls with their blood, but he was going to save one wall where he was going to leave a one-word message that the Ancient Enemy, his new master, wanted him to deliver.

CHAPTER 7

Palmer

Denver, Colorado

Palmer wasn’t sure if the ringing telephone had woken him up or if it had been the nightmare. It was the same nightmare he’d had seven years ago, right before Cardenelli had called him to go down to New Mexico to investigate the bodies found in the cave at the dig site.

In the dream he was in the warehouse again. The warehouse was full of furniture, appliances, and other odds and ends. The place was massive and seemed to go on forever. There was a hallway to his right where doorways and windows opened up to rooms that looked like they might be showrooms of some sort. He was at the two large metal sinks again, washing a piece of flesh off in the water, the blood running red down his hands and then turning pink when it mixed with the water, swirling down the drain. The man in the office off to his left was there again, leaning back in his office chair, the springs creaking, staring at him in horror, asking what the hell he was doing.

But Palmer didn’t know why he was washing the piece of flesh in the sink; he didn’t even know what part of the body the piece of flesh was from. He knew what was coming next though—a man was coming down the hallway. No, not a man. A monster that looked like a man.

And that’s when he had awakened.

The cordless phone rang again and Palmer rolled over and pawed at the end table for it, knocking it off the base and finally grabbing it on the fifth ring before it went to the answering machine. He didn’t even bother trying to look at the number on the little screen on the phone because he knew he wouldn’t be able to see it, not just because he was half-asleep, his eyelids thick and gummy, but also because his vision had gotten worse over the last few years. He needed glasses to see things close up, and pretty soon he would need glasses all the time.

“Hello?” he croaked into the phone. He had almost said: Special Agent Palmer. But he stopped himself in time. It was a twenty year habit that he was still having trouble trying to break even after seven years of retirement.

“Palmer?”

He sat up in bed. He knew that voice, a voice from the past, his former SAC Cardenelli. The last seven years seemed to melt away and suddenly he was in the Bureau again, back in the Behavioral Sciences department, tracking the worst of the worst serial killers.

“Cardenelli. What’s going on?”

“I’m on a case south of Denver. Double murder. I need to talk to you about it.”

Palmer was on his feet, pacing around the bedroom, dressed only in his underwear and a white V-neck T-shirt. “Why do you need to talk to me?” His half-awake mind was struggling to make the connection.

“The Dig Site Murders,” Cardenelli said, getting right to the point, as usual.

Palmer was rocketed back seven years into the past again, back to the horrors he had seen at the dig site in New Mexico, and the trail of bodies from Cody’s Pass down to the ghost town.

He walked out of his bedroom and into his living room. He still lived in the same condo, the same one he had leased when he and Teresa had separated. The condo was supposed to be temporary until they worked things out, but they had never worked things out, and now the condo was still in a half-unpacked state, some of the boxes still stacked up in the spare bedroom closet. The furniture and décor were minimal and the walls were almost all bare. He had been waiting to get back with his wife, but it had never happened. She had divorced him. She’d had enough of his drinking; she’d had enough of being an FBI agent’s wife, of playing second fiddle to his real passion—hunting down killers. She’d left. She’d found a new man. She had moved on.

Palmer hadn’t moved on, and his condo was proof of that. He had retired after twenty years with the FBI right after the Dig Site Murders. He had quit drinking. But it hadn’t been enough for his ex-wife, or it had been too late by then. They had remained civil with each other, and their daughter Eliza was still a part of his life. He’d been there when Eliza had gotten accepted to the University of Colorado. He’d been there when she’d gotten married to Ted. He’d been there when Eliza’s son and daughter were born.

Eliza was closer to her mom than Palmer, and nothing would ever change that, but Palmer considered himself lucky that he was a part of both of their lives. Eliza had done her best to try to get Palmer to move on, suggesting online dating sites. Palmer had tried a few dates, but he felt like it was a waste of time. He felt old, like a used-up husk of a man. He felt depressed a lot of the time. He knew he was no fun. He wouldn’t want to go on cruises or hikes in the mountains or to plays or operas. He wasn’t fun and he wasn’t going to ruin some other woman’s life.

He told Teresa and Eliza that he was happy being retired. He promised Eliza that he was taking care of himself. He hadn’t had a drop to drink since almost dying from the snakebites and the collapsed roof in that Arizona ghost town. He had begun walking in the park three times a week. He drank vegetable juice once a day. Eliza had bought him the Nutri-bullet blender and showed him how to make the drinks. He was pretty healthy for a man his age; at least that’s what his doctor had told him.

Yes, he told Teresa and Eliza that he was happy being retired, even if it wasn’t true. He missed the work. He missed the chase. And now, here was Cardenelli calling him up about a double murder south of Denver, something that had to do with the Dig Site Murders, according to him.

The Dig Site Murders had never been solved and they had taken on a myth of their own now. Hundreds of conspiracy theorists and amateur detectives on the internet speculated about who had killed all those people, or what had killed them. They questioned why the archaeologists were killed, why they had been displayed the way they had in the cave. They wondered where Stella Weaver was, if she was dead, if her body would ever be found. Some believed the strange murders and burnt bodies in the cabin in Cody’s Pass, Colorado were connected to the Dig Site Murders. Information had been leaked out into cyberspace. The killings had all happened in small communities, and in those small communities people liked to talk, they liked to leak information and photos.

The Dig Site Murders had developed a cult following over the years. Several books had been written about the murders and two documentary films had been made, one passable, the other one not very good at all. There was speculation about a feature film being made that would be based on these true events. The murders were so strange, the mystery so deep, it was a myth that would never go away. It was right up there with UFO sightings and Bigfoot or other strange occurrences around the world: The Dyatlov Pass Incident, the colony at Roanoke, the four University of Wisconsin students who had gone missing from a cabin in Minnesota, the strange disappearance (and most likely death) of billionaire movie producer Nick Gorman on a small Caribbean island.

And Palmer had been following the stories on the internet about the Dig Site Murders, reading comments. He had read some of the books, watched the films and the YouTube videos, the interviews.

Something had happened for Cardenelli to be calling, something big. Why else would he be calling him at—he looked at the clock in the kitchen—eight o’clock in the morning?

“The Dig Site Murders?” Palmer asked Cardenelli.

“Yes,” Cardenelli said and then hesitated for a few seconds like he was deciding how to say the rest. “There’s been another one.”

Palmer’s mind raced. “What do you mean another one?”

“I’m sure you heard about the two couples that were murdered north of Denver.”

Palmer had heard. Someone in the Denver area was trying to re-create the Dig Site Murders. So far the killer had killed two couples, and then he had hacked up their bodies, rearranging them like the pieces in the cave at the dig site. There were plenty of photos and illustrations online for the killer to go by. Of course the killer never came close to what the Ancient Enemy had actually done in that cave. How could he? He wasn’t the Ancient Enemy, he wasn’t the true killer, he was only a copycat. “Yes,” Palmer finally answered. “I heard about them. So this is another copycat murder?”

“Yes, but this one’s different.”

Palmer stopped pacing. He stood in the middle of his living room. “What do you mean different?”

“It’s just . . . different. I need you to come here.”

“You want me there? At the crime scene? If you’re asking me to be a consultant, I’m going to have to—”

“Your last name is written on the wall,” Cardenelli said.

Palmer was still frozen in place in the middle of his living room, unable to speak for a moment.

“The killer wrote the word Palmer on the wall in the victims’ blood.”

CHAPTER 8

Palmer

Denver, Colorado

Palmer wanted a drink. It was his first reaction after he’d gotten off the phone with Cardenelli. He didn’t have any alcohol in his condo, but it was easy enough to go get some from the liquor store, or even some beer or wine from the grocery store or gas station.

The nightmares had come back in the last week. He’d told himself that these copycat murders were just triggering the memories of being in that cave with Captain Begay and his deputies, of seeing—and smelling—the pieces of bodies stuck together, arranged like they had been.

He got dressed, slipped his shoulder holster on and slid his Glock 17 into it. He put on a windbreaker jacket that was nearly the same shade of dark blue as the FBI windbreaker he used to wear; it was bulky enough to conceal his weapon.

He studied his hands for a moment. They were trembling slightly. After all these years his sobriety was at risk. All the years of psychiatric help and therapy, the years of walking for exercise and drinking a vegetable juice every day, it all seemed to have been in vain, all pointless now, all for nothing. It only took one phone call from Cardenelli to bring the horrors rushing back into his life again.

But that wasn’t entirely the truth, and he knew it. The nightmares had returned before Cardenelli had called, and Palmer couldn’t help feeling like those dreams were an omen of the Ancient Enemy’s return.

“It’s not back,” Palmer told himself as he walked to the door that led out to the hallway of his building. “It’s not back. I saw David send the Ancient Enemy back. I saw David kill it.”

Palmer fought the urge for alcohol as he drove south from Denver. Cardenelli had texted the directions of the crime scene to his cell phone. The house was on a few acres of land at the foot of the mountains, a house at the edge of the woods where no one would have heard the victims’ screams.

When Palmer arrived, he parked behind a line of unmarked FBI sedans and SUVs. There was also a sheriff’s car and a coroner’s van. The front yard was a large field with a long driveway meandering through it and there was plenty of room to park.

Cardenelli met Palmer outside the house. A lot of the other cops and agents were milling around outside, none of them seemed to want to be inside.

“Thanks for coming, Palmer.”

How could I have said no? But he didn’t say that, he just nodded.

He followed Cardenelli to the house. Cardenelli was talking as he walked, going over the details of what they had found, catching Palmer up to speed. “Harold and Marcie Watson are the victims, both fifty-three years old. Harold was on disability and Marcie worked part-time at an accounting office. Someone entered their house sometime last night, early in the evening we suspect because the clothing from the victims suggest that they hadn’t gone to bed yet. And . . .” He let his words fade away.

“And what?”

“And it seems like the killer would have needed a long time to do the things that he did.”

“Only one suspect?” Palmer asked. He could already smell the coppery, slightly rotten smell coming from the open front door of the home, a smell that brought him back to that cave at the dig site; he had to push back that panicky, claustrophobic feeling that the smell brought with it.

“Only one set of bloody footprints found so far in the house,” Cardenelli answered. “Same shoeprint and shoe size we found at the other murder scenes. Probably some kind of hiking boot. Forensics is on its way. They’ll be here for a while.”

Before Cardenelli entered the home, he handed Palmer a pair of latex gloves and paper booties to go over his shoes. Palmer shoved his hands into the gloves and then slipped the booties on. He followed Cardenelli inside the home.

The front door opened right up to the large living room, right to the horror displayed in the middle of the floor. To the right, an archway led to a hall area and bedrooms. To the left there was a dining room and then an archway to the kitchen. The walls were splattered with blood, smeared with it in some places. But one wall had been left untouched except for the word PALMER painted in large looping letters.

Palmer walked a little closer to his own last name on the wall, careful not to step in the blood on the floor. He looked at the pieces of the bodies arranged in the middle of the living room floor. Some of the living room furniture had been pushed back towards the walls to make room for the display: legs and arms intertwined around a mound of organs on top of two torsos, the heads of Harold and Marcie Watson on top, their intestines strung through everything like strings stitching up the morbid display.

“You okay?” Cardenelli asked.

Palmer had the back of his hand up to his nose, trying to breathe in the latex of the gloves to mask the smell. He breathed through his mouth, anything to block out the stench of blood, the reek of shit and piss, the rotting smell of undigested food from torn stomachs and intestines stretched so far they had split open, spilling their contents. It had been a long time since Palmer had smelled anything like this, and it was overpowering. It had also been a long time since he’d seen anything like this, and he was beginning to feel a little light-headed. He could imagine how pale and sickly he looked right now to his former agent-in-charge.

But Palmer managed to nod and clear his throat. “This is how the other victims looked?”

“Sort of,” Cardenelli said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“They were arranged sort of like this, their body parts stacked up on each other. But the first two murders were more amateurish. Not as skilled as this.”

“So he’s getting better at . . . at doing this.”

“It’s quite a jump in skill.”

“Maybe this is someone different. Another copycat.”

“Same shoeprint found at the other scenes. Same type of hiking boot. No fingerprints or hairs left behind at the other two murders, and I’m betting we won’t find any here, either. Also, the victims have similarities. All three of the older couples lived in a remote area. They had all been tied up to chairs, tortured, then killed and their bodies cut up and mutilated. But you’re right, this could be someone different. The first two could have been copycat killings, but maybe this one is the real killer.”

Palmer felt another wave of dizziness wash over him. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening again. This couldn’t be the Ancient Enemy.

“Look at the way the bodies are cut up,” Cardenelli said, pointing at the pieces with a pen clenched in his gloved fingers. “These cuts are ragged, and the bones seem to have been snapped, not sawed apart. It’s like these people weren’t even cut up, more like they were ripped apart.”

Palmer swallowed hard. He felt clammy.

“Of course we’ll get more info after forensics is done, but I can see the differences already.”

“So you think this is the work of the killer from the dig site? Or from the Mountainside Inn in Cody’s Pass?”

“Seems similar in a way. There are things done to these bodies that don’t seem physically possible for a human being to do. Just like at the Mountainside Inn. Just like the cabin. Like the bodies at the dig site in New Mexico. Maybe this killer, or killers, they took time off. Seven years for whatever that might symbolize to them. And then this copycat comes along, trying to mimic the murders and it draws the real Dig Site Killer out into the open again.”

“But you said it seems like this is the same man that killed the other two couples.”

“Yeah, but that’s just the shoe size and some of the tools used. Lots of guys wear that shoe size and that brand of hiking boot.”

Palmer sighed and stared at the wall with his last name painted on it. “But you really brought me here because of that.”

Cardenelli nodded.

Palmer knew that Cardenelli had never bought his explanation of what had happened in Cody’s Pass and then down in Arizona, how he and Captain Begay had chased a suspect hundreds of miles into the desert. He and Begay had gotten their stories straight before they were interviewed, both of them saying that the “suspect” had gotten away, even implying that the “suspect” was part of a larger group, perhaps even a cult of some kind. Begay had even suggested that the cult could be Navajo or some other Native American people. It was all Cardenelli or any of the other FBI agents had ever gotten out of him and Begay after hours of questioning. And Palmer knew Cardenelli had never been satisfied with either of their answers or their version of what had happened. Cardenelli had actually seemed relieved when Palmer told him that he wanted to retire early. It had taken some paperwork and a few okays from the top brass in the FBI, but Palmer’s request was finally granted a few weeks later.

“Could be a different Palmer,” Palmer told Cardenelli. “This might not be my name.”

Cardenelli shook his head. “I don’t think so. Too much of a coincidence. You were the agent on the Dig Site case, and this is a copycat killer. I think this message is meant for you.”

Palmer couldn’t tell if Cardenelli suspected him of being involved with this somehow, or if he was worried about his safety.

It didn’t matter. Palmer was no longer an FBI agent, and he wasn’t even asked here as a consultant. He didn’t need to be here anymore. If Cardenelli was going to charge him with something, then he’d better get on with it, otherwise he was done here.

He left the house and Cardenelli followed him out, suddenly right behind him. “I want you to stay in touch with me,” Cardenelli said.

“Will do,” Palmer answered as he walked down the long driveway to his car. A forensics van was pulling up now, driving right past him.

Palmer got into his car and started it. He turned around in the driveway and left. As soon as he was on the road, he made two phone calls. One call was to his ex-wife Teresa, and the other to Eliza. He only got Teresa’s voicemail so he left a message for her. But Eliza answered the phone and Palmer told her about the recent copycat killings. He told her someone had painted his last name on the walls. He begged her and the kids to take a vacation for a while, somewhere far away.

At least Eliza sounded scared, and he hoped to God she was going to take his advice.

CHAPTER 9

David

Iron Springs, New Mexico

David was leaving his house. He was halfway across the front yard to the awning where he had left his bicycle when he stopped and turned around, sure for just a moment that someone was right behind him, watching him. For a second he thought it was his Aunt Awenita, but it couldn’t be her—she wasn’t home.

No one was there, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching him, following him, someone dangerous and powerful.

The first thought that came to his mind wasn’t the Ancient Enemy; it was the shadowy killer he’d seen in his dreams lately. The man had killed two couples up in Colorado, and he had killed again last night—David had seen that in his dreams.

David grabbed his bicycle that he had leaned against one of the poles holding the awning up. He had locked the front door on his way out of the house, his key shoved down in his pants pocket along with his cell phone. He got on his bicycle and rode down the driveway and then onto the road, heading towards Iron Springs. It would be a long bicycle ride to Captain Begay’s house, but he needed to see him—he had no one else to turn to now. He would have gone to see Joe Blackhorn about this, but he was dead now. David had turned his back on the old man two years before that, abruptly quitting the training with him because he didn’t want to be a shaman, he wanted a normal life. He wanted to be a normal kid with friends.

“I killed it,” David had told Joe Blackhorn right after their last training session, the last one before he had walked away. “None of this matters now because I killed the Ancient Enemy.”

Joe Blackhorn had given him a grave look, a look that said David understood nearly nothing about what they were doing. “You sent it back, but you can’t be sure you killed it.”

“I would know if it was still alive,” David had snapped at Joe Blackhorn. “I would be able to feel it.”

And then Joe Blackhorn had said nothing—he had just stared at David.

David walked away from his training because he just wanted to be a normal kid. He thought back then, four years ago, that it had been possible for him to be normal. But the kids in Iron Springs would never let him be normal. They all knew about his parents’ murders, about the bodies at the dig site, about Jim Whitefeather. They knew he’d been training with Joe Blackhorn, and then there were all the speculations and rumors that came with the old medicine man. Most of the kids David knew had never laid eyes on Joe Blackhorn or even knew where he lived, but it didn’t stop them from talking about him like he was some kind of bogeyman. Even the older kids stayed away, not even daring each other to venture out to where the ghost town stood—Hope’s End was the haunted house of haunted houses, even the land was haunted, a sacred site best left alone, a place that could rip a person’s soul away and leave behind a dried-out husk with an eternal mask of fear etched into their face.

David had been back to the ghost town several times, Joe Blackhorn had made him go. It had been part of the training. The first time David had been back in the ghost town, he had walked down the wide dusty street where nothing ever grew, not even a weed. As he stood in that street, he remembered riding on the back of the four-wheeler behind Cole, holding on to him. He remembered riding towards the church at the other end of town. He remembered the horrors he’d seen inside that church. He remembered the man and woman wearing the skinned faces of his parents. He remembered the spiders erupting from them, the snakes crawling around, the birds crashing in through the windows, the storm . . . the Darkwind.

Now the church was barely standing, the floorboards ripped apart, a section of the roof caved in. Joe Blackhorn wouldn’t let him enter the church for safety reasons, but he still wanted him in the ghost town, he wanted him to remember everything.

And other memories had come to David as he stood in the middle of the ghost town. He’d told Stella that he’d been in the ghost town before, and then he remembered it all. He remembered traveling to the town on horseback with the U.S. Marshal. They had been running from his home because his parents and his older brother had been slaughtered and then taken by the Ancient Enemy.

David remembered that Jed had planned on going somewhere else, to another town a few days’ ride north, but they’d had to stay in Hope’s End because of a sudden desert storm.

(The Darkwind)

David remembered staying in the saloon/hotel that a man named Moody owned. He remembered the drunken cowboy and a woman named Rose going upstairs to her room. He remembered a thin Swedish man. He remembered the bartender with the big mustache. He remembered a Navajo man they called Billy even though his real name was Nez. He remembered a gunslinger named Sanchez. And he remembered a woman named Esmerelda.

Now that David remembered those things from his past life, it all seemed so similar to when he had shown up at the dig site after his parents were murdered by the Ancient Enemy. He’d met Stella at the dig site. She had protected him from the others who wanted to kill him. She had taken him and fled to Colorado where Cole and his gang of bank robbers had carjacked them and taken them to the cabin.

David couldn’t help noticing the similarities. Jed reminded him of Cole, and Cole reminded him of Jed. Esmerelda and Stella seemed to be similar. The saloon reminded him of Tom Gordon’s cabin in Colorado. Things were eerily similar yet still different. David had been in the town of Hope’s End, in the saloon. The memory of that was as clear as any memory in his life had ever been. He had been reincarnated from that person, that David, in Hope’s End into who he was now, the same but still different. After he had fought the Ancient Enemy, he had taken it with him into its world, the netherworld, the Void. But he didn’t remember any of that. He had woken up here, in this new body, this new time. He wondered if Jed and Esmerelda had been reincarnated into Cole and Stella. The thought both thrilled him and terrified him. Was everyone a reincarnation of a past life, or were only certain people transported to the next life? Was everything a constantly turning wheel in time?

He’d asked Joe Blackhorn about these things, but of course the old man only spoke in riddles. He even told David that he didn’t have the answers to these questions; his only task was training him to become a shaman, to prepare him to fight and protect himself if the Ancient Enemy ever came back.

David had insisted that nothing like that was ever going to happen again, that the Ancient Enemy had been defeated. He had been so sure of it then, and maybe he had even been trying to convince himself as much as he had tried to convince Joe Blackhorn.

But in the end, Joe Blackhorn had been right—it was happening again.

Now he needed help, and the only person he could think of to turn to was Captain Begay.

CHAPTER 10

David

Iron Springs, New Mexico

David ended up catching a ride in the back of a pickup truck, and that saved him at least an hour of pedaling his bicycle. He got dropped off in town; he didn’t want to ask the driver of the pickup truck to take him all the way to Captain Begay’s house.

After riding down the road to Captain Begay’s house, he pushed his bike up the driveway. There were two vehicles parked in the driveway, a pickup truck and a small car. He laid his bike down out of the way and went to the front door to knock.

Mrs. Begay answered the door. For just a second she seemed to search her memory, like she was trying to recall David’s name. “David. What a surprise.”

“Hi, Mrs. Begay.”

“Call me Angie.”

“Would it be okay if I talked to the captain?” Even though Begay had been retired from the Navajo Tribal Police for a few years now, everyone still called him the captain.

Angie nodded. She stepped back and opened the door wider. “Sure. He’s in his man-cave.” She over-emphasized the word man-cave like it was some kind of secret joke between her and Captain Begay. But then her smile slipped away as she sensed the seriousness of David’s visit.

“Do you want anything to drink?” she asked after David came inside. She shut the door and then looked at him. “Some milk or water?”

“Water, please.”

Angie opened the refrigerator in the kitchen and got a bottle of water for David. She cocked her head towards a door at the other side of the kitchen. “Come on.”

David followed her to the closed door. She knocked and then opened the door a little, sticking her head in. “David Bear is here to see you.”

For just a second she stood there, blocking the doorway, the door still open just a little. It seemed like she was making sure the captain wanted to see him. Then she swung the door open all the way and gestured at David to enter.

The man-cave was at least as big as the living room. There was a bar off to one side, an old-fashioned juke box, and some bookcases filled with books along another wall near the desk and filing cabinet shoved into the corner. The walls were decorated with animal heads, framed photos, rifles, bows and arrows, artwork—an equal mixture of Navajo culture and more modern décor. Begay was in one of the two battered leather recliners situated in front of a gigantic flat screen TV mounted to the wall above the mantle of the massive fireplace.

Angie left and closed the door behind her.

Begay didn’t get up. His chair sagged a little to one side from his weight—he had gained at least another fifty pounds since retiring. He’d always been a big man, tall and stocky. He had looked like a giant to David when he’d seen him before. Now he looked so much older.

“David, what brings you by?” Begay’s face brightened with a smile.

David didn’t have an answer ready, not even sure where to begin.

“Come have a seat,” Begay said, pointing at the other recliner next to him. A large table cluttered with junk was between the two chairs. Begay’s smile slipped away and his face now had the same grave expression as his wife’s face.

As David sat down in the other recliner, Begay plucked a remote control from the clutter on the table and turned the TV off, giving David his full attention.

Begay’s diabetes had gotten worse over the last few years. Even with his socks on, David could tell that the old man’s ankles and feet were swollen. Begay moved slower and breathed heavier, but his mind was still just as sharp, his eyes showed that. To David, Begay had always been an imposing man, and even with all of the ailments, he still seemed to be a pillar of strength.

“I think something’s happening,” David said. He fiddled with the water bottle in his hands. He hadn’t even opened it up yet.

“What do you mean?” Begay asked.

David was pretty sure Begay knew exactly what he meant, but it seemed like the former captain wanted to hear the words spoken out loud. “The Darkwind,” David answered. “The Ancient Enemy.”

Begay sat perfectly still as if he’d already been bracing himself for the worst news. “And you’re sure about this?” His eyes never left David’s eyes.

“No,” David answered. “I mean I don’t have any proof. But I can feel it.”

Begay only nodded.

“I don’t know what to do,” David said. “I wish Joe Blackhorn was still alive.”

“Yes, I’m sure you do.”

David wondered if Joe Blackhorn and Begay had talked before Blackhorn died. He wondered if Blackhorn had ever told Begay how he had abandoned his training in pursuit of a “normal” life, a normal life that he now knew had never been within his reach, at least not here on the Reservation where everyone knew about his past and the horrors that had happened around him.

“I think I still need help,” David said. “My training with Joe Blackhorn, it was never finished.” He watched Begay, trying to figure out if he knew the truth.

“What makes you think the Ancient Enemy is back?”

David set his bottle of water down on the floor and dug his cell phone out of his pocket. He found the news article about the slaughtered villagers in Costa Rica and showed it to Begay.

Begay slipped a pair of glasses on, perching them at the end of his nose as he studied the phone, taking several minutes to read the article. Then he looked at David. “Says here that a drug cartel killed these people.”

“I think it was the Ancient Enemy.”

“This is in Costa Rica. Is that where . . .?” He let his words die away.

David only nodded. He wasn’t going to tell Begay exactly where in Costa Rica Cole and Stella lived now.

“Look, David. I never knew where Cole and Stella took off to, and I never really wanted to know. I kept quiet about details like that because I knew neither one of them was guilty of the crimes they would eventually be charged with by the FBI. Even if I found out where they lived now, I would never tell anyone. Do you believe me?”

David nodded. “I think they’re in danger. I think it’s back and it’s coming after them. After all of us.”

Begay sat statue-still in his recliner for a moment and then he handed the phone back to David.

“I’ve been having a lot of dreams lately,” David said as he shoved his phone back into his pants pocket.

Begay waited for him to continue.

“I’ve been having dreams of the ghost town, but in my dreams it’s the town it was back in the Old West—Hope’s End. I was in that town back then, when all of those people in that church were killed by the Ancient Enemy. I remember all of it. I remember everyone there.”

“I wish I could help you,” Begay said in a soft voice. “But I’m not like Joe Blackhorn. You know that.”

“I know. I just didn’t know where else to go.”

Begay sat in his chair, silent for a long moment, and then he sighed like he had finally come to a decision about something. “I know someone. He’s not Joe Blackhorn, but then no one is. His name is Nez. Billy Nez.”

David’s heart skipped a beat. “I knew a man named Billy Nez in Hope’s End.”

Begay nodded. “Maybe that was his great grandfather. I could take you to see Billy tomorrow. I can’t promise he will see you or talk to you, or even be able to help you, but we could try.”

“Yes,” David said. “I would like that.” And for the first time in the last few days he felt a little better.

CHAPTER 11

Palmer

Denver, Colorado

Palmer was back in his condo when he got the call from his ex-wife Teresa.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?”

This wasn’t exactly how he had wanted the call with her to begin. “Whoa,” he cooed. “Let’s calm down a little.”

“You’ve got our daughter scared to death. She’s packing the kids up and taking a spontaneous vacation. She doesn’t even know where she’s going.”

“If you’ll just listen to me for a second . . .”

But Teresa wasn’t giving him a chance to explain. He’d left Teresa a voicemail before he’d made the call to Eliza, telling her that she needed to take the kids and get out of town for a little while, at least until they caught this serial killer. He knew he wasn’t supposed to reveal details about a crime scene without permission, especially now that he was a civilian, but he’d told Eliza that the killer had painted his last name on the wall in blood. Whoever this killer was (and now Palmer knew exactly what it was), he was sending a warning.

“Oh my God, Dad,” Eliza had whispered into the phone earlier.

“This killer’s a copycat,” he’d told Eliza. “He’s trying to re-create the Dig Site Murders, and apparently he’s threatening me.” It was a bit of a stretch, perhaps even a white lie, but he would say just about anything to get Eliza and the kids out of town.

And now Teresa was on the phone and she was livid. “You’re not going to infect our child and our grandchildren with your paranoia, with your delusions of grandeur.” Teresa’s new husband Gary was a psychiatrist, hence Teresa’s habit of throwing around that kind of jargon.

“Did Lizzy tell you what was at the crime scene?”

Silence from Teresa for just a few seconds. “That could be anyone’s name. Palmer is a pretty common last name, you know.”

“I can’t take any chances with this. I think you and Gary should leave, too. Just to be safe.”

“I’m not going anywhere. And I’m going to try to talk some sense into our daughter. We can’t go running halfway across the country every time someone gets murdered.”

“This is different. You know that.”

“Yeah, you always think it’s different.”

“I think this might be the same person, or people, responsible for the Dig Site Murders.”

“The ones you never caught.”

She had to get that little dig in. “Yes, the ones we never caught. This could be the same people doing this.”

“I gotta go,” Teresa said.

She was done arguing, and that’s how arguments ended with Teresa—when she couldn’t win or get her way, she was done talking, storming off. Her idea of arguing was to tell you what she thought, and then she wasn’t interested in hearing anyone else’s side of things. She liked to yell and scream, and then she liked to run away.

Palmer hung up the phone. He was sure Teresa was calling Eliza right now, trying to talk some “sense” into her, as she had put it. But he hoped he had scared Eliza enough so that she wouldn’t change her plans. Eliza worked from home now and she could always take her work with her on a laptop if they had to stay away for a few weeks.

He paced across the living room of his condo, the bare walls staring back at him. That craving for a drink was back. He licked his lips and he swore he could almost taste the alcohol on his tongue. He thought about going to the store to buy a six-pack of beer. But he knew he wouldn’t stick to beer for very long, soon enough it would lead to shots of liquor.

He couldn’t do anything if Teresa managed to change Eliza’s mind, and that made him feel helpless. Eliza had said that Ted might not go with them, but he hoped Eliza and the kids would still go.

Now Palmer had one more phone call to make. He’d been putting it off. He didn’t want to call Begay unless he was absolutely sure there was a problem. But now he was sure. Some of the things done to Harold and Marcie’s bodies couldn’t have been done by a human, just like Cardenelli had said.

It was back, Palmer knew that as much as he’d ever known anything in his life.

He went to a kitchen drawer and found the old address book where he had written Begay’s home phone and cell numbers down, along with his address in Iron Springs. It had been seven years since he had spoken to Begay. The captain could have moved. He could have changed his phone number. But at least this was a place to start.

After dialing Begay’s cell phone number, Palmer paced back and forth in the kitchen. He had hoped never to see Begay again. He had hoped never to have to go down to New Mexico again.

“Begay speaking.”

For just a second Palmer couldn’t speak. Just hearing the sound of Begay’s deep voice brought back a rush of terrible memories . . . memories that he had tried for years to push into the darkest corners of his subconscious.

“Hello?” Begay asked.

“Captain Begay? I’m Agent Palmer with the FBI. I was down there seven years ago when—”

“I remember who you are, Agent Palmer.”

“Okay.” Palmer was stunned for a moment. Captain Begay sounded a little angry, but he didn’t sound surprised at all to be getting this phone call.

“And it’s not Captain Begay anymore. I retired three years ago.”

“Yeah, well it’s not Agent Palmer anymore either. I’ve been retired since . . . since all of that stuff happened down there.”

“You said you were going to retire,” Begay said. “In the hospital afterwards. You told me that you’d had enough and that you were going to retire.”

Palmer remembered that now. He remembered Begay visiting him in the hospital, bringing some kind of potted cactus with him.

Begay was silent now, but Palmer could hear his heavy breathing.

“The reason I’m calling,” Palmer said, “I think it’s happening again.”

“What makes you think that?”

“There’s been a copycat killer up here, some crackpot trying to re-create the Dig Site Murders.”

“I heard.”

“A couple was killed last night. An older couple. And this murder was different from the other ones. I don’t think this was the work of the copycat killer. I think this was . . .” Palmer’s words dried up; he didn’t want to say the name out loud.

Begay was still silent, still breathing heavily into the phone. Palmer realized that Begay was going to make him say it.

“I think it’s the Ancient Enemy,” Palmer finally said. “The way this couple was mutilated, the way their bodies were ripped apart, the way the pieces were arranged, it had to be the Ancient Enemy.”

Begay still said nothing.

“And there was one other thing at the latest crime scene, something that won’t be in any of the papers or on the news. My last name was written on the wall in the victims’ blood.”

Begay let out a long sigh—it sounded like a rush of wind in the phone. “David came by to see me.”

“David.”

“He’s fifteen now. Tall and skinny. He believes it’s happening again, too.”

“What did he say?” Palmer began pacing again. “Did he see anything?”

“He said he felt it. And he showed me a news article he had saved on his phone.”

“What kind of news article?”

Begay hesitated for just a moment.

“What is it?”

“I can’t reveal too many details about it right now,” Begay said. “But something about the news article convinced me.”

“This is about Cole and Stella, isn’t it?” Palmer said. “I won’t go after them; I promised you and David that I wouldn’t do that. I’m not even an agent anymore, remember?”

Begay sighed again. “The news article was about some murders, a mass murder that happened somewhere outside the United States. I’m sure you could eventually find out where it happened on your own if you wanted to.”

Palmer decided not to press the issue about the news article. “So what do we do?”

“What can we do?”

Palmer imagined the Ancient Enemy coming after him and his family. But then he thought about David. “You think that thing still wants someone to kill David for it?”

“I’m sure it does.”

“But it might be after all of us now. David, Cole, and Stella. Me. You. Our families.”

“David seems to think Cole and Stella are in danger.”

Palmer sighed. “Listen, I’d like to stay in contact with you. I know we’re not cops anymore, but if this is happening again we need to be ready.”

“Yes.”

“If this is really happening again, do you think David can stop it again? Do you think David got more powerful now that he’s been training to be a shaman?”

“David stopped training with Joe Blackhorn several years ago. Joe Blackhorn is dead now.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that,” Palmer said. There was an awkward silence for a moment and then Palmer said, “Let me know if you hear anything else.”

“I will,” Begay said and hung up.

Palmer wasn’t so sure Begay would keep his word about that. He went to his laptop and did a quick search of mass murders around the world. A few minutes later he found a mass slaughter of a village in Costa Rica about twenty miles from the Pacific Ocean. The people had been hacked to death, the pieces of their bodies stacked up like little sculptures. The local police were blaming the deaths on a drug cartel, but Palmer saw the similarities to the Dig Site Murders, and now he knew where Cole and Stella were living.

CHAPTER 12

Stella

Costa Rica

Stella didn’t sleep well through the night, and neither did Cole. She finally fell asleep, but then she woke up well after midnight from a dream.

In the dream, she was in the ghost town in Arizona where David had finally defeated the Ancient Enemy. But it wasn’t a ghost town anymore; it was an Old West town in the 1890s, and she was in a saloon. She was herself in the dream, but she was also someone else at the same time; she just wasn’t sure who she was. She saw David in the dream and he looked the same as he had when he was eight years old, but everyone else were strangers to her, yet at the same time it felt like she recognized them, like she knew them somehow. There was an Irishman who owned the saloon. There was a tall, thin man from Sweden. A Mexican gunfighter stood at the bar with his back to her; he was a young man, but a dangerous man. An older Navajo man sat at the back table with a bowl of stew in front of him. His head was lowered, and the brim of his black hat hid much of his face. The person who grabbed her attention the most was a marshal, a tall and muscular man, a man hardened by the Arizona weather and the work he’d done for years, chasing down bounties. He stared at her from across the saloon like he knew her. And she knew him—she was sure of it. Nothing scary was happening in the saloon, but Stella still felt a sense of dread, like something terrible was outside and it was coming for them.

She snapped awake and lay there in bed for a while. After Cole had finally fallen into a deep sleep, Stella eased out of bed and left the room. Her back was hurting a little from lying in bed too long, she needed to get up and move around. Her muscles had that achy feeling she got when she didn’t get a good night’s sleep. She was still tired but not too groggy; in fact, her mind was overly active right now, but she couldn’t keep tossing and turning in bed, keeping Cole awake. He needed his sleep, too.

It felt better to be awake and moving through their dark home. She turned on a light in the kitchen and started some coffee. The tile floor was cool on her feet and everything was quiet, with only the buzz of the night insects outside.

As she stood there she began to believe that Cole was right about what she’d seen in the jungle. At best it had been her imagination; at worst it was someone stalking them, perhaps planning to rob them. But she was beginning to believe more and more that it hadn’t been Jim Whitefeather standing in the jungle; it had been some kind of hallucination.

Again, she felt like all of her recovery had been set back to nearly the beginning. She wasn’t sure why she was suddenly so afraid of the Ancient Enemy again. Their first year down here had been horrible, she’d felt like a junkie fighting through withdrawals. But little by little, day by day, month by month, it had gotten better. Even though she knew that the memories and trauma would always be there, at least she could live a normal life again.

Still, as a scientist, it bothered her that these fears had come back so strongly and suddenly. Had something triggered it? Maybe being out in the jungle and so far from civilization had triggered it. But no, she’d been doing that for over a year now. And she hadn’t been alone; Maria and the rest of her team had been with her. And she’d had her gun with her.

Cole’s other theory was that she’d really seen a man in the jungle, and she had projected Jim Whitefeather’s image onto that man. Perhaps when something startling happened, her mind went instantly to the worst trauma she’d ever suffered—the Ancient Enemy. Cole was still worried that some men were stalking their dig site and planning to rob them. He had Stella so worried about it yesterday afternoon that she had called Maria to make sure she was okay. She’d gotten no answer from Maria so she left her a message on her voicemail. She would call her again soon.

Somebody poking around to rob them wasn’t good, but it was a natural danger, one they could fight. It was still much better than the Ancient Enemy being back.

The coffee was ready. She just wanted to drink a few sips of hot coffee and try to relax, think about things rationally. What she’d seen in the jungle had just been a—

Stella’s heart jumped, her eyes darting to the kitchen window. Something had moved out there, a shadow racing by. She swatted at the light switch, turning the kitchen light off and plunging the room into darkness. She opened a bottom drawer and pulled out a 9mm that Cole kept in there. Her heart was still pounding and she could barely catch her breath.

No noises from outside now. She crept to the kitchen window over the sink and looked out onto the side yard. There was a path beside their house and then a wall of jungle beyond that. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness again, but she couldn’t see anyone moving around out there.

The doors and windows were all locked; she and Cole had checked all of them several times before going to bed.

But the Ancient Enemy can still get in if it wants to, her mind whispered. She felt a panicky vulnerability because David wasn’t here. David had been the only one who could protect them, and she had also gained strength from protecting him, a mother’s courage. Now she and Cole were vulnerable, there was nothing to stop the Ancient Enemy and whatever horrors it was bringing.

She needed to calm down and try to think rationally again. There was nothing outside that she could see. The movement in the kitchen window could have been a reflection of her movement in the kitchen, something she’d caught out of the corner of her eye. She was still more tired than she wanted to admit even though she felt wide awake right now.

Little by little she began to relax. She was just jumpy and she had worked herself up into a near-frenzy. She would drink a little coffee, maybe even stay up until dawn.

Stella jumped and spun away from the window. There was a noise in the living room; it was a thumping sound like someone had just bumped into the coffee table. She imagined Jim Whitefeather in their living room, his body badly decomposed after seven years, but still somehow partially preserved enough by the Ancient Enemy. She imagined the dead man stumbling around, feeling his way along because his eyes had been gouged out so long ago.

Gripping the gun’s handle tightly, Stella had no choice but to go into the living room. Cole was in the bedroom and the only way to get to him was through the living room. It was still too dark in the house. If there was an intruder in the house, or if it really was the Ancient Enemy, then they knew she was in the kitchen right now. She needed to turn on a light—she couldn’t be in the dark.

On her way to the living room, Stella flipped on the overhead light in the kitchen and then the one on the ceiling fan in the living room. She rushed into the living room, gun aimed, her finger on the trigger.

And then she froze.

Cole sat in the recliner.

Stella’s breath came out in a rushing exhale, her body suddenly weak. The gun felt like a cinderblock in her hand and she dropped it down to her side.

Oh my God, what am I doing? I could have shot him.

“Cole,” she whispered.

He stared at her from the chair, hunched forward, his brow hiding his eyes in shadows, but she could tell he was staring at her. Maybe he was shocked because she had rushed into the living room with a gun aimed at him. But if he was angry, he wasn’t showing it. His face seemed blank, devoid of all emotion.

I could have shot him. What’s wrong with me?

Stella set the gun down on a bureau next to the wall, the thud of the gun against the piece of furniture loud in the silence. “Are you okay?”

Cole nodded. His eyes were half-closed now. Maybe he was still half-asleep. He had probably woken up and realized that she wasn’t in bed with him and he’d come out here to look for her.

“Are you cold?” she asked, taking a step towards him. It wasn’t cold at all in the house but he looked like he was shivering.

He nodded. But he looked more than cold, he looked sick. She hoped he wasn’t coming down with some kind of tropical flu. They’d been pretty lucky so far with their health. And if he was sick with something, there was a good chance she had brought it back with her from the jungle.

Maybe she was also sick. She felt like she was burning up with a fever, her skin hot and clammy. Maybe hallucinations were a symptom of this sickness. And paranoia.

“You want to go back to bed?” she asked him. “Get under a blanket?”

He shook his head no.

“I’ll get a blanket for you,” she told him.

He didn’t answer.

She knew she should have gone to him and comforted him, maybe she should have felt his forehead for a fever. But for some reason she didn’t want to be near him, and getting the blanket for him was an excuse to be away from that dead stare of his. She told herself that she was embarrassed because she had aimed a gun at him, but it was more than that. There seemed to be something wrong with him, something more than a fever.

A thought struck her when she was halfway down the hall to their bedroom—Cole hadn’t spoken a word to her. Cole wasn’t himself. She stopped in the middle of the hallway. It was dark, but the light from the living room was providing enough light for her to see that their bedroom door was almost all the way closed. Why would Cole leave their bedroom and close the door? He’d never done that before.

What if that wasn’t Cole out there in the living room anymore? What if the Ancient Enemy had gotten inside the house while she’d been looking out the kitchen window? What if the shadow moving outside had been a distraction so the Ancient Enemy could get to Cole, get inside of him? The Ancient Enemy had used distractions at the dig site and at the cabin; maybe it had used one here.

She’d left the gun out in the living room, but Cole had more guns in the bedroom. His handgun was in there. She slipped into the bedroom and closed the door, locking it. She would get another gun and go back to the living room. She would talk to Cole. She would make him answer her, make sure it was really him.

She was about to turn on the light so she could see. She didn’t want to be in the dark right now. But then she stopped. She heard something behind her, a heavy breathing sound coming from the bed.

It’s here . . . it’s already in here . . .

Stella slapped at the light switch, trying to find it, trying to turn it on. She realized now that she had made a terrible mistake. She never should have left Cole in the living room. She never should have put the gun down.

Something was grabbing her in the darkness, trying to pull her deeper into the room. She tried to fight back but it was too strong.

CHAPTER 13

Cole

Costa Rica

“Stella!”

She wasn’t answering him.

He turned on the bedroom light, flipping the switch on. He held her arm with his other hand, but she was still fighting him. Her eyes were wide with shock when she saw him in front of her.

“Stella, what’s wrong?”

“I . . . I . . .” She looked back at the bedroom door. It was closed.

“Were you asleep?” he asked. “Dreaming?”

She shook her head no, but it didn’t look like she was sure about her answer. It didn’t look like she was sure about anything.

This had happened to both of them before, especially the first year they were down here: night terrors, sleepwalking, paralyzing nightmares, stifled screams while waking up.

“I was awake,” Stella whispered, still staring at him like she was trying to understand why he was standing right in front of her.

He suspected she might still be trying to come fully awake.

“I just saw you in the living room,” she whispered.

Cole felt a shiver travel through his body. It wasn’t just what she’d said, but that expression of fear on her face.

He hurried over to his side of the bed and pulled on his pants. He stuffed his feet into his sneakers and grabbed his gun. He went to the door and then looked at Stella—she hadn’t moved an inch. “Is someone out there?”

She didn’t nod or shake her head no, she just stared at him.

Cole twisted the doorknob gently. It was locked. Stella had locked the door in her terror. He twisted the lock and then opened the door. He crept down the hall. The lights in the living room and kitchen were on. He stepped out of the hall into the living room, looking around. He didn’t see anyone.

Stella was right behind him.

“What did you see?” he asked her.

“I got up about twenty minutes ago,” she said.

“Did something wake you up? Did you have a nightmare?”

“I don’t think so. I . . . I just couldn’t sleep. When you finally fell asleep, I got up. I came out here to make some coffee. And then I thought I saw something moving outside the kitchen window.”

Cole stopped next to the bureau against the wall. He saw the gun on top of it.

“I got the gun from the kitchen drawer when I saw something outside the kitchen window,” Stella explained.

Cole just nodded and entered the kitchen. He could feel Stella right behind him. He checked the door that led out to a screened-in back porch. The door was still locked. He turned off the kitchen light and peered out the window over the sink. He looked back at Stella. “What did you see out there?”

“I don’t know. It was like a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye.”

“Like a bat?”

She shook her head no. “It was way bigger than a bat.”

“But you didn’t see what it was.”

She shook her head no again.

“What happened after that?”

“I heard a noise in the living room, like someone had bumped into a piece of furniture. That’s when I got the gun.”

He didn’t like the idea of her grabbing a gun while walking in her sleep.

“I went into the living room and I saw you sitting in the chair. You were in your T-shirt and underwear. Just like when you went to bed. You didn’t say anything. You just stared at me. You looked . . .”

“Looked like what?”

“At first I thought you were still half-asleep, but the more I thought about it, you had a blank expression on your face. Emotionless. Like you were dead. Like Frank at the cabin. Like the others the Ancient Enemy sent back.”

Cole went to her and wrapped his arms around her, holding her. She was trembling. “That wasn’t me,” he whispered. “It was just a bad dream.”

“You were cold,” she continued into his shoulder. “Shivering. I went to our bedroom to get you a blanket.”

“It wasn’t me,” he assured her.

“But then I wondered if the Ancient Enemy was already inside of you, using you, controlling you.”

Cole pulled away and looked at Stella, staring into her eyes. “Babe, it’s me now. I’m here now. I wasn’t out here earlier. I woke up in our bedroom when you were slapping at the wall, trying to turn on the light.”

She just stared at him.

“I think you might have been walking in your sleep.”

She shook her head no, already dismissing that idea.

“I know it might have felt real. Remember how many times you walked in your sleep before? When we first got here? Remember that time you punched me in the face? You gave me a bloody nose.” He smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back. “I think you got scared in the jungle yesterday at the dig. And I think it has triggered the night terrors again.”

Stella nodded. She seemed to be on the verge of tears, struggling to hold them back. But she was also beginning to look relieved. He thought his words might be sinking in.

“I think you should take a few more days off from the dig. Maybe even a week or two.” The thought of men stalking the dig site, possibly planning to rob it, hadn’t left his mind entirely.

He expected resistance from Stella, but to his surprise she nodded in agreement. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of Maria,” she said. “I left her a voicemail, but I wanted to talk to her about it.”

Cole was glad she was going to take some time off. He had never liked the idea of her going into the jungle, but he had given in because he knew how much she loved the field work. Maybe she hadn’t really seen someone in the jungle, maybe it had just been her imagination triggered by all the talk in town about the eighteen people that had been slaughtered in a village a few days ago.

“Let’s get a cup of coffee and then we’ll go back to bed. Okay?”

She nodded.

“Or how about some tea? Maybe tea would be better.”

She shrugged like she didn’t care. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It was just . . . it seemed so real.”

“I know.” He hugged her again, holding her tight.

This was just a temporary setback, he told himself. They would get through this again. They would get better again.

Cole started some tea for Stella. Maybe they’d be able to get back to bed soon, but Cole wasn’t so sure he’d be able to go back to sleep. He’d been dreaming when Stella had stormed into the bedroom. He’d been dreaming about the ghost town in Arizona, only it wasn’t a ghost town in the dream—it was the town it had been back in the 1890s, a town called Hope’s End. Nothing scary had happened in the dream, but it had scared him anyway and he wasn’t sure why.

CHAPTER 14

Teresa

Denver, Colorado

Teresa snapped awake in bed. The bedroom was dark, but moonlight shined in through the upper windows, giving her enough light to see the massive bedroom she shared with her husband Gary. She looked at him lying on the other side of their king-sized bed. He was in his usual position, on his side, facing away from her. He was breathing heavily, but not snoring.

She looked back up at the high ceiling, studying the patterns the tree branches and leaves made there in the moonlight, faint patterns that could turn into faces and other things if she stared at them long enough. It was her own private Rorschach inkblot on her ceiling.

It seemed like something had awakened her, a sound somewhere else in the house maybe. She had checked all of the doors and windows and made sure the security system was on before going to bed. Her ex-husband’s paranoia had gotten to her today and she hated him for it. She didn’t want to admit it to him, but she had been scared when she’d found out Eliza and the kids were leaving town. And she had to admit that her ex-husband’s last name painted in blood on the wall of a crime scene had been pretty creepy.

Earlier, in the daylight, it had been easier to pass his ravings off as paranoia, but now, in the dark, in the middle of the night, it seemed like all of it could be real. She tried to think rationally as she lay in bed. What were the odds that a serial killer would come to their neighborhood and target this house? Astronomical odds, she guessed. Possible? Yes, but anything was remotely possible. Probable? Not likely. Of course Palmer’s name written on the wall changed things and changed the odds a little.

She had talked to Eliza earlier, but she hadn’t been able to talk her into staying in her home. Maybe that was a small victory for her ex. But Eliza looked at leaving as an impromptu vacation, a chance to get away with the kids for a while, to spontaneously go somewhere. An adventure.

“Don’t let your father win,” she’d told Eliza on the phone.

“Not everything’s a competition,” she’d answered back.

But he had already gotten to Eliza first, buried that fear deep inside of her before she could talk some sense into her. She wanted Eliza to dislike her father as much as she did, but sometimes it only seemed to make her love him more.

Love? That probably wasn’t even the correct emotion Eliza had for her father, it was probably more like pity. Palmer had been a strong man once, but the drinking and the FBI had torn him down little by little, making him weaker and weaker. And that last case he had worked, the Dig Site Murders, that case had broken him completely.

Even Gary tried to defend Palmer. He found it perfectly reasonable for Palmer to exhibit post-traumatic stress symptoms after the things he had experienced. He suggested that Palmer see someone, at least talk to a therapist.

Now Palmer was retired and still living in that tiny condo in the city. She didn’t know what he did all day now, and she wasn’t even sure why he was occupying so much of her thoughts lately. At least he hadn’t started drinking again; she could at least say one good thing about him.

Teresa rolled over, facing away from Gary. This was how they usually slept, facing in the opposite direction.

She had closed her eyes again, teetering on the edge of sleep, when a sudden wind rattled the trees outside. It sounded like a hurricane for a moment. She rolled over to see if the howling wind had woken Gary up. He was still sleeping.

After the wind died back down, she stared up at the ceiling again. The familiar patterns of the leaves and branches were back. She figured she would stare at them for a while until she fell asleep. But now, even though the wind was gone, the patterns seemed to be moving, swirling together, creating serpentine shapes with insect-like legs poking out and then pulling back into the swirling shadows. Little mouths opened at the end of some of the tendrils, jaws opening and closing, revealing sharp little teeth.

Teresa rolled over onto her side again. She wasn’t going to stare at the shadows on the ceiling tonight. Maybe she had fallen asleep for a second, dreaming those moving shadows for a moment. Again, she blamed Palmer for this; his scary tales had gotten to her, too.

A noise sounded from deep in the house. There was no mistaking the sound this time. It sounded almost like footsteps, like someone was walking around out there.

She sat up in bed, her heart beating faster, her skin warming up, her muscles tense. She had to fight the urge to wake Gary up.

The alarm system is on, she told herself. There can’t be anyone inside or the alarm would have gone off. She looked at the alarm clock on the table next to the bed just to make sure the electricity was still on (even though the security system had a backup battery). The green digital numbers of the alarm clock seemed to float in the darkness like little ghosts.

She was going to have to get up and check the house; she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep if she didn’t. She picked up the cordless phone and took it with her when she left the bedroom.

Their house was large. It was a mixture of modern styling and a rustic log cabin. There were a lot of large windows that looked out onto the acres of property all around them, with mountain views in the distance.

She didn’t bother turning on any of the lights as she made her way into the living room. She stared out the windows. There was no one out there. No vehicles in the large parking area or the driveway that led back down the hill into the trees.

Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was in the house.

The killer . . . the one who had done those things to the archaeologists down in that cave in New Mexico.

Palmer had told her a little about that case, but not too much. She’d gotten vague details from internet sites and the news, but Palmer knew more—he knew what had really happened to those people. She had never pressed him about the details; she had never wanted to know. All she knew was that it had been bad, bad enough to tear him up.

She checked the keypad on the wall—the alarm system was still armed. There couldn’t be anyone inside the house. She relaxed a little, but she still heard those footsteps in her mind; they had sounded so loud. It had just been her imagination. She still had the cordless phone gripped in her hand. She would’ve felt better with a gun, but Gary was against guns. They had the burglar alarm and the cordless phone, he’d told her—that was good enough for civilized people.

In the kitchen, she grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator. The light from the refrigerator was shockingly bright and it took her eyes a few seconds to readjust to the darkness when she closed the refrigerator door, agonizingly long seconds.

But she was already feeling better, and feeling tired again. She was sure she would be able to fall back asleep now.

She froze.

Footsteps sounded from the other side of the house—from their bedroom.

It’s Gary. He woke up after I got out of bed. He’s come looking for me, wondering where I am.

She had an almost overwhelming urge to turn on some lights, but she fought against it. She wasn’t going to act like a scared little girl.

After marching through the house, she entered their bedroom. And then she stopped cold. Gary wasn’t in bed; he was standing beside it, staring at the open door to their massive walk-in closet across the room.

“Gary?”

He didn’t answer her. He didn’t turn her way. He didn’t even flinch. He never took his eyes off of the closet door as he stood there in the dark like a tall and lanky shadow.

“Gary, are you okay?”

Still no answer.

“Were you walking around in here? I was in the kitchen and I heard someone walking around in here.”

Gary still hadn’t turned her way. From where the bedroom door was, his back was turned slightly towards her. He was still staring at the open door to their walk-in closet. He was watching it.

Someone’s in there, her mind whispered. It’s the killer.

“Gary? Gary, answer me.”

Was he still asleep somehow? Was he sleepwalking? He’d never done that before.

“Gary, answer me.”

Her skin was buzzing with fear. She still had the cordless phone in her hand, gripping it tightly like it was a weapon. She had a gut instinct to run out of the room, to dial 911, to scream for help. But she couldn’t leave Gary.

Teresa walked to the foot of the bed, then around it, towards Gary. When she got closer to him, she saw his face. He looked ghostly pale. His eyes were wide and bulging from the sockets, his mouth hanging open, his body rigid, like he was paralyzed. He stared at the closet door with a horror-movie look of pure fright, almost an over-exaggerated expression.

A bumping sound came from inside the closet; something was moving around in there.

Her eyes darted to the black rectangle of the doorway in the darkness. She saw nothing beyond that wall of darkness.

“We have to go,” she told Gary, grabbing his arm. His muscles were tense, rock-hard, and she couldn’t make him move or turn her way.

Movement from the ceiling above them caught her eye. She couldn’t help looking up at the patterns of leaves and tree branches there. They were moving again like they had earlier, swirling, writhing in and out of each other like a mass of snakes. But some of those tendrils were dropping down from the ceiling like thick spider webs. The webbing fell down delicately on Gary, laying down on his head and shoulders like black lace.

She drew her hand back from Gary. She took a step back away from him. She still had the cordless phone in her hand. She dialed 911 with trembling fingers, ready to scream for help into the phone. It rang once in her ear and then someone picked up.

“Help us!” Teresa screamed into the phone.

All she heard was a heavy breathing on the phone and then someone whispering her name: “Teresa.”

The phone slipped from her hand, falling to the floor. She stared at Gary. He still hadn’t moved a muscle, but now he grunted through his open mouth, almost like he was choking. His mouth opened wider. At first she thought it was his tongue bulging out from his mouth, but then she realized that it was the black tendrils from the ceiling wriggling out from between his lips and teeth, pushing his mouth open even wider, the tendrils snaking down his face, one of them poking right into his eye.

“Teresa,” a man whispered from the closet.

She couldn’t help it, she turned towards the closet and saw a man standing in front of it—the killer. She tried to run, but she’d been a few seconds too late, something grabbed her hand, then it wrapped around her arm—the tendrils from Gary’s mouth. She tried to pull away from them, but they were too strong.

CHAPTER 15

Begay

Iron Springs, New Mexico

It was only an hour after sunup when Begay pulled into David’s driveway. He parked behind Awenita’s minivan and shut his truck off. His truck was a Ford F-250, only five years old now, a retirement present to himself.

He got out and walked to the front door. Awenita opened the door right after he knocked. She had a smile on her face. She was always up early.

“David told me you were coming by this morning to pick him up,” she said.

Begay nodded at her. “Is he ready to go?”

“Almost.” She opened the door wider. “You got time for a cup of coffee?”

“I never turn down coffee.”

Begay followed Awenita into the kitchen. She poured him a cup of coffee and set it down in front of him. “Cream or sugar?”

“No,” he said, putting a thick hand out to stop her. “I’m trying to cut back on the sugar.”

“I’ve got some Sweet-n-Low.”

Begay shrugged. “That would be great.”

She grabbed a box of the artificial sweetener from the cabinet and pulled a few packets out for Begay. She cleared a cereal bowl and juice glass off the table, bringing them to the kitchen sink.

David entered the kitchen.

“Morning, David,” Begay said.

He nodded at Begay. “Morning.” He looked at his aunt. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“I probably won’t be here when you get back. You got your house key?”

“Got it.”

Begay took another gulp of his coffee and then he and David went outside. It felt good to be outside again. He liked Awenita, but no matter how pleasant they were to each other, she reminded him of the past, of the horrors both of them had gone through.

They got into Begay’s pickup truck and Begay started it and drove away.

“I don’t know if Billy Nez is going to be able to help you,” Begay said when they were outside of Iron Springs.

“It won’t hurt to try, will it?”

Begay shook his head. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up. Billy is not like Joe Blackhorn. He’s not a true medicine man.”

“But he has some kind of knowledge,” David said, staring at him. “Or you wouldn’t be taking me to see him.”

David was correct about that. Begay gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, not sure how to explain the rest. “Billy knows a lot of the old ways. And there are some who say he knows about the darker side of things.”

“You mean like witchcraft?” David asked.

Begay just shrugged. “I’m not saying that. Others have said that.”

David didn’t say anything; he just stared out the passenger window for a while.

Begay was sure that David knew how Billy Nez might feel, he was sure David knew what it was like to have people whisper behind his back. He was sure David knew what it was like for people to assume he was a witch. Or a curse.

They drove for a while, but they didn’t talk much more. David seemed nervous. Maybe he was nervous about meeting Billy Nez, and Begay was sure that he hadn’t helped things by telling him about the rumors that surrounded Billy, but he felt that it needed to be said, that David needed to go into this with his eyes wide open.

Begay thought of the phone call he’d gotten from Agent Palmer last night. Former Agent. Palmer seemed sure it was happening again, as sure as David was. Begay could try to counter both of their arguments; he could try to come up with rational reasons why it wasn’t true, why it couldn’t be true. But why bother? He could feel it, too. He could feel something sinister in the clear desert air, something dark on the horizon, a wave of death coming. And he felt helpless to stop it.

Begay had called Billy Nez’s phone last night and he’d gotten Billy’s daughter—Doli. He told her that he really needed to see her father. She was nervous, tense even though he wasn’t part of the Tribal Police anymore. She told him that she would let Billy know he wanted to see him. Begay wasn’t sure if Doli would actually relay his message to Billy, but he made sure that she understood that he would be coming by this morning; he wasn’t going away.

*

An hour later Begay drove down the dirt drive to Billy’s mobile home. Even though it had been seven years since he’d been here, it seemed like yesterday. Not much had changed; the three rusted trailers were still there, the old cars and trucks were still parked off the side of the road, tucked away in the mass of weeds and brush. The vehicles were a little rustier, the weeds a little taller, the brush a little thicker. The trailer home still looked the same, the weedy front lawn—half sand and half scrub brush—was littered with trash, toys, and other junk. The doghouse was still at the back end of the first trailer, but there was no dog in there now, just a chain attached to the doghouse, the chain snaked across the yard. Doli’s battered gray Chevy Impala was parked near the front of the first trailer and it seemed to be the only operable vehicle there.

It felt like Begay had slipped back into time for a moment, like he was back in his old Ford Bronco and Agent Palmer was in the passenger seat. But only for a moment.

He pulled up within fifteen feet of the first trailer with its weathered and petrified wooden deck. The front door flew open and two kids rushed out, obviously excited to see visitors to their home.

Begay got out and the kids rushed up to him, a boy and a girl; the boy was probably about nine or ten years old and the girl was maybe six or seven.

Doli stood in the doorway. She was pregnant and she still looked just like she had seven years ago. She had the same long dark hair and the same blank expression. “Leave them alone,” she told her kids in Navajo.

“Who are you?” the little girl asked Begay in English.

“My name’s Begay. What’s your name?”

“Kai,” the girl answered. “That’s my brother Yas.”

“Who’s that?” Yas asked, pointing at David.

“His name is David Bear.”

Doli told the kids again to leave them alone, but they ignored her. Begay had the feeling that they ignored her a lot. He saw a wild streak in the children, the same wild streak Billy had in him, the same wild streak that had gotten him into trouble so many times through the years.

“I need to see your grandfather,” Begay told the kids. He felt he might have a better chance getting answers out of the kids rather than Doli.

“He’s down by the river,” Yas blurted out.

“But he wants to be alone,” Kai warned.

“Well, this is very important,” Begay said. He looked at Doli in the doorway of the trailer.

“I can show you where he is,” Yas offered.

“You’ll stay here,” his mom snapped. It was the first time she’d shown any real emotion in her voice or on her face.

And this time her children listened, knowing when they had crossed the line.

Begay stared at Doli, waiting.

She gave a slight nod at the woods, giving her permission, but she said nothing else.

David followed Begay along the trail through the woods. The farther they went, the closer they got to the lazy river flowing by. Ten minutes later they came to Billy’s sweat lodge. Billy sat on a big rock not too far away from the mud hut. It looked like he’d been waiting there for them to show up. His eyes were glassy and Begay wondered what he’d been smoking all morning.

“Billy Nez,” Begay said.

Billy looked older, but somehow still the same. His dark face was lined with wrinkles, his black hat pulled down low, his shirt unbuttoned down to his belly button. He nodded but offered no greeting in return to Begay. He looked at David and seemed intrigued by the sight of him.

“You remember David Bear,” Begay said to Billy. “He was training with Joe Blackhorn until he died.”

Billy nodded again. “Yes, I remember.”

“David needs your help,” Begay said. “Those murders at the dig site, the things that happened at the ghost town, I believe all of it may be happening again. I believe the Darkwind may be back.”

CHAPTER 16

David

New Mexico

David stared at Billy Nez. It was like seeing someone he knew, but also someone he couldn’t remember entirely. He felt like he’d seen this person before, and he saw the slight resemblance to the Billy Nez he remembered in Hope’s End, only this man in front of him was taller and a little younger. But there was something recognizable in his face.

And then David’s eyes were drawn to the necklace Billy wore, the silver charm hanging from it. He knew what was inside that silver sphere: a lock of hair from the other David, the one in Hope’s End, but also himself. He felt slightly nauseous as both memories competed for space in his mind: the memory of Hope’s End, of Billy Nez sawing off a hunk of his hair with the knife, and the ghost town seven years ago. And now David remembered that Begay had worn that same necklace when they were in the ghost town, and that necklace had helped keep the snakes and spiders away from him inside that church.

“I remember you, David,” Billy said. His eyeballs were as black as onyx stones and set deep in his face under a prominent brow.

David nodded at him.

“Is this true?” Billy asked. “Is it back?”

David found himself nodding before he even answered. “I can feel it. I know my friends, Cole and Stella, are in trouble.”

Billy seemed to remember them or the rumors about them. “Where are they now?”

David looked at Begay.

Begay nodded that it was okay.

David turned back to Billy. “In Costa Rica.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pants pocket, pulled up the news article, and then handed it to Billy.

Billy took his time reading the article, thumbing the screen slowly, studying it. After a few minutes he gave the phone back to David. “Did you warn them?”

“No. Not yet. I wasn’t sure at first.”

“Have you been having dreams?” Billy asked.

“How did you know?” David asked.

“What have you been dreaming?”

“They’re like memories. Of the ghost town. Back when it was Hope’s End. It feels like I was there back then, back when everyone in the town was killed. “He paused for a moment. “I was there in that town before. Back then. I fought the Ancient Enemy then, but it took me into the Void.”

“What do you remember about the Void?” Billy asked. “What do you remember about its world?”

David shrugged and shook his head a little. “Nothing. It was like I was there, then I was here. Like the blink of an eye.”

Billy exhaled a long, slow sigh. For some reason David felt that Billy suspected him of lying about his memories of the Void, but he didn’t say anything about it.

“What other dreams have you had?” Billy asked.

Again, David was shocked. It felt like Billy was reading his mind somehow, probing it a little, but it was like Billy couldn’t see everything he wanted. “I’ve been dreaming about a serial killer. He’s killed some people in Colorado.”

“You see the murders through the killer’s eyes?”

“Not really, but I’ve seen the things he’s done.”

“Have you seen the killer’s face?”

David shook his head no. “He’s like a shadow. Just a blurry image.”

“What did Joe Blackhorn say about the Ancient Enemy when you were training with him?”

“He told me that I might have only driven the Ancient Enemy back into its own world. He said I might have hurt it, or even damaged it, but I might not have actually killed it.” He glanced at Begay. “And now I think it’s back.”

“How am I supposed to help?” Billy asked.

“I never finished my training with Joe Blackhorn,” David admitted. He hoped Billy wasn’t going to ask him why—he didn’t want to go into the real reasons he had turned his back on Blackhorn.

“I am not a shaman,” Billy said. “I cannot show you what to do. Only you can know what to do.”

“But some say you know about witchcraft,” David blurted out.

Billy’s eyes cut to Begay.

David didn’t look at Begay; he kept his eyes on Billy. “Some say you have strong powers.”

Billy sighed. “I do not have the powers you do, David.” He pulled off his necklace and stood up from the rock. He walked the few steps over to David and gave the necklace to him. “I can give this to you. I can perform a few ceremonies. But I cannot do much more than that.”

David nodded. It wasn’t the answer he’d been hoping for, but he took the necklace.

“It’s kind of your necklace anyway. It was meant for you.”

David didn’t say anything.

“You are going to have to face this ancient evil again.”

David nodded—he already knew that.

“It will never stop looking for you,” Billy continued. “It will not stop looking for everyone around you. But this time you will have to go on a spirit walk, you will have to enter its world. You will have to enter the Void.”

“I don’t know how to enter its world,” David said. “I don’t know how to go on a spirit walk. Joe Blackhorn never showed me how.”

Billy frowned. “I am sorry. I cannot help you with that.”

David couldn’t help believing that Billy Nez was lying to him, but he didn’t say anything about it.

*

A few minutes later David walked beside Begay on the trail through the woods, heading back to Begay’s pickup truck. Moments later they passed the trailers where Billy’s daughter and grandchildren lived. David looked at the rotting deck of the last trailer. He thought he would see Billy’s daughter standing there, but the front door was closed. The children were inside. Everything was quiet.

They got to Begay’s truck and David got in the passenger side and closed the door. He slipped his seatbelt on.

Begay started the truck, but he didn’t shift into reverse yet. He looked at David.

David met his stare. “Sorry about calling Billy a witch. I . . . I just . . . I didn’t know what else to do. I just need some help.”

Begay shook his head like he was already forgiving David and accepting his apology. “That’s okay. I’m sure Billy’s heard that many times. The dream you’ve been having about the serial killer. Tell me more about that.”

“It’s like I told Billy, I can’t see the killer; he’s just a shadow. But I know he’s there and I know he can see me now. I don’t think he could see me before in my dreams, but now that the Ancient Enemy is inside of him he can see me.”

Begay sighed and finally shifted into reverse and backed up, turning around so he could drive down the bumpy trail that led back to the road.

David stared at Begay as he wrestled with the steering wheel down the path through the weeds. “You know something about the killer, don’t you?”

For a moment David didn’t think Begay was going to answer, but then he finally spoke. “The killer you’re dreaming about, he killed another couple in Colorado.”

“How do you know that?”

“Do you remember Agent Palmer? The man I was with when I came to the ghost town, the one from the FBI?”

David nodded. “He got bitten by the rattlesnakes at the church, and then the roof fell on him.”

“Yes. He called me yesterday. He told me that he believed the Ancient Enemy was back.”

“How would he know that?”

“Palmer told me that he’d been at the scene of the murder earlier in the day. He said things had been done to their bodies that only the Ancient Enemy could do. He also told me that his last name was written on the wall in blood.”

David realized that the agent’s phone call was one of the reasons Begay believed his story about the Ancient Enemy being back; Begay had already heard it from Palmer. David was happy to be right about his suspicions that the Ancient Enemy was back, but he was also terrified at the same time.

“What else did he say?” David asked.

Begay shrugged. “Not much. I told him that you believed the Ancient Enemy was back.”

“I think it’s coming after me,” David said. “I think it’s inside that killer I keep dreaming about, and I think he’s coming for me now.”

Begay nodded like this made sense to him.

“But I think the Ancient Enemy wants more than me; I think it also wants revenge.”

Begay seemed like he believed that, too.

“I need to go to Costa Rica. I need to find Cole and Stella. It’s after them too, and I need to be with them again. You should come with me.”

“I can’t go,” Begay said. “I’m too old and sick to go down to Central America. I don’t think I’d even be able to help much.” He looked at David as he pulled off of the dirt driveway and onto the paved road. “But maybe you should go.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Have you talked to them lately?”

David shook his head no. “I’ve been sending texts and calling Stella, but she hasn’t called me back in a few days.”

Begay frowned, and David didn’t like that look from him. It seemed like Begay believed that Stella and Cole might be dead, but David was sure they were still alive. He couldn’t say exactly how he knew, but he just did.

“It’s going to be dark soon,” Begay said. “I think you and your aunt should come and stay with me and Angie at my house.”

“Okay,” David answered.

“I think we should talk to your aunt when we get back.”

David nodded in agreement, and then he pulled out his cell phone. It was time to send another text message to Stella. It was time to warn them.

CHAPTER 17

Palmer

Denver, Colorado

In the dream Palmer was standing at the edge of the road. He watched the killer walk down the other side of the road, dragging a head and parts of a body behind him. Beyond the road there was nothing but woods. It was night, but there was an unnatural lightness in the sky, like the moon was ten times brighter.

Like in so many of his dreams, Palmer couldn’t move. All he could do was watch helplessly as the scene in front of him unfolded. He was rooted to the spot at the side of the road. All he could do was yell and cry out, but he knew the killer wouldn’t look his way.

Even in the illumination from the dark blue sky, the killer was still a shadowy figure. Not blurry—the edges of him were clearly defined—but he had no features. He was dressed from head-to-toe in black: black sweater, black pants, black boots, black gloves, and a black hood of some kind, like a ski mask. He looked to be about six foot tall and lean, maybe a hundred and sixty or a hundred and seventy pounds. His movements were quick and fluid, suggesting youth. And he seemed confident.

The killer held the woman’s head in one hand by a fistful of her blond hair, the rest of her long hair hid her face. Below her head, where the rest of her body should have been, there was a string of meat, strips of skin, a tattered piece of clothing, bones, and a section of spine—the vertebrae still held together somehow. The pieces seemed to be tied together by bits of slimy string (but Palmer knew they were small strips from tendons and ligaments). The bones knocked into each other like a bamboo wind chime as the killer walked down the road.

And then the killer veered off the path, walking towards a huge tree. One massive, gnarled branch from the tree sloped down towards the road. He hung the woman’s head from the branch, attaching it somehow with more cords of stretched-out flesh, wrapping the string around the limb and then underneath the woman’s chin like a noose. The rest of the gore, bones, and strips of flesh hung down from the woman’s head like the tentacles of a jellyfish.

And then the killer moved on down the road, disappearing into the darkness.

Suddenly Palmer was moving across the street towards the remains of the woman hanging from the tree branch. It was like his body had been picked up by some invisible force and now he was floating across the road, faster and faster, helpless to fight the force, helpless to stop it. It was a strange and terrifying sensation.

He was getting closer and closer to the woman’s head and the parts of her body that hung down below. Her blond hair was still partially hiding her face, a face that was bruised and battered. But even with the eyes swollen shut and the bloodstains, Palmer knew who the woman was—it was Teresa.

Palmer was rushing towards Teresa’s face when her eyes popped open.

That’s when Palmer had woken up from the dream.

It was ten o’clock in the morning. He hadn’t slept much last night, and he’d finally fallen asleep around dawn. He felt like he’d only been asleep for a few minutes but he knew it had been longer, at least a few hours.

His first thoughts were of Eliza and the kids, then of Teresa and Gary. He was out of bed in a flash, rushing for his cell phone. He called Eliza first.

The phone rang five times and then she told him to leave a message in a chipper voice.

“Hey, Lizzy, it’s your dad. Just wanted to see how things are going and make sure everything’s okay.” He tried to keep the tremble out of his voice. He tried to sound like he wasn’t scared to death. “Just get back to me as soon as you can. You can text me if you want. You don’t have to call if you don’t want to. I just want to make sure you’re okay. That’s all. Love you, honey. And tell the kids I love them, too.”

He hung up and stared at his phone. Maybe he should call Teresa. His finger hovered over the contact button for a few seconds and then he touched it, the phone dialing her number. After several rings it went to voicemail, just like Eliza’s phone.

“Hey, Teresa. I don’t mean to bother you.” He was probably the last person she wanted to hear from right now. “I called Lizzy and didn’t get an answer. I just wanted to make sure everything’s okay. If you talk to her, can you have her call me as soon as possible?” It was better to make the phone call about Eliza rather than about himself.

He hung up the phone and went into the kitchen. He was thirsty. He popped a can of soda open and drank half of it down—the bubbly liquid felt good on his parched throat, the sugar and caffeine helping to bring him fully awake. He was still tired. He thought about trying to go back to sleep for a few more hours, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep now.

After turning on the TV to a twenty-four hour news channel, something babbling in the background, Palmer took a shower. He spent ten minutes standing under the hot water, the dream coming back to him as he stood there. He saw Teresa’s dead face hanging from the tree limb in the dark, her blood coating the bones, organs, and strings of flesh hanging down from her head, the blood black and glistening in the luminescent moonlight.

And then her eyes popped open.

Palmer remembered stifling a scream as he’d awakened. He tried not to think about Teresa and instead concentrated on the killer. For some reason he was sure he had seen the actual killer in the dream, or at least the man the Ancient Enemy was controlling now, but he hadn’t gotten a good enough look at the man, especially with the black clothes and ski mask he’d worn. Palmer could tell the man’s height and approximate weight, but that was about all. He felt pretty sure the man was young, maybe mid to late twenties. But those were all details that Cardenelli and the FBI had already guessed at.

Not being able to see the killer clearly in the dream was frustrating. It was like the killer was taunting him. Only it wasn’t the killer sending the dream to him, Palmer knew that—it was the Ancient Enemy, and the dream was either a warning or a portent of the future.

Or it had already happened.

That was what Palmer didn’t want to face. Deep down inside, he couldn’t help feeling that Teresa and Gary were already dead and the Ancient Enemy was just showing off to Palmer what it had done to them.

Palmer shut the shower’s water off and got out, drying off quickly with a faded towel. He dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, his movements panicky and jerky. He wanted to call Eliza again. He needed to hear her voice, make sure she was safe. She might get annoyed if he kept calling, but he didn’t care. He darted across the living room to grab his cell phone, but as soon as he reached it, the phone rang. The name on the screen was Cardenelli.

Palmer didn’t want to answer it. He didn’t want to make the dream real. The phone rang a third time and Palmer picked it up and swiped the screen.

“Palmer. It’s Cardenelli. There’s been another murder.”

Palmer felt his stomach convulsing. He hadn’t eaten any breakfast, but the can of soda he’d had earlier wanted to come up along with bile and stomach acids. He didn’t want to hear this, but he was powerless to stop it. He remembered the dream, how he had floated across the road towards Teresa’s remains hanging from the tree branch, rushing forward through the night air, trying to fight against the force that paralyzed him yet propelled him forward. He felt like that now, like he was being propelled forward towards something he didn’t want to face.

“I’ve got some bad news, Palmer.”

Here it comes.

“It’s your ex-wife Teresa. She and her husband were murdered last night. And there are two new names painted on the wall in blood.”

CHAPTER 18

Palmer

Denver, Colorado

Palmer stared at Teresa’s head and the wind chimes of her bones, the dreamcatcher weaving of her intestines, the lengths of flesh and entrails that hung down from her head like the tentacles of a jellyfish.

Just like the dream.

And just like Cardenelli had said on the phone, two more names had been written in blood on the wall in large, looping letters: Cole and Stella.

Palmer felt sick to his stomach, afraid he might vomit at any second. His head was light and he felt weak and unsteady on his feet. The coppery smell of blood and the rotting smell of roadkill filled his nostrils. It had taken years to get that smell out of his nose, out of his mind, and suddenly it was back.

He had the sensation of being watched by Cardenelli, every action of his being scrutinized and studied. Was he a suspect in this?

Forensics was already in the house, getting set up, taking photos and jotting down notes. They were dressed in their protective clothing, gloves, and masks. Palmer had a pair of papery booties over his shoes, latex gloves on his hands, and a dust mask over his mouth and nose. The dust mask felt like it was cutting off his breathing, the gloves too tight on his hands. He needed to get outside.

Palmer walked away from the thing that used to be his wife that hung from one of the ceiling fans in the living room. The rest of her parts were in the bedroom with what was left of Gary. Palmer walked to the front door and stepped outside, ripping off his mask so he could breathe in a lungful of fresh mountain air, the air he had come out west for. But now that air felt tainted. He could still smell the scent of blood and fresh meat and shit in his nose, the smell of torture and pain, of fear and misery.

Cardenelli caught up with him. “I’m sorry. I imagine you and Teresa weren’t that close anymore but—”

“We were still close,” Palmer snapped, not sure why he was defending their relationship, not sure why he was lying. “We were close in our own way.”

“Well, I’m sure this is hard on you.”

Palmer thought of the dream he’d had only hours ago. Teresa’s head and what was left of her body had looked exactly like that in the dream. And then he thought of Eliza. He’d left three voicemails and three text messages, but he hadn’t heard back yet. He needed to make sure she was safe. And now he also needed to let her know that her mother was dead.

“Palmer? Do you know why this guy would go after your ex-wife?”

Palmer gave a slight shrug. “I don’t know.”

Cardenelli scrunched up his face in a theatrical expression of confusion. “You see, that doesn’t make sense to me because the first two murders had nothing to do with the Dig Site Murders.”

“He was arranging their bodies like the ones we found in the caves,” Palmer shot back with.

“Yeah, I get that. He’s a copycat killer. But why suddenly start going after you and your family? Or ex-family, I should say. Why paint your last name on a wall? He didn’t do that the first two times.”

“Those might have been warmups for him,” Palmer said. “Practice runs.” Cardenelli knew as well as Palmer did that a lot of serial killers bumbled their way through their first few murders, developing their patterns and rituals along the way. Even famous serial killers like Jack the Ripper seemed to evolve as he killed more.

“So what’s this guy’s agenda?” Cardenelli asked. “Track you down? Your family? Revenge?”

“Maybe.”

“You didn’t even catch him,” Cardenelli said, letting those words sink in for a moment. “Revenge for what?”

Palmer did his best not to lose his cool. “Who knows what’s going through this guy’s mind.”

“Well, I’ve got a theory,” Cardenelli said.

Palmer didn’t say anything.

“At the last crime scene, I told you that there might be two killers, a copycat killer and the real killer. I believe the person who killed the first two couples wasn’t the original killer. I think it was some copycat that wanted to pay homage to those murders, especially with the cult following they’ve got now. And after he started, I believe the real killer came out of hiding and started killing again. First with Harold and Marcie Watson, and now Teresa and Gary.”

Palmer stared at Cardenelli. “That’s a pretty interesting theory. Except you said before that these killings all seem to have been done by the same man. Same size shoe, same type of hiking boots, same way he walks. The same lack of fingerprints and hair left behind.”

“Yeah, those are the similarities. But what about the differences? The first two old couples were cut up with saws and tools. But these last two, they seem like they were ripped apart. Like the killer pulled them apart with his bare hands. Just like the bodies at the dig site in New Mexico. Not a copycat—this is the same guy.”

Palmer didn’t say anything. He could see the hope in Cardenelli’s eyes, the hope that this might be the original killer, that he would be able to do what Palmer couldn’t do and catch the Dig Site Killer. It would be one gigantic feather in the cap of his career. He’d be able to silence all of those conspiracy theorists and internet bloggers with their wild theories of monsters, demons, cults, and aliens. Some compared the dead bodies at the New Mexico dig site to reports of cattle mutilations. Others drew comparisons to other mysterious murders and disappearances. Cardenelli would be able to catch this killer and show everyone what fools they were for believing in monsters, for believing in a bogeyman.

“Look, Palmer, I hate to ask this, but can you tell me what you were doing last night? Where you were?”

Palmer felt like he’d been punched in the stomach, which wasn’t helping his nausea.

“It’s just standard procedure,” Cardenelli continued quickly, his hands up in surrender for a moment. “You know that. You knew the victims.”

Teresa. Her name was Teresa, the mother of my daughter. “I was at home. At my condo.”

“All night? You didn’t go anywhere?”

“I was there all night. I ate dinner there. Watched TV. Fell asleep. I didn’t sleep well, and I fell back asleep at dawn. There are security cameras in the parking garage. I’m sure you could check them if you wanted to.”

Cardenelli looked away for just a moment, squinting his eyes just a little like he was deep in thought, or like he was trying to mimic a person deep in thought. He looked back at Palmer. “It’s just that the security alarm in the victim’s house never went off. It’s like the killer got in without triggering the alarm, or like he turned it off. Like he knew the code.”

“And what? You think I knew the code to my ex-wife’s home?”

“You said you and Teresa were still close.”

“Not that close. She wouldn’t have given me the code to her security alarm. And neither would Gary.”

“You know I have to ask those things,” Cardenelli said. “You know it’s just procedure.”

Yeah, wasting time on these questions when the real killer was still out there was just procedure. But they were never going to find the real killer, because the killer wasn’t a man, it was some kind of demon.

“What about the names on the living room wall?” Cardenelli asked. “Cole and Stella. Weren’t those the two suspects you chased down to New Mexico seven years ago?”

Palmer realized how all of this must look to Cardenelli, but he nodded in agreement. “Yeah, those were the two.”

“You think those two might be involved with this?”

Palmer sighed. “I don’t know. I need to call my daughter. She’s out of town right now. I hate to tell her on the phone that Teresa’s gone, but I want her to hear it from me.” He didn’t give Cardenelli a chance to reply. He walked away, going back to his car in the large parking area. He got inside and started the car. He put on his seatbelt and then dialed Eliza’s number.

Eliza answered on the third ring. “Dad. Hey. How is everything? I’ve been trying to call Mom all morning.”

“Lizzy, listen to me.”

Stone silence from Eliza.

“I’ve got some really bad news,” he told her.

Eliza was silent for another few seconds and then she moaned, already beginning to cry. “No.”

“Your mom and Gary were killed last night.”

“No,” she moaned again. “No, that can’t be true. She was supposed to leave. You were supposed to make her leave. You were supposed to keep her safe.”

“I tried,” Palmer croaked, his throat closing up. He could feel the tears coming now. He turned on the air conditioner in his car, suddenly hot, feeling like his whole body was about to break out into a sweat.

“No you didn’t,” Eliza hissed into the phone. “You didn’t try hard enough.” She wasn’t shouting yet, and Palmer could only guess that the kids were close enough for them to hear her on the phone.

“Listen to me, Lizzy. Wherever you are, I want you to go somewhere else. I want you to keep moving to a new motel room every night. You understand me? You can’t tell me where you are.”

“This is so . . . so fucking crazy.” Her voice was a whisper, and Palmer had never heard her use language like that in front of him before.

“I know, baby. I’m sorry. But right now you need to think about yourself and the kids. Okay?”

Silence on the phone for a moment. Palmer could hear her crying.

“You have to be strong for the kids, okay?”

“What about Ted?” she asked. “He didn’t come with us.”

“I think he’ll be okay. But warn him. Let him know how serious this could be. Try to get him to meet you somewhere. Tell him that you need him with you. I’m sure he’ll drop what he’s doing and go to you.”

“This is your fault,” Eliza said between sniffles, her voice suddenly low, her sadness turning into anger. “This killer was coming after you. Trying to hurt you. Trying to take everything away from you.”

Palmer was going to argue again that he had tried to get Teresa to leave town, but she had refused to do it. He was going to remind Eliza that she had tried to convince her own mother. But neither of them had been able to get her to leave. It was a moot point now, and it would only make his daughter angrier. He would take her anger now, accept it—she needed someone to blame.

“I’m going after the killer now,” Palmer told her.

A dry and humorless chuckle from Eliza. “You couldn’t catch him before. What makes you think you can catch him now?” She hung up on him.

CHAPTER 19

David

Iron Springs, New Mexico

David knew it wasn’t going to be easy to convince his Aunt Awenita that they were in grave danger and that they should let Captain Begay protect them. To help convince his aunt, David told her some of the things about the Ancient Enemy, details that he’d never told her before. But he told her today.

David, his aunt, and Captain Begay sat at the small table off of the kitchen. Awenita had made coffee and served it with some cookies. Begay said he shouldn’t be eating the cookies, but he ate two of them with his coffee.

Awenita sat silently in her chair as David told her about the night his parents were killed, the night her brother was killed. He told her some of what he’d seen, but only a little.

“You don’t have to talk about this,” Awenita said. She sat very still, and she stared right at David the whole time, her eyes welling up with tears.

“I need to,” he told her. They had never talked about what had happened that night. She never wanted to talk about it, and usually David didn’t either—he never wanted to remember anything about that night. But tonight he needed to convince his aunt that a monster was coming. “I need you to understand that a demon killed my parents. A demon killed your brother. I don’t remember everything about that night, but I remember the thing that killed them. I ran away, but I don’t remember where I ran. I ended up at a dig site where archaeologists were working.”

Awenita nodded like she knew all that.

“A woman named Stella helped me at the dig site when the Ancient Enemy attacked again,” David told her. “She drove me away from there, up to Colorado. She said she was taking me to her aunt’s house, but I think she was just trying to drive as far away as she could as fast as she could.”

David told his aunt about Colorado and how Cole had helped them. He left out everything about the bank robbers, just telling her that Cole and Stella had brought him back down here to the reservation to find Joe Blackhorn, a shaman that Stella felt could possibly help.

“We went to a ghost town,” David told his aunt. “We fought the Ancient Enemy there. I thought I killed it, but all I did was hurt it and make it go away for a while.” David stopped talking. He could tell that his Aunt Awenita was having trouble believing his story. He looked at Begay. “The captain was there at the ghost town with us.”

He nodded. “I saw it. I saw the Ancient Enemy.”

Awenita looked at Begay.

“It was like a living shadow,” Begay continued. “It could change its form whenever it wanted to, turning into anything it wanted to. It could break apart and parts of it could be in different places at different times.”

David hoped that Begay was giving credibility to his wild tale. But his aunt was still quiet, still sitting very still, her hands in her lap, the cup of coffee in front of her growing cold. She seemed to be trying to hold on to the safe and orderly world she believed in. Like many Navajo, Awenita didn’t believe in the myths and the monsters of their culture, the stories from the past. She called them parables and folklore; she always said the stories were entertaining, but not true. She said there were no such things as skinwalkers, thunderbirds, gods, or star people. There were no such things as magic, witchcraft, chindi, or shamans. Even though she didn’t believe in shamans, she had let David study with Joe Blackhorn, believing that David would learn the stories of his people.

“This is all true,” David told his aunt. “The Ancient Enemy is real and we’re in real danger. I’ve been having dreams about a serial killer, and that serial killer is on his way here now. That killer is looking for me.”

Maybe the stories and descriptions of demons and monsters weren’t scaring his aunt, but the idea of a serial killer had perked her up—that was something real and not a ghost story. She looked at Begay.

“There is a serial killer in Colorado,” he told her. “I got the call from Agent Palmer. He told me about the killer David has been seeing in his dreams.”

David realized that Begay hadn’t told his aunt that Palmer was a retired FBI agent, leaving that little detail out.

“Agent Palmer was with us at the ghost town,” Begay told Awenita. “He saw everything I saw.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Awenita finally said. “I don’t see how this can be true. How something like that can be real.”

“I know it is difficult,” Begay said. “I had trouble believing it at first, too. But you must see by now that there is something special about David. Something powerful. You two should come with me. Stay at my house. At least for tonight. It’s too dangerous for you and David to be here by yourselves. We’ll figure out what to do and where to go tomorrow.”

David was willing to go with Begay tonight, but he also wanted to find a way to get to Costa Rica. He checked his cell phone again to see if Stella had texted him back. He felt guilty for not warning Stella and Cole earlier, but he hadn’t been absolutely sure the Ancient Enemy was back yet. Begay hadn’t told David about Agent Palmer’s phone call until they were driving back here to his aunt’s house, and that had confirmed what he’d seen in his dreams, confirming to him that the serial killer was real and that the Ancient Enemy was inside of him. But he still felt guilty for not talking to Stella yesterday. He should have trusted his visions and his instincts and warned them. He wondered why Stella hadn’t written him back yet. He hoped they were okay. He wanted to protect Stella and Cole. They had protected him and he wanted to return the favor. They could have left him at any time when they were in Colorado or when they came back down here to the reservation. They could have given in to the Ancient Enemy and killed him, but they hadn’t, and he loved them for that.

“Awenita,” Begay said, leaning towards her. “Please. Come with me to my house.”

“If this is so dangerous, if you’re so sure a killer is coming, then why don’t you contact the tribal police and get them involved?”

Begay nodded like she had a good point. “I have reached out to them. I’ve told them to be on alert, that I had a tip that a serial killer might be in the area. But that’s about all I can tell them. If I talk to them about dreams and demons, about what I saw in the ghost town, they would never believe me.” He was sure the tip he’d given to the tribal police would spread like wildfire throughout the Iron Springs area. “And I don’t want to risk any more lives than I have to. And I don’t know if it will be tonight. The killer could come tomorrow night. Or the night after that. But we just need to get through tonight, and then we can worry about what to do tomorrow.”

Awenita sighed and nodded.

David knew she had been debating internally, but now she’d made up her mind, and now she was all in. She stood up. “I’ll pack an overnight bag.” She was off to her bedroom.

David and Begay looked at each other. Begay was about to say something but the phone rang. For just a second David thought it was his cell phone ringing, hoping it was Stella calling him back, but then he realized it was a different ringtone.

Begay looked at the screen on his cell phone and stood up as he answered it. He walked away into the next room, talking in a voice so low David couldn’t hear him.

David waited at the table for a few minutes. His aunt was back from her bedroom. She had two bags; one of them was her overnight bag and the other a bag for bathroom supplies. “You need to get a bag packed, too,” she told him.

Begay came back into the dining room just as David got to his feet. The captain looked scared, his skin paler. “That was Agent Palmer. He just told me that the killer struck again in Colorado. He murdered two more people last night—the agent’s ex-wife and her husband.” Begay looked right at David. “It was just like the murders at the dig site and the cabin. The bodies were mutilated.”

CHAPTER 20

The Killer

Colorado

Quinn had been living alone for three years now, but this was the first time he’d ever really been scared. It was a little after noon now and he’d just finished his second drink of the day. The alcohol helped a little with the fear that blanketed him, but the fear was still there. He was hurting today—his joints, his muscles, a headache—maybe that was contributing to this feeling of fright that had been with him since he’d gotten out of bed. He popped three Advils and poured another drink.

Quinn was truly alone now that his dog Bruno had died six months ago. Bruno’s food and water bowls were still on the floor in the kitchen, two empty metal bowls just sitting there; he didn’t have the heart to throw them away. In fact, Quinn didn’t throw much away—you never knew when you might need something. Every corner of his home was crammed with clutter.

His wife left him three years ago, tired of his drinking and snorting crushed-up pain pills when he could get them. Good riddance; he didn’t want her around anyway. He was free now and happy living alone. Nobody was yammering at him now, telling him what to do every day. He had his monthly disability check (for a hurt back that he claimed had happened at work) and he lived in the crappy house his mother left behind when she’d died. At least the house was paid off. He didn’t need anyone; he had his home at the edge of the woods and his ten-year-old Buick that still ran pretty well.

But he did miss Bruno. Maybe he would get another dog.

Normally Quinn was fine being alone, but today his skin felt like it was crawling. He was antsy. He felt like he needed to escape, to run away, but he didn’t know what he was supposed to be running from. Maybe he’d take a shower and put on a clean pair of clothes, go down to Lucky’s Pub and continue drinking through the night. He had enough money for a night out. Maybe he’d pick up a sandwich and some fries before he got too wasted to eat. Yeah, that’s what he’d do. Now that he had a plan, he was ready to get started on it.

He needed a shower first.

The shower . . . he didn’t really want to be alone in there right now.

“Come on, old man,” he told himself. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

Fifteen minutes later Quinn was in the shower. He had actually locked the bathroom door before getting in the shower, chastising himself for doing it, but feeling a little better with it locked. He was going to take a quick shower, five minutes, tops. He hadn’t taken a shower in three days and he wasn’t going down to Lucky’s reeking of body odor, so he had to get this done.

Once he was in the shower he felt a little better. He washed the hair he had left on his scalp and then lathered his flabby body with soap. He was rinsing off when he heard a sound out in the hallway.

He froze, the water streaming down his body. He stood there, listening, leaning forward so that his head was out of the water. It sounded like something had thumped against the wall out there, or maybe the floor. Maybe one of his stacks of junk had fallen over.

No one’s inside. I locked all the doors. Checked them again before I got in the shower.

Quinn finished rinsing and shut off the water. He tore the shower curtain open, standing there naked and dripping, staring at the closed bathroom door across the room, listening for any more sounds out there.

Nothing. No sounds.

“It’s nothing—” he started to whisper to himself, but another noise cut off his words; a scraping sound on the wood floor out in the hallway that he knew very well. Bruno used to push his dog bowl across the floor when it was empty, pushing it with his nose all the way into the living room and then looking up at him with his sad, puppy dog eyes that said: Feed me.

Someone was pushing one of the metal food bowls along the floor outside the bathroom door just like Bruno used to do. The bowl clunked up against the bathroom door. Quinn could even see a small shadow under the door where the bowl was right up against it.

“Who’s out there?” Quinn said as he grabbed the towel off of the toilet tank lid to cover himself. He felt vulnerable, suddenly scared to death. He wished he would have brought his gun into the bathroom with him. And that led to a terrible thought: his gun was in his bedroom on the nightstand, and someone was out there in the hallway. Whoever had pushed Bruno’s dog bowl up to the bathroom door was going to eventually find his gun.

Quinn heard panting from the other side of the bathroom door now. The sound was down low by the bottom of the door, like a dog was panting. Just like Bruno used to do; sometimes he would follow Quinn to the bathroom and wait outside in the hall, lying down by the bottom of the door, just waiting patiently and panting.

“It’s not Bruno,” Quinn whispered. His lips were trembling and he was breathing quick and shallow breaths. It was difficult for him to catch his breath now. His heart was thudding so hard in his chest that it hurt, sharp pains near his left armpit jolting him. He was afraid he was going to have a heart attack.

“Who’s out there?” Quinn said, trying to yell, but he still felt like he couldn’t draw or exhale a complete breath. “I’ve . . . I gotta gun in here. And a phone. You better go now or I’m gonna call the cops.”

The panting stopped. Someone scratched at the bottom of the door now, the sound of claws digging quickly at the door, moving up from the bottom of the door. The doorknob jiggled, then something struck the door hard.

Quinn jumped. There was no window in the small bathroom and the air was thick with steam from his shower, but he could see clearly enough, he saw the two black tentacles poking in underneath the bottom of the door. At first Quinn thought they were snakes, but there were no eyes or mouths, they were just slick, thin tentacles thrashing around. Two tentacles, then four, then seven, all of them whipping around in a frenzy. One of the tentacles slithered up the door to the doorknob, wrapping around it, unlocking it.

When the door was unlocked, all of the tentacles shot back under the door and into the hallway at the same time, all of them gone now.

Everything was quiet.

Quinn cried, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, trying so hard to be quiet.

It was just a hallucination, that’s all it was. What he’d seen wasn’t real, couldn’t be real. Maybe he was finally getting the DTs.

I’ll quit drinking tonight. I swear to God I will.

The door burst open, slamming into the bathroom wall.

Quinn yelped, jumping, the towel falling down into the bathtub around his feet.

A man stood in the doorway. He was tall and thin, his skin so pale. His head was completely bald, he didn’t even have eyebrows. His eyes were cold; there was no mercy in those eyes, no feeling, no humanity.

Tentacles shot out from underneath the sleeves of the man’s hoodie sweatshirt, and Quinn screamed.

*

Two hours later the killer was driving Quinn’s Buick down the highway, traveling south towards New Mexico, to the Navajo Reservation. It wouldn’t be too much longer until he reached the border and the town of Iron Springs. That’s where he would find David.

The killer wasn’t sure why the Ancient Enemy had tasked him with killing a teenage Navajo boy, but it didn’t matter—he would do anything his god told him to. Yet it still intrigued him. As powerful as the Ancient Enemy was, it seemed like the being was scared of David, like the god couldn’t kill David on its own. He didn’t know why, all he knew was that he’d been chosen to carry out this very important mission.

The traffic was light as he drove through the mountains. He had left the pieces of Quinn in the bathtub, and then he had relieved himself in Quinn’s toilet. He had grabbed whatever water and sodas Quinn had, stowing them in a cooler with some ice. He stopped at a fast food place at the next exit off of the highway and bought three sandwiches, three fries, and two more drinks. He hadn’t even tasted the food as he shoveled it into his mouth while he drove; he was just loading his body up on calories, fuel for the tasks ahead tonight. It felt like his body was a machine that he had filled up with oil and gasoline, much like this car he was driving.

It was a strange feeling to have the Ancient Enemy inside of him. The killer still felt like himself but also not like himself anymore. It felt like a dark and powerful energy had been coursing through his veins earlier when he had killed Quinn, but now it was like that dark energy had collected in some far-off corner of his mind, dormant and waiting to be activated again. It wasn’t painful even though the idea of another living being taking up residence in his body was a strange concept to grapple with. But was this god really a living being, or was it something he would never be able to understand?

He let his mind wander as he drove, visualizing David. He could home in on the boy like he was a beacon. He couldn’t wait for tonight, couldn’t wait to kill David and complete this task for his master. He was so close now, only hours away. But he had to make a stop before he got to David; there was something important he needed to do, revenge for something done to his master long ago in an Old West town.

“Use me,” the killer whispered as he drove. “I’ll do anything you want.”

CHAPTER 21

Palmer

Southern Colorado

Like the killer, Palmer was also traveling south on the highway.

He’d still been parked in his ex-wife’s driveway a few hours ago when he’d hung up the phone with Eliza—or more accurately, she had hung up on him. He had checked airplane reservations on his phone after that. The flights were expensive on such short notice, but that wasn’t a problem; he had plenty of money on his credit cards and in the bank. He paid his bills from his FBI pension and then hardly ever spent any money on himself. The airplane might get him down to New Mexico faster, but he would still have to rent a car when he got there. And then he thought of trying to get his gun on the plane with him. He had a concealed carry permit, but he wasn’t an FBI agent anymore, and the hassle of trying to get past TSA might not be worth it.

He’d driven back to his condo and packed an overnight bag. He had his gun, a Glock 17 like he used to use in the FBI even though they had switched over to a different model now. He also had two boxes of ammo, a hunting knife, a pocket knife, and he wore a crucifix around his neck, a necklace his mother had given to him when he was a teenager, a necklace he hadn’t worn in decades. He packed three changes of clothes, a few bathroom supplies, and an envelope of extra cash. He also packed a cooler with drinks and loaded a plastic bag with snacks. He would stop and pick up some more food on the way, but he wanted to get down there as quickly as possible.

When he was done packing, Palmer stood at the door of his condo with his bags down by his feet. He looked back at his condo like it might be the last time he ever saw it.

And then he had left, going down to his car in the parking garage, loading his overnight bag in the trunk, and the cooler and bag of snacks on the passenger seat. He had his Glock in a shoulder holster under his windbreaker jacket.

And now he drove down the highway as the sun was beginning to set. He was still a few hundred miles away from the border of Colorado and New Mexico. He picked up his phone and dialed Begay’s number.

“Palmer.”

“Begay, there were two more murders last night. My ex-wife and her husband. The killer got inside their home without setting off the alarm. He left pieces of their bodies all over the house.” He saw Teresa’s severed head hanging from the ceiling fan with the trail of vertebrae and strings of flesh hanging down from her neck. He tried to push that image out of his mind.

“I’m sorry,” Begay whispered, and it sounded like he meant it.

“There were two more names written in blood on the wall: Cole and Stella. I think the Ancient Enemy is inside the killer now and the killer’s going after Cole and Stella.”

“They’re not in the United States.”

Palmer nodded and sighed. He remembered that now. “Maybe it’s a distraction then. Maybe the killer’s going down there for David, but it wants us to think it’s going after Cole and Stella.”

“I’ve got David with me now. We’re at his aunt’s house. I’m taking them back to my place tonight.”

“Are you going to get some more protection? Police?”

“I can’t justify it. They would never be allowed to camp outside my home because I told them a monster is coming to kill us. But I have told some trusted friends, and the word will spread. They’ll all be patrolling tonight. And we’ll be ready here. As ready as we can be.”

“Okay,” Palmer said.

“What about you?” Begay asked.

“My daughter is safe. She’s out of state with her kids. I don’t even know where she is, and I don’t want to know. I just talked to her a few hours ago.” He thought of the last thing Eliza had said to him, that he hadn’t caught the killer the first time and what made him think he could catch him now.

Palmer thought about telling Begay that he was coming down there to help, but he decided not to. Begay would only tell him to stay away. But Palmer wanted to help. He felt that maybe they would all be stronger together. Obviously they hadn’t finished that thing off in the ghost town, but maybe this time they could. Maybe David was stronger now; maybe instead of driving the Ancient Enemy away, he could actually kill it this time. But Palmer didn’t say any of that. Instead, he said: “You just stay alert down there.”

“We will. You be safe, too.” Begay hung up.

Palmer set his cell phone down in the console. Three seconds later it rang. Palmer thought it was Begay calling right back, but he saw Cardenelli’s name on the screen.

An anger flared up inside of him at just seeing the man’s name on the phone. He couldn’t believe his former SAC suspected him in the murder of his ex-wife and her husband, but it just showed how desperate Cardenelli had become—he had no leads, no physical evidence, no video, no witnesses, and the bodies were starting to pile up.

He thought about ignoring the call, letting it go to voicemail, but he picked it up on the third ring and answered it. “Palmer here.”

“We got a lead,” Cardenelli said.

“A lead?”

“Found one blood sample at the crime scene that doesn’t match either of the victims.”

Teresa and Gary, Palmer thought. Those are the victims.

“And we picked up a few clothing fibers.”

“That’s good,” Palmer said. His DNA was already in the FBI database so Cardenelli would be able to rule him out as a suspect pretty soon.

“There’s more,” Cardenelli said. “A call came in two hours ago. Neighbors called about some noises from a house near them, a man named Quinn Kurtzman. Police found the man’s body in his bathtub. The pieces of his body.”

“The same killer?”

“Has to be. Same shoeprints. And the killer took the man’s car, a ten-year-old Buick. We’ve put out a BOLO in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona.”

“Good,” Palmer said. He thought about saying something sarcastic about not being the prime suspect anymore, but decided not to.

“We’re gonna get this guy now.” Cardenelli hesitated for a moment. “Hey, about what happened back at the crime scene, I didn’t mean to imply that you had anything to do with that.”

Palmer didn’t say anything. It didn’t sound like Cardenelli was apologizing; it sounded more like he was telling him that he didn’t need him anymore.

“Well, I just wanted to say that and let you know what’s happening,” Cardenelli said.

“I appreciate it.”

They hung up and Palmer set his cell phone back in the center console. He knew Cardenelli wasn’t going to catch the killer. Even if a cop stopped the killer, that cop would be dead in seconds when the Ancient Enemy attacked.

We’re going to have to catch him, Palmer thought, but then his daughter’s last words to him earlier on the phone echoed in his mind: You couldn’t catch him before. What makes you think you can catch him now?

CHAPTER 22

Officer Sam

Iron Springs, New Mexico

As night fell on Iron Springs fear blanketed the town. Word had spread that a killer was coming tonight, the same killer who had murdered the scientists at the dig site near Randy Tahoma’s ranch, the same killer who had murdered and mutilated Jim Whitefeather, the same killer who had murdered John and Deena Bear, removing the skin from their heads and faces. The whispers of horrors done in the past were on the townspeople’s lips.

Many in Iron Springs locked their doors and windows as the night came, many doing this for the first time in years. Many got rifles and shotguns and pistols loaded and ready. Many planned to stay up late and keep watch over their families.

As night came businesses closed early, including the Mexican restaurant where Kiki worked. She’d been working there for nine years now and she remembered when the Dig Site Murders had happened seven years ago. She remembered waiting on Captain Begay and an FBI agent that night, both of them coming in for dinner. She remembered Old Woman Sloane screaming at the men in Navajo, telling Begay that she knew who the murderer was—the Ancient Enemy. Kiki remembered her skin crawling when Old Woman Sloan had screamed the name of that demon in the restaurant, the old woman’s eyes wild with fear. The woman’s niece had pulled her away from the captain and the FBI agent, and Kiki had apologized to them for the old woman’s outburst.

The murders stopped after that day. Many had performed ceremonies and sang prayers, and many said that the power of those rituals had stopped the killer, drove him (or it) away. Even though there were no more murders, the FBI and BIA had stayed in town for weeks afterwards. She had waited on agents, scientists, and reporters. The small motel and the bed and breakfast were filled to capacity every night, rooms rented out in advance. Empty houses and trailers had been rented out, and some stayed in distant towns. Reporters stood in front of cameras and reported on the mysterious tragedy that had befallen this once-quiet and quaint Navajo town. Kiki had been interviewed by the FBI, but she had nothing important to offer them. She knew nothing. And she had never mentioned Old Woman Sloane’s warning to the captain and the FBI agent that night about the Ancient Enemy—the FBI agents never would have believed her anyway.

It took a while but life in Iron Springs finally returned to normal. The FBI agents left, the scientists left, and the reporters left. Every once in a while some people would come into town, an author working on a book, filmmakers producing a documentary, a person doing research for a blog. The cave at the dig site had been deemed U.S. property now, and scientists and archaeologists still studied the ancient city built inside the cave and the ancient Anasazi writings they had found on the stone tablets. The whole canyon floor was off-limits to the Navajo now, their own land, and the land of their ancestors, had once again been taken from them.

Kiki went home when the restaurant closed down. She made sure the doors and windows were locked. She brought their dog inside for the night and her eighty-year-old father got his shotgun out and loaded it, keeping the weapon and a box of shells near his chair. She watched TV as her father fell asleep in the chair. She couldn’t sleep and she knew she would be awake until dawn.

*

Old Woman Sloane lay in her bed staring at the ceiling in the dark. She’d been singing songs and burning herbs all day, doing her part to keep the evil spirits from coming back to their town. Rumors had spread about a killer coming, the same killer coming back. But Sloane had felt the evil long before the rumors had started. She’d felt the evil spirits lurking in the shadows seven years ago, and those same evil spirits were returning. She had tried to warn people back then that the Ancient Enemy was coming, but of course no one listened to a foolish old woman. Many called her a witch, but she didn’t care. They hadn’t believed her then, but many believed the warnings now. And after what was going to happen tonight, they would all believe.

A killer was coming. She’d seen this in her dreams, and she knew some others had seen him too. She was sure David had seen the killer in his dreams. The killer was only a man, but the Ancient Enemy demon was inside the man, controlling him. When the Ancient Enemy was done with the killer after tonight, the demon would throw the killer away like a used tissue, leaving behind a husk of dry, dead skin; the killer’s insides and his soul would be gone, taken to the demon’s world. Maybe the killer already knew his fate, maybe he didn’t care, maybe he wanted it that way.

Old Woman Sloane wasn’t afraid for herself, not tonight anyway. She knew the evil spirits would pass her by tonight to get to David. But if the killer murdered David, if the shaman was killed, then the Ancient Enemy would be free and more powerful than ever. Nothing would be able to hold it back. The Darkwind would move across the landscape like a tidal wave, killing whoever it wanted, whenever it wanted: whole villages, towns, cities. It would be a plague like no other ever seen before, a true apocalypse. The Fifth World would be over and there would be no other worlds after this one. No new suns would rise again.

*

Officer Sam Yazzie of the Navajo Tribal Police patrolled the streets of Iron Springs in his Dodge Durango. It was his night off, but everyone had either been called in tonight or had volunteered to patrol the roads. The word was that Captain Begay had called in a tip about a possible serial killer, and everyone trusted Begay. Sam didn’t mind being out here tonight; he prayed for the opportunity to nab this murderer, the person (or persons) who had killed Jim Whitefeather and John and Deena. Sam had known all three of them, but he had been close to John and Deena Bear.

The day had been warm but the night had cooled the air quickly. All businesses were closed, owners and workers home now, all of them locked up inside their homes and trailers. Maybe nothing would happen tonight. Maybe the killer wouldn’t come tonight, or even tomorrow night, but Sam would still be ready. He and the other officers had agreed to take turns patrolling the roads, especially out by Randy Tahoma’s ranch, John and Deena’s empty home, Awenita’s house, and Captain Begay’s house. They had agreed to have two squad cars in Iron Springs at all times tonight, while everyone else patrolled the territory surrounding the town—a vast expanse of land to cover. But with everyone locked up inside their homes, Sam felt confident that one of them would be able to spot the killer driving into town tonight. If he came.

Sam believed the killer’s target might be David Bear or even Captain Begay. Perhaps the killer was coming back for some unfinished business, or for revenge against Captain Begay for halting his killing spree. Captain Begay had never taken credit for stopping the murderer, but many around here believed that the captain had something to do with running the killer off. Sam didn’t know if that was true or not, and he wasn’t going to ponder questions he didn’t know the answers to.

It was going to be a long night, but Sam had a thermos full of coffee and a bag of beef jerky. He would be ready if the killer came tonight.

CHAPTER 23

Begay

Iron Springs, New Mexico

David and Awenita were settled in Begay’s home. They had followed Begay back to his house in Awenita’s minivan. She had parked right beside Angie’s car in the driveway and Begay had parked his pickup in the gravel to the left of the driveway.

Angie had cooked a fine dinner and for a little while the evening felt like a normal gathering, like he and Angie had two guests over for supper. But this wasn’t a normal evening; everyone was tense. The small talk felt forced. Begay caught Angie’s eyes a few times as they ate dinner, and he saw the worry in her eyes.

After dinner Awenita insisted on helping Angie with cleaning up the kitchen and putting the dishes away. Begay checked all of the windows and doors once again. He had gotten his old police belt out and adjusted it to fit his waist, then shoved his pistol down in the holster on his hip. He checked the shotgun and the two rifles he had positioned around the house, making sure they were all loaded. He knew they were, but it was just a nervous habit. He made sure their cell phones were charged up and that they had candles, lighters, and flashlights ready if the electricity went out. If their dog was still alive, he could have been helpful, at least he would have heard, or even sensed, something outside before they would have. But he had died two years ago and they hadn’t gotten another one—Angie said she couldn’t bury another pet. They didn’t have an alarm system, but Begay was going to do his best to stay awake tonight.

Begay was in his man-cave now. Angie came in and walked up to him. That concern was in her eyes, but it was more than that; she was afraid.

“I had the worst dream last night,” she told him as she touched his arm.

Begay held his wife, hugging her, holding her close.

She pulled away and stared at him. “I saw the killer in my dream. But he was just a shadow. I could see his outline, but I couldn’t make out any of the details. Except one—his eyes. They glowed in the darkness, like two pinpoints of light. I ran and ran, but it seemed like the killer was always right behind me. He grabbed me and turned me around to face him. He held my arms and I couldn’t move. He stared at me with his yellow eyes. They were glowing in the dark. They were like a cat’s eyes. Like a cougar’s eyes. But I couldn’t see his face. He said he wanted to show me something, show me what was coming.”

“It was just a dream, Angie,” Begay told her, but he felt the chill dancing across his skin and the pit of fear in his stomach. After the things he’d seen in the ghost town seven years ago, anything was easy to believe, including any premonitions his wife had.

“No,” Angie said sharply. “The killer in the dream showed me what was coming. I saw a ghost town in the desert. And then there was this tidal wave coming, a black wave at least fifty feet high, blocking out the sky as it came. But it wasn’t water; it was just blackness, like a solid thing, like a wall. It was wiping everything away, eating up everything in its path.”

Begay wiped at the tears in his wife’s eyes with his big thumbs. And then he hugged her again, holding her tight for a few moments. For such a strong woman she felt so small and fragile in his arms right then. “It will be okay,” he whispered. “I’m not going to let anything happen to us.”

Angie trembled in his arms, and she seemed to be relaxing a little. But then she ripped herself away from him, staring at him. “He’s here,” she hissed.

Just then there was a loud knocking at the front door.

Angie turned and stared at the door that led into the kitchen, and then the dining room and living room beyond that.

David and Awenita were in the doorway a moment later, both of them staring at Begay and Angie. “Someone’s at the door,” Awenita whispered.

Begay drew his pistol from the holster on his hip. “Come in here,” he told David and Awenita. “Wait over there by the bar. You too, Angie.”

All three of them hurried over to the bar.

Begay went to the door that led into the kitchen. He looked back at his wife, Awenita, and David; he gestured at them to get down behind the bar.

The knocking continued at the front door. The knock seemed urgent, but not as forceful as before. Begay crept through the house, passing the dining room, and then he entered the living room. Most of the lights were off. The TV was still on, providing the only light in the room, but either David or Awenita had turned the sound all the way down when they’d heard the knocking at the door.

Begay moved closer to the front door. There was no window in the front door, but there was a peephole. He thought about peeking out the living room windows that looked out onto the front porch, but he didn’t want to be seen by whoever was out there. Instead, he would look through the peephole. The front porch light was on and he would be able to see who was out there.

But he still hesitated. He’s here, Angie had just whispered right before this person started knocking at the door, right after she had told him about her nightmare.

Was it the killer out there? Had Angie sensed him coming? But if it was the killer, why would he knock on the door at ten o’clock at night, standing under the glare of the porch light? Why would he give himself away like that? Or were there others with him? David said he dreamed of only one killer. Palmer insinuated that there was only one suspect in the killings in Colorado. But maybe they were both wrong, maybe there were two killers. Or even more.

The knock sounded again, so loud now that Begay was this close to the door.

“Captain Begay,” a voice yelled from behind the door. It was a man’s voice, a deep voice.

Begay recognized the voice but couldn’t think of who it was right at that moment.

“Captain Begay, open up,” the man said.

“Who is it?” Begay yelled. He was still a few steps away from the door, his gun aimed at it. “Identify yourself.” His years of police training were automatically taking over.

“It’s me,” the man said, “Billy Nez. Let me in. I have come to help.”

Billy Nez was here? It took a few seconds for Begay to wrap his mind around that. He took three steps to the door and peeked through the peephole. In the fisheye view through the lens Begay saw Billy Nez standing on his front porch. Billy was a few steps back from the door like he knew Begay would want to see him through the peephole. Billy wore old faded jeans and a bulky black hoodie with the hood down. He carried a small black duffel bag. His dark hair was pulled back into one long braid and under the porch light the strands of gray were showing. The wrinkles were etched in his tan face and his prominent brow hid his eyes in shadows.

“Captain Begay?” Billy said.

Begay unlocked the door and opened it. “What are you doing here?”

Billy Nez’s face remained solemn, almost devoid of all expression as he stared at Begay. He lifted the duffel bag in one hand just a few inches, just a shrug of his shoulder. “I came to help.”

Begay looked past Billy into the front yard, but all he could see was darkness out there beyond the light. He didn’t think Billy had driven to his house because it never seemed like Billy had a vehicle or even a driver’s license.

“A friend dropped me off,” Billy said like he was reading Begay’s mind.

“I thought you said you couldn’t do anything to help us,” Begay said. “When I brought David to you today, you said there wasn’t anything you could do.”

Billy shrugged again. He hadn’t moved a muscle; he was still standing in the same spot.

Begay heard Angie, David, and Awenita gathering behind him in the living room. He turned and glanced at them. There was something about the way they were staring at him, the fear in their eyes.

That’s when the thought popped into Begay’s mind. He remembered being in that ghost town seven years ago when David had battled the Ancient Enemy. He remembered how easily the Ancient Enemy had controlled animals and people, even dead people. He had seen the Ancient Enemy controlling the two dead people who wore David’s parents’ skinned faces over their own faces like masks. He remembered the spiders pouring out of the woman’s mouth, all of the snakes and birds trying to get inside the church.

Was that really Billy Nez out there, or was the Ancient Enemy already inside of him?

Begay looked back at Billy Nez and realized that he had left the front door wide open. Billy was only a few feet beyond the threshold, standing very still. The wind out there had picked up suddenly, a blast of howling wind roaring across his front yard, rattling the leaves of the cottonwood trees. It sounded like things were moving around out there in the darkness. Dangerous things. Poisonous things.

I don’t know if I can do this again.

Begay still couldn’t see Billy’s eyes under his brow, his eyes lost in shadow. Billy still waited on the front porch to be invited inside.

Like a vampire.

Begay aimed his gun at Billy Nez. “How do I know it’s really you?”

CHAPTER 24

David

Iron Springs, New Mexico

Billy didn’t even flinch as Captain Begay aimed his gun at him. He didn’t try to run or raise his hands in surrender. He didn’t take a step back or show any fear at all. It was like he’d been expecting this from Begay, like he’d been prepared for it.

“How do I know it’s really you?” Begay said again.

“I am me,” Billy said. “I am Billy Nez.”

David knew the Ancient Enemy was out there somewhere in the darkness, but he also knew it wasn’t inside of Billy Nez right now. He took a step towards Captain Begay. “It’s okay,” he told him. “It’s really him. The Ancient Enemy isn’t inside of him.”

“You’re sure?” Begay asked without turning around to look at David.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

The wind was blowing harder now, sand swirling at the edge of the front porch that disappeared into the darkness. The wind blew Billy’s clothes, rippling them, but he stood very still, washed in the front porch’s light.

Begay let out a breath and lowered his weapon. He stepped back and gestured at Billy to come inside.

Billy entered quickly and Begay closed the front door on the wind. He twisted the little knob on the door handle, locking it.

“An evil is coming,” Billy said, looking right at David. “I believe you that it’s happening again. I want to try to help.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t do anything to help,” Begay said.

Billy shrugged. “Maybe I cannot, but I can try.”

“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” Begay told Billy. “I don’t know if you really understand exactly what is coming, what it is and what it can do.”

“I want to help,” Billy said. If he was offended by Begay’s words, he didn’t show it. “I have to try to help. I have to honor my ancestors. If I die tonight, then I die. Any day is a good day for a warrior to die.”

“Okay,” Begay said. He nodded down at the big black bag Billy was holding. “What’s that?”

“My medicine bag,” Billy said with a secretive smile.

Begay didn’t question Billy anymore; he went back to his chair and sat down, wincing like his feet were hurting. He picked up the remote control and turned the TV off. The living room was mostly lost in shadows now with only the light in the kitchen on.

Billy walked into the dining room and set his medicine bag on the floor. He unzipped his hoodie and took it off, folding it neatly over one of the dining room chairs.

Angie was in the kitchen now, and she seemed to relax a little now that Billy was inside and the front door was locked again. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “We have some leftovers in the refrigerator.”

“No, thank you,” Billy said to Angie, but then he looked at David. “We do not have much time. We must prepare.”

David entered the dining room as Billy opened the large black duffel bag. He pulled out a small jar of red liquid that looked like paint, but David knew that it had owl’s blood mixed in with it—the same thing Joe Blackhorn had used in the church. Billy pulled out a small paintbrush. “Sit here,” he gestured at the dining room chair at the head of the table.

Angie went back into the living room and sat down on one end of the couch. Awenita was at the other end.

It took almost an hour for Billy to paint all of the ancient symbols onto David’s hands and forearms. He never spoke as he painted, but he sang old and powerful songs under his breath in Navajo. He also burned some herbs in a small dish that gave off a pungent but somewhat pleasant odor.

When Billy was done painting the Anasazi symbols onto David’s skin, he put the “paint” and brush away. He pulled out a necklace of beads from his bag and handed it to David. “Do you know what these are?”

“Ghost beads,” David said.

Billy nodded.

Joe Blackhorn had told David about ghost beads before. The necklace was usually made from dried juniper berries with holes drilled into them so a thin piece of leather could be run through them to create a necklace. The ghost beads could give the wearer protection and peace from evil spirits. And the Ancient Enemy was the worst of the evil spirits.

David put the necklace on. It laid on top of the other necklace that Billy had given to him this morning, the one with the silver charm on it that held the lock of his own hair from over a hundred years ago inside. He looked down at the necklaces against his chest, then he stared at the symbols painted on his hands and forearms. He didn’t know what the symbols meant, but at the same time he did. He had written these same symbols before, drawing them in a spiral notebook in Tom Gordon’s cabin that Stella had given to him. Those symbols had helped him, Stella, and Cole before in that cabin when the Ancient Enemy had attacked, maybe they would help again.

“These things will help,” Billy said as if reading his mind, gesturing at the necklaces that David wore. “But the power lies within you. It always has.”

David just nodded. He wished he knew what to do. Everyone kept telling him that he already knew what to do, but he didn’t. He had no clue what to do.

The wind picked up again outside, sand pelting the windows of the house. Begay kept watch in his recliner lost in the shadows of the living room. He kept his gun in the holster on his hip, and he had the shotgun down on the floor beside him.

Angie and Awenita were still on the couch, both of them quiet, beginning to nod off.

David looked back at Billy. “I’m sorry I said something about you being a witch earlier today,” he told him in a low voice.

Billy smiled. “It is okay. Witchcraft is not something to be afraid of. There is not only light in this world and there is not only dark in this world. They exist together. Sometimes they overlap, and we must know both worlds well.”

David just nodded again.

Billy’s smile disappeared. He hesitated for just a moment like he had something difficult to say. “I have to make an apology to you.”

“To me?” David asked. “For what?”

“Earlier, when you and Captain Begay visited me, I should have told you something. It is the reason I am here now. There is something you need to know.”

David didn’t say anything; he just waited for Billy to continue.

“Before Joe Blackhorn died two years ago, he told me that he had something for you.”

David’s heart jumped with surprise. “What?”

“He did not tell me what it was. He said it was something that could help with your training. Something that could help with a spirit walk.”

“A spirit walk?” David asked.

Billy nodded.

“But he didn’t say what he left for me?” David asked.

“No.”

David was going to ask Billy why he had waited two years to tell him about this, but Billy spoke before he could ask. “Joe Blackhorn wanted you to have this when the time was right.”

When the Ancient Enemy came back, David thought.

“Where is it?” David asked. “Do you have it with you?”

Billy shook his head. “No. It is at Joe Blackhorn’s home. Hidden somewhere. But he told me that you would be able to find it.”

Billy Nez and Joe Blackhorn had obviously been friends. David wondered if that meant Billy knew that he had walked away from Joe Blackhorn and turned his back on the training? The heat of embarrassment flushed him for a moment.

Billy took David’s hands in his gently, glancing down at the symbols painted there. “The thing Joe Blackhorn left for you will help. And these symbols and our songs will help. But it is you who must fight the evil out there. Only you.”

David nodded, but he still wasn’t sure what to do, and it didn’t seem like Billy was going to be much help when the time came.

CHAPTER 25

Stella

Costa Rica

All day Stella had been telling herself that Cole was right, that she had been hallucinating and having night terrors, that the things she’d seen lately weren’t real. She had slipped back into that cycle of fear that had dominated their lives the first few years they were down here in Costa Rica. He had suggested that something had triggered her sudden fear, and he suspected that it was the story of the eighteen villagers that had been slaughtered. It was a big story around here. Costa Rica didn’t have as high of a crime rate as some of the other countries it bordered, but there was still crime. Murder could happen anywhere.

“It was just a drug deal gone bad,” Cole had told her earlier in the day when he had suggested again that the slaughter of those villagers had triggered her sudden panic. “Someone ripped someone off and they had to pay. They made the person pay by making him watch all seventeen people getting hacked to pieces before they finally killed him. It’s a common practice with drug cartels.”

If anyone would know, it would be Cole. And his explanation seemed to make sense. But the only thing that didn’t make sense in Cole’s explanation was the rumor that the pieces of the hacked-up bodies had been arranged and displayed, like the bodies in the cave at the dig site. It was too much of a coincidence for her to overlook.

Cole had just shrugged off her worry, automatically dismissing those details as exaggerations or rumors. People lied. Sometimes they passed rumors on that they knew weren’t true and the stories grew like a snowball rolling down a hill.

Cole had seemed to be getting a little defensive at that point, and she had let it go. She began to believe that the story of the murdered villagers had been in the back of her mind when she was at the dig site in the jungle, where she thought she’d seen Jim Whitefeather standing in the brush. In that split second everything had converged and all of her fears had come back. But either there had been a man in the jungle and she had projected Jim Whitefeather’s dead and eyeless face there, or no one had been there at all. Both were equally frightening.

It bothered her that something like a murder spree could trigger all of this fear again so easily, that she could nearly be back to the place where she had started when they had first gotten here. She was upset that all of her years of hard work of getting past her fear could be erased in a few days.

But it was just a temporary setback, she told herself. She would battle through her fear again. She would get better again.

Stella and Cole had gone back to bed last night after her sleepwalking episode. After she had crawled back into bed, Cole had stayed awake in the chair for a while, watching over her like he used to.

She’d fallen into a deep sleep and dreamed again of the ghost town where David had made his stand against the Ancient Enemy. And again in this dream the ghost town was the town of Hope’s End that it used to be in the 1890s. The same people were in the saloon. She didn’t know them, but at the same time she recognized them. It felt like something was outside the saloon, something out there in the darkness coming for them.

They had both slept in late this morning. Cole cut up some fruit for breakfast when they got up. He didn’t go into town to the bar as evening approached; he stayed with her. He knew she needed him around tonight, and it seemed like he was a little jumpy even though he would never admit it.

Little by little Stella had felt better throughout the day, but as the sun set over the Pacific, the horizon on fire with the last of the daylight, she felt the first twinge of nervousness returning. It felt like the day was ending and that it wouldn’t ever come back again, like the night and darkness would reign forever. Things hid in the dark. Things moved around in the dark and materialized out of the dark. Dangerous things. Poisonous things.

After a light dinner of fish and vegetables, Cole made them each a mixed drink. Stella sipped her drink, hoping it would help her relax. She drank it slowly; she didn’t want to get drunk. For some reason she wanted to be alert tonight.

She had tried calling Maria again to let her know that she wouldn’t be able to make it to the dig the rest of the week, but she still hadn’t gotten a hold of her. She left a voicemail this time even though she really wanted to talk to her. She hoped Maria wasn’t mad at her.

And now it was almost midnight. Cole had fallen asleep in bed, but she was still wide awake. She got out of bed and went out to the living room. She turned on the light next to the couch and grabbed one of her books. This was a book she had picked up on her last trip into San Jose, a book about Mayan and Aztec myths and prophecies. She saw similarities between their stories of monsters and what had happened with the Ancient Enemy in New Mexico and Colorado. She believed even more now that the same thing had happened down here a long time ago, that some of the mass disappearances could be attributed to the Ancient Enemy. She had to close the book because it was starting to creep her out a little. She thought the book might distract her, but it only made her think about the Ancient Enemy even more.

She got up and grabbed another book, a fiction book, one that would hopefully make her tired. She lay back down on the couch, reading, and soon the words were beginning to run together.

Stella woke up when the book slid off of her chest and almost fell to the floor—that would have definitely awakened Cole. She must have dozed off for a few minutes without remembering it.

It felt like something had pulled her from sleep, a noise maybe. She couldn’t remember dreaming anything, but maybe a nightmare had awakened her. Her heart was beating fast, her skin tingling with a creepy-crawly feeling. A heaviness was pressing down on her chest, trying to squeeze the breath from her.

The house was quiet except for the whirling ceiling fan above her and the occasional chirps and buzzing of the night insects outside. The wind was picking up outside and there was a flash of lightning from behind the curtains covering the windows, and then a few seconds later thunder rumbled. A storm was coming; maybe that was what had awakened her.

But no, it seemed to have been something else.

She glanced at the recliner across the living room and remembered Cole sitting there last night, hunched forward, his face blank and expressionless. A shudder ran through her and she was suddenly cold under the ceiling fan as she lay on her side on the couch, her back facing the cushions.

That hadn’t been real. Cole hadn’t been there last night. It had only been a dream. Cole had been in their bedroom the whole time last night, exactly where he was now.

She had a sudden and almost overwhelming urge to go to their bedroom and make sure Cole was still in bed. But she forced herself to remain on the couch, curling up on her side, nestling deeper into the couch.

Lightning flashed again and thunder boomed a few seconds later. She couldn’t hear any rain outside, but the wind was even stronger. The storm was close.

Stella felt something touching the small of her back from deep down inside the couch, something poking at her, something moving around down in the crack between the cushions. She shot up and got to her feet, staring at the couch. A large yellowish-white snake crawled out from deep in the cushions of the couch, pushing its way out over the couch and onto the floor, staring at her and hissing.

She backed up a few steps as the snake darted across the living room to the bureau against the far wall, the snake lost in shadows for a moment as it crawled behind the bureau.

Was the snake poisonous? She wasn’t sure. There were definitely poisonous varieties of snakes in Costa Rica.

How did a snake get into their house? How long had it been inside the couch? It must have been there when she’d fallen asleep a little earlier. Her body shook with the shivers for just a moment as she thought about the snake being so close to her.

She watched the bureau across the room against the wall. The snake darted out from the other end of the piece of furniture and into the kitchen; at least it hadn’t gone towards their bedroom.

Hisss.

She couldn’t see the snake now. It was somewhere in the kitchen, hissing and slithering around. She needed to get to the bedroom and wake Cole up. She wasn’t deathly afraid of snakes—she’d seen many of them on dig sites in the southwest—but something felt different about this snake.

You know what it is.

A soft tapping noise sounded from the window beside the couch. Stella jumped. She stared at the curtains in front of the windows. Something was tapping on the glass out there.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

She had forgotten about the snake in the kitchen for a moment as she stared at the curtain covering the living room window. The tapping stopped, but it was going to start again; she was sure of that. Her mind was turning to white-hot panic, every nerve in her body buzzing. She knew she should run and wake Cole up, but she walked towards the window almost like she wasn’t in control of her own body. She watched her own hand rise to the curtains—she had to see what was out there, she had to know. She grabbed the edge of the curtain and pulled it back just as the lightning flashed.

Maria floated right outside the living room window, her golden skin so pale in the lightning flash. Her expression was blank, her mouth wide open, her eyes wide like she had died of shock, like she was still seeing the horrible thing that had stopped her heart. She still wore the clothes she’d had on at the dig site two days ago, the sleeves of her shirt rolled up to her elbows. She raised a hand to the glass, her fingernails caked with dirt, her index finger poking out stiffly. She tapped at the glass again. Three taps.

In that moment Stella knew it was all true. She knew she had really seen Jim Whitefeather in the jungle. She knew the Ancient Enemy was back. She had left the dig site and it had gotten Maria and everyone else. And now it had sent Maria back to tap at her window.

Stella jumped off the couch and bolted for the bedroom.

CHAPTER 26

Cole

Costa Rica

“Get up!” Stella yelled at Cole, pulling the bedsheet off of him.

Cole sat bolt-upright in bed. Stella had turned the overhead light on, the one attached to the ceiling fan. He knew it was still dark outside, but he had no idea what time it was. It felt like he’d been asleep for only a few minutes, but when he looked at the alarm clock he saw it was only a few hours until dawn.

Stella’s eyes were wide with fear, her tanned skin paler than he’d seen it in years. He hadn’t seen her this frightened since . . .

Cole jumped out of bed. He wore only a pair of underwear. He grabbed his clothes he’d laid over the chair. Even though it was hot in the bedroom, the ceiling fan barely pushing the heat away, Cole felt a cold chill dancing across his skin, raising goosebumps. He suddenly felt like he was back in Colorado, back in that freezing cold with something dangerous and unimaginable waiting outside, something approaching their front door, something about to knock on the door and ask for things.

He’d been dreaming when Stella had shaken him awake. He’d been in the ghost town again in his dream, but the town was different; it was the town of Hope’s End. He was himself in that town, but he was also someone else. He waited in the saloon with a few others, all of them frightened of the Ancient Enemy that lurked out in the darkness, the monster that had slaughtered everyone else in the town. He saw a woman named Esmerelda in the dream, a woman he had feelings for, but it seemed like the woman’s visage shimmered from Esmerelda to Stella and then back to Esmerelda again. There were other people in the saloon that he didn’t really recognize, but he knew them. And then there was David, and David looked exactly as he had seven years ago.

Cole was dressed in a few seconds, slipping his feet into a pair of boots and buckling the belt on his jeans at the same time. He pulled a T-shirt on and then grabbed his gun from the table beside the bed.

Stella was at the bedroom door, staring down the hallway; she was tense, ready to either run or fight.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s happening again,” she told him without taking her eyes off of the hallway, like she was watching and waiting for something to come down the hall. “The Ancient Enemy . . . it’s here.”

Cole wondered if Stella had been sleepwalking again, if she had seen a nightmare that she had projected onto the real world. “Stella?”

“There was someone at the living room window,” she said as she backed up a step into the bedroom. She still stared down the hallway, still waiting for the monster to come.

Cole could see down the hallway because Stella had turned on the lights in the living room before rushing into the bedroom to wake him up, but he didn’t see or hear anyone moving around in the rest of the house. The wind was blowing outside and thunder was rumbling every minute or two, but it wasn’t raining yet. He stood right behind Stella, trying to ignore the noise of the wind, the thunder, the ceiling fan, and Stella’s heavy breathing, trying to listen for any other sounds in the house. He kept his gun down by his side. “Who was at the window?” he asked.

“Maria.”

It took Cole’s groggy mind a few seconds to realize who Stella was talking about. “Maria? From the dig?”

“Yes. She was outside the living room window. Floating out there. She was tapping at the window. She had this . . . this blank look on her face. She was dead, or nearly dead. It’s inside of her.”

“Stella, you’re sure—”

“There’s a snake in the house,” she said.

“A snake?”

“At least one. There might be more now. It came out of the couch.”

Cole remembered the ghost town and the way the Ancient Enemy had controlled the animals there: tarantulas, scorpions, snakes, birds, coyotes. And it had controlled the wind, kicking up a sandstorm.

Just then a gust of wind slammed into the house, rattling the windows. The tree branches and palm fronds were shaking outside. And then when the wind died down, there was a tapping at their bedroom window.

Cole turned and stared at the curtains covering the window. He knew then that Stella was right, the Ancient Enemy was here. Cole had been trying to convince Stella that she hadn’t seen Jim Whitefeather standing in the jungle. He had tried to convince her that she’d been sleepwalking last night. But now he knew that he’d been wrong and she had been right. Maybe he had just been trying to convince himself that it wasn’t really happening again.

There were three more loud taps at the window, a fingernail tapping at the glass.

“Don’t open the curtains,” Stella warned.

Somehow the Ancient Enemy was out there even though Joe Blackhorn said that David had driven the being back to its own world. Cole suddenly felt vulnerable—they didn’t have David here to protect them now. They were defenseless.

“Get the phones,” Cole said. He was still watching the window, the tapping still coming from outside, three taps at a time. He shoved his gun down into the waistband of his pants and darted over to the closet. He opened the doors and pulled out an old cardboard box, tearing it open, pulling out some papers until he found a plastic pouch that was zipped up. He threw the pouch on the bed and then turned back to the closet. Underneath the cardboard box was a wooden box full of bottles of pure grain alcohol. He pulled a bottle out and untwisted the cap, splashing the alcohol around the perimeter of the room.

Stella had the cell phones in her hand, standing very still at the end of the bed. She wasn’t even watching Cole—she was staring in horror at the phone in her hand.

Cole emptied the bottle of alcohol and tossed the bottle down on the floor. He went back to the bed and picked up the plastic pouch, about to hand it to Stella. But then he saw the look on her face as she stared down at her phone. “What is it?”

“David texted me a few hours ago.”

“He did? What did he say?”

“He said the Ancient Enemy is back.”

There was no dismissing it now or trying to pretend that something else was going on. If David said it was back, then it was back.

Stella shook her head a little, staring at Cole. “This text message wasn’t here before. I checked earlier. I would have seen it.”

“We can’t worry about that right now,” Cole said, pulling a disposable lighter out of the wooden tray on top of the dresser. He ripped a strip off of a T-shirt he pulled out of the top drawer and lit the end of it with the lighter. “We need to go.”

Stella’s eyes said: Go where?

And she was right. There was the chance that their truck wouldn’t start. The Ancient Enemy could have already destroyed the engine or drained the battery. But they had to try. They needed to leave now. One thing Cole had learned when they were at Joe Blackhorn’s trailer was that the Ancient Enemy used up a lot of its energy to control the wind, animals, and people. It was powerful, but only for short periods of time. Right now it had been controlling Maria, making her body float outside the windows, tapping at the glass. It was also controlling at least one snake inside the house. And the Ancient Enemy might even be controlling the wind. This was their only chance. The important thing was to get as far away from here as they could. After that Cole could call one of his friends and arrange a flight out of here, even if it was only to the other end of the country, somewhere away from here where they could catch their breath and make more plans.

The tapping sounded at the bedroom window again, a series of quick taps, three at a time. It was a maddening sound. Then the fingernail scraped down the glass, sounding like a fingernail on a chalkboard. Cole wondered why the Ancient Enemy wasn’t shattering the window and rushing inside to get them. David wasn’t here to protect them now. Why hadn’t it gotten Stella when she’d been in the living room earlier? Or why hadn’t it gotten him while he’d been sleeping in bed? Why was it holding back? If it wanted to get inside, it could. It had to be waiting for some reason. But he couldn’t worry about that right now.

Cole looked at Stella again. He held the burning piece of cloth by a corner. “We get to the kitchen and out the back door. To the truck.”

She nodded and slipped her cell phone into the back pocket of her jeans, but she didn’t look confident. She had the plastic pouch in her hand.

Lightning flashed outside. Thunder rumbled a few seconds later.

Cole threw the flaming cloth down at the base of the wall where he had soaked it with the alcohol. The wall erupted in flames. And then he grabbed another bottle of alcohol, opening it up and tossing the cap away.

As they ran down the hall, Cole dribbled the alcohol out of the bottle. Cole kept glancing at the floor as he entered the kitchen, splashing the last of the alcohol around. He pulled his gun out of the waistband of his pants, trying to spot the snake that Stella said was inside the house. He imagined that the snake was coiled up in a shadowy corner somewhere, waiting to strike at them. But he never saw the snake.

Cole kicked the back door open. He expected to see the reanimated corpse of Maria waiting for them, floating out there in the night, but she wasn’t there. He ran across the weedy yard to their Toyota 4x4. He got in the driver’s side and Stella got in the passenger side, throwing the plastic pouch down on the floorboard. Cole slid the key into the ignition after pushing the button down to lock the doors.

The wind was blowing even harder and flashes of lightning were lighting up the darkness for a split second, the wind blowing sand around, bits of plants and twigs pelting their vehicle.

Cole turned the key and the motor tried to turn over, but it sounded like the battery was already low. He tried again, keeping the key turned all the way. The motor turned sluggishly.

It was only playing with us. It didn’t attack us because it wanted us to run out here to the truck; it wanted us to have a glimmer of hope. But now it would come for us.

Another flash of lightning revealed Maria at the other end of the yard, coming out of the brush, floating three feet above the ground, her arms out to her sides, her head cocked to one side, her face blank and her mouth open. She looked so pale in the lightning flash, like a ghost. And there were other things scurrying out of the brush underneath her floating feet—rats, hundreds of them.

Darkness again. Thunder rumbled. The ground shook.

Cole turned the key again, stomping his foot down on the gas pedal. The headlights came on even though Cole hadn’t turned the knob. The dials and gauge lights on the dashboard flickered. The headlights brightened and then dimmed to almost dark, and then brightened again.

Maria was floating closer to them. The sea of rats was getting closer.

“Cole,” Stella said.

Cole kept the key turned all the way and he stomped down on the gas pedal. “Come on!” he yelled at the truck through clenched teeth.

The 4x4 roared to life, the headlights brightening all the way, illuminating Maria who floated ten feet away from the front of the truck, the rats racing towards them under her feet, some of the rodents were already underneath the truck.

Cole shifted into reverse and stomped down on the gas pedal, squishing dozens of rats as he backed down the driveway and out onto the street, the tires sliding as the rain began to fall. He shifted into drive and sped away.

CHAPTER 27

Officer Sam

Iron Springs, New Mexico

It was late now as Officer Sam Yazzie patrolled the streets ten miles outside of Iron Springs, but he was still alert. It was his turn to patrol the main road leading in and out of town. The empty desert was in front of him with a million stars and a nearly-full moon shining down from the night sky, washing the desert in a milky blue light, creating dark shadows. The night had also brought cold air.

It had been hours now and there had been no sign of this killer that everybody had been whispering about. But Officer Sam wasn’t going to let his guard down. He kept himself awake with the coffee, but also with his anger. He thought of John and Deena Bear, people he’d known well. And he thought of their poor son David. At least David and Awenita were with Captain Begay tonight at his house.

When they had organized their patrol earlier in the day, they had all agreed to drive by Captain Begay’s house every hour or so, even though he didn’t want them doing that. Officer Sam had also decided to swing past Awenita’s house on his way out of town. The house was dark and empty. He stopped there for a moment, his Dodge Durango rumbling in the driveway. He used the spotlight on the side of the driver’s door, shining the beam of light along the front of the home, but he saw nothing suspicious.

And now that he was farther away from town, he would run by John and Deena’s house. It was just an empty place now. No one would ever buy the house now. No one would even rent it. No one would buy the land even if the house was torn down. It was a haunted place now and it would always be a haunted place.

On his way out to John and Deena’s house, Officer Sam saw something in the distance down the road, a dark shape speeding towards him. He slowed down a little and flipped his headlights to brights. He saw now that the dark shape was a vehicle racing towards him, but the vehicle had all of its lights turned off.

Sam hit the switch for the police lights on top of his Dodge Durango. His first thought was that it could be the killer driving towards him, the killer they’d all been waiting for. But then he thought it was more likely a drunk driver who hadn’t realized that his headlights weren’t on.

The car wasn’t slowing down as it approached. It was driving fast, at least sixty miles an hour, and it was coming right for him.

Maybe the police lights weren’t working to alert the driver. Sam pressed the button for the siren, just a quick whoop whoop.

The car still hadn’t slowed down. It was almost up to Sam’s vehicle, staying in its own lane, driving as straight as an arrow. It was an older car, a gray Chevy Impala with a different colored front fender and a big dent in the rear quarter panel. The Chevy sped right past Sam’s Durango. His heart skipped a beat, his breath freezing in his lungs for a few seconds. There wasn’t anyone inside the vehicle. The Durango’s headlights had washed over the windshield of the Chevy Impala and there was no one in the driver’s seat.

That can’t be possible.

Maybe the flickering red and blue lights and his headlights had worked together to create some kind of distorting lights and shadows, some kind of optical illusion that made it seem like no one had been driving.

Officer Sam skidded to a stop and turned around. He gunned the gas and sped down the road. He was up to fifty miles an hour. Sixty. Then seventy. He was gaining on the car quickly, the red and blue lights from his police cruiser crisscrossing the road in front of him.

He was about to call this in, but he didn’t grab the mike because he saw the New Mexico plate on the back of the Impala; he already knew whose car this was. This was Billy Nez’s daughter’s car. But he doubted Doli was driving tonight, more likely it was her husband who was often drunk and always getting into trouble.

The driver was already slowing down, already knowing that he couldn’t outrun Officer Sam’s Durango. The Impala veered to the right as it slowed down more, the brake lights flashing a few times. It slowed to a crawl as it ran over the sand and then the brush and small shrubs before coming to a stop in a cloud of dust.

Officer Sam pulled up behind the car and kept his police lights on. He sat there for a moment, not sure what to do. He didn’t want to take this guy in because he didn’t want to leave his patrol, so he decided not to call it in. Maybe Doli’s husband wasn’t drunk; maybe he had just fallen asleep. If he was really drunk, Sam decided that he would just put him in the back of his Durango until his shift was over. There was always the danger of the guy puking or pissing himself, but it was a chance he would take to stay out here and help nab this killer.

If this killer was really coming.

He stared at the Impala in front of him. The Durango’s headlights were shining right into the rear window because his vehicle sat higher up off of the ground. The strange thing was that he still couldn’t see a driver behind the wheel. Maybe the driver was lying down across the seat, passed out. Or maybe he had jumped out earlier, running into the desert, taking his chances out there rather than being caught.

A strange sensation of fear tapped at Sam, but he pushed it away. He always had to be careful on traffic stops, but he was pretty sure this guy would be no real threat.

He got out and unsnapped the strap over his service pistol, getting ready to draw just in case. He pulled his flashlight out and turned it on even though his headlights and police lights were providing plenty of light. He shined his flashlight at the back of the Chevy Impala as he walked towards it, his boots crunching on the sand. It was quiet out here. The only sounds were both of the vehicles running. He was expecting the driver’s window to roll down or the driver’s door to open at any moment, spilling the driver out. But the door remained closed and the window stayed rolled up. All the windows were rolled up.

Sam got to the back door of the car and shined his flashlight in at the back seat. Everything—his heart, his breath, his muscles—seemed to stop for a second. There were four severed heads in the back seat: a man’s head, a woman’s head, and the heads of two children. Blood was smeared all over the seats. The children’s heads were face-down, but the man’s head was on its side and the woman’s face was turned up, her blank eyes staring at the ceiling of the car. Her mouth was wide open, her neck ending in a ragged stump that was crusted with dark blood. Her hair was splayed out underneath the head. It was Doli’s head. And her husband’s head was right beside hers. The two smaller heads must be her children.

Officer Sam drew his gun and stepped in front of the driver’s window, aiming his gun at the window, shining his flashlight beam inside. “Turn the car off! Keep your hands where I can see them!”

There was no one in the driver’s seat—it was empty.

“Aw, you saw the gifts I was bringing to the party,” a deep voice said from right behind Officer Sam.

Sam turned and aimed his pistol and flashlight at the man who stood only a few feet away from him. The man was tall and thin, the skin on his face and hands ghostly white. His head was shaved clean; even his eyebrows and eyelashes were gone.

“Don’t move!” Sam yelled at the man. This was the killer that Begay had warned everyone about earlier—had to be. Sam was going to nab this guy by himself, or shoot him if he had to.

The man raised his hands up slowly, surrendering. There were bloodstains on his dark clothing, and smaller splashes of blood on his hands. The man didn’t look scared. He smiled and his eyes were as cold as the desert air.

“Down on the ground!” Sam yelled. He needed to get this guy down and cuffed, and then he needed to call this in. He wished now that he would have already called this stop in.

“I guess one more gift couldn’t hurt,” the man said as dozens of tentacles shot out of his wrists and from his torso, knocking Sam’s gun and flashlight out of his hands, wrapping around his wrists in a flash.

Sam was slammed into the side of the Impala, his breath knocked from his lungs with a grunt. He slid down the car door, sitting down hard on the sand with his back against the Impala. He didn’t even know how he’d gotten down to the ground so quickly. There were more tentacles wrapped around his wrists and arms, holding him there. The tentacles were moving like snakes, alive but not alive, squeezing him tighter. He tried to kick his legs, but he couldn’t move.

Another tentacle shot out from a dark mass in front of him and wrapped around his neck. The killer was out there somewhere beyond those tentacles, somehow connected to the black, shimmering mass of tendrils. But that wasn’t a man, that was a demon, the Ancient Enemy that some whispered about, the monster that Sam had never believed in.

The tentacle around Sam’s neck tightened, sinking into his flesh, cutting through his windpipe. He could feel the blood gushing down into his lungs, cutting off his breathing, drowning him. He kept his eyes open as long as he could, but everything was going black. His world was turning dark.

CHAPTER 28

David

Iron Springs, New Mexico

David woke up. He was curled up on the floor. He couldn’t remember falling asleep, but he must have dozed off at some point. He looked around at the living room. Angie and his Aunt Awenita were on the couch, one at each end, both asleep. Begay was probably supposed to be on watch, but he was asleep in his recliner, snoring softly, his shotgun on the floor beside him. Billy Nez was in the dining room, chanting softly, moving around in the other room like a shadow. All of the lights were off, but there was a little bit of light shining in through the windows from the front porch light.

David remembered dreaming so he had to have been asleep for a little while. In his dream he’d been in the town of Hope’s End again. But this time the dream was different, this hadn’t been a memory. This time he’d been alone in the town—Jed, Esmerelda, and the others were all gone; it was just him and the dead people in Hope’s End. And the killer. The killer was there in the town, a shadow materializing out of the darkness of the saloon.

But that was all David remembered before snapping awake.

The wind had died down outside of Begay’s house and everything was quiet. It felt like the calm before the storm. David sat up and stared into the dining room and kitchen, catching flashes of movement from Billy Nez, listening to his whispered chants. Begay had said Billy dabbled with the dark side of magic and that some believed he was a witch. Maybe the symbols Billy had painted on David’s hands, the ancient Anasazi writing, would help. But maybe Billy’s dark spells and songs would help, too. Anything might help.

David didn’t know anything about the dark arts, and as far as he knew Joe Blackhorn didn’t either. But Billy said earlier that Joe Blackhorn had left something for him at his place, something that could help with a spirit walk. David wondered if Joe Blackhorn had been keeping secrets from him. But that wasn’t really fair because he hadn’t studied long enough with Joe Blackhorn to find out any secrets the old man might have been keeping; he had turned his back on the medicine man and walked away from his studies. And now the guilt was back. He felt selfish because he had walked away from Joe Blackhorn, because he had wanted to feel normal. But now he knew that feeling normal was never going to be possible for him.

He looked down at the symbols painted on his hands and wrists. He wasn’t as prepared as he could be. He could die tonight because he wasn’t strong enough to defeat that monster out there in the dark, that spirit or demon or alien, or whatever it was. Not only could he die, but his aunt could die. And Captain Begay and his wife. Billy Nez could die. Cole and Stella could die. They could all die because he wasn’t ready, because he wasn’t strong enough to fight the Ancient Enemy, because he hadn’t studied and trained long enough, because he had turned his back on Joe Blackhorn.

The Ancient Enemy wasn’t going to stop after it killed all of them tonight. There would be a black wave of death to follow, every living thing wiped out in its path.

Begay seemed to stop breathing for a moment in his chair, for almost a full minute. David watched him, wondering if he should get up and try to wake the captain up. But then Begay snorted and inhaled a breath, coughing and waking up. He hunched forward in the darkness. “You hear that?”

David wasn’t sure if Begay was talking to him, or if maybe he was freeing himself from the last fragments of a dream.

“You hear that?” Begay asked again.

David listened for a moment, and then he heard a sound coming from outside. It was a rumbling sound, like a car or truck with a powerful engine running.

Begay grabbed his shotgun from the floor and stood up. He walked over to the living room window to peek out through the curtains.

Angie and Awenita woke up on the couch.

“What is it?” Angie asked as she popped up to her feet. “Who’s out there?”

Begay peered out the window. “It’s a squad car,” he said. “A Durango. One of the older ones. I told those guys not to park in front of my house. They need everyone they’ve got out on patrol.”

“What’s he doing out there?”

Begay shook his head just a little, still staring out through the slit in the curtains he had parted with the barrel of his shotgun. “I don’t see anyone. The lights are on, even the lights inside the cruiser, but no one’s there. I think it might be Sam Yazzie’s truck.”

“Why isn’t he in his truck?” Angie asked.

“I don’t know,” Begay muttered. He looked around at the front yard through the window. “Maybe he saw something and got out to check it out.”

David watched Begay at the window. He could tell that Begay felt helpless. He knew Begay wanted to go outside and check on Sam, but he was torn between staying in the house to protect them and going out there to help his former officer.

The wind picked up a little, David could hear it and he felt the goosebumps on his skin. It felt like the fine hairs on his skin were standing up, like a slight electric current was suddenly in the air. It was a sensation he’d felt before when the Ancient Enemy was close.

Begay let the curtain fall back in place and walked back to his chair, pacing the floor. Angie sat back down on the couch.

Something slammed against the front door from outside, a wet thump.

David had heard that sound before, the sound of wet thumps striking a door. He’d heard those same sounds in Tom Gordon’s cabin in Colorado.

Another thump against the door, loud and heavy, but also soft, like a rock covered in a cloth.

“What the hell?” Begay said, frozen for a moment with his shotgun in his hand.

Billy entered the living room from the kitchen, staring at the front door.

Three more thumps sounded against the door—five of them so far.

Begay marched to the front door.

“Wait,” David yelled at him.

Begay stopped and stared at David. “You know what that is?”

David didn’t answer because it wasn’t a simple thing to explain. He knew vaguely what the thumps were: body parts thrown against the front door, just like what had happened at Tom Gordon’s cabin in Colorado. But he didn’t know whose body parts they were. David looked at Billy Nez. The man looked frightened, like he’d just gotten a horrible premonition.

“It could be Sam knocking at the door,” Begay said, going for the door again.

“It isn’t Sam,” David told him.

Again, Begay stopped in his tracks. He looked at the door; the thumps against the door had stopped now. He looked at the window, the porch light shining in through the curtains.

Then the porch light went out. All of the lights went out and the house was plunged into darkness.

Angie screamed and put a hand up to her mouth.

Begay hurried over to the front window and peeked out through the curtains. He was tense, like a cat inspecting something on the floor, ready to jump back at any moment.

The Ancient Enemy was out there, David was sure of that. But it was more than that, the Ancient Enemy had brought a killer this time, a man who would know how to get inside the house, a man who would know how to terrorize his victims and keep them off-balance and second guessing.

Angie watched Begay as he stared out the front window. She still had one hand up to her mouth, breathing so heavily she was practically hyperventilating. “What is it?” she whispered at her husband. “What’s out there?”

Begay looked more confused than frightened as he stared out the window.

David had seen that expression on a man’s face before, at the cabin when Cole’s brother Trevor had stared out the cabin’s front window, staring at Frank standing in the snow, Frank who had been taken in the night and sent back to ask for things.

But David didn’t think the Ancient Enemy was going to ask for things now. No, the Ancient Enemy had the serial killer with him this time, a man who wouldn’t hesitate to kill just for the pleasure of it.

“I don’t see anything out there,” Begay finally answered his wife.

CHAPTER 29

Begay

Iron Springs, New Mexico

Begay moved farther to his left along the window so he could see more of the front porch, but everything was hidden in darkness. From this angle he could only see part of the front porch. It looked like there might be some stains on the concrete floor of the porch, maybe mud or footsteps, but he couldn’t be sure. The night sky was clear of clouds and full of stars, and the moonlight helped a little, but the only other light out there was from Officer Sam’s Durango. Begay was still tense as he looked out the window, ready to jump back if he needed to, his shotgun still gripped tightly in one hand.

“I still don’t see anything out there,” Begay said. “Sam’s Durango is still running, the interior lights still on.”

“You’re sure it’s Sam’s truck?” Angie asked.

“Yeah. The doors are all closed, the windows rolled up. But no one’s inside.”

“You think he’s out there chasing someone?” Awenita asked.

Begay didn’t answer.

“Maybe it was Sam at the front door,” Angie said. “Like you said.”

But Begay wasn’t so sure about that now. “No. He would have called out to us.”

Not if he can’t talk, a voice whispered in Begay’s mind.

Begay studied their large front yard. It was mostly hidden in darkness, but there was something halfway between the porch and Sam’s Durango. “I think I see something out there.”

“What?” Angie asked.

“I can’t make it out.” He stared out the window at the thing in the dark. It was only about three or four feet tall and skinny. It looked almost like a tree trunk that had been snapped off about four feet up. But there was no tree there in his front yard. It wasn’t a person—too thin. A child? No, still too thin. This looked more like a short ragged post in the ground.

Begay moved away from the window. He knew he needed to go out there. Sam was out there. If Sam was in trouble he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if he stayed in the house under the guise of protecting everyone else. He walked over to Angie and handed her the shotgun.

“No,” Angie whispered. “Don’t go out there.”

Begay knew Angie could use the shotgun, he had taught her to use it in the backyard years ago. He had also taught her how to use a handgun and a rifle.

“You watch the front door,” Begay told Angie. “When I come back I’ll call out to you. I’ll identify myself. If anyone comes to the door you tell them to identify themselves or warn them that you will shoot.”

Angie nodded, but she looked scared to death. She knew there was no use in arguing with him about it now.

Begay still had his pistol in his hand. He went into the kitchen and opened the drawer where they kept the flashlights. He grabbed two of them. He handed one to Angie and kept one for himself. He kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll be fine,” he whispered.

She didn’t look like she believed it.

Billy Nez met Begay at the front door; he had an old revolver in his hand.

“Where’d you get that?” Begay asked, nodding down at the gun in his hand.

“My medicine bag. I did not only bring feathers and beads.”

Begay was going to tell Billy to wait, order him to stay in the house, but he knew he couldn’t do that; he wasn’t a captain in the Navajo Tribal Police anymore, and Billy Nez could go where he wanted. Begay was about to warn Billy that it could be dangerous out there, but he saw that Billy already knew that. Begay wished they had gone somewhere else today, but it had been late and he figured they could stay the night here in the house. Besides, where could they have gone that the Ancient Enemy wouldn’t know about? Where were they truly safe?

Maybe the killer wasn’t out there yet. Maybe Officer Sam had just stopped by and was taking a look around, checking things out. But Begay didn’t believe that. Sam would have called first, or at least knocked on the door. And the electricity going out couldn’t just be a coincidence.

David will be in the house, Begay told himself. At least Angie and Awenita will be safe with David here.

A voice cried from outside, a female voice, the voice of a little girl. “Help meee. Please, help me!”

CHAPTER 30

Begay

Iron Springs, New Mexico

Billy Nez’s eyes widened with fear, his body suddenly tense and ramrod straight as he listened to the little girl call for help outside. He knew that voice. “Kai,” he whispered.

“Acheii,” the girl screamed from outside—the Navajo word for grandfather. It was then that Begay realized it was Billy’s granddaughter out there calling him.

Begay saw Kai in his mind, just a flash of memory from this morning when he’d seen her and her brother Yas. He’d been at their home with David, asking if they knew where their grandfather was.

Billy brushed past Begay and unlocked the front door, tearing it open.

Begay was about to order Billy to wait for him, but both men froze as they stared at the open front door. There were blood splatters all over the outside of the door, the blood so dark against the white paint in the moonlight. Whatever had hit the front door five times had left smears of blood behind. There were more splotches of blood on the floor of the front porch, just barely visible in the darkness, the spots that Begay had seen through the window, the spots he thought were mud or dirt tracks.

“Help meeee!” Kai’s voice mewled out in the darkness.

Begay realized that Kai’s voice was coming from the object he had seen in the front yard, the short shadowy thing he couldn’t make out in the darkness.

Billy bolted out the door with his revolver in his hand. “Kai, hold on! I’m coming!”

“Billy, wait!” Begay yelled, but Billy wasn’t waiting.

Begay turned to Angie. “Come lock this deadbolt when I leave. You don’t unlock this door for anyone except us!”

Angie took a step forward and nodded, the shotgun still clenched in her hands. Her eyes were so big and round with fear.

Begay twisted the lock on the doorknob and rushed outside, pulling the door closed behind him. He looked down at the concrete floor of the front porch as he ran to the edge of it, shining his flashlight beam down at the splatters of blood all over the surface. It looked like someone had dunked a basketball in blood and bounced it all over the front porch and front door.

A moment later Begay was running through his front yard. Billy was already ten yards ahead of him, running towards Sam’s Durango, kicking up sand as he sprinted. Begay had his flashlight trained on Billy, but the light beam was swaying back and forth as he ran. A cold wind blew, rattling the leaves of the cottonwoods at the other end of the yard, the line of trees marking the end of his property on that side.

Billy had stopped running. He had stopped cold. His body was suddenly very still, his shoulders slumping like all the strength and energy had suddenly drained out of him. He lowered his gun down to his side. He was standing in front of the object in the middle of the yard.

Begay’s chest was burning from the short run, his heart jackhammering in his chest. His knees and back already hurt, and he couldn’t catch his breath. But he caught up to Billy and stood right beside him, staring at the object he’d seen from the window, the object he thought had looked like a thin tree trunk broken off around four feet high. He couldn’t understand now how he could have possibly thought this was a tree trunk. Maybe his mind hadn’t been able to process what he was seeing from the living room window, or maybe a part of his mind didn’t want to really see what it was. But now that he was standing right in front of it, there was no pretending that it was something else. It was a stack of heads, like some kind of morbid totem pole, all of the faces pointed towards them. Officer Sam’s head was on the bottom. His eyes were purplish and swollen shut, his mouth a grim line, his face squished just a bit perhaps from the weight of the four heads stacked on top of his. The head on top of Sam’s head was Doli’s husband. Begay couldn’t recall the man’s name, but he remembered that he was always in trouble. His eyes were halfway open, the eyeballs glazed and white. His nose looked broken, crushed in. Dried blood was caked under his nose and all over the lips of his open mouth. His tongue was swollen inside, forcing his mouth open a little. The head of Billy’s daughter, Doli, was on top of her husband’s head. Her long hair was parted in the middle and flowing down onto the sides of her husband’s face. Her eyes were almost closed. There were cuts and spots of blood on her face. The head on top of Doli’s head was Yas, her son. And the head on the top of the stack was Kai’s head.

Begay wasn’t sure how the heads were stacked up straight like they were; he thought maybe there was a wooden pole or piece of rebar shoved into the ground and the heads had been stuck down onto the stick like a shish kabob.

Billy still hadn’t moved. His face was a mask of shock and sorrow. He stared at his granddaughter’s face.

“We have to get back inside,” Begay told Billy. He was shocked by the obscene totem pole, but he’d been prepared for something like this; after what he’d seen in the ghost town seven years ago, he knew what the Ancient Enemy was capable of.

Billy didn’t answer Begay, he just whispered Kai’s name.

“Help me,” Kai whispered, her words just barely heard.

Begay’s eyes shot back to Kai’s head on top of all of the others. Her eyes had been closed but now they were wide open, her pupils looking like two round black polished stones set in her face, the large eyes of a child. Begay shined his flashlight beam at the girl’s face. There was no expression on her face, but her eyes remained open as her lips trembled. “Help me, acheii.”

She can’t be talking. She doesn’t have a neck anymore. No vocal chords. The Ancient Enemy is in there somewhere, a sliver of itself inside this totem pole, controlling this abomination, making the girl talk.

“You were supposed to be there with us, acheii,” the girl whispered. “You were supposed to protect us.”

Tears slipped out of Billy’s eyes, but he was so still, his body deflated, shoulders sagging, the revolver loose in his hand, ready to slip out of numb fingers and fall to the ground.

Begay grabbed Billy, turning him away from the stack of heads, shaking him, trying to snap him out of the stupor that had taken him over. “Billy Nez! It’s not Kai anymore! She’s dead now. The Ancient Enemy is controlling this. We need to get back inside the house.” He wasn’t going to wait much longer for Billy. He hoped Angie and Awenita were safe inside with David, but he couldn’t be absolutely sure of it. If Billy wasn’t going to come back with him, then Begay was going to have to leave him out here alone.

Billy seemed to suddenly come to life and Begay wondered if his words had finally gotten through to the man. Billy’s eyes narrowed, his eyebrows knitting together, his mouth turning down into a severe frown—a growing thunderstorm of rage on his face. He tore himself from Begay’s grasp and ran away from the stack of severed heads, running deeper into the yard, waving his gun as he ran. “Come show yourself!” he screamed at the darkness.

“Billy, no!” Begay yelled. He couldn’t run after Billy now, he didn’t have the strength for it. He needed to get back to the house. The Ancient Enemy would be going for the house now—he was sure of it.

Billy seemed to blend into the darkness, but Begay could still see him like a shadow moving along the moonlit ground. From the darker shadows of the cottonwood trees, something large and quick darted across the sand, slamming into Billy, lifting him up and spinning him around in the air. Billy was caught in a web of living darkness.

It was too late for Billy now. He screamed as he was pulled apart.

Begay turned to run back to the house. A man stood in his way. The man was tall, his clean-shaven head and face so pale and luminous in the moonlight.

It was the killer and he had something in his hand.

Begay raised his gun up, tried to get off a shot, but the killer had already swung the weapon in his hand. Begay felt a blast of pain in the side of his head and his body went numb, and then his world turned to blackness.

CHAPTER 31

David

Iron Springs, New Mexico

Angie kept the shotgun aimed at the front door like Begay had told her to. The weapon was getting heavy and her hands and arms were trembling, but she wasn’t going to set it down. She had backed up towards the kitchen with Awenita and David right behind her.

“I heard yelling out there,” David’s aunt said.

Angie nodded.

David had heard it too. Captain Begay had been yelling, but now it was quiet and it had remained quiet for a few minutes now. That might be bad, but it might be good. Maybe Captain Begay was still alive. But there had been other screams, too. Billy’s screams. Those screams had been cut short. The wind rushed up and then died down quickly. Now there were no sounds coming from outside except the faint rumbling of the police cruiser parked out on the road.

“We need to call the police,” Awenita said. “Get some help.” She ran for the phone on the wall in the kitchen. She grabbed the receiver and punched at the buttons frantically. She hung the phone up, slamming it into the cradle, then picked it up and tried the buttons again. The phone was dead.

“Let me have your cell phone,” Awenita told David when she came back.

“Cell phone service isn’t the greatest out here,” Angie warned.

David pulled his phone out of his pocket and gave it to his aunt. He’d been waiting to get a text from Stella but maybe the service here wasn’t letting her messages get through. Or maybe Cole and Stella were having a hard time with cell reception in Costa Rica—they were in a pretty remote area of the country.

Awenita dialed a number into David’s phone, waited a second, and then sighed in frustration. “No service.” She moved around in the kitchen and the dining room, trying the phone again and again.

It’s not going to work, David thought. The Ancient Enemy isn’t going to let it work.

“The captain will be back soon,” Angie said as she stared at the front door with her shotgun still aimed at it. “He’ll know what to do.”

“Officer Sam’s car is out there,” Awenita said when she came back and handed the cell phone back to David. “They’ll know his car is here. He probably called it in when he got here. They’ll come looking for him soon.”

David walked across the living room to the front windows.

“What are you doing?” his aunt asked.

“Going to look out the window,” he told her.

Awenita didn’t try to stop him.

David got to the window and pulled the curtain back just a little, allowing the faintest of moonlight to shine inside the house. He stared out the window for a moment, trying to make things out in the darkness. He could see the night sky and the dark silhouette of mountains and trees against it on the horizon. He could make out the dark mass of cottonwoods to the left of the front yard. The police cruiser wasn’t running now. All the lights were off, too. Someone had just shut the engine and the lights off.

The wind kicked up in a sudden gust, sand blowing around, obscuring the little that David could see in the yard. But he thought he could make out some of the objects in the front yard, but he couldn’t see anything clearly enough, especially not now with the sand blowing all over the place.

“You see him?” Angie asked. She sounded like she was on the verge of crying.

David let the curtain fall back in place. He walked back to Angie and his aunt. “No,” he whispered to Angie. “I can’t see anything out there. The police car isn’t running anymore. Someone shut it off. All the lights too.” The Ancient Enemy shut the police cruiser off, he thought but didn’t say it. The Ancient Enemy shut the police cruiser off just like it had shut off the electricity and the phones, and disrupted the cell service here.

“He’ll be back soon,” Angie told herself.

The wind died down as suddenly as it had picked up. The three of them stood in the dark and the silence. But then David heard the sound of shuffling feet across the concrete porch. Someone was walking towards the front door out there.

“It’s him,” Angie practically squealed with delight. She started to go for the door, but David put a hand on her upper arm, stopping her.

“It’s not him,” David told Angie.

She stared at him like she was shocked he would try to stop her from opening the door for her husband. “How do you know?” Her voice was louder and sharper, like she was accusing him of something.

“It’s not him,” David said again.

CHAPTER 32

David

Iron Springs, New Mexico

There were three heavy knocks at the front door.

Angie pulled her arm out of David’s grasp, swinging the shotgun down to her side, about to rush for the door.

“Please don’t open the door,” David told her. He wasn’t so worried for himself, more for her.

“Maybe David’s right,” Awenita said.

Angie ignored both of them as she walked towards the door.

Three more knocks at the door. The pounding was so hard it sounded like the door was vibrating in the doorframe from the force of the knocks.

Angie hesitated.

“Tell him to identify himself,” Awenita yelled at Angie. “That’s what Begay said to do. Remember?”

Angie didn’t look back; she still stared at the front door.

David was ready to grab his aunt and herd her to another room, through the kitchen to Captain Begay’s man-cave. If his aunt stayed with him, maybe he could protect her like he had protected Stella and Cole in the cabin in Colorado. The only problem was that David didn’t know how he had protected them, and he didn’t know how to protect his aunt now.

“Baby,” Angie said to the door, her fingers on the deadbolt knob, ready to unlock it. “Is that you?”

Silence from the other side of the door. Not even the wind was blowing now; it was like the Ancient Enemy wanted them to hear everything.

There was no knocking now, but a voice answered Angie: “Let me in.” But it wasn’t Begay’s voice—it was Billy Nez’s voice.

“That’s not Billy anymore,” David told Angie.

Angie’s fingers still rested on the deadbolt knob.

David took a few steps towards Angie and the door. His aunt was right behind him. He turned his cell phone on and shined the light at the front door, illuminating Angie in front of the door. Her face was wet, shiny with tears in the light.

“Please,” Billy said from behind the door. “Let me in. The killer was out here. You have to let me in.”

David watched Angie’s face in the cell phone’s light. He saw that she was crying harder and it seemed like she knew the truth now; she knew it wasn’t Billy out there anymore.

“I’ve seen this before,” David told Angie in a calm and even tone of voice, trying to get through to her, to stop her from opening the door. He took a few steps closer to her. “The Ancient Enemy sends people back. It controls them like puppets.”

“The captain is out here,” Billy said through the door, but his voice was gruff and guttural, more of a growl now. “He’s still alive. He needs help. Don’t you want to help him?”

Angie’s eyes widened with hope, her fingers twitching on the deadbolt knob.

“It’s not true,” David told her. “He’s telling you anything to get you to open the door. Ask Billy why he didn’t bring the captain back with him.”

Angie turned to the door. “Where’s my husband? How come he isn’t with you?”

“He’s in the front yard. He got hit with something. I can’t carry him. You need to help him.”

“Don’t do it,” David told her.

For a second David was sure he’d gotten through to Angie, but then she twisted the deadbolt knob and unlocked the lock on the doorknob.

The front door flew open and Billy Nez rushed inside, crashing into Angie, knocking the shotgun from her hands. The weapon dropped to the floor and slid into the corner by the door, hitting the wall.

David rushed towards the door without thinking about it, a white fury in his mind. He just wanted all of this to stop; he just wanted the Ancient Enemy to go away, to leave him and everyone he knew alone.

“Stop!” David yelled. He thrust his hands out in front of him like he was going to push Billy Nez back. The symbols Billy had painted on David’s skin a few hours ago began to glow, like little heating elements were warming up, first yellow, then orange, then a deep red.

Billy Nez was rocked back in the doorway from the invisible force that came out of David. Billy stood ramrod straight for just a second, then he fell forward onto the floor inside the house, his body smashing apart like a porcelain doll as it hit the floor, his head and hands coming loose from the rest of his body. Other sections of his body came apart inside his clothing, like large pieces of rocks were inside his shirt and pants.

David lowered his hands.

Angie was still on the floor in front of Billy as large black beetles crawled out of his body, crawling out of the ends of his wrists and the stump of his neck. She scrambled back away from Billy’s body, crab walking back along the floor, kicking and screaming as she tried to get away from the broken corpse.

The backs of the fat black beetles shined in the moonlight that came in through the open front door. The beetles crawled all over Billy’s body, but they weren’t coming forward, they crawled along Billy’s back and legs, collecting on the floor beyond his legs, forming into another creature, swirling like a black smoke out onto the front porch, building and collecting mass, its shape constantly shifting and changing in the shadows under the porch. The writhing black shape tore away into the night like smoke carried along the wind.

David looked down at his hands and wrists. The Anasazi symbols were no longer glowing. Had the Anasazi writing on his skin helped, or had the power come from somewhere inside of him?

Angie was back on her feet, right in front of David now, staring at Billy Nez, making sure he wasn’t moving. The pieces of his body were motionless now, the black beetles swept away in the night wind. The Ancient Enemy was gone for now.

David wondered why the Ancient Enemy had gone away. It had Angie right there in the foyer. It could have grabbed her and taken her out into the yard. Had David pushed it back or had the Ancient Enemy gone willingly? Why would it just leave like that?

“Where’s Awenita?” Angie asked when she turned to look at David.

CHAPTER 33

David

Iron Springs, New Mexico

David spun around. He hadn’t even heard his aunt leave, never even knew she wasn’t behind him anymore.

She ran, David told himself. She saw that monster that used to be Billy Nez in the doorway and she ran. She was probably hiding somewhere right now.

Or the reason the Ancient Enemy hadn’t attacked was because it had only been a distraction.

David didn’t want to listen to that voice in his mind, but he had a nauseous feeling in his stomach as he hurried into the kitchen and the dining room. He looked around. He had his cell phone in his hand again, the screen lit up to give him some light. He shined the light around the rooms so quickly that it seemed like the shadows were racing along the walls.

“Aunt Awenita!” David called.

Angie stared at the door that led to her husband’s man-cave—the door was ajar.

David saw what Angie was staring at. She’s in there, he told himself. She’s in there hiding, scared to death.

David bolted to the door and pushed it open, letting the meager light from his cell phone guide his way. The light from the phone lit up most of the room but kept the corners and the bar in shadows. He stopped in his tracks when he came to Captain Begay’s two leather recliners. There on the floor between the backs of the chairs and the bar was his aunt sprawled out, her face staring up at the ceiling, her eyes wide open, her throat a gory mess, the blood so dark and glistening in the light from his cell phone.

“No,” David whispered. “Please, no.”

The light on his phone winked out and he had to push the button to light it up again. For a second as he stood in the darkness David thought his aunt’s body would be gone when he lit the phone back up again. For a second he thought that he hadn’t really seen her on the floor, that it had been a hallucination. But when he lit the phone up again she was still there, still in exactly the same position on the floor.

“He wants to take everything from you first,” a deep voice said from behind David.

David turned around, shining his cell phone at the voice like he was aiming a weapon. A tall man was right behind Angie, holding a hunting knife up to her throat. The knife blade still had a little bit of blood on it like his aunt’s blood hadn’t been wiped off well enough. Angie stood motionless, afraid to move an inch with the blade up to her throat. The man’s skin was so pale in the light, like a living corpse. But this man wasn’t dead, he was very much alive—he was the killer. David had never actually seen the killer in his dreams, but he had sensed the evil and he felt that same evil right now. The man was thin but all muscle that could erupt in explosive power. His head was shaved clean and he had no eyebrows left, just hard ridges of bone and flesh that protruded over his eyes, the darkest eyes that David had ever seen, eyes that showed no mercy or compassion. The killer’s mouth spread into a smile of triumph, his lips shiny in the cell phone’s light.

David knew the Ancient Enemy wasn’t inside the killer anymore; it was out there waiting in the night for its puppet to complete the task.

“It will kill you after you kill me,” David told the killer. “It’s only using you to get to me.”

“I know,” the killer said. “I want it to use me. I want to help it, to serve it, to give it what it wants. And what it wants more than anything is for you to be dead. And I’m going to give that to it. First I’m going to cut this woman’s throat while you watch, and then I’m coming for you.”

David had nowhere to run; Begay’s man-cave had no doors that led outside and he wouldn’t have time to get out through the windows. He already knew he didn’t stand a chance in a fight against the killer, and he couldn’t use his power on the killer because he was just a man now that the Ancient Enemy wasn’t inside of him anymore. But David swore he would fight as hard as he could when the killer came for him, he would fight as hard as he ever had.

Angie looked resigned to her fate, closing her eyes now. She looked close to passing out.

“Say goodbye,” the killer whispered to David. The killer was about to rip the blade across Angie’s throat, but then his forehead exploded open. Blood, bits of brain, and tiny pieces of skull came flying out. His eyes had bulged in surprise in that millisecond, his mouth falling open. His body went limp. The knife slipped out of his already dead fingers.

Angie pushed herself away from the killer, a scream escaping her throat. Blood from the killer’s forehead was splattered all over the top of her head, making her hair shiny in the darkness.

David stood in the middle of the floor, unable to move for a moment as he watched the killer fall forward onto his face, bones crunching when he hit the floor.

Emerging from the darkness of the kitchen was a man, a gun still in his hand. He lowered the gun now, aiming it down at the pale body of the killer as he inched his way forward to the doorway, revealed in the light of David’s cell phone. It was Agent Palmer.

Palmer entered the room, still aiming his gun down at the dead killer.

David realized that he hadn’t even heard the gunshot, he had somehow blocked out the noise as the top half of the killer’s face exploded outward.

The wind gusted outside, another sound David hadn’t noticed until now. But the wind was dying down already, and David could hear the sirens of police cruisers getting closer.

“David,” Agent Palmer said. “Are you okay?”

David nodded.

Palmer looked at Angie. She was crying. “Captain Begay’s outside,” he told her. “He got hit in the head pretty hard. He’s hurt, but I think he’s going to be okay.”

Angie erupted into tears, falling to her knees and sobbing.

Palmer looked back at David.

“It’s gone for now,” David told the FBI agent like he had asked the question. “It will be back, but for now it’s gone.”

CHAPTER 34

Palmer

Iron Springs, New Mexico

As dawn began to break Palmer was outside with David, Captain Begay, and Angie. The ambulance was there, ready to take Captain Begay to the hospital. Palmer guessed that Begay had been hit in the head with some kind of blunt object, a rock or maybe a stick. There was a pretty good gash on his head and dried blood caked the side of his face. There was more blood all over the front of his shirt. He had twisted his knee in the fall and he could hardly walk.

The paramedics had inspected the other bodies: Awenita and the killer in Begay’s house, Billy Nez—the pieces of him—in Begay’s doorway, and the five severed heads in the front yard, the heads rammed down onto a long thin metal rod that had been driven into the ground.

Another officer of the Navajo Tribal Police found Officer Sam’s headless body beside Doli’s Chevy Impala. He had called it in and one of the other officers eventually came to Begay’s house, calling all of the other officers when he got there. Two officers were now on their way out to Billy Nez’s home where Palmer was sure they would find the car that the killer had driven down here.

Palmer had gotten to Begay’s house before any of the police officers had. He had driven past the house and saw the front door wide open. He suspected something was wrong, but more than that, he felt it. He’d parked thirty feet down the road, sneaking in through the driveway between Begay’s new pickup truck and a minivan. Now that he was closer, he saw that there appeared to be a body in the doorway of Begay’s house. But what caught his eye was the large body lying in the middle of the yard. He hurried over to the fallen man, crouching down as he ran, his gun out.

It was Captain Begay on the ground. The side of his head and face were covered with blood. He saw the stack of severed heads near Begay, like some kind of grisly totem pole erected in the middle of the yard. He checked Begay’s pulse in his neck and was surprised to find one.

The wind had kicked up at that moment and it made it even harder for Palmer to see in the darkness, but he knew he had to leave Begay behind for the moment and get into the house. He sprinted across the front yard to the front door and stared down at the man’s body there, the head and hands detached from the corpse.

From behind him, Palmer heard the wind gusting, he heard the leaves rattling in the trees. It felt like something was rushing up behind him, but Palmer made himself wait there in the doorway, hiding in the shadows of it, watching the interior of the home. He saw a shadowy figure moving through the kitchen, sneaking up behind a woman and putting a knife to her throat. He was the killer, Palmer was sure of it. Maybe he couldn’t save all of these people, but he could get in there and put a bullet in the killer’s brain. At least he could do that much.

Palmer crept forward with his gun in his hand. He was trying to be quiet but he was also trying to move quickly. He knew he didn’t have much time. He heard the killer talking in a deep voice. He heard David from the next room telling the killer that the Ancient Enemy wasn’t going to let him live after this.

The killer didn’t care; all he wanted to do was give the Ancient Enemy what it wanted, to serve his new master.

Palmer was only three feet away when he shot the killer in the back of the head. He hadn’t been sure if the killer had already slit Angie’s throat, but if he didn’t take the shot then her death was going to be certain in the next few seconds.

After it was all over Palmer brought David and Angie out to the front yard, out to Begay. Angie didn’t seem to notice the stack of heads (or didn’t want to), she only concentrated on her husband who was beginning to wake up, trying to sit up, grunting with effort as he got to his feet, hobbling on one leg.

They moved slowly across the dirt yard to the driveway, Begay limping the whole way. Begay sat down on the back of his truck after Palmer lowered the tailgate.

“Thank you,” Begay told Palmer when they told him what had happened, how Palmer had shot the killer.

Two officers from the tribal police were there within minutes. They said more officers were on their way. They had searched the yard and house. One officer brought a white bedsheet from the back of his car and draped it over the stack of severed heads in the middle of the front yard.

And now Palmer waited as the paramedics got Begay onto a gurney.

“I need to make a quick phone call,” Palmer told them. He walked away and called Cardenelli. “I got the killer,” he told Cardenelli when he was out of earshot of the others.

For a moment Cardenelli was in shock, still trying to come fully awake.

“He’s dead,” Palmer said into the phone. “No ID on the killer yet, but I’m certain the shoe tread, clothing fibers, and DNA will be a match to what you’ve got up there.”

“Where . . . where the hell are you?”

“In New Mexico. Iron Springs. On the Navajo Reservation.”

“The same place—”

“Yes, where the Dig Site Murders happened.”

“How did you know he’d be there?”

Palmer could hear the suspicion in Cardenelli’s voice. “The killer was trying to re-create the Dig Site Murders, but he also wanted revenge on anyone involved with the murders seven years ago. He got Teresa to get to me. I figured he might go after Captain Begay of the Navajo Tribal Police and his family. And I figured he might go after David Bear, the boy Stella took from the dig site.”

“You got him before he killed anyone?”

“No,” Palmer answered. “He got seven of them down here before I could stop him. A whole family, an Officer named Sam Yazzie, and David’s aunt. All of the victims have already been positively ID’d.”

“Survivors?”

“Yes. David survived. Captain Begay and his wife. Captain Begay was injured. An ambulance is here now. It’s a head injury but he seems to be okay.”

“This is . . . How am I going to explain this?” Cardenelli asked. “You’re retired. You’re not even supposed to be down there.”

“I came down here on my own to visit my friend Captain Begay and his wife. I came to warn them that he and his loved ones might be in danger. I guess I was just in the right place at the right time.”

“Hmm,” Cardenelli said, but he didn’t sound happy.

“But I didn’t get here soon enough,” Palmer said more to himself than to Cardenelli. “Not nearly soon enough.”

“I’ll text you the number of the FBI office in Farmington,” Cardenelli said like he hadn’t even heard Palmer’s words. “You tell them to get out there now.”

“Klein still in charge there?”

“No,” Cardenelli answered. “New guy. He’ll get forensics there and take care of everything. I don’t want those bodies touched or disturbed in any way. Is that clear?”

“Clear.”

“And you let the tribal police know that this is the FBI’s case now. I don’t want them involved.”

“I think they already know that.”

Cardenelli hung up without giving Palmer an “attaboy” or a “good job.” Palmer figured that Cardenelli was pissed because he and his boys hadn’t brought the killer down themselves; it had taken and ex-FBI agent, an ex-drunk, to do it. But Palmer was sure Cardenelli would find a way to spin all of this in his favor, find some way that he could take credit for this.

The morning was brightening up quickly. Some of the officers of the tribal police were holding a few of the onlookers in the street back. One of the officers had already sectioned off the front yard with yellow police tape.

Palmer went back to the captain, David, and Angie. The paramedics were already tending to Begay on the gurney even though he insisted that he was okay.

“He’s probably got a concussion and a sprained knee,” the paramedic told Angie, and then looked at Palmer, anyone but Begay. “He should get some tests done.”

“I don’t need any tests,” Begay grumbled.

“Yes, you do,” Angie said. “And you’re going with them.”

David watched in silence, still stunned by the death of his aunt. Begay looked at David then at Palmer. He looked at the paramedics. “Can I get a moment alone with these guys?”

The paramedics didn’t look willing to leave, like Begay might try to escape.

Begay pointed at Palmer. “He’s from the FBI and I need to tell him something real quick. Can you give us a little breathing room? I’ll go with you after that.”

The two paramedics walked away.

Begay looked at David. “This isn’t over, is it?”

“No,” David whispered. “It’s going to come back.”

“Cole and Stella might be in trouble,” Begay said to Palmer. “They’re down in Costa Rica. David wants to go down there. Is there any way you could help him with that?”

“I . . . I don’t know—”

“I don’t need to go there anymore,” David said.

Palmer stared at David.

“They’re coming here,” David said. “Stella and Cole will be here soon.”

“How do you know?” Begay asked. “Did you hear from them?”

David shook his head no. “I just know. But I need help with something else. Billy Nez said Joe Blackhorn left something for me at his place before he died, something that will help with a spirit walk. I need to go there. I need to find what Joe Blackhorn left for me.”

Begay looked at Palmer. “Could you take him there? I don’t think they’re going to let me out of the hospital for a little while. And I think we need to hurry on this.”

“I have to wait for the FBI agent to get here,” Palmer said. “They need to take my statement. They’ll want a statement from you, too. They’ll probably get in touch with you at the hospital.”

Begay waved his hand like he was okay with that.

“But after that,” Palmer said as he looked at David, “I can take you.”

“I’ll text you the directions to Joe Blackhorn’s place,” Begay told Palmer. “You need to use my truck. Your car won’t make it all the way out there.”

Palmer remembered how remote Joe Blackhorn’s place was.

CHAPTER 35

Cole

Costa Rica

It was almost dawn as Cole drove their Toyota 4x4 through the pouring rain. Right after they had left their burning house, the clouds split open and released a monsoon of rain. A lot of times these thunderstorms only lasted a little while, but this one had been going on now for almost two hours.

Cole didn’t really know where he was going right now; he was just driving as far away from their burning house as he could. He still felt like he was in shock after what had happened there. He had allowed himself to believe after seven years that all of it was finally over, that David had killed the Ancient Enemy in that ghost town, or at least sent it back to its world and closed the door on it.

But a part of Cole had never truly believed it was over, a small part of Cole wanted to be prepared if it ever came back again—as prepared as he could be for something like the Ancient Enemy. He’d had two more fake IDs made when they had first come down to Costa Rica, new passports and new names for each of them, along with fake birth certificates and credit cards. He had also squirreled away five thousand dollars in cash (the rest of their money was in several bank accounts in Panama under their fake names). He had kept all of that in the plastic zippered pack that was on the floorboard right now. The plastic pouch was small, lightweight, and waterproof. The other thing he’d gotten ready were the bottles of grain alcohol he had used to set the house on fire. Fire seemed to have hurt the Ancient Enemy back in the cabin in Colorado, so maybe fire would work again, or at least buy them some time. And it had worked tonight.

Or had it?

Cole still couldn’t help feeling that the Ancient Enemy hadn’t attacked them for a particular reason. There was no way it could be scared of them like it was scared of David.

So why hadn’t it come inside the house and taken them?

“You okay?” Cole asked Stella as he drove, trying to think about something else. She’d been quiet for a while now.

Stella nodded and showed him a weak and fake smile. “You had this stuff ready,” she said, glancing down at the plastic pack by her feet on the floorboard. “And the bottles of alcohol, fuel for a fire. Storing gasoline in the house would have smelled and the gas would have turned bad after a while. You’ve had the house ready for this since we moved in.”

“I never thought it would come back,” Cole told her. “But I couldn’t be sure. I wanted to believe David had killed it, or at least sent it away, but I couldn’t bet my life on it. I couldn’t bet our lives on it.”

Stella didn’t say anything.

“I didn’t want to say anything to you about it. I didn’t want you to worry. I did this stuff when we were first down here, back when we were still paranoid. Still scared.”

Stella pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, checking it again.

“Still not working?” he asked her.

She shook her head no. He knew she wanted to text or call David back, but neither of their phones was working anymore, like parts of them had been fried.

“The Ancient Enemy did something to our phones, didn’t it?” he asked her.

Stella just nodded. “When we get to a phone I want to call David and make sure he’s okay.”

“Don’t you think it’s kind of strange that the Ancient Enemy didn’t rush right in and take us in the house?” Cole asked her. “It had plenty of opportunities.”

Stella didn’t respond, but Cole could see that the thought had already crossed her mind.

“And it screwed up our phones, but not the battery in this truck,” Cole said. “It’s almost like it wanted us to get away.”

Stella looked out the passenger window. “I’ve been thinking about the Mayan calendar lately.”

Cole wondered if she was trying to change the subject, trying not to think about what had happened tonight and why the Ancient Enemy had let them go.

“The Mayan calendar spans for thousands of years,” Stella continued. “And it ends at a specific date.”

“Yeah,” Cole said. “December 12, 2012.” He remembered the anxiety in town leading up to that date. Many people had secretly wondered if the Mayan calendar was true, especially the more superstitious people out in the rural areas. But the day had come and gone. No great travesty had befallen the Earth.

“Well, that’s the date given by many scholars,” Stella said. “It’s the date that the media focused on, mainly because of the popularity of a book and a few articles written by a handful of people. But what wasn’t widely reported was that there were others who interpreted the calendar a little differently, speculating that the interpretation of the dates on the calendar could be off by a few years, or even a few decades. Maybe as much as a hundred years.”

“What are you trying to say?” Cole asked her. He wanted to keep her talking, keep her focusing on her area of expertise. It would help her relax a little after the horrors they’d just gone through. Their house was probably still burning right now and everything they had in the world was literally in this Toyota right now. She needed this; she needed a distraction.

“What if the calendar is a prediction of the end, but it’s off a few years like so many believe? As I’ve said before, I believe the Maya, and many other groups in Central and South America, dealt with their own Ancient Enemy—either a different Ancient Enemy or part of the same being. The Ancient Enemy would win a battle and wipe out a civilization or run them from their villages and into the wilderness. But the Ancient Enemy never completely won because all of us are still here.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Maybe if the Ancient Enemy finally kills the shaman, then it’s all over for us. And that’s when the calendar ends for humanity.”

“Kills the shaman,” Cole said. “You mean David.”

Stella nodded. “There have been a lot of Davids throughout the years, a lot of shamans. And there are many prophecies in Native American and Central American cultures about the End Times, but a lot them are very similar. For instance, the Aztecs and the Navajo have similar stories about this world we live in being the Fifth World.”

“The Fifth World?”

“The final world. There were four worlds before this one, all of them destroyed and a new one taking its place until we finally came to this one—the Fifth World. Maybe these stories are similar because the Central American peoples moved north and brought their stories with them. They became the Anasazi, and they eventually mixed in with other tribes.”

“If this is true, then how come the Ancient Enemy hasn’t killed a shaman yet? You’ve seen how powerful that thing is.”

“I would debate you on how powerful it is.”

“What?” Cole asked. “You just saw what it could do tonight. What it did seven years ago.”

“I’m not arguing that the Ancient Enemy isn’t powerful, just not all-powerful. At least not yet.”

“Because it needs to kill the shaman first to become all-powerful.”

“Yes. I believe that’s why, even though it seems very powerful, there are still some severe limits to its power.”

“So you think it hasn’t been able to kill a shaman yet because its powers are somehow limited.”

“That and because I believe that throughout history as shamans were born, they were revered and trained to protect their people. They knew eventually that the Ancient Enemy would come and they would have to protect the shaman so he could fight back against the evil power. But in these modern times so many of the Old Ways have been lost and forgotten, or ignored. Now when the Ancient Enemy comes, there are no villagers or tribes to protect the shaman anymore. Not in 1891, and definitely not now.”

Cole drove down the road. The rain was finally beginning to let up a little. “So what do we do? Protect David?”

“Yes. We protect him like he protected us. I’m not saying we’ll survive, but if the Ancient Enemy kills David none of us are going to survive anyway. We have to try. That’s all we can do.”

“And you think David knows what to do now? You think he knows how to fight it now?”

“He was training with Joe Blackhorn, so he had to have learned a lot.”

Cole nodded.

“Until Joe Blackhorn died,” Stella added.

“What’s that supposed to mean? You don’t think David completed his training because Joe Blackhorn died?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how long that kind of training takes.”

Cole just sighed, gripping the steering wheel harder as he drove. The world was beginning to lighten up now as the rising sun broke through the clouds above the trees. “So you think we need to go to David now.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Okay,” Cole said, turning the truck around.

“Where are you going?”

“A small airport I know. I might know someone who can help us get out of here.”

CHAPTER 36

Stella

Costa Rica

Two hours later Cole drove their Toyota 4x4 down a trail through the jungle as the palm fronds slapped at the sides of their vehicle.

“We’re going to get stuck in the mud out here,” Stella said. She didn’t want to get stuck. They needed to stay on the move or they would be sitting ducks for the Ancient Enemy.

Cole didn’t respond; he wrestled with the steering wheel as he navigated the twists and turns of the trail. He drove down into what looked like a ditch of brown water, the mud splashing across the windshield as he waded through the standing water and then climbed up the other side.

“We’re in the middle of a jungle,” Stella said. “How can there be an airport in the middle of a jungle?”

“You’ll see,” Cole told her.

He drove around a few more bends in the trail through the brush and then the jungle opened up to a vast clearing. There were a few metal and wood-framed buildings in the distance, a line of small airplanes, and a strip of pavement beyond them.

Cole sped up as he drove across the grass towards the nearest building where other SUVs and 4x4 pickup trucks were parked in a line. Cole pulled up next to an orange Jeep sitting up on large knobby tires that were crusted with mud. He shut off their Toyota and turned to Stella. “Let me see the pack.”

Stella picked up the plastic pouch on the floorboard and handed it to him. He unzipped it and rifled through it, handing Stella her IDs and keeping his own. He opened up the envelope of cash and gave her some of it. He stuffed the rest of the cash in the envelope down into his pants pocket. He shoved his gun down into the waistband of his pants and pulled his shirt down over it.

“Don’t show that cash or your ID to anyone here,” he told her.

“Are these drug smugglers or something?”

Cole didn’t answer.

“They are, aren’t they?” she said more to herself.

“It might be a little difficult getting a plane on such short notice,” Cole said.

“I thought we had fake passports and IDs. Why can’t we just go to a real airport?”

“Those IDs were made seven years ago. A lot can change with technology in seven years. We could get busted at the airport. We’ll only use those in an emergency.”

“I think this qualifies as an emergency.”

He sighed.

“We should just try the airport,” she said.

Cole looked out the windshield at the aluminum-sided building in front of them, twenty feet away. She watched him. She could tell he was nervous, not just because they were on the run from some cosmic monster, but also because they were here at this little airstrip in the middle of the jungle. “Let’s just try this first,” he said. “My friend told me there should be a pilot here who could help us out, a guy named Paco. Let’s see if he’s here.”

Cole got out and Stella got out of the Toyota on her side. The ground was still soggy even though it had stopped raining for half an hour now. The sky had brightened a little and there were even some patches of blue sky among the swiftly-moving gray clouds, but there was a thunderstorm to the north, a line of dark and menacing clouds. The wind gusted across the grassy field as they walked towards the building.

The building was old and rusty. Junk was piled up at the corners of the building: old metal barrels, wood crates, garbage, engine parts and tires. Another larger building to the right, a hangar, had a big garage door open and a man worked on the engine of an airplane there. The other small planes were lined up a hundred feet away from the tarmac. There were no airplanes on the tarmac, none getting ready to take off and none coming in for a landing—the weather was probably too bad for any of them to fly today.

Cole opened the metal door of the building and entered. The inside of the place was just one large room and it was as cluttered with debris as the outside of the building was. The room was larger than Stella had expected and bright because a large garage door was opened at the other side with a view of the line of airplanes and the airstrip and then the jungle beyond those, the trees of the jungle in constant movement from the stormy weather.

Four men sat at a table in the middle of the room playing cards. To the left was an arrangement of mismatched living room furniture situated around an old television. A man slept on one of the sofas and an older woman turned to look at them as they entered; she looked stoned out of her mind and didn’t seem interested in them.

All four men at the card table had stopped what they were doing to look at Cole and Stella as they entered the building, then they went back to their card game, talking in Spanish to each other.

At the other end of the large room were stacks of boxes and crates, plastic and metal barrels, old metal and wood shelves crammed with smaller boxes and packing materials. There was a bar near the collection of boxes in the corner, a homemade job with a few neon signs on the wall and bottles of liquor lined up along with racks of potato chips and candy bars. An older overweight man stood behind the bar, his attention on a small TV that blared a soccer game.

A breeze blew in through the open door, blowing the odor of motor oil, marijuana, and body odor towards Stella.

Cole walked up to the men at the table and asked how they were doing.

“Pura Vida,” the men answered, a common phrase in Costa Rica.

Cole spoke in his broken Spanish, asking if any of them knew a pilot named Paco.

The men shrugged, none of them identifying themselves as Paco. None of them seemed very interested in what Cole had to say.

The man at the bar pretended not to be concerned, but Stella caught him looking their way every few seconds, waiting for trouble to start.

Cole asked about Paco again.

One of the men, a thin man with a huge mustache and gray stubble on his chin seemed to be the only one willing to talk to Cole. His hair hung down to the shoulders of his long-sleeved cowboy shirt. He had on jeans and well-worn cowboy boots. He was smiling at Cole, showing a bright gold tooth right in front, but he still had a wary look in his eyes.

“I need to hire a pilot,” Cole told the men in Spanish.

Again, only the thin man with the big mustache and gold tooth seemed interested in taking Cole up on his offer.

Stella stood pretty far away, but she could hear some of their conversation. One of the men had said: “Not in this weather.” But after a few minutes of conversation, the thin man folded his cards and collected the money on the table in front of him. He stood up and finished the bottle of beer he’d been drinking. He walked away from the table and talked with Cole for a few minutes, negotiating in whispers.

Cole finally nodded and smiled. He and the pilot walked past her towards the door that led out front to the vehicles. “I’ll be right back,” Cole told Stella.

She just nodded and watched them walk out the door.

“Do you want to play cards?” one of the men at the table asked her with a malevolent smile.

She turned and looked at the three men; all of them were staring at her. “We’ve got an empty seat now,” one of the men said. The others laughed.

“No thanks,” Stella told them and tried her warmest smile on them. She walked away from the table so they wouldn’t keep talking to her, but she heard them whispering to each and then laughing again.

She didn’t want to go over to the living room furniture and the stoned woman and the snoring man on the couch, so she walked to the open garage door and looked out at the field of grass and the small airplanes in the distance. She pretended to be interested in the line of small planes. A few of them looked ready to fall apart and she hoped they wouldn’t be flying in one of those.

The sky was churning above them, the small patches of blue eaten up again by the gray clouds. The grass, weeds, and trees swayed in the wind, and even a few of the small planes shook a little from the gusts. At least it had stopped raining for a little while.

The man on the couch stopped snoring and sat up. Stella turned and watched him get up and stumble to a door she assumed led to a bathroom. He entered the room and closed the door. The woman sitting in the chair didn’t even seem to notice or care that the man had gotten up from the couch—she stared at the TV but didn’t really seem to be watching it.

Cole and the skinny pilot came back inside the building. The pilot was happier now, his smile even wider under his bushy mustache; he spoke rapidly, gesturing wildly as they walked across the room right towards Stella.

She waited there as Cole and the pilot approached. “Well?”

“We’re working on it,” Cole told her in Spanish, grinning at the pilot.

The pilot was still insisting that it was too dangerous to fly right now, even though he was very interested in the Toyota 4x4 parked outside and the money that Cole was offering.

They had stopped at the edge of the large doorway that led out to the planes, the pilot feigning the act of really thinking this over, looking up at the sky, considering the churning clouds.

Cole’s eyes shifted back to the card table where the men kept looking over at them even though they were playing another hand now. “I could ask one of them,” Cole said in a low voice.

“Just wait a minute,” the pilot said with a big smile back on his face. He draped an arm around Cole’s shoulders. “Let’s talk about it a little more. Come, let me show you which airplane is mine.”

They walked outside, talking in whispers. Stella couldn’t make out what they were saying anymore. She noticed that the men at the table had grown quiet during their card game, listening, sensing Cole’s desperation.

And she and Cole were desperate. The Ancient Enemy wasn’t going to wait much longer before it built up its strength again and attacked. She swore she could feel it near them now. Her skin was prickling and she suddenly felt cold, fighting a shiver.

She was about to go outside and catch up to Cole and the pilot. They were halfway to the line of airplanes now. The pilot had lit either a thin cigarette or a joint; he was waving it around with his wild gestures, still negotiating the price of the plane ride.

A slamming noise turned Stella back around. The bathroom door had just crashed open and the man who had gone in there stood in the doorway. But he wasn’t the same anymore.

CHAPTER 37

Stella

Costa Rica

Stella knew there was something wrong with the man as soon as he came out of the bathroom; he looked mostly the same but his expression was different, the look in his eyes, the purposeful way he walked away from the bathroom, past the couch and chair, towards the men at the table playing cards.

Even the stoned woman seemed to sense something different about the man, tearing her eyes away from the TV and watching him as he walked past her.

The Ancient Enemy, it’s here. It’s inside of him.

One of the card players called out to the man as he approached their table, but the man didn’t respond. He wasn’t just walking towards their table now, he was marching; he was a man on a mission.

The three men at the table seemed to instinctively understand the threat coming their way, only they couldn’t imagine how dangerous and powerful this man was now. The card player who had called out to the man threw his hand of cards down and stood up, drawing his gun, ordering the charging man to stop or he would shoot.

The man kept coming, not exactly running, but walking quickly. He growled something in Spanish that Stella couldn’t entirely make out, and then a black tentacle shot out from the man’s stomach, ripping right through his clothing and the flesh underneath as if it were paper. The tentacle was long and thin, a feeler; it shot through the air fifteen feet towards the man like a bullet. Smaller hair-like tentacles grew from the feeler on the way. The tentacle was wrapped around the man’s hand and gun before he could even shoot, the tentacle eating through the man’s flesh in seconds, severing the man’s hand.

Other tentacles shot out of the man who had come from the bathroom, launching across the room, branching out like webs along the way. The other two men tried to draw their guns. One of them tried to run. But they weren’t quick enough. The tentacles were all over them now, growing all over them in seconds, digging their way inside of them.

The two men screamed, still trying to move, but it was like the tentacles had invaded their bodies and stiffened like rods of metal, forming a frozen skeletal system inside of them that their muscles weren’t strong enough to fight against.

Stella was as frozen as the three men for a few seconds. She watched as the man from the bathroom turned towards the bar. The tentacles were out of him now, leaving a hole in his stomach big enough to slip a fist into. Blood and pieces of guts poured out of the hole, spilling down the front of his clothes, saturating them and dripping down to the floor. He walked past the three men, all three of them frozen yet still trying to scream, still trying to struggle against the alien things inside of them. The man from the bathroom marched towards the bar, stepping in his own blood on the floor, leaving bloody footprints behind on the dusty concrete floor.

The bartender had a shotgun in his hands that he had grabbed from behind the bar. He aimed the weapon at the approaching man, trying to hold it still in his shaking hands. Another tentacle shot out of the hole in the man’s stomach, the thick tentacle branching out into thinner wires that wrapped around the shotgun and the man’s hands, pulling him over the bar and down onto the floor, invading his body just like it had the other three men.

The tentacles had completely left the man from the bathroom now, leaving behind the massive hole in his stomach. His face was a mask of shock as he fell forward and landed face-down on the floor.

The piece of tentacle that was still wrapped around the shotgun grew more branches in the blink of an eye, shooting its sharp ends into the fallen bartender’s arm, his belly, and his chest; the thickest tentacle stabbed into his neck. The bartender seized up, his body frozen, his eyes bulging, his mouth open and trembling like he was trying to scream, but he couldn’t make a noise with the tentacle moving around inside of his throat.

Stella’s paralysis broke and she ran out through the open garage door, slapping at a big red button on the wall next to the doorway on her way out. The large garage door began rumbling down. She ran as fast as she could across the grassy field.

Cole and the pilot were closer to the line of airplanes now, but they were looking her way as she ran towards them.

“It’s here!” Stella screamed as she ran towards Cole. She expected to feel the sharp end of one of the Ancient Enemy’s tentacles piercing the back of her body at any second now. She chanced a look back as she ran. The garage door was almost all the way down now and nothing was chasing her.

Why?

She thought of what Cole had asked her earlier: Why wasn’t the Ancient Enemy attacking them? There must be a reason.

CHAPTER 38

Palmer

Iron Springs, New Mexico

Palmer had stayed at Captain Begay’s house until the FBI agent from the Farmington office showed up. The agent was a man named Alex Hollings; he was a young clean-cut guy with an athletic build and the gleam of ambition in his eyes. He took a detailed statement from Palmer, and then he took statements from Angie and David. After that he talked to the captain of the tribal police for a few minutes, the man who had replaced Captain Begay.

Angie was ready to leave as soon as Agent Hollings showed up; she wanted to get to the hospital so she could be with her husband. “Is it okay if I go now?” she asked Palmer.

“Yeah. Agent Hollings got your statement. Are you coming back here tonight?”

“Depends if they keep him overnight,” she answered.

Palmer nodded.

“Come inside with me and I’ll give you the keys to the pickup,” she told him in a low voice.

Palmer followed Angie to her bedroom. She shut the door after they were inside and then she hurried over to their closet. She flipped on the light and pulled down a shoebox and put it on the bed. There was a gun inside. She handed the gun to him and an extra magazine to go with it. “I know they took your gun for evidence so take this with you.”

Palmer nodded; he’d had to give his Glock up after shooting the killer. The FBI would need it to match ballistics.

Angie pulled the keys to Begay’s pickup truck out of her pants pocket and gave them to Palmer. “Be careful.”

“I’ll be as careful as I can,” he told her as he shoved Begay’s spare handgun into the shoulder holster under his jacket. He slid the extra magazine and set of keys into an inside pocket of the jacket.

Palmer left the bedroom while Angie packed an overnight bag for her and Begay. She also said she was going to wash the blood out of her hair and change her clothes before going to see her husband.

After leaving the bedroom, Palmer didn’t go back outside just yet. He went to Begay’s man-cave where Agent Hollings was taking photos of the two bodies on the floor.

“I can’t believe this is really the guy,” Agent Hollings said as he snapped another photo of the dead man on the floor. “I can’t believe one guy did all of this.”

Palmer didn’t say anything.

“One guy did all of this,” Agent Hollings said again, almost like he was talking to himself. “And all of the other murders seven years ago.”

Palmer still didn’t say anything; he wasn’t going to reveal anything to this agent who seemed to be fishing for something.

“Oh,” Agent Hollings said like he’d just remembered something. “The car he drove down here was registered to a man named Quinn Kurtzman in Colorado. They found Kurtzman’s pieces in his bathtub.”

Palmer remembered Cardenelli telling him about the murder of Quinn Kurtzman earlier.

“How could one man rip people apart like that?” Agent Hollings asked, staring right at Palmer.

“Listen, Agent Hollings, if there isn’t anything else you need from me, then I’m going to drive David back to his house so he can grab a few things.”

Agent Hollings just stared at Palmer—he saw the suspicion in the agent’s eyes.

“David’s been through a lot tonight,” Palmer explained. “I’m going to take him to one of his family members so he can stay with them. He needs to be with his family now.”

Agent Hollings nodded, a barely perceptible nod. The agent knew things weren’t adding up here at this crime scene any more than things had added up at the dig site seven years ago. “Forensics is on its way here,” he said like it was some kind of threat. “They’ll be here for a while.”

“Yeah,” Palmer said. “I’m sure they will.”

“I think they’re taking the bodies, and the pieces, to a local hospital so they can get them on ice until they can transport them to the lab in Albuquerque.”

Palmer didn’t say anything; he didn’t really care what they were doing with the bodies. His mind was on getting David out to Joe Blackhorn’s home before it got too late in the day; he didn’t want to be there after the sun went down.

“Hey,” Agent Hollings said, pointing at Palmer. “When are you going to be back here? I’d love to get your take on things. Pick your brain a bit.”

“Sure,” Palmer said. “It might take a few hours for me to get back. I want to make sure David gets settled in with some of his other relatives.” Palmer glanced down at the body of David’s aunt, her throat sticky with dried blood, her glassy eyes staring up at the ceiling. “He’s in a state of shock right now as you can probably imagine.”

“I could see if the BIA will send a shrink to talk to him.”

“No,” Palmer snapped. “I think he just needs to be with loved ones right now. I’ll talk to him about it though, see if he would like to talk with someone like that.”

Agent Hollings nodded.

This guy’s smart, Palmer thought, not at all like Klein was, the agent who had been in charge down here seven years ago.

Palmer’s cell phone rang. He was glad to be rescued from any further conversation with Agent Hollings, but then he saw that it was Cardenelli calling and that prospect didn’t seem any more alluring. “I need to take this.”

A few minutes later Palmer was outside. He called Cardenelli back.

“Palmer,” Cardenelli snapped. “Did the agent from the Farmington office get there yet?”

“Yes. Agent Alex Hollings is here now.”

“Yeah,” Cardenelli said as if he knew the man personally.

“We all gave our statements,” Palmer said. “Hollings is waiting on forensics to get here.”

“Any ID on the killer?”

“No wallet or ID found on him, just a wad of cash in his pants pockets. Nothing else.”

“Forensics will get his prints and we’ll ID him soon enough,” Cardenelli said. “Hell of a thing. This guy goes on a historic killing spree and then nothing for seven years. And now he just starts again?”

“Yeah,” Palmer agreed. “It’s a strange one.” He glanced over at Begay’s pickup truck parked in the gravel next to the driveway. David was standing there like he was waiting to leave. “Listen, I’m done here for now. I’m going to take David Bear to his relatives’ house, somewhere he can stay the night. Angie Begay is at the hospital with her husband, the captain. I imagine they’ll keep him overnight. He had a pretty nasty blow to his head and he sprained his knee in the fall.”

Cardenelli was silent on the phone, but he was breathing heavy like he was doing something with the phone up to his ear.

“It’s going to take me a few hours to get David settled in and cell phone service can be spotty out here.”

“You informed Agent Hawthorne that you’re leaving?”

“Agent Hollings,” Palmer corrected and then he almost added: I’m not asking you for your permission. “Yes. I told him I’d try to be back in a few hours. David’s had a rough time; he saw his aunt die right in front of him.”

“Yeah. Of course.” Cardenelli sounded distracted. “I’m coming down there. Hopping on a plane as quickly as I can.”

Palmer figured Cardenelli would come down here. This wasn’t his jurisdiction by far, but some of the murders this killer had committed had happened in the Denver area, and Cardenelli wasn’t going to miss this spotlight for the world. Palmer was sure all of this would be leaked to the media soon enough and an army of reporters and photographers would descend upon this small town like a cloud of locusts, just like they had seven years ago.

Palmer hung up and walked towards David and the pickup truck.

It’s going to come back, David had said—this wasn’t over.

Palmer’s stomach was in knots at the thought of driving out to Joe Blackhorn’s property again, but if there was something at Joe Blackhorn’s house that could help David fight the Ancient Enemy, then he was going to do it. At least they weren’t going back to that ghost town, and that church.

CHAPTER 39

Cole

Costa Rica

Cole was pretty sure he had the pilot convinced to fly them out of here. The pilot had told them he could get them as far as Mexico, but he knew someone else there who could take them the rest of the way into New Mexico. Cole had offered the pilot a thousand dollars plus the Toyota 4x4 they owned—they wouldn’t need it anymore now because Cole had a feeling that one way or another he and Stella weren’t ever coming back to Costa Rica. The paperwork for the vehicle was in the glove box, but he was sure the pilot, Juan Carlos, had ways of making money off of the vehicle. The Toyota would be associated with their old fake names, along with the house he had burned down hours earlier. And now they were going back to New Mexico, back to the horrors they had run from seven years ago. It was crazy going back there, but Stella was right—they had to do their best to protect David. And the Ancient Enemy wouldn’t ever stop hunting them no matter where they went; Cole could see that now.

And maybe Stella was right, maybe if that thing, whatever the Ancient Enemy really was, if it killed David, the last shaman, maybe it would really be free then to do whatever it wanted. Maybe it would bring a tidal wave of death across the land, an unstoppable force that could kill all life if it wanted to. Cole wasn’t sure how it would work, maybe the thing could multiply itself after it killed the shaman, or the thing would turn into a biblical plague or grow into an unimaginable beast. If this thing was an alien living in another dimension, then what did that make David? An alien? Part alien?

Cole couldn’t ponder those things right now, it was too big for his mind and it only frustrated him; he only liked problems that he could solve, problems that were possible to solve, his mind didn’t work well with the abstract. And right now he was focused on getting him and Stella the hell out of here.

The pilot Juan Carlos was a talker. He was definitely interested in the Toyota even though he pretended not to be, he was just trying to drive a harder bargain now for as much cash as he could get. Cole was doing his best not to seem desperate, but it was hard not to seem desperate at a tiny smuggler’s airport in the middle of a jungle.

“Two thousand,” Cole told Juan Carlos. “That’s as much as I can do. We don’t have much more than that for ourselves.”

Juan Carlos pretended to be thinking it over. He looked up at the stormy sky again, he was about to continue his shtick about the storm to the north being too dangerous to fly into.

Cole had no doubt that flying into a storm like that was dangerous, but he knew these pilots had flown in some of the worst conditions on short notice when the money was right.

“If that’s not enough money, then I’m sure one of your buddies back there will do it for fifteen hundred,” Cole said, turning away to head back to the building; this was his last bluff.

Juan Carlos laid a gentle hand on Cole’s arm, that wide smile back under his bushy mustache. “Amigo, please. We can talk about this.”

“I’ve been trying to talk about it.”

“What’s your hurry?” Juan Carlos asked. “Some kind of trouble you are running from, yes?” He had turned suddenly serious, his smile disappearing.

“You could say that,” Cole said.

“Who is chasing you, my friend?”

“You’d never believe me if I told you.”

Juan Carlos feigned shock, he even looked hurt. “Just tell me. Maybe I could help.”

“Doubt it.”

“Maybe I know others that could help. We do more than just fly passengers here, you know.”

Yeah, that’s why I’m here, Cole thought, but he didn’t say it. “I don’t have much time. You gonna do this or not?” He glanced back at the building. He could just make out Stella’s figure in the darkness of the large doorway. He was glad he could still see her; he didn’t like leaving her alone in that building with those criminals any longer than he had to.

Cole looked back at Juan Carlos. “Well? Do we have a deal?”

Juan Carlos nodded, blowing out smoke from the joint he’d been puffing on. He thrust out his hand. “Si, we have a deal.”

As Cole shook the pilot’s hand, they both looked back at the building. Stella was running towards them now, shouting at them as the garage door started closing. Cole’s heart leapt in his chest, his heartbeat stopping for a moment.

“It’s here!” Stella yelled as she ran towards them.

Juan Carlos pulled his hand out of Cole’s hand, suddenly suspicious. “What’s going on here?”

“We need to go right now,” Cole said.

Juan Carlos pulled out a pistol from under his shirt, aiming it at Cole. “Who are you? Why do you really want me to fly you away from here?”

Cole raised his hands in surrender and Stella stopped running a few feet away.

“What happened in there?” Juan Carlos asked Stella, backing up a few steps, aiming his gun at her now. “Tell me the truth.”

“They’re all dead.”

Juan Carlos backed away from Cole and Stella, still aiming his gun at them. “I’m not flying you two anywhere.”

CHAPTER 40

Palmer

Northern Arizona

Palmer drove Begay’s pickup truck down the road, deeper into the desert, leaving towns and buildings far behind now.

Thirty minutes later they stopped at the same gas station Begay had stopped at before when Palmer had come with him to Joe Blackhorn’s property—the last chance for gas and supplies, Begay had told him then, and it still appeared to be true.

Palmer went into the store and bought some water and food. He also bought two five-gallon plastic containers for gasoline, a pack of disposable lighters, and two flashlights with extra batteries.

David went to the bathroom while Palmer was at the counter to pay for the stuff he’d bought. David got a few looks from the people in the store because of the ancient writing painted on his hands and wrists, but no one said anything to him.

After Palmer paid for his supplies and gas, he carried the bags to the pickup truck. He filled up the two five-gallon plastic cans with gas and then used the rest of the fifty dollars he had paid on the pickup truck. He loaded the water, food, and flashlights into the back seats and he put the cans of gasoline in the back of the truck, using a bungee cord he found behind the driver’s seat to hold them in place.

David was still inside the store when Palmer was done so he decided to use the time to call his daughter. He was still getting a faint signal on his cell phone here, but he knew the signal would fade fast only a few miles down the road.

“Hello?” Eliza answered.

“Lizzy,” Palmer said. He was surprised she had answered the phone. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” At least she didn’t sound as angry as she had yesterday.

“The kids okay?”

“Yeah, they’re fine. Ted came up here last night. He’s with them now. Where are you?”

“I’m in New Mexico.” Actually, he was well into Arizona right now, but he didn’t think he needed to go into all of that.

“What are you doing down there?”

“I had a hunch the killer was coming down here for Captain Begay and David Bear.” He paused for just a moment. “I got him, Lizzy. Early this morning, I shot the killer in the head. I killed him.”

Eliza was quiet for a long moment. Palmer wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting when he told her the news: relief, tears, anger. Maybe it was taking her a moment to process what he had just said.

“I got him,” Palmer said again. “I got the one who killed your mom. You and Ted and the kids can go back home now. It’s over.”

It wasn’t really over, not at all, but it was over for Eliza. Palmer realized that he had wandered quite a ways from the pickup truck at the pumps. He had walked into the sand beyond the concrete parking area. He looked back at the truck and saw that David was sitting in the passenger seat now.

“When are you coming back?” Eliza asked. Her voice was a little husky, like she’d just been crying and was trying to hide it.

I might not be coming back at all. “Not for a little while. I’ve still got some things to do down here. Cardenelli’s coming.”

“You’re not in the FBI anymore.”

“I know, but I still have statements to make. I shot and killed a man. They had to take my gun. An investigation needs to be done.”

“Dad, I’m sorry about what I said before, about you not catching the killer. I was . . . I was just mad.”

“I know. It’s okay. I understand.”

“And I know you tried to get Mom and Gary to leave, just like you tried to get me to leave. Mom told me about it. Actually, she was a little pissed off—” Eliza stopped, choking up.

Palmer let her take her time.

“She was mad about it,” Eliza continued when she’d gotten herself together. “She was mad that I was leaving. Mad that I was listening to you.”

“Lizzy, you don’t have to tell me all of this.”

“I just wanted to apologize for saying that stuff to you. I was mad about Mom. Taking it out on you.”

“I know. I just wanted to call you and let you know that it’s over.” He paused for just a moment. “Lizzy, I love you.”

“I love you too, Dad.” She was starting to cry again.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

They hung up and Palmer walked back to Begay’s pickup truck. He got in and closed the door, started it. The truck’s engine idled smoothly, the gas gauge showing that the tank was nearly full. He looked at David who was staring out the passenger window.

“I’m sorry about your aunt,” Palmer said.

David looked at him. “Thank you,” he whispered. He looked so tired; he looked hollow.

“You sure you still want to do this?” Palmer asked him.

David nodded, his lips tight, eyebrows knitting together in anger. “Yes. I have to try.”

“What’s out there at Joe Blackhorn’s house?” Palmer asked as he pulled the truck out of the gas station and onto the road, the desert stretching out before them with the mountains in the distance.

“I don’t know,” David said. He touched the necklace he wore, the large silver charm hanging from it. “Billy Nez said Joe Blackhorn left something there for me before he died. I need to find it.”

Palmer sped the truck up to seventy miles per hour, but it only felt like he was going forty; the truck was new and smooth and quietly powerful. “What are we supposed to do when you find . . . find this thing you’re looking for?”

“I’ll know when I find it,” David said and looked back out the passenger window at the desert whipping by in a blur.

Palmer decided not to ask David anymore questions. It would take at least another two hours to get to Joe Blackhorn’s property, and it seemed like they were going to drive in silence.

CHAPTER 41

Stella

Costa Rica

Stella had stopped cold as the pilot aimed his gun at her, then at Cole. “Throw your gun on the ground.”

Stella knew Cole was reluctant to give up his weapon, but the pilot looked more than willing to shoot both of them right now. Cole pulled his gun out and tossed it on the ground.

The pilot gestured with his gun at the building. “Start walking.”

“Juan Carlos,” Cole said. “You don’t understand what’s going on here. We need to leave right now.”

Juan Carlos sneered at Cole. “The both of you have about three seconds before I shoot.”

Cole met her eyes and then he turned and began walking. She fell in step beside him, with Juan Carlos behind them. The garage-style door was still closed and the other door she had run from was ajar. She could sense Cole’s tension as they walked; they had almost gotten on the plane, almost gotten out of here, and now they were marching right back to the Ancient Enemy.

When they were fifteen feet away from the door, Juan Carlos began shouting from behind them. “Fernando!”

No answer from inside the metal building—nothing but silence.

“Paco!” Juan Carlos called out from a few feet behind them when they were right in front of the door.

So there really was a pilot named Paco among the card players, Stella thought. But Paco wasn’t going to answer Juan Carlos, none of them were.

“You two go inside first,” Juan Carlos growled at them.

Cole took a deep breath and stepped inside. Stella was right behind him. They ventured a few steps inside the building. It took a couple of seconds for Stella’s eyes to adjust to the darkness even though the day was gray outside. But the dead bodies all over the floor materialized in the middle of the large room, puddles of blood under them, holes in their chests, abdomens, and smaller holes in their arms and throats where the tentacles had pierced their flesh. There were streaks of blood across the floor and spatters of it on the overturned card table and chairs. The playing cards and money were scattered all over the floor like dead leaves, some of them stuck in the drying blood.

“What happened?” Juan Carlos whispered from a few feet behind them. Stella guessed that he was trying to bark an order at her, but he sounded more shocked than angry.

Stella glanced over at the stoned woman in the recliner; she was sitting back, her throat slashed, her eyes wide open, her mouth frozen in a long frown. Then Stella looked across the room at the bar. The bartender was slung over the bar, face-down, his arms hanging down, his fingers touching the puddles of blood, his shotgun on the floor just out of his reach.

“Who did this?” Juan Carlos demanded, still staying a few feet behind them. “Where are they?”

“Listen to me,” Cole said, speaking slowly and carefully, his hands still raised a little. He hadn’t turned around to look at Juan Carlos. “We need to leave right now. All three of us. What’s after us is very dangerous. It’s going to kill you if you don’t come with us.”

“It?” Juan Carlos said, spitting the word out.

“I don’t know what it is,” Cole said, still not turning around to face Juan Carlos. “Some kind of demon.”

“Demon?” Juan Carlos shouted. “You expect me to believe that?”

One of the men on the floor started to move, shifting slightly, pulling a hand up out of the puddle of blood. Stella watched as the man sat up, his dead eyes focused on nothing. Another sound pulled her attention to the bar where the bartender was moving his arms. The woman with the slashed throat shot forward, getting up to her feet and swaying just a bit.

“What is this?” Juan Carlos whispered from behind them.

Stella was sure she would feel the impact of a bullet in her back at any moment, but then she could hear Juan Carlos backing up towards the door.

She and Cole turned around at the same time.

Juan Carlos stared at the dead people as they all got to their feet. He made the sign of the cross on his chest with his left hand but still had his gun in his right hand. He stumbled just a bit back to the half-open door that led outside, almost falling.

“There’s a demon inside of them,” Cole told Juan Carlos. “We have to go now!”

Juan Carlos stared in disbelief, his arm shaking so badly Stella thought he was going to drop his gun. But he believed—at that moment the pilot believed everything Cole was telling him. He turned and ran.

Stella and Cole followed Juan Carlos out through the doorway and across the field of grass and weeds, running towards the line of airplanes.

When they were close to the airplanes, Cole ducked down and picked up his gun from the grass, aiming it at the pilot. “Juan Carlos, turn around!”

For a second Stella didn’t think the pilot was going to listen, but then he stopped and turned around.

“Throw your gun away,” Cole told him.

Juan Carlos hesitated, but his eyes went to the building beyond them.

Stella turned around and saw that the dead were pouring out through the open door. She could see the black tentacles poking out of them, whipping around in the air.

“Juan Carlos,” Cole said. “We don’t have much time!”

The pilot tossed his gun away and then ducked under one of the better-looking airplanes and pulled a pair of wooden chocks away from the wheels, throwing them out in the grass. Then he opened the door on the side of the plane. Stella darted into the airplane before the pilot could get inside, crawling to the back of it. The plane rocked a little with her movements, the whole aircraft leaning back just a bit. Juan Carlos got in and then Cole; he pulled the door shut, locking it. Juan Carlos twisted a key, flipped switches, and then the engine started, the propeller on the nose of the plane spinning to life.

“I don’t understand this,” Juan Carlos said, muttering to himself as he put a pair of headphones on. “This can’t be real.” He looked at Cole and the gun in his hand. “Put that away. You don’t need that anymore.”

Cole laid the gun on the seat between his legs and looked out the window as Juan Carlos drove his airplane onto the tarmac. The small narrow airstrip looked cracked and dilapidated now that Stella saw it up close.

“I want three thousand for this!” Juan Carlos announced as his plane picked up speed on the airstrip.

Cole waved a hand like he was agreeing, but he didn’t say anything.

The plane was moving faster now, beginning to lift just a little, the engine whining. It was so loud inside the airplane. Juan Carlos pulled up slightly on the control wheel and the plane lifted up into the air, the gray sky in front of them. The plane rocked from side to side on the wind.

Juan Carlos looked back down as he banked sharply into the turn north; he looked down at the tarmac, the grass, and the buildings, staring in horror at the dead people below. Even from a few hundred feet in the air Stella could see the tentacles and feelers shooting out of the people below, the Ancient Enemy constantly changing shape once it was out of the bodies, like a black amoeba, like an oil slick that had come to life.

The pilot muttered another prayer as the plane sailed higher into the low clouds, flying right towards the dark clouds to the north. At least there wasn’t any lightning. Soon Juan Carlos would get the plane above much of the thunderstorm, but not high enough to be completely above it.

The plane shuttered, rocking from side to side again. For a moment Stella thought the Ancient Enemy had launched itself at the plane and was holding it, one long tentacle wrapped around a wheel.

“Hold on,” Juan Carlos said. “This is going to be a bit bumpy for a while.”

Stella held on to the armrest of her seat. She had buckled her lap belt. The plane shuttered again and it sounded like the metal was trying to rip apart. The engine was roaring. The plane dipped and it felt like they had dropped at least twenty feet. Stella’s stomach fluttered.

“Once we get past this storm it will be better,” Juan Carlos promised.

The clouds were swirling in front of them, darker and darker, moving faster. Cole leaned forward, staring through the windshield at something in the clouds.

Stella saw what he was looking at.

“What’s that?” Cole asked, pointing at the dark mass in the gray clouds.

Juan Carlos stared. He was speechless for a moment. “I don’t know, but we’re going around it.”

The plane shuttered again, metal screeched and made popping sounds. Juan Carlos struggled with the control wheel, trying to maneuver the plane.

“What are you doing?” Cole yelled. “Turn away from that thing.”

“I’m trying,” Juan Carlos yelled back.

Stella watched the black mass among the clouds. It looked like a spinning black sphere in the clouds, but it also looked like a black hole that was pulling the clouds down into its darkness. She had seen it before—she had seen a black swirling mass like this inside the church at the ghost town, the black spinning ball that David had summoned, the doorway to the Ancient Enemy’s world, the doorway David had sent the monster back through. Now it was here in the sky, among the gray storm clouds.

Juan Carlos still fought with the control wheel. The plane was shaking even harder now, but they kept flying right towards the black hole, the gray clouds swirling around it. To Stella, it looked like they were flying right down into the top of a tornado, right down into the funnel.

“I can’t turn!” Juan Carlos yelled, still pulling on the control wheel as hard as he could.

Stella remembered when David had summoned the spinning black sphere in the church, the electricity crackling from it, the Ancient Enemy being sucked into it, stretched and pulled back into its world. Now it was happening to them. She realized now why the Ancient Enemy hadn’t attacked and killed them—it had been saving them for this, for the chance to suck them into its own world, into the Void.

CHAPTER 42

David

Joe Blackhorn’s trailer

It was early afternoon when they got to Joe Blackhorn’s trailer. David had expected the place to be the same, and it was, but it was also different. The trailer was still there, the small greenhouse not too far away, the stables and corral off to the left, the small windmill generator in back, the hogan in the distance beyond the trailer at the foot of the steep hill. But none of Joe Blackhorn’s stuff seemed to be there. All of his vehicles were gone, both of his pickup trucks and even the two junk vehicles. The construction and fencing supplies piled up at the rear of the trailer were gone. His potted plants beside his trailer and next to the greenhouse were gone. All of the horses were gone. And of course Joe Blackhorn’s German shepherd had been given away to a good home two years ago.

Palmer parked in front of the trailer and shut the engine off. It was deathly quiet now. He sat there like he was reluctant to get out, looking around.

“It’s not here,” David told Palmer. He would be able to tell if the Ancient Enemy was here, he would feel that prickling on his skin, the goosebumps raising, that electric feeling in the air around him like the air was suddenly ionized, that sense that someone—or something—was right behind him, sneaking up on him, about to touch him.

“Nobody lives here now?” Palmer asked.

David shook his head no. “An old lady owns all of this property around here. She let Joe Blackhorn live here. When he died, she just left his trailer and buildings here. She gave a lot of his stuff to his distant relatives and friends, and donated the rest of it.”

“She doesn’t want to rent this place to somebody?”

“Nobody wants to live here. A lot of people were scared of Joe Blackhorn. Some believe his ghost is here now.”

Palmer didn’t look like he believed that, but he looked worried that a demon might be here. He got out of the truck with Begay’s gun in his hand.

David got out and walked to the front door of the trailer, climbing the three steps up to the door.

“Is the door locked?” Palmer asked from the sandy and weedy area that served as the front yard.

David didn’t answer. He knew the door would probably be unlocked—many older Navajo didn’t believe in locking their doors. He twisted the doorknob and opened the door.

It was a little stuffy inside the trailer. The air was musty but not too bad. The trailer was mostly empty; all of the furniture and Joe Blackhorn’s possessions were gone. The handmade wooden bookshelves were still there, still attached to the living room walls. David swore he could still smell the old books in this room.

Memories came flooding back as David walked deeper into the living room. He had prayed in here and learned in here, studied in here. And outside by the fire pit he had listened to Joe Blackhorn tell stories of his ancestors, stories that had never been written down, some stories never uttered between two people who weren’t Navajo; they were secret stories and powerful songs.

“The power is already in you,” Joe Blackhorn had said while sitting across from him at the fire pit, the firelight dancing and reflected in his dark eyes, the creases and wrinkles in his face seemingly deeper and darker. “Energy is all around you, every atom vibrating at its own frequency. Use that frequency. Use that energy. Nothing in this world is still, that is an illusion. Reality is only an illusion.”

Joe Blackhorn used a mixture of science and ancient teachings in his lessons, and when he explained things scientifically it had all seemed plausible to David. But his teachings had also been frustrating because so much of it relied on David’s own instinct, and David didn’t even know how to control any of it yet.

“You will learn,” Joe Blackhorn had said so many times. “It will come to you. You have years to learn this. Let it come to you naturally.”

But right now David didn’t have years to learn how to summon his powers. Maybe it was too late for him, and maybe it was too late for everyone else.

Palmer entered the living room from outside. He still had Begay’s gun in his hand. He looked around at the empty living room and kitchen, then at David. “This place is empty. You sure there’s something here for you?”

“Billy Nez said there was. I believe him.”

“Do you know what you’re looking for?”

“No.”

“If this thing he left for you was so important, why didn’t he just give it to you when he was still alive?”

David shrugged. Trying to explain how Joe Blackhorn’s mind worked would be a waste of time; David didn’t understand it and he definitely wouldn’t be able to make Agent Palmer understand it. “I think he left something to me like someone leaves something in a will.”

Palmer just sighed, but he seemed to accept and understand that answer. He walked into the empty kitchen, looking around like he might spot an object sitting on a counter or inside a cupboard.

I stopped coming to see him. That was the real reason Joe Blackhorn hadn’t given him the item before now. But David didn’t want to explain that to Agent Palmer either; he didn’t want to tell him how he had turned his back on Joe Blackhorn.

David walked over to the empty bookshelves. He could almost still see all of the old books, the titles and author names on the spines, hardback books shoved in with paperback books, no real order to the collection. He remembered the small objects on the shelves in front of the books: a small animal skull, the sextant, a small figure carved from wood. He had never been contacted by the old woman about Joe Blackhorn’s things. Maybe Joe Blackhorn had been angry at him the last few years for not continuing with the training, or maybe the old woman was angry. David had a few things Joe Blackhorn had given him over the years, a stack of books, carvings from pieces of wood and stone. That was enough for him.

He walked down the hallway into the bedroom. The furnishings and décor in here had been simple: a bed, a table next to it with a lamp, a dresser, and a wooden chair. But the room was empty now. There was a bathroom off of the bedroom with a small shower in it. The bathroom was bare and clean, nothing left behind.

Billy Nez had said that Joe Blackhorn had hidden something here, something that could help with a spirit walk. David tried to guess what it might be. In all the years of teaching that Joe Blackhorn had done with David, he had never taught him about spirit walks, and he had never used objects or talismans. David had never even been on a spirit walk before.

But then again maybe he had been on a spirit walk already; maybe his dreams were unconscious spirit walks. He’d seen the killer in his dreams; maybe he had been journeying through other dimensions to get to the killer in those dreams.

“Physicists know there are other dimensions than ours,” Joe Blackhorn had said. “They can’t prove it yet, but they know those other dimensions are real. Are they alternate realities or just different planes of existence? They can’t say for sure. But they know they exist—it isn’t science fiction.”

David thought about the spirit walk again, a different dimension. He had summoned a doorway to the Ancient Enemy’s world before inside the church in the ghost town. Could he summon that doorway again? And if he could, then could he enter that world?

But he had already been in the Ancient Enemy’s world. In Hope’s End he had entered that doorway and taken the Ancient Enemy with him. He couldn’t remember anything now about that world, but he had survived it before because he was standing here now.

David felt a little better as he walked back out to the living room. Palmer was back by the front door, waiting impatiently. David went into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator; it was empty and clean.

“Still didn’t find anything?” Palmer asked.

“No.” David closed the door, thinking again about all the training he had done with Joe Blackhorn here. Some of it inside this trailer, some of it out by the fire pit, much of it in . . .

“. . . the hogan,” David whispered.

He shot past Palmer and went outside, almost running to the hogan in the distance at the foot of the hill. He opened the wood door that faced east and entered the hogan. It was empty inside, all of Joe Blackhorn’s possessions gone. The only thing left was the old fire pit in the middle of the hogan, the pit surrounded by rocks, a hole in the center of the ceiling for the smoke to escape.

David sighed. There was nothing in here. He walked over to the fire pit, but it was empty. He even sifted through old ashes, but he didn’t find anything. He stood back up and walked over to the wall, walking around the large circular room, running his fingers along the wood posts that made up the walls. More wood posts crisscrossed each other to make up the ceiling. As he walked he swore he could still smell the faint odor of wood smoke inside. He swore he could still hear Joe Blackhorn’s chanting.

Whatever Joe Blackhorn had left for him, it was in this hogan—David was sure of that. But where? He had to slow down and concentrate, feel where Joe Blackhorn would have hidden it.

He kept walking next to the walls of the circular hogan. He kept running his hand along the wooden beams that stood up next to each other, lashed together and packed with mud years ago. And then he stopped. A part of one of the thick wooden posts felt loose. He dug his fingers in around the edge of the loose area and pulled off a piece of wood revealing a rectangular hole cut into the wood. A small wooden box was stuffed into the hole with a white envelope on top of it. He pulled the box out and opened it, sifting through the few contents inside: a small jar of what looked like red paint (but David knew it was owl’s blood), a small paintbrush, a few smooth round black rocks, a small stick with beads and feathers attached to it, and one lone eagle feather.

After setting the box on the floor for a moment, David opened the envelope.

“Is that it?” Palmer asked from the doorway.

David didn’t respond. He unfolded the two pieces of paper he had pulled out of the envelope. One was a letter from Joe Blackhorn, both a goodbye letter and a set of instructions. The other paper was a hand drawn map.

“It’s a map,” David told Palmer as he folded up the papers and stuffed them back into the envelope. He folded the envelope in half and shoved it down into his pants pocket.

“To the ghost town?”

“No. I already know how to get there.”

“A map to where?”

“A map to Bone Canyon.”

“Bone Canyon? What’s that?”

“It’s a place where mass burial sites of the Anasazi were found a few years ago along with some kivas.” He thought of Stella just then and how she would love to see those ancient burial sites. But these sites had been kept secret from outsiders. Many of the Navajo were tired of scientists coming in and unearthing the dead, taking the bones away to be studied and kept in some drawer at a university, or worse, displayed in a museum. This burial ground had been left just the way it had been found, and no one ever went out there. But Joe Blackhorn had gone there over two years ago, and now he wanted David to go to a certain spot in Bone Canyon for some reason. And at the spot he wanted David to go to, he had drawn a medicine wheel there on the map.

Palmer stepped outside the hogan.

David took one last long look around inside the hogan. He picked up the wooden box and followed Palmer outside.

Palmer looked up at the early afternoon sky. He seemed to be calculating the hours until sundown. And then he looked at David. “What now?”

“We go to the Bone Canyon. We go to the place on the map that Joe Blackhorn drew.”

Palmer didn’t say anything for a long moment; he just stared out at the never-ending hills.

David thought Palmer was going to refuse to take him to Bone Canyon, but Palmer took a deep breath and then exhaled just as slowly, like he had finally made up his mind about something. “You ready to go now?”

David nodded.

“Then let’s get going.”

David’s cell phone dinged, it was the sound of a text message. He pulled his phone out of his back pocket, his heart leaping with hope.

“You’ve got cell service way out here?” Palmer asked, looking at his own phone and frowning. “I can’t get anything out here.”

“No service,” David said, reading the text message. “It’s from Stella.”

“What did she say?”

David handed his phone to Palmer.

“Help me,” he said, reading the text. “Where is she?”

“That’s not her,” David told Palmer. “The Ancient Enemy’s got them now.”

CHAPTER 43

Begay

Hospital – New Mexico

Begay woke up in bed. For just a few seconds he didn’t know where he was. He knew he wasn’t in his own bed or at his own house. No, he wasn’t at his house because there were dead people at his house. The Ancient Enemy had been there.

“You’re awake.”

Begay turned to his left and saw Angie sitting in a chair near the window. The blinds were drawn but the late afternoon light was still shining through them. She smiled at him as she got up and walked over to his bedside.

“I guess I dozed off a little,” Begay said. Now he remembered coming here to the hospital this morning. From the look of the golden light coming through the blinds he guessed it was close to sundown. “What time is it?”

“You can go back to sleep if you want to,” Angie told him. “The doctors told me you don’t have a concussion. They were amazed about that.”

“I’ve got a hard head.”

“I told them that. You’ve got some bruising and they stitched up the cut on your head. And your right knee is sprained.”

Begay moved his leg and felt a sharp pain shooting through his knee. He winced, closing his eyes for a moment. “Have you been back to the house?”

“No. I called Sarah next door a few hours ago. She said the police and FBI were still there then.”

Begay nodded. He figured an investigation like that would take a while. “The bodies,” he said.

“I talked to a nurse. They took the bodies here for the night until they can arrange to transport them to a lab in Albuquerque.”

“Awenita,” Begay whispered. He hadn’t seen her dead body, but Angie had told him about her earlier, before the ambulance had taken him away. “You hear from David?”

Angie shook her head no.

Palmer’s with David. He’ll protect David. And David will protect him.

It’s going to come back. That’s what David had said.

Begay struggled to sit up.

“Hold on,” Angie said like she was suddenly annoyed, but he knew she loved to help him. She pushed a button on a remote control attached to a wire, inclining the bed, the electric motor humming from underneath the bed. When he was sitting up, she laid the remote control down on the bed beside him.

“I need to get out of here,” Begay said.

“They want to keep you overnight.”

“For what? You just said I don’t have a concussion.”

“They just want to keep you for observation.”

“To pad the bill.”

Angie frowned, her eyes smoldering; it was the look she got right before they argued and she erupted in anger. “I know what you want to do. Where you want to go.”

“He needs my help.”

“What can you do for him?” she asked. “Only David can fight that thing.” She touched his hand, laying her hand over his. “You got lucky. We both did. Why can’t we have that?”

“We got lucky because Agent Palmer showed up when he did. He saved your life. If he hadn’t been there . . .” Begay didn’t want to think about that. Angie had told him that the killer had been about to cut her throat. She still had a faint red line across her neck, and there would be bruising there later. A few more seconds and she would have been dead.

“Yes, and I’m thankful he was there.”

“And now I need to help him.”

Angie was quiet for a few seconds. “You don’t have to,” she whispered. “When that man had the knife up to my throat I thought you were dead. I didn’t even fight it anymore; I just wanted the man to get it over with. I didn’t want to go on without you.” She still had her hand over his, squeezing.

“Don’t say that,” he said.

She didn’t reply; she just squeezed his hand a little harder.

“You know this isn’t over, don’t you?” he told her. “That thing isn’t going to stop coming after us. It will find another serial killer or try to scare someone else so badly that they will try to kill us. Try to kill David.”

Angie sighed. “All those years you were a policeman I worried something would happen to you. I know you never worried about it, but I did. Every night, night after night, year after year, I worried that you would get shot or get in an accident trying to chase down a drunk driver. And now here we are. You’re finally retired. I finally have you home and out of danger, and now you want to go find danger again.”

“The Ancient Enemy wants David, but I think it also wants us. I think it wants revenge.”

“Maybe David can send it away. He did before. That’s what you said.”

Begay had told Angie about what had happened in the ghost town. On the way home that day he had stopped and bought a six-pack of Coca-Cola. He brought the cans of soda right into the house, not even trying to hide them from her. He sat down and opened up a can and chugged half of it down like it was a beer. Begay would never drink alcohol, he’d told Palmer the truth about that, but he needed something that day, even if it was bad for him; he needed something to celebrate the fact that he had survived the demon he had seen in the church, survived an evil unimaginable to him only a day before. And Angie never scolded him about the cans of soda that day.

He had told her everything that day, from the bodies in the cave at the dig site, to meeting Agent Palmer, to tracking down Billy Nez, and eventually going out to Joe Blackhorn’s place to track down Cole, Stella, and David. He told her about the ghost town and everything that had happened there.

Angie had sat there in her chair, quiet the whole time, letting him get everything out. When he was done there were four empty cans of soda in front of him, and he could tell by the look in his wife’s eyes that she had believed every word he had told her.

Now she had that same look in her eyes. He knew she wanted to keep him safe, but she knew she couldn’t really do that. But she also didn’t want to break his spirit—that would be worse than keeping him safe. He was the man she had married, a man who helped people, a man who put other people’s safety and lives before his, a man who ran towards danger and not away from it.

Angie got up and went over to the closet near the door that led out to the hall. She got his coat and shoes out and brought them back to the bed.

Begay swung his legs over the bed, wincing and grabbing his knee. Angie bent down and put his shoes on for him. “The doctors aren’t going to be happy about this,” she said as she laced up his shoes.

“I know,” Begay said as he got to his feet and hobbled over to the chair she had been sitting in moments ago. He sat down and rested, breathing hard.

“I’ll go talk to the nurse,” Angie said. “I’ll be right back. You just wait here until I’m back.”

He nodded. He could feel a headache at the back of his head, the pain creeping up from his neck. The pain was also wandering down his back. He thought about asking Angie for some aspirins, but he didn’t want to give her a reason to keep him here. “Thank you,” he told her.

Angie just nodded and she left the room.

Begay sat in the chair for a moment, getting his breath back. He was hurt and sore, and so tired, but he needed to do this. He needed to summon all the energy he had left, and all the courage he had.

Angie was back in ten minutes. She had a metal cane with four plastic-tipped feet at the bottom. “I signed everything and the nurse gave me this for you. There are some wheelchairs down by the elevators.”

Begay took the cane and got to his feet. “I don’t need a wheelchair,” he grumbled.

“Yeah, I thought you would say that. That’s why I got the cane.”

The cane did help, but he didn’t want to admit it.

They walked out to the hallway and turned left towards the elevators. It was a little darker out here in the hall than Begay thought it would be, and there didn’t seem to be too many nurses walking around.

As they got closer to the elevators, Begay noticed that the hall beyond the elevators was dark and gloomy, like the lights had all burnt out down there.

Angie pushed the button for elevator. They were on the third and highest floor so there was only a down button here.

Begay looked at the hall again as they waited for the elevator doors to open. He couldn’t believe how dark it was down there. Something seemed to be moving in the darkness, coming their way. He heard the sound of bare feet shuffling on the floor and the crinkling of thick plastic.

“Begay,” a voice whispered from the darkness.

“You hear that?” Begay asked Angie.

She nodded, staring down the hall.

“Begaaaay,” the voice said again, stretching out his name. It was a female voice.

The person who had called his name came closer, materializing out of the darkness. It was a woman shrouded in thick clear plastic. Her throat was a black sticky mess. It was Awenita.

CHAPTER 44

Stella

The Void

Stella was in the Ancient Enemy’s world—the Void. The last thing she remembered was being in the small airplane as the pilot flew them right into the thunderstorm, trying to climb above the clouds. But then they saw the black hole in the clouds, the spinning vortex that was sucking them in.

And now she was here. She still felt like she was in the sky, among those churning gray clouds because everything around her was a gray mist. Objects only ten or twenty yards away became blurry dark shapes in the mist. It was like being underwater, but instead of an endless blue, this was an endless sea of gray. It felt like everything went on forever here, and maybe it did.

A wave of panic washed over Stella.

Am I dead? Is this the afterworld?

No, she knew what this was—this was the Ancient Enemy’s world, the Darkwind’s world, the dimension where it lived, where it popped out of into her world.

She wasn’t dead. She was still alive. But why? The answer came to her as quickly as the question had; the Ancient Enemy hadn’t killed her and Cole in their home or at the airport because it wanted to bring them here alive, it wanted them as bait to lure David here.

Cole. Where was he? She looked around, turning around in a slow circle, but all she could see were shadowy shapes in the fog. Some of the shapes looked like they were moving around, maybe coming closer to her.

She could feel the Ancient Enemy here. It was close to her, or at least a part of it was. An electric current tingled on her skin, a cloud of energy buzzed all around her, a light pressure pressed on her mind like fingers gently pushing into her brain. She wondered if this was how David felt when the Ancient Enemy was near him.

Something moved in the mist, a shadowy form running right towards her, a human form. Cole materialized out of the fog.

Was that Cole? Was that really him, or was the Ancient Enemy inside of him? She remembered seeing him in the chair in their living room, staring at her with that blank expression.

“Stella,” Cole breathed out.

It was really him.

He hugged her, holding on to her for a moment. “I didn’t know if I was going to find you in here,” he whispered to her.

“I think it wanted us to find each other,” she said when he pulled away from her. “It still wants David. It’s using us as bait to get David here.”

“That’s why it didn’t kill us earlier.” He saw it now.

But it will destroy us once it has David, Stella thought but didn’t say it. Then again, maybe it wouldn’t kill them. Maybe you didn’t die here. Maybe it would keep all of them alive in this dimension, where time stretched out into infinity, their torture going on and on.

She didn’t want to think about that.

A low growl rumbled from somewhere in the distance, the beast that had made the noise hidden by the mist. Footsteps crashed down onto the rocky ground, the sound echoing through the fog. The large thing seemed to be close yet far away—it was hard to judge distance in the unending fog.

Cole took Stella’s arm gently and they hurried away in what they thought was the opposite direction from whatever had made that growling noise and those thundering footsteps.

It felt strange here, like sound didn’t travel like it was supposed to. This place was a world of contrasts; it felt claustrophobic here yet everything seemed to stretch out forever. It felt like they were outside yet inside. The ground felt rough and made of stone, but mostly flat. There were bits of gravel and pebbles scattered around. Maybe there were bigger rocks in the mist. Maybe those large blurry shapes in the distance were large rocks or small hills.

“We should keep moving,” Cole said as they walked.

“To where?”

“Away from whatever that thing was.”

It will find us no matter where we move to.

They held hands as they walked through the mist, but then they stopped. There was something in the distance, something taking shape in the mist. She felt the tension in Cole’s hand as he squeezed hers harder, ready to pull her away from whatever lurked in the grayness.

A moan came from the object in the mist, then another one, then a few words in Spanish, incoherent mumbling.

“It’s Juan Carlos,” Cole said. He took a step forward, then another.

Stella could see better now as the mist seemed to move away from an object that was turning out to be the trunk of a thick and twisted tree with only a few stubby branches reaching up towards the gray ceiling of fog. There were no leaves on the tree and it looked like something that had been struck by lightning a century ago, dead and charred and gnarled now. It looked like there was a piece of paper tacked to the tree.

When they moved a little closer Stella realized that it wasn’t a piece of paper, it was a face skinned away from a head and nailed to the trunk of the tree. The face had inches of thickness to it, like a giant sawblade had cut off Juan Carlos’ entire face like a Halloween mask.

“Help me,” Juan Carlos said. His mouth moved with the words, his eyes rolling back and forth wildly. “What happened? Where are we? What is this place?”

At the bottom of the tree was a large heap of shredded flesh and clothing with sharp ends of splintered bone sticking out. It looked like Juan Carlos’ body had been run through a meat grinder and then dumped at the bottom of the tree in a pile.

“Please . . .” Juan Carlos said. He closed his eyes, his mouth drawn down into a frown under his big mustache, the gold tooth in front twinkling just a little in the gray light.

He’s not alive, Stella told herself. No way he’s still alive. That’s the Ancient Enemy in there. The Ancient Enemy is doing this.

As if the Ancient Enemy had heard her thoughts, tentacles poked out of the heaping mound of flesh. The tentacles were small at first, worm-like, slithering over the pile of flesh, blood glistening on the black skin of the tentacles. Two large tentacles erupted from the top of the mound of flesh, one of them snaking up the tree trunk towards Juan Carlos’s face. The thin end of the feeler poked at the large nail that had been driven through the flesh right underneath Juan Carlos’s chin, then it ventured up to the corner of his mouth, probing it, pushing his lips apart.

Other tentacles shot out of the mound of shredded flesh, bits of bloody and slimy meat clinging to them, the stench of rot carried on the misty air.

Cole grabbed Stella, pulling her as they ran.

They ran for what seemed like a few minutes, but in this place it could have been hours or even days. They stopped to catch their breath, trying to locate the dark shapes in the distance and use them as some kind of landmarks.

“That wasn’t real,” Stella said. “The Ancient Enemy can do anything it wants here; it can make us see whatever it wants us to.”

Cole didn’t say anything. He looked like he was going to get sick. His eyes were wide as he looked around. He didn’t have his gun here. He didn’t have his wallet, just the clothes on his back.

“We should stay on the move,” Cole finally said.

“But David—”

“If David can find us, he will. The Ancient Enemy will show him how. Until then, I don’t think we should stay in one place too long.”

Stella nodded. She couldn’t argue with him; she didn’t know what else to do.

A voice called Cole’s name from the mist, the hiss of a whisper, but the sound traveled easily through the fog.

Cole had been about to grab Stella and take off again, but he froze.

And Stella knew why he had stopped; he knew that voice. And she knew it too.

“Cole,” the voice said. It was Trevor’s voice, Cole’s dead brother.

CHAPTER 45

Palmer

Bone Canyon

“What the hell’s that doing there?” Palmer asked as he drove up and over the hill. The trail they were driving on led down into a large valley that stretched all the way to the line of hills miles away. The trail was hard packed dirt, and without any rain for months the dirt was like concrete. Scrub brush, smaller cacti, and other plants dotted the sand and rocky landscape in every direction, the plants somehow clinging to life out here.

After David had found the envelope in Joe Blackhorn’s hogan with the hand drawn map inside, they had jumped into Begay’s truck and followed the directions.

At least they weren’t going to the ghost town, Palmer was happy about that. As much as he wanted to help David finally kill this thing, he wasn’t sure if he could go inside that church again. But who said Bone Canyon was going to be any better than the ghost town?

Bone Canyon wouldn’t be too far away David had told Palmer when they started their drive here, but Palmer had learned that out here in the desert “not too far” could mean several hours of driving. And the going was slow because the trail was rough in some areas and Palmer was trying to take it easy on Begay’s pickup truck.

The day was ending now, the sun hanging low over the mountains in the distance, a bloated, blood-red disc hovering above the jagged peaks. The wind had picked up a little, the air growing colder by the minute. It would drop another twenty degrees when the sun finally disappeared behind the mountains.

David had gotten another text message on the way to Bone Canyon even though Palmer’s cell phone still couldn’t get a signal at all (Palmer had turned his phone off now to save the battery). But David assured him that he didn’t have a signal on his phone either—this message was from the Ancient Enemy.

He had shown Palmer the text message. It read: HeLP me He haS me And Cole HE is hurting mE hElp me DaviD.

The writing was strange, like the use of capital and lowercase letters were a mystery to the Ancient Enemy, like it was struggling to translate a message into the English language.

With each new text message, David got more aggravated and impatient, but Palmer could only drive so fast down this trail. If they wrecked or bent an axle then they weren’t going to get to Bone Canyon, or anywhere else.

But they were here now, and Palmer drove down into the wide valley; it was like a gigantic bowl in the desert, but the land was flat down there at the bottom.

“It’s an airplane,” Palmer said as they drove towards the small aircraft parked in the distance. It was some kind of Cessna or something, Palmer guessed. He parked twenty feet away from the airplane.

David’s attention wasn’t on the airplane sitting in the middle of the desert; he was focused on what looked like a gigantic circle of white rocks around a big hole in the ground.

“Is someone supposed to be meeting us here?” Palmer asked, nodding towards the airplane as he shifted the pickup truck into park.

David shook his head no. He finally looked at the airplane. The windows of the aircraft looked dark and there didn’t seem to be anyone inside. The airplane looked older and a little beat up. There were identification numbers on the back of it.

“Maybe the pilot saw the burial grounds from the air and landed to take a closer look at them,” Palmer said as he turned off the truck’s engine.

David didn’t say anything.

Palmer looked over at the collection of rocks circling the large pit in the ground. The circle was big enough to fit the airplane inside, big enough to fit the plane, the pickup truck, and still have room for more vehicles. “What is the circle of rocks for?” he asked David.

“It’s a medicine wheel that Joe Blackhorn made around the burial site.”

“Joe Blackhorn did that?”

David nodded. “That’s what he drew on the map, a medicine wheel.”

“What’s a medicine wheel?”

“It’s a place of power,” David said.

David didn’t seem like he wanted to explain much more about it, so Palmer left it alone. He looked back at the airplane, staring at it through the windshield. “Maybe that’s a scientist’s plane. Like an archaeologist or something.” He didn’t think it was a police or government plane, but he couldn’t be sure.

David got out of the truck without a word and started walking towards the plane.

Palmer got out, grabbing Begay’s gun and taking it with him. He caught up with David. As he got closer to the plane he was sure it was empty now. He stepped up to the side of the plane and looked in the window—no one inside. He could smell the odor of flesh and blood before he even saw the splatters of blood all over the pilot’s seat, the control wheel, and the instrument panel. A few tiny specks of blood dotted the windshield. There was a handgun on the passenger seat.

Palmer opened the door and grabbed the gun. He knew he shouldn’t be touching anything that could be evidence in an obvious crime here, but this was a different situation. He inspected the gun, a 9mm. He checked the magazine; it was fully loaded.

“In the back seat,” David said. He sounded excited and nervous.

Palmer saw what David had alerted him to, some kind of thin wallets, like a passport or ID, and a crumpled white envelope. He reached in and grabbed the leather wallets and the envelope. He stepped back away from the airplane and opened the passports.

“It’s them, isn’t it?” David said from right beside Palmer. He sounded hopeful that he was wrong, but he also sounded certain that he was right.

One of the passports had a photo of Cole inside but the name was different. The other one was a fake passport for Stella. The crumpled envelope had a few thousand dollars of cash inside, all in American one-hundred-dollar bills.

“Cole and Stella were in this plane,” Palmer said, trying to wrap his mind around that. He stuffed the money back into the envelope and looked around at the desert all around them. “They flew up here from Costa Rica?”

David didn’t answer.

“That’s a long way,” Palmer said. “Where are they now? Did they walk from here?” He looked for signs of footprints on the hard packed dirt, but he didn’t see any.

“They’re not here anymore.”

Palmer looked at David. “What do you mean?”

“The Ancient Enemy has them.”

“Has them where?”

“In the Void. In its world. In its dimension.”

Palmer remembered the hole David had opened up inside the church seven years ago, the spinning black hole that had sucked the Ancient Enemy into it. He didn’t want to think about that so he took the IDs, passports, envelope of cash, and the 9mm back to Begay’s truck. He put the IDs and money in the glove box but kept the gun out.

David had walked back to the truck with Palmer, but when they got to the truck David stared at the medicine wheel and the large hole in the ground in the distance. He started walking towards it.

Palmer followed David, stepping inside the circle of rocks after him. Some of the rocks were about the size of soccer balls, but others were larger than that. He wondered how Joe Blackhorn had constructed this circle of rocks by himself. He wondered if he’d had help.

As Palmer followed David towards the edge of the large pit in the ground, he noticed that there were straight lines of rocks coming from the edge of the circle towards the pit.

“These lines represent the four directions,” David explained as if Palmer had asked him about it. He stood at the edge of the gigantic hole in the ground now.

Palmer stepped up beside David and saw what looked like a homemade wooden ladder standing up at the edge of the pit, the thick rungs lashed together with cordage. “I suppose Joe Blackhorn left that ladder here for you.”

David didn’t answer. He stared down at the pit. Some of the walls of the pit were smooth and Palmer could see the blocks of adobe stacked up on each other. It looked like this pit used to be some kind of underground structure at some point. The floor of the pit was flat and smooth, and in the middle there was a collection of flat rocks stacked up on top of each other about four feet high, it looked like a cairn.

“What do we do now?” Palmer asked.

“I go down there in the burial ground. I summon the doorway to its world. I go into its world and bring Stella and Cole back. And then I’m going to kill the Ancient Enemy.”

“You can do that?” Palmer asked.

There was an anger growing on David’s face that made him look much older than fifteen years old. A power was radiating off of him like heat. “I’ll kill it for what it did to my mother and my father. For what it did to my aunt. For what it did to all of the others.”

In that moment Palmer believed him.

CHAPTER 46

Begay

Hospital – New Mexico

Awenita stood in the darkness of the hospital hallway, just visible in the shadows, her naked body wrapped in plastic, her long black hair spilling down past her shoulders, her throat a gory mess. Blood trickled down the front of plastic shroud, beading on it, dripping down onto the floor, puddling there. Her eyes seemed to be just two dark shadows under her brow. Her mouth was drawn down into a frown, but then her lips moved as she called Begay’s name again. The plastic that clothed her body crinkled again, like she was moving around under there . . . or like other things were moving around.

“It’s not real,” Angie whispered. She was right beside Begay, holding on to him, her fingers digging into his arm.

Awenita took another step forward, her bare feet stepping in the puddles of blood that had dripped down from her throat.

The plastic upside-down triangle above the elevator doors lit up and a bell dinged. Begay’s head snapped towards the doors—they slid open. The elevator car was empty. He looked back at Awenita. She was closer now. How had she gotten so much closer? The fluorescent lights above them were flickering now, about to go out.

“Come on,” Angie hissed. She pulled Begay into the elevator with her. He shuffled along with her, pain shooting through his knee. He used his cane to support him as much as he could. The pain was bad but it felt like something was loose inside of his knee, like he couldn’t trust putting his entire weight down on that knee or it might give out, spilling him down onto the floor.

They were inside the elevator, waiting for the doors to close, but it was taking the doors so long to slide shut.

“Begay,” Awenita whispered from the hallway. She was so close to the elevator doors now, only a few feet away. The plastic sheeting on her body crinkled as she moved and her wet footsteps sounded so loud in the darkness. The lights in the hall right outside the doors flickered again and then went out.

The lights inside the elevator flickered.

The lights are going to go out, Begay thought. It’s going to be dark and Awenita was going to slip inside the elevator with them and then the doors were going to close. And then the elevator wouldn’t work—they would be trapped inside this metal box. Or the cables would snap. This was a trap. They shouldn’t have gone in here.

The doors slid shut on the dark hallway. The lights inside the elevator flickered again, but they stayed on.

Angie punched the button for the first floor, jabbing it with her thumb, tears in her eyes. She was seconds away from a full-blown panic attack.

We’re only three floors up, Begay told himself. Twelve feet to a floor, thirty-six feet altogether. If the cables snapped they could survive a fall like that, couldn’t they?

But then worse thoughts came to Begay’s mind. What if the Ancient Enemy got inside the elevator with them? What if the lights in the elevator went out and then came back on again and Awenita was in the elevator with them, crammed in this little box with them, the wound in her throat opening with a wet, tearing sound as she moved, a second mouth opening up in her throat.

How long was it going to take before this elevator started moving? Was it broken already? Were they already stuck in here? A panic seized Begay, a claustrophobia like he’d never known before. He remembered entering that cave seven years ago, being so deep inside that cave with all of those dead bodies stacked up in front of the ancient city built inside the cavern, a city that stretched out forever into the darkness. He had felt claustrophobia then, but it wasn’t as bad as this. It was worse now because he knew what the Ancient Enemy could do.

“It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real.” Angie whispered her mantra over and over to herself, her way of dealing with what she had just seen. But it was going to get worse; Begay knew that—the Ancient Enemy wasn’t going to give up coming after them.

Why isn’t this elevator moving?

Begay held onto Angie, pulling her close to him. He whispered into her ear that it was going to be okay, it was the only comfort he could offer her.

The elevator’s motor came to life and the car dropped smoothly down. Begay stared up at the digital numbers on the display above the metal doors. Three. Two. It seemed to take forever to get from the third floor to the second.

This is it. This is where the elevator stops, where it breaks down.

The lights inside the elevator flickered again, and it felt like the car was moving even slower. Begay was sure that the elevator was going to stop at the second floor. He was sure that someone (or something) had pushed the button for the second floor. He was sure the doors would open to that floor and a horror beyond his imagination would be waiting out there.

But then the digital number changed from two to one, and he felt his stomach lurch a little as the elevator eased to a stop. The lights flickered again as they waited for the doors to open.

If they open.

A thump sounded from above them, like something had just landed on the top of the elevator car. They stared up at the ceiling of the elevator, which was a grid of panels. It sounded like something was up there now, trying to get in. Begay was sure he would see tentacles poking down through those panels in the ceiling any second now.

The elevator doors slid open.

Angie grabbed Begay’s arm, her fingernails digging into his flesh. She had forgotten about his sore knee and she dragged him out of the elevator. Begay did his best to hobble along, still using the cane. He wanted to tell her to wait, to look around, to make sure there wasn’t somebody or something down here waiting for them.

But she kept going, kept pulling at him; a noise was caught in her throat like a moan, like a scream was trapped in there.

He let her lead him down the hall, leaning on his cane for support, the plastic feet stomping onto the floor with each step he took. The pain seemed to go all the way from his knee up to his head now, fiery signals shooting up and down the network of nerves throughout his body. He pushed through the pain, trying to walk as fast as he could.

But he knew he was slowing them down.

They were down the hall now. No one was down here. The lights above them were flickering so Begay knew the Ancient Enemy was close. He let Angie lead the way to the exit doors down the dark hall.

“Go,” he told her. “I’m just slowing you down.”

“No,” she barked and then stopped. “There,” she said. She had spotted a wheelchair by the wall.

Begay hobbled along as Angie darted to the wheelchair, pushing it back to him. Begay sat down in the chair, laying his cane across his lap. Angie was behind him in a flash, pushing him towards the glass doors that led outside to the parking area on this side of the hospital.

He hoped the glass doors were going to slide open. But the lights in the ceiling were already out down here, the hallway lost in murky shadows, the last of the day’s light fading quickly outside.

The glass doors swished open and Begay breathed a sigh of relief as Angie pushed him outside. They were under a covered area with a circular drive beyond it where patients could be dropped off. One of the wings of the hospital rose up into the night sky to the right, three stories high, most of the windows lit up in the evening gloom. He looked up at one of the windows on the third floor. The lights were flickering there and he saw the silhouette of a woman—Awenita.

Did that mean they were safe? Did that mean the Ancient Enemy was still inside the hospital? Did that mean they could get away now?

Angie pushed Begay out into the circular drive, pushing him faster and faster towards the parking lot.

They were going to get away, but Begay was sure that the Ancient Enemy would follow them.

CHAPTER 47

Stella

The Void

“Cole,” Trevor said from the mist.

Cole had stopped, frozen like a deer in the woods that had just sensed a predator.

Stella stood beside Cole, watching the swirling mist, trying to spot Trevor in the grayness. Something was moving around in there, she could see it now—a person taking shape, becoming a human form, walking closer to them but still twenty feet away.

And then Trevor emerged from the fog. He wasn’t cut up into pieces like he’d been at Tom Gordon’s cabin; he was whole again, alive again, wearing the same clothes he’d worn at the cabin, his glasses on, his blond hair slick and combed back.

“Cole,” Trevor said. He stood there smiling, his arms down at his sides, relaxed. “I’m so glad you finally came.”

Cole shook his head no, his mouth a tight line, his dark eyes wide with shock. “No. You’re . . . you’re not Trevor. You’re not my brother. He’s dead. I saw him die. I saw his body on the front porch. I saw him burn up in the fire.”

“I’m not dead, Cole. I’m alive. We’re all alive here. No one dies here. You can be with me now.”

Cole didn’t say anything. He just stared at Trevor.

Stella looked at Cole. She saw him wanting to believe, wanting to rationalize how this could be real.

“There is so much more to this place,” Trevor said, still smiling. But his smile was beginning to falter just a bit. “There’s so much that you don’t understand yet. This is only a small part of this place. There’s so much more to see. So much beauty. So much wonder. You can see it all. We can see it together.”

Cole still didn’t say anything.

“Cole,” Stella said, touching his arm, trying to break the spell that Trevor was casting. “It’s not real. That’s not your brother.”

Cole looked at Stella, locking eyes with her. He seemed to be back for a moment, but she could tell that the spell hadn’t broken completely.

“Look at his smile,” Stella said to Cole, her voice louder now. “Look at the way he tilts his head to the side a little, like he’s listening to something we can’t hear.”

Trevor laughed, shaking his head, dismissing Stella with a wave of his hand. “Don’t listen to her, big brother.” His voice had gotten just a little deeper, and there was a harder edge to it. “You know me. You’ve always looked out for me. Well, I need you now. I need you here with me.”

Cole looked at Trevor again.

Stella still had her arm on Cole, her fingers digging in just a little. She could feel him leaning slightly towards Trevor, wanting to pull away from her and walk to him.

“Hey, remember when we were kids?” Trevor said. “Remember when I got in some trouble with Ronnie Moore and his brothers? They cornered me. Man, I thought I was going to get the shit beat out of me. I was ready to fight even though I knew I was going to lose. But then you showed up out of nowhere like some kind of superhero. And Ronnie backed down. All three of them backed down when they saw you. You remember that, Cole?”

Cole nodded.

“It’s like you knew I was in trouble, like you knew I needed help. And right now I need your help.”

Cole swallowed hard.

“I need your help, big brother.” Trevor reached a hand out towards Cole even though he was still in the same spot, twenty feet away. The mist had parted so Cole could see him clearly. “You still got my back, don’t you, big brother? You tried to help me out with Frank, I know you did. You were going to get me out of that jam with him.”

“It’s the Ancient Enemy,” Stella said. “It’s just spitting out memories it collected from Trevor’s mind when it killed him.” She pulled at his arm, trying to turn him to her, trying to make him face her again, make him see her eyes. “Cole, listen to me. You have to fight this. David will be here. I know it seems like a long time, but he will be here soon.”

Cole looked at Stella, his eyes clearing some. He was coming back to himself.

“Don’t leave me here all alone, Cole,” Trevor begged.

Cole looked at Trevor again.

“Listen to his voice,” Stella snapped. “Don’t look at him, but listen to his voice.”

Cole followed her instructions, looking at her again.

“You can hear it in his voice, can’t you?” she told him. “Remember what Frank sounded like at the cabin? And Jose? Remember what they all sounded like? The same deep voice. The same way they said things. It can’t keep up this charade too much longer.”

“Don’t leave me here, Cole,” Trevor said, and his voice was much deeper now, almost guttural and angry. “Don’t leave me like you left me at the cabin. You failed me. You were supposed to protect me. You were supposed to look out for me. You were supposed to have my back. But you didn’t. You let it take me out through the bathroom window. It hurt, Cole. It hurt so bad.”

Cole looked at Trevor again.

Trevor was still standing in the same spot, the mist still cleared away from him. His head was tilted to the side a little, the strange smile still on his face, his eyes blank behind his glasses.

“I’m sorry,” Cole whispered. Tears slipped out of his eyes. “You’re right. It’s my fault. All my fault. You always followed me around and did what I did. I got into trouble and you did too. I became a criminal and you were right there with me. But I tried to change. I tried to take you back with me. But then you got involved with Frank and his crew when I told you not to. I tried to help you, but it was too late. If I had changed earlier, if I had gotten through to you earlier, you never would have hooked up with Frank and Jose. You never would have been at that bank in Colorado or at that cabin. We never would’ve been there and none of this would have ever happened to us.” He wiped at his tears. “It’s all my fault.”

“Don’t cry, big brother,” Trevor said, but there was no emotion in his voice now. “Come with me and we can be together forever.”

“I lost him,” Cole said to Stella, looking at her now. “I lost him and I’ve had to live with that.” He looked back at Trevor. “But you’re not him. You’re not my brother. You’re not Trevor. I saw him die. I saw him torn to pieces. I saw him put back together again. And then I saw his body burn up in the fire. He’s dead. Gone. His soul is in another place, but it’s not here.”

Trevor was quiet for a moment. He stood motionless as the mist moved back in, swirling around his legs. His expression was still blank, the smile gone now, his head tilted just slightly. His posture reminded Stella of how Frank stood in the snow, his body hollowed out, waiting there like he was listening for instructions from a voice they couldn’t hear, the Ancient Enemy’s voice.

A smile suddenly appeared on Trevor’s face. “You’re wrong, Cole,” he said. “His soul is here. It’s trapped here. And you’ll be trapped here too.” A line appeared on Trevor’s neck, right across his throat, like a crack in an egg. Another crack moved up the side of his face, another one down into the collar of his shirt, another one appeared on each of his hands. A crackling sound came from him as the cracks grew longer and wider, deeper, bloodless red flesh exposed underneath as his skin began to pull apart.

“Run!” Stella yelled at Cole, grabbing him.

The mist flowed over Trevor again as he broke apart into pieces, his body coming apart inside of his clothes. He collapsed down to the ground like an imploded tower.

Stella and Cole ran away, but then they came to a stop when they saw someone else in front of them. The person limped forward out of the mist. It was Jose. He looked just like he had at the cabin, so much of the flesh of his neck missing, only a thin line of vertebrae somehow holding his head up like a balloon, pieces of his face gone. He had an ax in his hands, the same ax from the cabin.

They turned and ran, but Needles’ voice rang out from somewhere in the swirling fog. “You took my eyes, Cole! It hurts! It hurts so fucking bad!”

The voices were coming from all around them now: Trevor, Jose, Needles, and Frank. And there were others that Stella recognized—the man from the Mountainside Inn and Travis who had come to kill them with the gun. She saw Jim Whitefeather standing in the mist when they tried to run in a different direction. She heard Jake’s voice calling to her from the mist. She heard some of the other dead archaeologists. And there were others she didn’t recognize. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. She and Cole were surrounded now with nowhere to run, a circle of the dead in the mist, shadows moving around and getting closer.

CHAPTER 48

David

Bone Canyon

David stood inside the medicine wheel at the edge of the burial pit. The sun was down behind the mountains now, but much of the sky was still a light purplish color, those magic minutes of twilight, the barrier between day and true night.

Palmer had parked Begay’s pickup truck thirty yards away from the edge of the medicine wheel right near a rock wall that rose up twenty feet from the valley floor. He had built a campfire in front of that rock wall. David knew Palmer was scared, but the man wasn’t leaving. He had Captain Begay’s gun and now he had Cole’s gun with him. Would it be enough if the Ancient Enemy came? David didn’t know.

David had the letter from Joe Blackhorn folded up in his pocket along with the map. It was a goodbye letter from his teacher, but it was more than that—there were final instructions inside. It was like Joe Blackhorn knew this moment was going to come, like he had seen it.

And now it was time to face the Ancient Enemy.

David climbed down the ladder into the pit. When he was on the hard, smooth floor of the pit, he walked towards the stack of rocks that looked like some kind of cairn. He had the wooden box from the hogan and he set it on top of the stack of flat rocks. He opened the box and took out the contents, laying them out on the flat rock. Most of the contents were immediately familiar to him and he would have known what to do with them even if he wouldn’t have had the letter from Joe Blackhorn. There was the small rattle with feathers and beads on it, the glass jar of owl’s blood, a small paintbrush, and the small black rocks. But the thing that intrigued David the most was the lone eagle feather. David picked up the feather and held it in his fingers, staring at it for a moment. He couldn’t say exactly how he knew, but he was sure this was the same feather Billy Nez had used in Hope’s End, the Billy Nez who had lived over a hundred years ago.

It took David a few minutes to go through a similar ceremony that Blackhorn had performed in the church. He didn’t need to draw a circle around him because the medicine wheel of rocks was the circle of protection now. He opened the jar of owl’s blood and smeared a little of it on each wrist and on his cheeks underneath his eyes. He sang the ancient songs that Joe Blackhorn had taught him by those campfires years ago.

He wore the string of ghost beads that Billy had given him last night, and he still wore the other necklace Billy had given him, the necklace with the silver charm with the lock of hair inside, his own hair from 1891.

This ritual was both a repeat of the original ritual in the ghost town, but also different. David had incorporated some of the things Billy Nez had done in the saloon in Hope’s End. He held the eagle feather in his fingers, waving it back and forth in the air gently, like he was writing the symbols of the ancient language on the air.

As he chanted, he felt the energy inside of him. He pictured that energy as a ball of spinning electricity inside his body, a power trying to escape from him. The dry air around him felt charged with particles now. He felt the fine hairs on his skin standing up—this was the same feeling he got when the Ancient Enemy was near.

He remembered the words Joe Blackhorn had written in the letter: The items in this box may help you re-create the same ritual inside this circle of protection. It may help, but you don’t really need the things inside the box—those are just talismans and they only hold the power you give to them. The power is inside of you and it has always been there.

And now David felt that power. He was truly summoning it on his own. Before today he had always needed to be scared for his power to surface, scared of losing loved ones and friends. But he wasn’t scared now—he was angry. And maybe that anger was fueling his power as much as his fear had before. He saw his parents in his mind, his memories of them before the Ancient Enemy had taken their bodies over and made them tear each other’s faces off. He saw his Aunt Awenita’s dead body on the floor of Captain Begay’s man-cave. He saw Cole and Stella, held captive and used as bait. He saw so many others, so many who had been used by the Ancient Enemy to get to him; some of those people had been guilty, but so many others had been innocent.

It will end here. One way or another, all of this will end tonight.

David opened his eyes. He saw the black sphere in front of him, spinning and growing larger, hovering above the rocky floor of the pit, trapped in this ancient mass grave, trapped even more by the circle of rocks surrounding the pit. The air around the sphere crackled with energy, small bolts of lightning shooting off of it as if it were a Tesla coil. It looked like a spinning black sphere, but now it also looked like a hole in the air, a hole that was pulling him towards it.

It was a doorway, and it was growing larger and larger, big enough for David to step through now. There was nothing but the blackest of darkness beyond the doorway. But David knew there was a world beyond that darkness, a world he had been to before, a world he had escaped from to be here now.

With the eagle feather still in one hand, David stepped through the spinning vortex and into the Void.

CHAPTER 49

Palmer

Bone Canyon

Palmer sat by the fire he’d built on the sand. He’d dug a small pit and surrounded it with rocks earlier while he still had enough daylight to see. He had scrounged for wood, breaking up the small, dry brush and piling it up a few feet away from his campfire. He had used a little bit of the gasoline he’d brought in the five-gallon plastic containers to get the fire going, and to keep it going if he needed to. He would need the rest of that gasoline later in the night—he was sure of that. He hoped he had enough wood and brush to last him through the night because he didn’t want to go looking for more in the desert when the darkness came.

He sat on a blanket that he’d gotten from the backseat of Begay’s truck. He had his jug of water on the blanket and the flashlight he’d bought at the gas station. He had the gun Angie had given to him along with the extra magazine. And he had Cole’s 9mm. He was as prepared as he could be for whatever was going to happen tonight. He even had the crucifix on his necklace tucked down inside his shirt. His mother had given the necklace to him—it had been his grandfather’s necklace. Maybe the crucifix would help him when the evil finally came. Maybe it would keep him safe. It couldn’t hurt.

Now all he could do was sit here and wait. Night was almost here, the last of the daylight was fading over the mountains, the purple sky giving way to the black night sky. The mountains were still a jagged line silhouetted along the horizon. David was down in the pit now. David had told him that he needed to be alone down there when he summoned the doorway. And that was okay with Palmer because he didn’t want to be near that doorway when it was opened again. The moon was rising in the east and it was nearly full. He hoped the full moon would give him some light to see by, but the flickering light of the campfire made the world beyond the fire even darker.

What if this doesn’t work? What if David can’t open the door to the other world, the Void as he called it? What if he can’t get the ritual right? What if his powers aren’t strong enough to stop or even kill the Ancient Enemy?

It will end here. One way or another, all of this will end tonight.

Where had that thought come from? Palmer wasn’t sure. It almost felt like someone else’s voice had just whispered in his mind, a voice both familiar and alien at the same time.

He watched the pit in the distance from beside the fire. The fire was making everything else around him darker, and now he could just make out the line of white rocks that made up part of the medicine wheel’s circle. It felt surreal sitting here in the middle of a place called Bone Canyon while a fifteen-year-old boy tried to summon a doorway to another world. This felt like a dream. Like a nightmare. Part of his mind tried to convince himself that what he’d seen in the ghost town had never happened, that it had been some kind of hallucination brought on by the venom of the rattlesnakes when they had bitten him. But he knew it was true, he knew it had happened. And he knew the demon they called the Ancient Enemy was real, and it was close.

It had been deathly quiet for a while now; the only sound was the crackling fire. But then the wind picked up suddenly, and a moment later a bluish light danced along the top of the pit, the light reflecting off of the rocks of the medicine wheel. The light looked almost like the flickering light from a television set in a dark room. Something was happening down there.

Palmer stood up and walked away from the campfire. He had his gun in one hand and the flashlight in his other hand; he couldn’t really remember grabbing them. He was a few steps beyond the fire now, out in the darkness, watching the blue lights dance along the rim of the pit, spreading out into the desert.

Somewhere a coyote yipped

Another coyote answered the first one; this coyote was much closer.

“Oh God,” Palmer whispered as he stared at the lightshow dancing along the rocks and dirt. It was really happening; David was doing something down there. Palmer wasn’t sure if he should go over to the pit and look down, see if David needed any help. But what could he do to help David? Instead, he stood right where he was on the sand, the campfire behind him, the small airplane a black shadow in the night.

The wind was picking up even more now. Sand was swirling around the protective circle of rocks, whipping around the edges of the pit. The blue lights were more intense now, and there was a rushing noise, like a train coming.

And then it was over in the blink of an eye. The wind had died down. The lights were gone. Everything was quiet and still again.

Palmer stood there for a long moment as another coyote yipped. It sounded like the coyotes were talking to each other out there, making their plans to attack as an army. He felt the urge to get back to the campfire and the safety of the firelight. He had built the campfire in front of the rise of a rock hill, something to protect his back and reflect the firelight. He had parked the truck at the other side of the fire. Even though the truck wasn’t a rock wall, it still felt somewhat like a wall of protection. Now he was leaving the fort he had built, that meager place of protection. But he had to look down into the pit. He had to know for sure that it had worked.

He used the flashlight beam to guide his way to the edge of the circle. Now that he was fifteen yards away from the campfire, he could see better out here in the darkness. The moon had risen in the sky and even the scattering of stars helped provide some light. But he still needed the flashlight.

He stepped over the line of large rocks and inside the medicine wheel. The edge of the pit was only another fifteen feet away. He could see the poles of the wood ladder sticking up just above the edge of the pit. He walked towards the ladder carefully, not wanting to stumble and fall over the edge.

When he was at the edge, he shined his light down into the bottom of the pit.

David wasn’t there. The pit was empty. On the stack of rocks there was the wooden box that David had gotten out of Joe Blackhorn’s hogan—the only sign that David had ever been there. Palmer shined the flashlight beam around the walls of the pit, the light picking up objects sticking out of the dirt sections of the wall. He trained his light on one area, staring at it for a long moment.

Bones. There were human bones sticking out of the dirt. They hadn’t been there before when he had stood at the edge of the pit with David.

He panned the light a little to the right and saw the face of a grinning skull partially exposed from the dirt wall. And there were more skulls, more bones. The bones weren’t white, but brown with age.

A rattlesnake rattled close by, and then another one.

Palmer whipped his flashlight beam out towards the desert beyond the circle of rocks, trying to spot the snakes in the darkness, trying to keep his balance at the edge of the pit.

The desert creatures were coming now.

Palmer hurried back across the desert floor to his campfire and Begay’s pickup truck. The wind had picked up again, gusting through this wide valley, the Darkwind blowing through the night and bringing its evil with it. When he got within a few feet of the fire, Palmer heard something from the pickup truck, a skittering along metal. He shined his flashlight beam at the truck and saw dozens of tarantulas and scorpions crawling all over the side of the truck.

It was here now.

More coyotes yipped and rattlesnakes rattled. They were still far off, but getting closer. Palmer even heard the sound of a mountain lion, a low warning growl from the big cat.

But what scared him the most was the shuffling and shifting sound coming from the pit, like those bones were moving around inside the walls of that pit, pulling themselves out of the dirt and assembling into skeletons.

The campfire was getting low and Palmer added a few more branches and twigs to it. He had the cans of gasoline close so they would be ready when he needed them. When the snakes and spiders got too close, he would create his own protective circle of fire to keep them back.

I’m going to die out here tonight.

If that happened then he was glad he had been able to talk to his daughter one last time earlier when he had called her from the gas station. He was happy he had told her he loved her one last time. He was happy she was doing well with a career and a family of her own. He was proud of his own career in the FBI, and he was proud that he had stopped a killer this morning. He hadn’t gotten there in time to save Billy Nez or David’s aunt, but at least he had helped Captain Begay and his wife, and David. He was happy he had gone the last seven years without a drop of liquor. Yes, he’d led a pretty good life and if tonight was his last night on Earth, then he was satisfied with that.

There were more scuffling noises coming from the pit. Palmer could imagine the skeletons standing up, flesh growing on their bones.

Another coyote yipped in the night, answered by another one. They were even closer now. Palmer remembered the animals at the church, the spiders spilling out of the woman’s face, the birds pecking at the windows and getting inside the church, the coyotes standing guard outside. And of course the rattlesnakes.

He picked up one of the plastic cans of gasoline and poured the gas in a line around him and the campfire. He’d found a large branch earlier, it was about three feet long. He used an extra T-shirt from Begay’s pickup truck, tearing the shirt into strips. He wound one of the strips around the end of the branch, tying it there. He lit the end of the branch and touched it down to the line of gas. The flames whooshed up, creating a ring of fire all around him. In that light he saw the rattlesnakes coiling back, the tarantulas and scorpions skittering back along the sand. The fire would hold them off, but for how long? How long before David defeated this demon (if that was even going to happen)? How long before David was back?

Palmer still had his burning branch in one hand and he had Begay’s gun in the other. He aimed the gun at the rattlesnake closest to the ring of fire, the one venturing the closest despite the heat. He pulled the trigger and the snake’s head blew away in a spray of blood, the body coiling around and around violently.

“Come on, you son-of-a-bitch!” Palmer yelled at the night beyond the fire. “I’m ready to die.”

Any day is a good day for a warrior to die. Again, he didn’t know where that phrase had come from and how it had popped into his mind, but it was there, and it gave him an odd sense of comfort.

Yes, if he had to die tonight, then so be it. But he was going to go out fighting.

CHAPTER 50

Begay

Hospital – New Mexico

Angie pushed Begay in the wheelchair all the way to their car. The parking lot wasn’t even half full, and there wasn’t anyone else wandering around out here under the streetlights. Angie helped Begay out of the wheelchair, trying to guide him to the passenger door of the car.

“I got it,” Begay told her. “Go ahead and get the car started.”

Angie darted around to the driver’s side as Begay opened the passenger door and sank down hard into the seat, trying to keep his leg as straight as he could. His knee was screaming now and his head was throbbing worse than ever. But he managed to get in the car and close the door.

“I don’t see anything out there,” Begay said, already out of breath, as Angie got in the car. “I think we’re good for now.”

Angie started the car. She glanced at him and then looked out the windshield. Begay had seen that same look of shock before on a rookie’s face when he had seen his first murder or suicide victim. He’d seen that same look on an officer who’d been shot and was fighting for his life. It was a look of pure shock, like nothing could be trusted as real anymore. And he didn’t like seeing that expression on his wife’s face.

Angie gripped the steering wheel hard as she pulled out of the well-lit parking lot and onto the road, the darkness taking over now.

“Where are we going?” Angie asked even though she was already speeding down the road.

“Home,” Begay said, but then he wondered if they should go somewhere else. He grabbed his cell phone and dialed Agent Palmer’s number from his contact list. It went right to voicemail. “Agent Palmer, this is Begay. Call me back when you get this.”

Begay tried David’s phone but it did the same thing Palmer’s had, going right to voicemail. He left a message there too.

“It’s a good thing we got out of that hospital when we did,” Begay said after setting his cell phone down in the center console. “You wanted me to stay, remember?”

“The doctors wanted you to stay the night,” she corrected.

“Still, it’s a good thing we left.”

“You’re not trying to take credit for that right now, are you?”

Begay shrugged.

Angie tried to hide her smile. She was still tense, still white-knuckling the steering wheel, but she was beginning to relax just a little. He was doing his best to joke with her and set her at ease a little.

“What are we going to do now?” Angie asked, all business again.

“I don’t know. We should go back home.”

“It will come for us there.”

Begay could see that home was never going to be the same for Angie; it would always be tainted by the monster and the people who had died there, always tainted by the evil that had come knocking at their door.

“We could just drive around for a while,” Angie suggested. “Just stay on the move.”

“How much gas do you have?”

“Almost half a tank,” she said. They were passing the edge of town now, getting out into the desert where they wouldn’t see another building for miles.

“We should go home first,” Begay said. “I’ll get my shotgun. The feds didn’t take that. I’ve got another handgun there we could use.”

Angie shook her head. “I gave that one to Agent Palmer because the feds took his gun.”

Begay nodded. “Well, I’ve got a rifle there.”

Angie still didn’t look too sure about going home.

“I need some kind of weapons,” Begay explained. “I need something to protect us with.”

Angie still didn’t say anything. She drove along the two-lane road into the desert.

“The FBI might still be there,” Begay said. “The police.”

She gave him a hopeful look, and he thought it might be enough to convince her. She needed to take a left up at the next road, which would lead to Iron Springs. But that road would be the most desolate part of their journey home.

“You need to turn up here,” Begay reminded her.

Angie finally nodded and turned left onto the road. The canyons and hills stood in the distance like dark giants.

They drove along in silence for a while.

“We’re okay,” Begay told her. “We’ll be okay.”

“You still want to go find Palmer, don’t you?”

“I want to find out where they are,” he answered. “See if they’re still alive.”

Angie was about to say something, but her words were choked off when their car made a clunking noise. The headlights and all of the lights on the dashboard went out.

“What’s wrong?” Begay asked.

“I don’t know,” Angie said. “Everything just died.”

Begay turned around in his seat and looked out the rear window; sharp pains shot from his neck up into his head and down into his back. He didn’t see any cars on the road behind them. “Just pull over,” he told her. “Shift into neutral.”

Angie shifted into neutral as she steered the car towards the side of the road.

“Try to start it again while it’s still rolling,” he told her.

She twisted the key in the ignition.

Nothing.

She twisted the key again and again until they rolled to a stop on the sand at the side of the road, pebbles and sand crunching under their tires.

“Put it in park and try to start it again,” Begay told her, trying to keep his voice calm, trying not to panic Angie any more than she already was.

Angie shifted into park and twisted the key. The car wouldn’t start.

“I’ll call someone,” Angie said. She tried Begay’s phone and then her own. “No signal,” she said, trying her phone again. She looked at him. “We should still get cell phone reception out here.”

“I know,” Begay said. He turned around and looked out the rear window again, trying to ignore the pain in his head and neck. There were no headlights in either direction on the road, no one coming. This was such a remote area and it could be an hour before they saw another vehicle.

Begay realized now that they shouldn’t have tried to go home. They should have stayed in town. But what good would that have done? If the Ancient Enemy wanted to get them out here or in town, then it would. David wasn’t here to protect them now like he had at the house.

The wind picked up, blowing hard suddenly, rocking their car just a bit.

Angie stared at Begay. “That thing did this, didn’t it?” She watched him like she was searching his eyes for the truth. “It made the car die. It made the cell phones die.”

Begay didn’t answer. He didn’t really think he had to.

“I’m scared,” she whispered.

Begay took her hand into his, giving it a gentle squeeze like she had done to him earlier in the hospital room. He looked back out the rear window of their car.

“Why do you keep looking back there?” Angie asked. She yanked her hand out of his and turned around, her eyes widening with shock. “How . . . how can that be possible?”

Awenita was walking up the road towards their car, her naked body still wrapped in plastic, her skin pale, her throat a gaping wound that looked black in the moonlight. The wind was blowing her dark hair around, some of the loose pieces of plastic whipping around her.

“I want you to go,” Begay told Angie. “Run. I can’t run. Even if my knee wasn’t sprained, I couldn’t run very far.”

“No. I’m not leaving you.”

“I’ll fight her off,” Begay said. He didn’t think he would be able to do that for long, but he would try. He didn’t know what else to do. At least Angie would have a chance. If she stayed in this car, she wouldn’t have a chance at all. “Please, Angie. A truck might come by. You could wave it down.”

“No.”

“Angie . . .”

“I said no,” she snapped.

Awenita was at the rear of their car. Then she was walking past Angie’s window to the front of the car. She stood there at the front, staring at them, her hair flying around in the wind, the plastic around her body rattling and crackling. Something moved underneath the plastic and four black tentacles poked out from the plastic and her body, the ends of the tentacles tapered down to points, the skin of the tentacles shiny and slick with blood and fluids in the moonlight. Two of the tentacles slithered towards the sides of the car, their tapered ends fanning out into smaller offshoots of tentacles, like roots growing from a taproot, creating a web across the windows to the rear of the car. The other two tentacles slithered up the hood of the car to the windshield. One of the tentacles continued up onto the roof, but the other one reared back like a cobra, poking at the glass of the windshield as if it was testing the strength of it.

How big was that thing inside of Awenita? It didn’t even seem to make any sense. The thing seemed to keep growing from itself, like a tree from a seed.

The tentacle tapped at the windshield again, harder this time.

Angie grabbed Begay’s arm, pulling him to her. She had tears in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

She shook her head no. “I love you,” she told him.

“I love you,” Begay said, holding her, waiting for their death to come.

CHAPTER 51

David

The Void

David was in the Void now. Everything was a contrast here, a collision of opposites. The place felt limitless, an unending sea of grayness. Yet it also felt claustrophobic, like the mist was pushing down on him, the walls of fog closing in all around him. It felt like he’d been here before, but he also couldn’t remember ever being here; it felt foreign yet strangely like home. The memory of dual lives floated around in his mind—his memory here and his memory back in Hope’s End. And now there were memories of other lives, distant lives.

He needed to concentrate—he was here to save Stella and Cole. But he was also here to stop the Ancient Enemy. Could he kill it? He wasn’t sure. Could he even harm it here in its own world? He wasn’t sure about that, either. Joe Blackhorn seemed to think he could defeat the Ancient Enemy, so he would just have to use the confidence his former teacher had in him.

There didn’t seem to be an immediate threat near him now, yet the Ancient Enemy seemed to be all around him. The hairs were standing up on his skin and he felt the electricity buzzing in the air all around him, like static electricity on a dry but stormy day. Every atom around him seemed to be vibrating here, and it seemed like he could hear the frequency, like it was a language he could understand. The world here was malleable, controllable, solid matter could be formed from the mist all around him.

Stella and Cole were here somewhere. They could be a mile away or a million miles away. But distance didn’t matter in this world, and neither did time; none of that existed here in this ever-changing yet never-changing world.

David closed his eyes and concentrated on Stella, listening to her frequency. He held the eagle feather in one hand and touched the ghost beads hanging around his neck with his other hand, and then he touched the silver charm on the necklace. The symbols drawn on his hands were glowing now; he didn’t need to look at them, he could feel the warmth on his skin, the power inside of him. The necklace and the feather might just be talismans, objects with no power as Joe Blackhorn had said in his letter, but David felt like he was drawing even more power and energy from them.

“Stella,” David whispered, calling out to her.

She was close, but he couldn’t hear her yet.

“Stella,” he whispered again, a little louder this time.

She screamed from the mist.

David focused on her scream. He opened his eyes and . . .

. . . he was beside her and Cole now, like he had teleported there. They were surrounded by the dead, ghosts summoned by the Ancient Enemy and solidified into life. David saw the bank robbers from the cabin in Colorado, including Trevor, Cole’s brother. He saw the archaeologists from the dig site, and Jim Whitefeather with his eyes gone. Tom Gordon’s eyes were gone, too; there were just two deep black holes in his frozen face, the ice on his skin and clothing crackling as he moved forward. He saw others from the Mountainside Inn, the salesman who had been crushed up but somehow still alive, the clerk from the front desk, his upper body twisted in a different direction from his lower half. He saw the tall, thin Swede from Hope’s End, his torso naked, his belly bloated as spiders wriggled around inside, his throat swollen with them. He saw the cowboy and Rose, the woman he had gone upstairs with at the saloon, their bodies twisted together like taffy. He saw the others from Hope’s End, the dead townspeople. And there were others he didn’t even recognize. So many of them. Hundreds of them.

But his eyes settled on the man and the woman from the ghost town church, both of them still wearing his parents’ skinned faces. And then he saw his parents right behind them, their faces red masks of gore like chewed raw hamburger.

That’s not them. That’s the Ancient Enemy.

The dead were closing in fast, all of them rushing forward at the same time.

David raised his hands up. Words came out of his mouth without his understanding what they were. Joe Blackhorn had tried to teach him the language of the ancients, but David had never learned much of it, but those words and phrases of power were pouring out of him now, the symbols Billy had drawn on his hands were glowing yellow, then orange, and then a deep red like magma from a volcano. He waved his hands back and forth in front of him like he was erasing a chalkboard, the eagle feather still clenched in his fingers. He spun around in a slow circle, erasing the dead that charged them. Their flesh was wiped away like the mist itself, disappearing like ash blown on the wind, leaving behind the skeletal remains of the Ancient Enemy inside of them. Each structure looked like a human sized and shaped tree with branches for the arms and legs, a network of thinner branches growing out from the bigger ones like a network of vines.

Exposed now, the skeletal membranes that had controlled each of the dead crumbled down to the ground like collapsing buildings, breaking up into smaller creatures that looked like beetles with no legs, scurrying away into the mist to regroup, to collect together again into a monstrous creature—the Ancient Enemy’s true form. Maybe not. Maybe David, Stella, and Cole would never be able to see the true Ancient Enemy; maybe their minds weren’t able to process it, just like this world was only what their own minds could project onto it.

“David,” Stella breathed out. She hugged him.

David hugged her, holding her for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” she said when she pulled away. “We tried to run. We tried to get up here to help you, but it took us into a doorway, into the Void. It used us as bait to get you here.”

“I had to come,” David told her. “I never had a choice. If I don’t stop it now . . .”

Stella just nodded. David could tell that she understood what would happen if the Ancient Enemy won; she had seen in it in her mind, in her dreams. She had seen the tidal wave of death coming. And Cole had seen it, too.

Crackling noises sounded from all around them in the mist. The Ancient Enemy was rebuilding. It was going to come at them again soon.

But David knew something about the Ancient Enemy now; he knew that it was weaker. It had punched itself out in a way just now, like it had at Joe Blackhorn’s house when it had controlled all of those animals and the wind. Now it was regrouping, but taking its time, trying to recharge its power. It was also spread out in too many places. David saw now that it was trying to attack Agent Palmer, Captain Begay, and Angie. David knew he had to attack now, he couldn’t let the Ancient Enemy get its strength back.

David stepped forward, raising his hands up in front of him. He still had the eagle feather in his fingers, and the symbols on his hands and arms glowed even brighter now. But there were more symbols on his flesh now, symbols that Billy Nez hadn’t drawn on his skin; these were new symbols, even more powerful ones creeping up his arms; they were all over his body now, heating it up. But David didn’t feel the pain; all he felt was the anger as the power grew inside of him, ready to blow like a faulty boiler.

“This is for my aunt!” David yelled at the mist and the shadows moving around in it. “This is for my mom and dad!”

David thrust his hands forward and strings of light shot out of him in every direction, shooting into the mist like a web, like threads of light that went on forever, wrapping around those shadows in the mist, wrapping around them like a net, holding them, heating them up, hurting them. He could hear the Ancient Enemy’s screams inside of his mind; he could feel its pain and its fear.

The tentacles shot out from the mist, rushing towards David in one last effort to hurt him, but as they touched him, they withered and died. But they had hurt David; he had felt the pain. He knew he was injured, but he didn’t know how badly.

“Die!” David yelled, still seeing his family in his mind, still seeing Stella and Cole and all of the others that this ancient being had tormented and killed.

More tentacles shot out from the mist, striking him, hurting him.

And then everything went black in David’s mind and he collapsed.

CHAPTER 52

Begay

Western New Mexico

Begay and Angie held onto each other inside of her car, waiting for the death they knew was coming.

The tentacle poked at the windshield one more time, even harder this time, and then it reared back like a snake about to strike, about to punch through the windshield and into them.

The tentacle froze. All of the tentacles froze. Even Awenita beyond the tentacles stood frozen in the night. The tentacle in front of them fell down onto the hood of their car with a thud, and then it began dissolving, turning to ash, blowing away into the wind. All of the tentacles were gone in seconds.

Awenita’s dead body stood in front of their car for a moment, but with nothing inside of her to hold her up anymore, she collapsed onto the ground in front of their car, out of sight now.

“What happened?” Angie asked.

Begay shook his head, and he couldn’t help smiling. “I . . . I think it’s over.”

“Over?”

He looked at Angie. “I think David just defeated the Ancient Enemy. Wherever he is, I think he hurt it or drove it back again to its own world. Maybe he killed it.”

Angie jumped when their car started on its own, the headlights turning on and shining into the darkness and down the edge of the lonely road.

Begay picked up his cell phone, checking to see if he had service.

Angie hugged him, crying harder now, holding him tight. She grabbed the shifter, ready to shift into reverse.

“Wait,” Begay told her.

Angie just stared at him.

There was a signal on his phone, a weak one, but it was there. He dialed the number for the Navajo Tribal Police, a private number he knew well. “Someone needs to take Awenita’s body back to the hospital,” he told her. “We can’t leave her out here in the desert.”

Angie nodded.

Moments later, the arrangements were made. They would wait for the captain to get here. He tried Agent Palmer’s phone again, but he still wasn’t getting through.

They’re going to be okay, Begay told himself. He looked at Angie. “We’re going to be okay.” He stroked her hair. “We’re all going to be okay.”

CHAPTER 53

Palmer

Bone Canyon

Palmer had used up all of the bullets in Begay’s gun and the ones in Cole’s 9mm. He had used up all of the gas in both of the plastic cans. His campfire was getting low now, the pile of brush he had used for fuel almost gone. The pickup truck had tarantulas and scorpions all over the side of it. Coyotes yipped in the darkness, even closer now. There were at least two mountain lions out there. But the rattlesnakes, the creatures that Palmer feared the most, were now slithering towards him.

He should have saved one of those bullets for himself. But he didn’t want to do that. David was somewhere else; he was fighting. And Palmer would fight too. He had his branch with the piece of cloth wrapped around it. He had stuck the end of the branch into the dying campfire, catching it on fire. It wasn’t much, but he would use it to fight off the snakes until there were too many of them.

Five rattlesnakes were slithering towards him, two of them coiling up, ready to strike, the rattles on their tails going crazy. It was like the snakes knew he was out of gasoline and bullets.

Of course they knew.

As the snakes began to slither towards him, Palmer backed up towards the rock wall behind him. He was cornered, trapped. The snakes would be on him in seconds.

But then the snakes stopped. All of them. The tarantulas and scorpion dropped off of the side of Begay’s pickup truck, skittering away into the desert. The snakes seemed to be confused, two of them turning around and slithering away. Palmer had seen the snakes act like this before in the church when David had driven the Ancient Enemy away.

“David,” Palmer whispered.

He stepped forward, waving the fire at the end of his stick at the last three rattlesnakes remaining. They reared back, afraid of the fire, crawling away quickly into the darkness. A few coyotes yipped, but they were farther away now.

The animals were gone now. There were still a few spiders and scorpions, but they were crawling away.

Palmer took a few steps away from the rock wall, closer to his dying fire. He picked up his flashlight and turned it on. He rushed past the campfire towards the medicine wheel and the burial pit inside of it. He got to the edge of the pit, shining the flashlight down into the pit. The stack of flat rocks was still there, and now there were human bones and skulls scattered everywhere along the floor of the pit.

But David wasn’t there. It seemed like the Ancient Enemy was gone, but David still wasn’t back.

CHAPTER 54

Stella

The Void

David had defeated the Ancient Enemy. He had driven it back, but now David was down on the ground. He was out. Maybe dead.

No, he can’t be dead.

She rushed over to him and crouched down beside him. The memory of the cabin in Colorado came back to her, when she had crawled over to him through the snow after he had gotten them out of the cabin. She knew he hadn’t been dead then, just knocked unconscious, but she wasn’t so sure now.

David’s face was covered in cuts. His hands were curled up into fists. The ancient writing and symbols on his skin had faded quite a bit. She shook him, trying to wake him up. She felt his neck for a pulse. There was a pulse, a weak one.

“Is he dead?” Cole asked, standing right beside them.

“No,” Stella said.

David’s eyelids fluttered, and then he opened his eyes.

“David,” Stella said, crying. “You did it. You killed it.”

He closed his eyes again.

She shook him gently again. “David, you need to wake up. We need to get out of here.” She had told David that he had killed the Ancient Enemy, but she couldn’t be sure. What if it was regrouping and getting its strength back? What if it was waiting to strike, knowing that David was hurt and weak now?

A loud crashing noise sounded from the mist, like a wall of rock slamming down. A moment later the ground under their feet vibrated from it.

“What the hell’s that?” Cole asked.

Another crash. This one louder. This one closer.

“I think this place is falling apart,” Stella said. She could picture in her mind that this place wasn’t real, and now that the Ancient Enemy was either destroyed or gone, the place was folding in on itself and dying, going away, collapsing into nothingness.

“David.” She shook him harder. “David, you need to wake up. We have to get out of here.”

The crashing was louder now, and closer. The ground was shaking.

“David!”

His eyes popped open.

“David, this place is collapsing. We have to go!”

He nodded slightly and Stella saw that he understood, he had seen it in his mind. He moaned as he struggled to get to his feet. Cole and Stella helped him. He raised his hands, waving them around lethargically, trying to summon the doorway, but nothing was happening.

The crashing was even closer now, like slabs of rock folding over slabs of rock, compressing and dissolving, mashing into each other, destroying atoms along the way, crushing itself into nothing.

The faded symbols on David’s hands glowed weakly, just a pale yellow. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried again. He whispered, the words coming out quickly.

They weren’t going to make it. David was hurt, too weak to summon the doorway.

Stella took one of David’s hands, lowering it, holding on to it. Then she took Cole’s hand. They held hands. She felt something inside of her, a burning that didn’t hurt, a glowing warmth that wasn’t hot. She realized that she was whispering words that she didn’t understand. Cole was whispering the words too, an ancient language that hadn’t been spoken in centuries. They were helping David, giving him some of their strength, some of their life. They were feeding off of each other, yet strengthening each other.

She opened her eyes and saw a spinning black sphere in front of them, blue lightning crackling off of it. Cole squeezed her hand tighter. He was still whispering, still chanting.

The sphere was getting bigger and bigger, but it was wobbling and the lightning was fading. It was beginning to close.

This was their only chance.

She and Cole took David’s hands, jerking him forward to the black hole, pulling him forward before it collapsed like everything else in this world. She wasn’t sure if they had made it because everything faded away to nothingness.

CHAPTER 55

Palmer

Bone Canyon

Palmer backed away from the pit and then the medicine wheel. He was halfway between the dying campfire and the circle of rocks. Everything was still dark and quiet. There was no wind now and even the coyotes had stopped yipping.

There was nothing.

David still wasn’t back. Was he trapped in the other world now? Was the Ancient Enemy keeping him there? Had the Ancient Enemy actually won?

Just then there was a flash of blue light from the pit, the same flickering blue lights Palmer had seen before when David had opened the doorway down inside the burial pit.

“He’s back,” Palmer whispered. He ran to the medicine wheel, his flashlight beam bobbing around in the darkness. He was at the edge of the pit a few seconds later, right by the old wooden ladder. The blue lights were already gone and the pit was dark.

Maybe it hadn’t worked. Maybe they weren’t back.

But then Palmer heard voices. He shined the flashlight beam down at the other end of the large pit and saw Stella and Cole; they were standing over David who was sprawled out on the floor of the pit. She stared up into the flashlight beam. “David’s hurt.”

Palmer hurried down the ladder and ran to them. Together, he and Cole helped David up the ladder. David’s face was battered and bruised; he was in and out of consciousness, muttering and whispering words Palmer didn’t understand. The symbols that had been painted on his hands and forearms were gone.

Minutes later they were out of the pit and on their way to Begay’s truck.

When they got to the pickup truck, Cole and Stella helped David into the backseat, laying him down with Stella in the back.

“Watch out for spiders and scorpions,” Palmer said as he kicked sand over the embers of the campfire to extinguish it.

“What?” Cole asked, suddenly tense.

“There were some spiders and scorpions on the truck earlier. I think they’re all gone, but . . .” He shrugged like he couldn’t be sure.

Cole climbed into the passenger seat as Palmer got in the driver’s seat. He flipped on the headlights and they shined right on the small airplane in the distance.

“Holy shit,” Cole whispered. “Is that the plane we flew in?”

“Yeah,” Palmer said. “I got your stuff out of it.” He handed the 9mm to Cole. “I used all of the bullets on rattlesnakes.”

Cole nodded. “I saw the dead snakes on the way to the truck.”

“I tried to hold them off as long as I could,” Palmer said as he drove towards the trail. “I didn’t think I was going to make it. Your papers and money are in the glove box.”

Cole didn’t open the glove box to look.

Stella whispered to David. “Hold on, David. We’re going to get you some help.”

“What happened to him?” Palmer asked Cole.

“He fought against the Ancient Enemy, but it struck back at him. It hurt him, but I’m not sure how bad.”

“Is it dead?” Palmer asked. “Did he kill it?”

“I don’t know,” Cole answered. He looked into the backseat at Stella. “I think so.”

“We need to get him to a hospital,” Stella said with tears in her eyes.

“I’ll get there as fast as I can,” Palmer said and picked up his cell phone. He saw the voicemails from Captain Begay, but he still didn’t have enough of a signal to make a call yet. “I’ll call the captain as soon as we have a signal. He’ll direct us to a hospital.”

CHAPTER 56

Stella

Arizona – one week later

Cole drove the car down the highway. Stella was in the passenger seat and David sat in the back. He had his backpack from school beside him on the backseat and the rest of his bags were in the trunk.

Stella’s mind slipped back to a week ago. She remembered rushing through the desert in the middle of the night, trying to get to the closest hospital, which seemed like it was a million miles away.

The next twenty-four hours had been tense. The good news was that David didn’t have any life-threatening injuries. The bad news was that the doctors at the hospital weren’t sure why David was unconscious, and they didn’t seem to be entirely buying the story that David had fallen down the side of a hill and busted himself up.

It had been Cole and Palmer who had come up with the idea of a cover story as they drove to the hospital. Palmer brought it up first, thinking practically. He knew the doctors were going to wonder how David had sustained his injuries. They sure weren’t going to believe that David had entered a different dimension to save everyone on Earth.

Captain Begay and a few of the officers from the Navajo Tribal Police met them at the hospital. Between Begay and the two officers, they convinced the doctors that David hadn’t been abused, no matter how suspicious the story about a fall in the desert sounded.

David regained full consciousness, but he claimed to the doctors that he couldn’t remember the “accident” at all. None of the tests showed any signs of brain damage. He was dehydrated and exhausted, and he had some superficial cuts and bruises on his body, but there were no broken bones or damage to any of his organs. He was released the next day into Captain Begay and Angie’s care since there were no close family members who could (or wanted) to take care of him. When David got back to Begay’s house, he had asked about his Aunt Awenita. He wanted a funeral for her, but it was going to have to wait for a few more days because the FBI was still gathering all of the evidence it could from the bodies.

Palmer had to go back to Denver the day David was released from the hospital. He needed to be with his daughter so they could make their own funeral plans for his ex-wife and her husband. He told Stella before he left that she would no longer be a person of interest in the Dig Site Murders because Cardenelli and the FBI were going to pin all of the murders on Patrick Arthur Curry, whether they had all of the physical evidence or not. Cardenelli wanted this case closed before he retired; he wanted to be remembered as the one in charge when one of America’s worst serial killers was finally stopped. Palmer got some of the credit in the news, but he told Stella that he didn’t want to do any interviews; he just wanted his old life back, and he wanted to repair his relationship with his daughter and her kids.

Captain Begay and Angie tried to pick up the pieces of their life over the next few days. Even though they hadn’t suffered any losses in their family, they had lost friends and members of their community. The town of Iron Springs had suffered so much, but there was also a sense of relief that it was finally over, that the man (and some said the demon inside of him) had finally been stopped. Captain Begay and his wife were considered heroes now. But then again, Captain Begay had always been considered a hero in this town.

Now that Stella was no longer a “person of interest,” she could have her old life back. She had talked about it with Cole because he was still a suspect in the bank robbery and murder in Cody’s Pass, Colorado. But Cole still had his fake ID (which Palmer assured him would pass any sniff test), so he would live under his new name. He had kept out of the way over the last week as the FBI and Navajo Tribal Police continued their investigation. Cole told Stella that he knew they couldn’t go back down to Costa Rica now, not under the names Travis and Melissa, because their Toyota 4x4 was parked at the scene of a horrific murder at the small airport in the jungle. It was all over for them down there. Most of those seven years in Costa Rica had been great, but he was ready to start a new life with Stella.

A lot of David’s family was gone. He had no brothers or sisters. His parents and aunt were dead. David had some distant relatives on the Navajo Reservation, but they didn’t want him because he would never live down the horrors that had happened here; his name would always be associated with the evil spirits that had plagued this town. There would always be some who were still suspicious of him. There would always be some who would still believe that David was behind it all. David would have Captain Begay on his side, and that would carry a lot of weight, but it wouldn’t be enough. David loved his people and his culture, but for now he just wanted to get away from all of the terrible memories of this place.

Three nights ago Stella had talked to Cole in bed about letting David live with them. She wasn’t sure how Cole would react, but it only took him a millisecond to agree that it was a good idea. She loved him for that, along with so many other things.

“Do you think you’d like to stay with us for a while?” Stella had asked David the next morning.

David had looked surprised at her offer, like he’d never considered it. But then a smile appeared on his face and his eyes lit up. “Is it okay with Cole?”

“He would love to have you with us. And so would I. If you want to, that is.”

“Yes,” David said and hugged her. He pulled back from her, staring at her. “For how long?”

“For as long as you want,” she told him. She couldn’t help the tears coming then—tears of happiness and relief. “Until you get tired of us.”

They had spent the week at Captain Begay’s house. Angie seemed to be happy to have all three of them there. Stella saw the haunted look in Angie’s eyes; she recognized that look because she’d seen it on her own face in the mirror so many times over the last seven years.

Even though the Ancient Enemy was gone, Angie still insisted on burning herbs and whispering prayers and songs. Anything to keep the evil spirits away. She felt that if the Ancient Enemy was real, then other demons could be real—there could be other evil spirits out there in the dark.

Over the last two days Stella and Cole had helped David pack up his things in his Aunt Awenita’s house. The house would go to him when he was eighteen years old, but for now David decided to keep most of his aunt’s possessions right where they were. He packed up his room, giving some of his stuff away for donation, and only taking a few bags with him. He kept the books Joe Blackhorn had given him, and the little figures Joe Blackhorn had carved from wood and stone. After he was gone, David wasn’t going to worry about his house. No one was going to go near it. No one would ever buy it; his house would always be a haunted place.

Now they were driving down to Phoenix where they could start over. They still had plenty of cash and Stella could start working again soon, maybe even publishing papers again. She also had some ideas for a novel, but she would take it slow.

They hadn’t officially adopted David, and he was still technically in the care of the Begay family. But they would see how things went, and everything would be up to David. He was going to be eighteen years old in two and a half years, and then he would be able to do whatever he wanted then. But for now he could go to high school in Phoenix, maybe even college afterwards. He had already expressed interest in archaeology, and Stella was happy about that—she would help him in any way she could.

Stella felt good as they drove down the highway, her arm out the window, her hair blowing in the wind. She was sure the nightmares would haunt her over the next few years, but they would fade in time. Things were going to be so much better soon. The Ancient Enemy wouldn’t haunt them anymore, not that demon or any other evil spirits.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

Thank you so much for reading my ANCIENT ENEMY box set. I hope you enjoyed it. Being an author is a dream come true for me, and it only happens because of readers like you. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I had a blast writing the four books in this series, and unfortunately they had to come to an end. But I hope you’ll check out my other books and series, including my Dark Days post-apocalyptic series, which I’ll be formatting into two box sets in the near future. Once again, thank you for reading!

Please feel free to follow my blog for updates, new releases, sales, articles, and more. Just click on the link below and select the Follow button.

www.marklukensbooks.wordpress.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Mark Lukens has been writing since the second grade when his teacher called his parents in for a conference because the ghost story he’d written had her a little concerned.

Since then he’s had several stories published and four screenplays optioned by producers in Hollywood. He’s the author of many bestselling books including: Ancient Enemy, Sightings, The Exorcist’s Apprentice, Devil’s Island, Followed, and many others. He’s proud to be a member of the Horror Writers Association.

He grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida. But after many travels and adventures, he settled down near Tampa, Florida with his wonderful wife and son . . . and a stray cat they adopted.

He loves to hear from readers!

You can find him on Facebook here:

https://www.facebook.com/Mark-Lukens-Books-670337796318510/

You can follow him on Twitter www.twitter/marklukensbooks

His blog is: www.marklukensbooks.wordpress.com

And he can be reached via email at mark@marklukensbooks.com and marklukensbooks@yahoo.com

A billionaire assembles a team of ghost hunters to investigate an abandoned Caribbean island with a dark and bloody past.

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Four film school students investigate a remote cabin where an alien abduction reportedly took place many years ago . . . but they encounter much more than they ever could have imagined.

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I hope you’ll check out the first book in my Dark Days post-apocalyptic series. When the Ripper Plague sweeps the earth, the darkest days are just beginning.

www.amazon.com/dp/B07SCPL6QB

After Zach’s wife seems to have been abducted from a restaurant, he stops at nothing to find out where she is. But the deeper he digs into her past, the stranger things get.

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As a stalker terrorizes Phil and Cathy, dark clues surface from Phil’s past that convinces Cathy that Phil may know who their stalker is and what he really wants.

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Table of Contents

ANCIENT ENEMY
OTHER BOOKS BY MARK LUKENS:
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
PART 1
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
PART 2
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
PART 3
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
PART 4
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
CHAPTER 72
CHAPTER 73
CHAPTER 74
CHAPTER 75
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER 76
PART 1
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
PART 2
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
PART 3
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: