In honor of Friday the 13th, I’m making THE HERETIC, book one in my internationally bestselling Templar Chronicles series, free over at Amazon for the next 48 hours.  If you’re looking for some new urban fantasy with a male lead, swing on over and download a copy – you won’t be disappointed!

Get it now!

Book one in the Templar Chronicles

Then head on over to Wowio.com, where Direct TV is sponsoring a free pdf download of the complete graphic novel for your reading enjoyment!

Candice Crow was released this past June from Arcana Studio and features a script by me and artwork by Angel Angelov.

From the cover:

For the last six months my life has been sliding out of control, but even in my worst dreams I’d never imagined that it could get this bad.

My name’s Candice Crow.  Welcome to my messed-up life.

Candice Crow’s just your average American teenager until the death of her mother and the stress of her best friend’s alleged suicide causes her previously dormant powers to surface.  Telepathy.  Telekinesis.  Extreme strength and agility.  Everything a girl could ask for, really.

Gifts like these always come with a price, however, and for Candice it means she’s forced to wear a special suit every few hours to keep her skin from necrotizing from the inside out.  Still, she’s determined not to let that put a damper on either her love life or her dreams of being a rockstar.

But first, Candice intends to find out what happened to her best friend, Claire, and heaven help anyone who gets in her way.

Book one in the Templar Chronicles

I’ve written more than a dozen books in the last seven years, but my favorites have always been the Templar Chronicles series.  First published by Pocket Books, the series hit a bestseller list in Europe, was adapted into a comic book series in the UK, and has been translated into multiple languages, including German, Russian, and Polish.

I want to introduce the series to the new wave of Kindle, iPad, Sony Reader and Nook owners this holiday season… and to do that, I’d like send anyone who wants it a FREE COPY of the first book in the trilogy, THE HERETIC,  in whatever eformat you prefer (epub, .prc, PDF, txt, html, etc). Here’s all that you have to do to get your copy:

1. Send me an email at jnassise@gmail.com with the subject FREE HERETIC and give me your name and the address of your website/blog.  (If you don’t have one, that’s okay, as there is an alternative we can use – see below)

2. Agree to post a review, positive or negative but preferably without spoilers, on your blog, website, Amazon page, Goodreads page, Facebook page, etc by Christmas Eve. (You don’t have to buy the book on Amazon to review it there, you only need to have an account, so you can use that if you don’t have a website.)

3. Email me a copy of the review or a link to the post.

This offer is limited to the first 50 people who respond by December 15th. (I might make the same offer for books two and three if this works out.)

Here’s a quick summary of what the book’s about:

Centuries after the Knights Templar were presumed destroyed at the hands of King Phillip and Pope Clement V, the Order resurfaces as a secret militant arm of the Vatican, tasked with defending mankind from the supernatural.

At center stage is Knight Commander Cade Williams, a veteran of the Order and a man torn between his thirst for vengeance and his need to discover what happened to him during an encounter with a supernatural entity known as the Adversary five years before. That same encounter scarred him, body and soul, and left him with supernatural abilities of his own, including the power to cross into the world of the dead. Now Cade leads the famed Echo Team, a special forces-style unit that gets called out when things go from bad to worse.

When Templar commanderies come under attack by unknown forces, it will be up to the Echo Team to get to the bottom of the trouble.  Spectres, revenants and even fallen angels — they’re all in a day’s work for the men of Echo Team and their mysterious commander.

Some of the critical praise the book has received from authors and reviewers includes:

“First-rate, stylish work from Mr. Nassise, with a steady escalation of the story’s speed that makes it almost literally breath-taking.” — Clive Barker

“With THE HERETIC, Joseph Nassise kicks off his TEMPLAR CHRONICLES in fine, swaggering style. This book bobs and weaves like the young Muhammed Ali, keeping us off-guard and entertained with its every surprising move.” — Peter Straub

“Nassise offers readers a tightly plotted terse military horror thriller in ‘The Heretic’. There’s not a whiff of pretension and not an ounce of fat here. Just the good old muscles, gore and the terror of a soul in danger.” — The Agony Column

“THE HERETIC has it all — action, suspense, terror, sharp dialogue, a dynamite central concept, and richly drawn-drawn characterization. Don’t try pigeon-holing this book, because Nassise — like his Templar Knights — doesn’t stand still long enough for you to take aim. This is cross-genre fiction at its absolute best. I, for one, cannot wait for the next book in what promises to be a long and rewarding series.” — Gary Braunbeck

“THE HERETIC is a genre bending thrill ride that heralds the debut of a series to watch…and enjoy.” — Bev Vincent in Cemetery Dance Magazine

“A breakneck-paced thriller that delivers on the thrills and tosses in more than a few more chills.” — Kelley Armstrong

“THE HERETIC is a genre-bending thrill ride that heralds the debut of a series to watch…and enjoy.” — Cemetery Dance Magazine

“One part military thriller, one part religious horror, and 100% fast-paced action” — The Horror Channel

“Hellraiser meets Delta Force by way of George Romero.” — The Trades Entertainment Magazine

“Horror fans will be delighted to discover the works of Joseph Nassise, a relatively new writer who can hold his own with such masters as Douglas Clegg, Bentley Little, and Stephen King.” — Midwest Book Review

So, grab your copy, post a review by Christmas Eve, then send me a link.  That’s all there is to it!

I hope you enjoy it as much as others have!

Looking for something new to read?   I’m giving away from ebook versions of The Heretic: Book One of the Templar Chronicles to everyone who signs up for my mailing list.  Just enter your name and email address in the form on the right and you’ll receive instructions on how to download your copy of this bestselling urban fantasy tale.

Back on April 27th I started posting one chapter a day from my 2003 novel RIVERWATCH.  I thought it might be a nice way to give back to some of my fans while at the same time introducing others to my fiction in a way that doesn’t require them to lay out any cash or even much effort.  Subscribe to the feed and voila – every day a new chapter in a book that was nominated for both the International Horror Guild Award and the Bram Stoker Award.  How much easier can it get than that?

So here we are at day 17 and I’m starting to wonder if I should bother continuing.  There hasn’t been a single comment or tweet on any of the entries, so I don’t know if people are enjoying the posts, bored with the story, or just completely indifferent to the entire concept.  Traffic to the site has jumped a little, but not by much, so it doesn’t seem to be attracting new readers, although this could be simply be because I haven’t had time to get out there and promote it all that much.

With all that said, I’ve decided to leave it in your hands.  If you want to see the daily posts continue, leave a comment below.  If I don’t receive any feedback one way or another over the next couple of days,  I’ll probably stop the daily posts and simply put up a single link to download the ebook as a whole.  That way people still get to read the book (and finish the story they’ve started) if they want to.  Who knows – maybe more of you will like that approach anyway?

RIVERWATCH

Damon spent his first twenty minutes on the scene interviewing Jake and Katelynn. After telling them he’d be in contact shortly to follow up, he let them go home and turned his attention to the scene itself.  He had a lurking suspicion for the last several days that they’d missed something at the first two crime scenes, something special, something that would provide that one important clue he so desperately needed. This time he intended to take no chances.

If it’s here, he thought with grim determination, we’ll find it.

He ordered the officers to take up watch at the gates to the estate with the command that they admit no one but the coroner and the state police forensic squad. Officers searched the house thoroughly looking for any sign of the owner, to no avail. Hudson Blake was quickly put at the top of the Sheriff’s suspect list and an APB was put out on him with a “wanted for questioning” alert.

It wasn’t long before Strickland arrived, alerted personally as he’d been by Damon via radio just after the call came in. Ed came up the drive in a hurried walk, his black doctor’s bag in one hand and his crime scene kit in the other.

Damon turned toward the house and matched his stride, filling Ed in on the details as they went in.

On the second floor they stopped at the entrance of the room before entering, letting initial impressions sink in. Roughly forty square feet, the room looked to have once been a study. A desk was pushed flat against the wall off to the right, next to a small table. Bookshelves partially lined two of the other walls. A glass shelved display case stood between the bookshelves, filled with medieval weaponry. The fourth wall, directly opposite the door in which they were standing, was split in the center by a set of open French doors.

In the middle of the room a large circle had been drawn on the polished wood floor with some kind of white powder or sand. In the center of that circle, a second design had been similarly laid out. A bejeweled sword was thrust point first into the floor inside the latter. A dark stain coated the blade’s surface and a section of the floor several feet wide surrounding the tip of the blade. The light from the morning sun coming in through the open balcony doors glistened off the precious stones set in the weapon’s hilt and cast a long, cross-shaped shadow across the floor in their direction.

Beside him, Damon heard Strickland whisper, “What in the name of God…?”

Once Damon tore his gaze from the strange tableau in the center of the room, he noticed what had sparked Strickland’s outburst.

Small amounts of blood were splashed in odd places throughout the rest of the room: on the spines of a book, on the front of the desk, on the gossamer-like curtains that blew in the slight breeze coming through the open doors. The headless corpse of a small animal, possibly a cat, lay in one corner as if carelessly tossed there. A small gilded cage stood incongruously on the desktop beside a revolver.

A man’s lower leg jutted out from behind one of the open balcony doors.

Thinking of the other recent crime scenes, Damon found himself hoping there was a body attached to that leg.

“Ed,” he said aloud, pointing out the limb to his companion, who was still staring in amazement at the condition of the room. The two men made their way to the balcony, being careful not to disturb anything as they crossed the room.

On the balcony they discovered the mutilated body of a middle-aged man. Like the Cummings, large chunks of flesh were missing from the corpse. However, this time the killer had added a new twist. Several weapons, obviously taken from the weapons case in the next room, had been thrust violently into the body and left there, reminding Damon of pins in a pincushion. One corner of Damon’s mind began absently cataloguing the weapons; that’s a broadsword, and an epee, and a dirk…. He shut the voice off quickly.

“Recognize him?” Strickland asked.

“No, but we’ve got a positive ID.”

The man’s face was twisted in a savage expression of fear and pain, partially splashed with blood. Damon told Strickland that Jake had provided a confirmation that the man was Charles Turner, Blake’s butler.

Strickland set his bags down on a clean section of the balcony and opened one up. Withdrawing a pair of thick rubber gloves, he pulled them on and then knelt next to the body to begin his examination.

Damon gave him a few moments to do the prelim, and then asked, “What do you think?”

“No question it’s the same killer. Exterior soft organs gone; eyes, tongue, etc. Chest cavity penetrated, probably find a few organs missing from there as well once I open him up on the table. What I can’t figure are these weapons.”

“Pre or post?” Damon asked, referring to whether or not the weapons had been used while the victim was still alive.

Ed gave it some thought. “At a guess I’d have to say he was still alive when they were used. There’s some evidence of bleeding around the wounds themselves, though it is hard to be sure. From his facial expression there is no question the poor bastard suffered.” Ed shook his head in frustration. “Then again, they could all be post-mortem. Wounds of that type should have bled one heck of a lot, yet the floor beneath him is practically blood-free.” He looked up at Damon. “I can’t say either way until I open him up.”

When Ed bent again over the body, Damon left him to his task and walked back into the room. He surveyed the damage and then headed over to the dark stain in the center of the room. As he got closer to it, several details became clear.

The stain was obviously blood; that was immediately apparent. And though partially obscured by the blood, Damon could see that the design laid out on the floor was actually a pentagram enclosed by a circle. The material with which it had been created was probably salt or colored sand, he guessed. It reminded him of the Hopi sand paintings he’d seen once on a trip out West.

The symbolism troubled him. A pentagram inside of a circle was not all that common. He didn’t like the implications. Back in Chicago he’d encountered the symbol once before, during a rash of cult-related homicides. The killer had been deep into the occult, the murders took place as sacrifices in the midst of a black mass. Is that what happened here? Damon wondered. Was Turner the sacrificial victim in some occult ceremony? Had his death taken place here, inside the room, and his body dragged out onto the porch once it was no longer needed? If so, why? Damon gritted his teeth in frustration. This one was like all the others; too many questions and not enough answers. Starting to be the story of my life, he thought.

Being careful to avoid disturbing anything, Damon moved closer to get a better look at the sword. The blade was roughly three feet in length, most of which was stained with blood. The weapon’s hilt was covered with what looked to Damon to be precious stones, though they might have been fake; he certainly wasn’t one to tell the difference.

All in all, it was an impressive weapon. As were the others in the room. Blake must be quite a collector, Damon found himself thinking.

The thought froze him in place.

Damon stood and moved over to the display case. Some weapons were still in their proper places, but the majority lay in a reckless heap on the floor in front of the case. He looked them over carefully, taking his time, examining the set-up. He counted those he could see, then did his best to mentally place them in their proper places with the help of the identification tags inside the case and his own knowledge of ancient weapons. He did this three times, each time arriving at the same result. If he included the sword in the center of the room and those still in the corpse outside, he came up one short. Another sword of approximately the same length as the one in the center of the room was missing.

Had the killer taken it with him?

Damon moved around the room, bending to look beneath the furniture and the bookshelves, making certain he hadn’t simply overlooked it. Beneath the shelves closest to the display case something glinted in the light from his flashlight. Something red.

Damon withdrew an extendible pointer from his breast pocket and used it to fish the object out into the light.

It was a necklace. A gold necklace on which hung a ruby-red stone of considerable size. The chain itself was broken and stained with more dried blood. Damon guessed that it must have been torn off and flung aside during a struggle, and wondered whose it was. Blake’s? Turner’s? The murderer’s?

He used the pointer to push the necklace into a clear plastic evidence bag he withdrew from another pocket, and marked with his pen, noting the date, time, and location he found it.

At that point Strickland came back in from the balcony. “Okay. Here’s what we’ve got. Turner’s wounds are definitely consistent with the other killings. Rigor has set in, but hasn’t left yet, so we know that his death took place sometime in the last twenty-four hours. There’s no sign of post-mortem lividity on the body. A full autopsy should provide more answers, but for now my guess is that he was killed in this room and moved out to the balcony afterward.”

The sound of Damon’s radio interrupted him.

“Wilson here.”

“Nelson, sir. The CSC team is here. And, uh, so is the press.”

Shit.

“Send up the team. Hold the press at the gate, do not, I repeat, do not let any of them onto the property. We’ve got a crime scene to protect here. Tell them I’ll be right down to talk to them personally.”

He replaced the radio on his belt and looked over at Ed.

The coroner nodded, a grim smile playing across his face. “Have fun.”

“Yeah,” Damon responded dryly, and went downstairs to face the music.

PREMONITIONS

Katelynn awoke the next morning with a nagging suspicion that something was wrong. The dream remained with her still and all through breakfast images flashed before her, reminding her of the horror she’d seen. The face of the man on the balcony kept playing itself over and over again, haunting her, until she knew she would have to do something about it.

Although she was reluctant to admit it to herself, she knew that face in her dreams.

She saw the scene again in her mind.

The open balcony doors.

The symbols etched out on the floor.

The man standing in the center of the room, blood covering his face and chest, a sword held in his right hand.

She’d seen both eager anticipation and sudden fear in his eyes.

Katelynn couldn’t deny it any longer. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind that the man in her dreams had been Hudson Blake.

She saw enough in the local news and had even gone to his estate to try and interview him at the start of her thesis. She could still recall his haughty dismissal of her request and the way he’d slammed the door in her face in dismissal.

What was he doing in her dreams?

Katelynn ate her breakfast, mulling it over, then picked up the phone and called Jake. She told him that she had something important to speak to him about, something that she had to do in person, and asked if they could meet. Jake agreed and told her he’d be at her place within the hour.

Good to his word, Jake arrived just on time. She let him in, and the two of them walked through the kitchen and out onto the deck, where they took seats next to each other on the patio chairs. It was a gorgeous morning, but the heat of the sun did nothing to thaw the chill in Katelynn’s bones.

“I want to go over to Riverwatch.”

Jake could see that she was agitated. “Why?”

“I want to try again to get Blake to give me an interview for my thesis. I thought maybe you could help out.”

Jake laughed. “Hell, Katelynn. The man can’t stand me. You’d probably have better luck going without me.”

“No, I don’t think so. He hired you, didn’t he? Maybe with you there he will be more apt to say yes.”

Katelynn didn’t like lying to Jake. He was a friend and deserved better, but she knew that if she told the truth, he would laugh in her face. Jake was too firmly rooted in reality to believe that something like premonitions could exist outside their weekly Swords and Sorcerers sessions. She wanted him there because she had a nagging suspicion that something would be horribly wrong when they arrived at the Blake estate. Jake had always been level-headed in a crisis, and she needed that rock-solid support if it turned out that she was right.

He protested for several more minutes, but eventually Katelynn wore him down. He had the day off due to the continuing police investigation at the Stonemoor estate. He had yet to hear when they would be resuming work, so he could use that as a pretense for going to see Blake. Reluctantly he agreed, if for no better reason than the fact that he enjoyed her company and had nothing better planned for the morning.

Jake waited while she cleaned up her breakfast dishes, then they went out to the Jeep. Loki was waiting inside and Jake let him out to greet Kate for a moment before they all climbed back inside.

The ride to Riverwatch passed in companionable silence, with an occasional chuff from Loki at a passerby on the street he found particularly interesting. It was a sunny morning, and Jake was feeling pretty good about things in general. He had time off from work with pay, money in his pocket, and good friends. He did his best not to think about the events from earlier in the week, not wanting to ruin the beginning of a great day.

When they arrived at the estate, Jake pulled into the drive and down to the front of the house. He parked directly in front of the entrance, knowing that it would probably irritate Charles, which was okay by him, and got out of the Jeep. Katelynn did the same. Before she could shut her door, however, Loki pushed his way past, shot up the front steps, and began barking furiously at the door.

“Shit!” Katelynn exclaimed.

“Don’t worry about it.” Jake said, shutting his door. “Just leave the door open a minute and I’ll get him back inside.” He called to the dog, fully expecting him to return. He’d trained the Akita well, despite the aggravation and the time it had taken. Having such a large dog made the training mandatory in Jake’s view and since being trained Loki had always obeyed him. This time was no different. The dog stopped barking immediately and trotted back to Jake’s side. But instead of climbing back into the car, Loki stood close to Jake, his attention fixed on the mansion’s front door, growling low in his throat.

Jake had only seen him act this way on one other occasion, and that had been when a burglar had tried to break into his home. Something was wrong, that was clear.

Jake squatted down next to the dog. “What is it, boy? What’s in there?”

The Akita looked at him, and then turned back to the door, growling once again. He took a step or two forward, looked back at Jake, and growled a third time.

“Something’s wrong, Katelynn. He never acts like this. I think we should go.”

“Go?” Katelynn asked. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the dog since he’d leapt from the car. A heavy, suffocating weight was slowly settling on her shoulders as she realized that her suspicions had been correct. Something was terribly wrong here, and Katelynn had a hunch she knew just what it was.

“We have to go inside,” she heard herself say. It sounded to her like her voice was coming from a distance, and she wondered if she’d even said it aloud.

Apparently she had. “Inside? What the hell for?” Jake replied.

“Someone might be hurt, Jake. We can’t just leave.”

“The hell we can’t. If it’s got Loki this upset, I’m not going inside.” He turned toward the Jeep, intending on doing just what he’d suggested, when Loki made his own opinion known. The dog dashed back up the steps and jumped up, putting his front paws against the door.

Much to everyone’s surprise, the door opened beneath him and dumped the dog into the foyer. With a cacophony of barking, the Akita disappeared inside.

“Oh, shit!” Jake exclaimed as he chased after him.

Katelynn followed.

Loki must have gone straight upstairs because Jake could hear barking from somewhere above once he was inside. He raced up the steps to the second floor. Loki’s barking became deeper, more strident, and Jake knew that the dog had found whatever it was he had been looking for.

* * *

Back in the foyer, Katelynn glanced around.

Instinctively she knew the house was empty. She knew it with a certainty that surprised her, and this only served to heighten her discomfort. She was frightened for both Blake and his servant, beginning to think that what she had seen in her dreams had been a premonition of harm for them both.

Somewhere up above, the dog’s barking became more urgent.

Katelynn glanced into the closest rooms. If anyone had been in the house, they would have heard the commotion and come to investigate, but every room she checked was empty. Satisfied that her observation had been correct, Katelynn returned to the entryway and started up the steps to the second floor.

* * *

As Jake reached the second floor landing, he glanced down the hall to find the dog standing in the entrance to the very last room. Loki stopped barking and stared at him, obviously waiting for permission before entering.

Jake was not going to give it.

“Come boy,” he said firmly.

The dog stood his ground.

“I said, Come.”

Loki paced back and forth, whining in his throat. It was clear he was not going to obey the command.

“You’re going to regret this,” Jake said through clenched teeth, his anger rising. The last thing he needed was to be caught here in his employer’s house with his dog. He would be out of a job quicker than he could blink. Shaking his head in frustration, he started down the hall.

As soon as Loki saw that Jake was coming toward him, he turned back to face the room, but did not enter it.

When Jake reached the door, he saw why.

* * *

Katelynn came up the stairs, calling their names. She reached the second floor landing and saw Jake and Loki down at the end of the hall. “What’s going on?” she called.

Jake jumped, and then turned to face her. “Stay there, Katelynn. You don’t want to see this.”

“Don’t want to see what?” she asked, ignoring him.

She started down the hallway, her fear growing with each step.

Jake came forward and tried to stop her, but she slipped by his grasp, needing to know, needing to see.

The room was just as she’d seen it; the bookcases, the symbols drawn on the floor, the sword standing upright in the center of the room, except now the room seemed to have been splashed with blood. It was everywhere, and the stench of it must have been what had drawn the dog. Across the room, Katelynn could see the body of a small animal in the far corner. Through the open patio doors the lower portions of a man’s legs could be seen lying on the balcony.

Loki growled softly.

“Is he..?” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the question.

“I don’t know.”

“We’ve got to find out. What if he needs help?” It was the right thing to do, but in her heart Katelynn knew the man was already beyond help.

Jake nodded and started forward.

Katelynn watched as he made his way across the room and out onto the balcony. He disappeared from view behind the partially opened door and then emerged a few moments later. He saw her looking at him and shook his head, letting her know there was no help to be given.

“It’s Blake’s butler,” he said, when he rejoined her. “We’d better find a phone and call the police.”

Taking hold of Loki’s collar, Jake led the way back down the stairs and into Blake’s study where he knew he would find a phone. He gave the details to the 911 operator and was told to wait outside until the Sheriff arrived.

Back in the Jeep, Jake thought about what he’d seen upstairs. He hadn’t really needed to go into that room, hadn’t really needed to discover if the man they’d seen on the balcony had been dead or alive.

He’d already known.

Once you’ve seen death up close, he thought, you can recognize it anywhere.

Despite the sun shining high overhead, the day was no longer as bright and beautiful as it had been when they’d left Katelynn’s.

It had gotten considerably darker.

In the back seat, Loki looked up into the sky and growled low in his throat.

A WITNESS IN THE DARK

On the other side of town, something stirred.

He awakened slowly, ponderously, like a dragon aroused from its enchanted slumber.

He blinked his yellow, cat-like eyes, once, twice, three times.

A voice was calling to him in his mind, a voice he didn’t recognize.

If it had been the old man, he simply would have ignored it, having already decided he would deal with the old fool when the time was right. But this wasn’t the Elder, nor one of his own kind.

So who then?

As far as he knew, the old man and he were the only survivors of the Age of Creation.

Therefore, it had to be a human.

The notion filled him with mild amusement.

Curious, he closed his eyes and relaxed, sloughing off the earthly restraints imposed on his body, sending his awareness soaring out into that dark realm that separates this world from the next; that place out of time, out of space, where the physical laws of reality no longer have any meaning.

In that realm he was free to travel wherever he willed and he used the summons as a beacon, honing in on it, following it to its source.

What he saw there surprised and delighted him.

It also aroused his hunger.

Taking to the sky, he headed in that direction.

* * *

In her dream, Katelynn was standing in the cemetery.

It was late at night.

The moon was hanging in the sky, a baleful eye in the darkness. Its cold blue light touched the edges of the gravestones around her, sending their long, solemn shadows across the dew-wet grass in perfect rank and file, reminding her of an army standing watchful and still.

A grim, motionless army.

The air was heavy with their silence.

Feeling this silence all about her, Katelynn grew afraid.

Without knowing why, she began to run, slipping in and out between the gravestones as she raced desperately across the wet grass. Her heart was thumping wildly and the need to scream rose dangerously in her throat.

She managed to stifle it in time, knowing that if she let it loose that he would hear her.

That thought startled her and brought her up short in her headlong flight to lean against the nearest tombstone.

“He’ll hear me?” she asked herself, with a moment’s rational thought. “Who will hear me?”

She didn’t know. But she did know he was there.

Behind her. In the darkness.

Coming for her.

She had to get away!

A whimper of fear escaped her lips as she pushed away from the headstone and began running again.

The silence behind her changed; became the silence of fear, thick and lazy.

The air grew colder.

She had the unmistakable feeling he was closer now, relentlessly closing the distance between them, and she glanced around frantically, knowing he was out there but unable to find him.

And then she fell.

* * *

The night grew still.

Even the trees seemed to be holding their breath, standing immobile, frozen in place.

The light breeze that had been blowing moments before suddenly died.

The crickets stopped their singing.

From where he knelt in the middle of the floor, Hudson Blake opened his eyes and looked around the room.

He was alone.

But he didn’t expect to remain that way for long.

The beast was coming…

The feeling that someone was nearby, watching, struck him suddenly, and he instinctively cringed, reacting to the presence on a primal level, animalistically aware of the nearness of danger.

Coming…coming…coming…

His mind screamed at him to run but he remained where he was, believing he was safe as long as he stayed within the confines of the protective circle he’d created. He grasped the stone tighter between his hands, his knuckles leeched white from the effort, and repeated the name again and again in his mind, calling out to him.

Moloch…

Moloch…

Moloch…

Abruptly, he realized he was no longer alone.

The warmth of life slowly seeped from his frame as he saw the shadow that fell on the wooden floor, the shadow of the large hulking beast that crouched on his balcony rail, its wings swept wide in the moonlight.

Blake could only mutely stare as icy terror swept over him with the swiftness of a cyclone, but it was too late for thoughts of escape.

Moloch had arrived.

* * *

The dream shifted, wavered, and then coalesced.

No longer in the cemetery, she found herself standing on a railing. Behind her a thirty foot drop over the balcony stretched away to the ground below. A pair of open French doors faced her, and through them she could see an older man kneeling naked in the middle of the floor. His chest and face were stained with a dark, crimson crust.

Dried blood, she realized, as its tangy aroma reached her nostrils. Her mouth twisted into a wide, cruel grin.

Her tongue flicked forward, caressing her upper incisors, feeling their length and sharpness.

What the hell? a distant part of her mind wondered.

A voice not her own spoke, and a chill ran up and down her spine at the icy menace in its words.

“Give me the stone,” it said.

A hand, her own but not her own, reached forward and uncurled its fist.

She saw with growing horror that it wasn’t human.

There were only four fingers, each one tipped with a razor sharp claw, and when they curled into the palm and back out again, gesturing, she heard them clicking together like the rasp of steel on steel.

Her breath caught in her throat as she tried to scream…

She awoke, gasping for air, the sound of her scream still ringing in her ears. Something clutched at her out of the darkness, twined itself in and out of her legs, and she screamed again, thrashing her limbs frantically, fighting off whatever it was with strength born of desperate fright.

With a start she realized she was merely tangled in her bed sheets, the material clinging to her sweat-drenched skin.

“Oh, my God!” she said, her chest heaving as she fought to control the wild beating of her heart.

“It was a nightmare, just a nightmare,” she mumbled as she slumped back against the headboard, drained and exhausted.

Unlike most dreams, this one stayed with her; most of the details etched firmly in her mind. It had been shockingly real and frightening. She couldn’t imagine what had caused it; she hadn’t had such a vivid dream in years, certainly not one so violent.

Or so strange.

She sat up and glanced at the clock.

Three-thirty.

Hours before daylight yet.

She lay back down, willing her body to relax. In time her shaking finally stopped and her breathing lost its ragged edge, returning to its normal rhythm.

Though she hadn’t expected to return to sleep that night, her exhaustion worked to her advantage. Eventually the gentle sounds of her own breathing lulled her to sleep as easily as a child listening to a mother’s lullaby.

At her breast the red gemstone shone brightly with a crimson light all its own.

Across town, Moloch, the beast the stone had connected her with, continued with his bloody assault.

A SUMMONS IN THE NIGHT

Midnight.

The night was still.

Hushed.

Expectant.

The moon hung low on the horizon, looming there as if poised on the edge of a long drop. Since it was early in its ascension, it filled the sky, a vast ball of incandescence that punched a hole in the night’s blackness.

Standing on his balcony, the smooth flagstones beneath his feet damp from the evening’s chill and glistening with the silvery blue light of the moon, Hudson Blake gazed out into that darkness, watchful and vigilant.

As he watched the darkness, he felt it watching him in return.

He sensed it was hungry.

Turning away, he reentered his study through the set of French doors that led to the balcony, and crossed the room, picking up the withered journal that lay open on his desk. The book’s leather binding was stiff and laced with cracks, its pages fragile, yellow with age and neglect.

He read aloud the entry written on the open page.

“To summon the Beast, one must make a true and worthy sacrifice. An offering of that which is most precious to the denizens of the pit must be made swiftly and without hesitation. Once the blood has been shed, if ye are of sound mind and valor, you must take up the Bloodstone in both hands, cupping it between the palms, with the left hand, the Hand of Vengeance, above the right, the Hand of Righteousness. Repeating the words of the unholy incantation contained herein, reach out with the very essence of your now damned soul and call forth that which you desire.”

He’d read that passage more than a hundred times, and the words fell from his lips with the ease of long familiarity.

Having made a substantial study of ancient, mystical traditions, Hudson dismissed most of the text as bullshit. Such rituals were mainly for show, to bolster the performer’s image in the eyes of the uninitiated.

But as the best lies often contain a kernel of truth, so too did the description of the ritual contain the clues needed to bring it to its proper fruition. And in this instance, Blake was certain he had correctly identified them.

The remarks about the crystal were the key.

Carefully laying the book back onto the desk, Hudson reached up under the collar of the shirt he wore and removed the necklace that was hanging about his neck. The dark stone that dangled on the end of the chain spun in the air like a pendulum, sending off tiny flashes of crimson whenever it was touched by the room’s light.

This was the crystal to which the journal had been referring.

The Bloodstone.

He stared at it now, wondering as always where his ancestor, Sebastian had obtained it. Years earlier he’d shown it to several prominent jewelers. None of them had been able to identify the type of stone or its country of origin. Ever since, it had held a particular fascination for him and he’d often gaze at it for long periods of time, attempting to unlock its secrets.

What he did understand was that it was the stone itself, not the ritual or its flowery incantations that would allow him to communicate with the beast his ancestor had known as Moloch.

He held it up to the lamp, shining the light on its ruby surface. Deep inside the stone, he thought he could see movement.

His eyes narrowed as he looked closer.

There! Something had shifted position deep within its depths.

But what?

While he yearned for the answers, he knew they were really not all that important. Only what the stone would allow him to do was.

He leaned over the desk and reread the vital line in the journal.

“…reach out with the very essence of your soul and call forth that which you desire.”

At first, the line had confused him. How does one reach out with the essence of his soul? But after a time he came to realize that he was seeking a deeper meaning than necessary, that the words needed to be taken in the literal sense. Medieval writers had seen the mind and the soul as one, so the passage was actually referring to the mind. Thus reaching out with his soul really meant reaching out with his mind.

He believed that somehow the crystal channeled his thought patterns, much the same way as an antenna will channel radio signals.

All that he had to do to reach Moloch was think about him.

It should be that simple.

He’d tried it before however, without success. His failure with the stone and his inability to find the hidden vault had caused him to dismiss the entire legend of his ancestor’s winged familiar as so much fantasy.

But now that the vault had been found, he was convinced that the journal’s contents were true.

Maybe it was my doubt all along that prevented the connection.

The discovery of the body in the basement of Stonemoor had added fuel to the flames of his beliefs, and after getting all the information from Caruso that he could, he decided that there was only one possible explanation.

The journal was true; the beast did exist.

And with the death of that vandal, it seemed to have returned to the world after hiding itself for so long.

Not that he cared about the fool who had been killed, that wasn’t important. What was important was the fact that at last he’d be able to prove the family legends that had intrigued him all of his adult life. The end of his search was finally in sight.

His fingers itched to seize the power in their bony grasp.

He first learned of the beast’s existence when he’d found the journal years before, hidden in a niche in the fireplace in one of the mansion’s unused rooms. Upon reading it, Hudson scoffed at the information it contained, but later found himself irresistibly drawn back to its musty, yellowed pages again and again, his mind alight with the possibilities he saw there. It was in the journal that he also learned of his ancestor’s pact with the Beast, and the awesome powers it employed for him. Dreaming of possessing such knowledge for himself, he set about to learn if what the journal contained was true.

Tonight he would finally know.

It was time to begin.

Holding the crystal in one hand by its slim gold chain, he moved to the center of the room.

On the floor at his feet rested a number of objects. Considering what he was about to do, he decided to take certain precautions.

Blake was not a deeply religious man and never had been. When he was younger he scoffed at the idea of God and his army of heavenly hosts. Likewise, if there was no God, then there was no Satan, and no demonic army with which to corrupt man from the salvation that supposedly awaited him.

As he’d grown older, he discovered the power that a religious leader can hold over his followers, particularly religions of a darker nature. He joined one after another, studying the craft, learning from those above him before ruthlessly replacing them, taking their power for his own. All those years had slowly but surely convinced him that there was some truth to what the leaders preached. He had become convinced that there was another realm of reality separate from our own, which could be tapped into with the right methods. It didn’t matter what you called it; the supernatural realm, the astral plane, the Other Side, whatever. It was there. Waiting to be made use of. Of that he was certain. Once he made this concession, it was only a short step to believe that this other realm was populated by beings of which we have little knowledge. Hudson felt it was through encounters with creatures from the Other Side that led man to invent religion. After all, what is religion but the attempt to explain that which man fears and doesn’t understand?

Although he still scoffed at the old rituals with their trappings of mysticism and their elaborate schemes to protect the summoner from the very powers he sought to invoke, he did not abandon them entirely. After all, what if there was some validity to them? Could he take the chance and leave himself vulnerable to the very creature he sought to summon and harness for his own use?

No.

That would be foolish and Hudson Blake was anything but a foolish man.

He replaced the crystal around his neck so that he would have both hands free. Shedding the long, black robe he was wearing, he carefully folded it and laid it aside. He took up a small clay bowl in both hands and moved to the open floor space immediately in front of the French doors.

He held the bowl upright in front of him at arm’s length as if in silent supplication, remaining that way for several long moments.

Lowering his arms, he dipped his left hand inside and took up a handful of the fine white salt that filled the bowl. He knelt on one knee and slowly began to let the mixture fall from his grasp to form a smooth, unbroken line on the floor. Once his hand was empty he repeated the process, inching backward as he went, bit by little bit, until a circle eight feet in diameter was laid out around him.

Satisfied, he stepped out of the circle, carefully avoiding making contact with the powder so its integrity as an unbroken circle would remain intact, and returned to the small pile of objects a few feet away.

Bending, he picked up a small cage and a leather wrapped parcel of considerable length. A large black cat lay curled inside the cage and hissed warily as he lifted the cage, watching him with liquid green eyes that accused without words.

Blake grinned.

He hated cats. Always had. He went out of his way to use them in his rituals, taking a sadistic delight in ridding the world of as many of the foul little beasts as he could. With the two objects in hand, he reentered the circle, again carefully stepping over the boundary, and moved to the center, setting the cage at his feet.

He unwrapped the second object, tossing the covering it had been wrapped in outside the circle. The sword swept free of its scabbard with a soft reptilian hiss, and the sound of the steel scraping against the leather sent the blood quickening in his veins. This was the part of the ritual he liked best, and so he waited a few minutes, letting the anticipation he was feeling build until it was a raging river surging against the mental damn of his will.

When the time was right, when his excitement had reached the proper fevered pitch, he straightened and raised the weapon aloft.

Naked, with the moonlight rippling across the silver blue steel of the blade and a light breeze stirring the edges of his hair like the touch of unseen phantom fingers, Hudson Blake began to sing.

The song started as a low murmur, the sound of the wind whispering through the river reeds, but it built with power as he went, getting louder, stronger, until it grew into the roar of a thousand voices all crying out at once.

In the midst of this, he withdrew the cat from its cage. It hissed and spat at him, scratching his forearm with its claws, but he ignored the attacks. He made certain he had a firm grip beneath its forelegs and then held it out at arms-length, away from his body, still singing all the while.

He drew the sword over his shoulder until he could feel the soft kiss of the blade against the bare flesh of his lower back.

Suddenly, abruptly, he stopped singing.

The silence was thick with tension, the air in the room seeming heavier than when he’d begun, filled now with a vibrant energy.

The cat met his gaze with its own.

Understanding passed between them.

The sword came whistling down, cutting through the air with an eerie shriek.

The cat’s severed head fell at Blake’s feet with a soft, wet sound.

Blood sprayed from the stump of its neck; a hot crimson fountain that splashed Hudson’s face and upper body.

Moving quickly, he held the sword beneath the cat’s upended corpse, turning it like a spit on a barbecue so that the entire blade was covered with blood before the river stopped. When the blood ceased to flow, he tossed the corpse across the room.

With the dripping blade he unhesitatingly traced a pentagram inside the boundaries of the circle he had created earlier. According to custom, as long as he remained inside the symbol he would be safe from harm.

Not being the type to risk everything on one toss of the dice however, Blake stepped clear of the circle and retrieved the last object he’d left on the floor. The Smith and Wesson felt satisfyingly heavy in his hands.

He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.

Returning to the circle, Blake laid the pistol down between his feet. With his other hand he thrust the sword point-first into the floor in front of him so that it stood upright without any support.

He knelt and meditated for several moments, clearing his mind of all extraneous thought.

When he was ready he reached up, cupped the Bloodstone between both palms, and called out with his mind into the dark night, summoning the beast to his side.

GRUESOME DISCOVERIES

The ringing of the phone jarred him awake.

“Wilson here.”

“Sorry to disturb you, sir. But we’ve got a bad one.”

Damon listened for a few moments and then hung up. He was dressed and out the door in less than ten minutes, using both the sirens and lights as he climbed the hills into Harrington Falls. As he made his way down Chestnut Street, it was easy to see the activity that surrounded the house at the end of the block.

The house was a beacon, shining in the darkness, calling out to him, demanding the justice which he could supply, commanding him to avenge those who lay still and silent inside.

Though he was still half a mile away, he could see the house clearly. It stood out from the rest because it was the only one on the block with every window bathed with electric light, like a blazing torch in an empty field, and he moved toward it reluctantly.

The unspeakable had occurred. For the first time in over twenty years, there had been a murder in Harrington Falls.

Damon didn’t want to see what lie waiting inside those four walls, didn’t want to smell the freshly spilled blood or see the wounds, didn’t want to stare into lifeless eyes and wonder what they had seen in those last few precious moments before death.

Despite his resignation he continued on, if for no other reason than it  was his job. There was no one else to do it.

He’d only gone to bed moments before the call had come, and as he put down the receiver he realized he hadn’t been surprised to learn that someone had been killed. All evening since leaving the office he’d been nervous, watchful, unable to relax and settle down the way he usually did after a day’s work, his conversation with Strickland replaying over and over again like a Top Forty record in his mind. It was almost as if he’d been expecting something to happen.

When he arrived he could see the house was set back from the street on a thickly wooded lot. In the drive were several police cars, their blue lights flashing, giving the house’s white paint a sickly glow. Two ambulances were parked at the curb.

The house was a split-level, as were many of the others in this neighborhood, though some work had been done to subtly alter its appearance. There was a small addition, probably a den or TV room, jutting out from the rear left corner, and from this a wide latticed porch extended around to its opposite corner on the front. The original windows facing the street had been taken out, and two large bay windows had been installed in their place, looking to Damon like the bulbous eyes of some giant fly.

The Sheriff looked away, suddenly uncomfortable.

For just a moment, he’d been struck by the uneasy feeling that he was being watched.

His attention turned to the thick row hedges that lined the path from the front door to the drive, and the manner in which the pines in the back yard crept across the rear of the property. Both areas would provide fine places for concealment for anyone trying to approach the house undetected, and he made a mental note to have the boys check them for any sign that the killer had indeed been there.

Deciding he couldn’t postpone the inevitable any longer, Damon resigned himself to what lay ahead and walked to the front door.

Inside was chaos.

The living room was in shambles. A recliner had been overturned, its leather upholstery slashed. Cushions from the sofa and loveseat were strewn about the room, ripped as well, their white foam interiors spilling out around the jagged tears. It looked as if someone had taken the same knife to the heavy drapes too as they now hung in ragged strips. The floor was littered with chunks of ceramic and glass; all that remained of what Damon guessed had once been a pair of table lamps.

Two technicians were moving about the room, pausing now and again to scoop some object into one of the many clear plastic envelopes that jutted from their pockets.

One of them looked up and waved a hand in the direction the hallway was leading, and Damon followed it to a stairway that led to the second floor.

At the top, Deputy Frank Castiglioni stepped out of the shadows to greet him. Frank was a ten-year veteran of the force, and one of Damon’s most hardened and experienced officers.

“Sheriff,” he said in greeting.

“How’s it going, Frank?” Damon noticed his fellow officer was pale, his voice slightly off key. Behind the man’s back, where he obviously hoped Damon wouldn’t be able to see it, Castiglioni’s right hand was shaking violently.

“Is it bad?” he asked.

The other man swallowed once, hard, and then nodded. He tried a weak smile but failed to bring it off.

Damon laid a comforting hand on Frank’s shoulder, and then moved past him. He stopped at the entrance of the room just beyond, his bulk framed in the narrow doorway.

What he saw in front of him made the bile rush to the top of his throat, and for a moment he thought he might be sick at a scene for the first time in many years, but after a moment or two the sensation passed.

“Holy Mother of God.”

What he saw here was far, far worse than what he’d expected.

The room was a slaughterhouse.

Blood was splattered everywhere; on the floor, on the ceiling, on the walls. It was as if someone had taken buckets of the stuff and merrily splashed it around.

Pieces of bloody human flesh were likewise cast about, scattered across the floor and atop various pieces of furniture.

A hand, with only three fingers intact, dangled from an open dresser drawer, the missing digits ripped off at the first knuckle.

A foot, still clad in a blood-stained slipper lay in the middle of the floor, the shinbone was shining whitely through the torn and bloody flesh.

Many of the other pieces were unrecognizable as to what part of the body they had originated from, a fact which Damon found increasingly disturbing as his gaze kept returning to them repeatedly, his mind trying to discern what they once might have been, so as to give order to the chaos.

What he took to be glistening lengths of rope dangled about the curtains that concealed the surface of the king-size bed, reminding him of the tinsel he used to decorate his Christmas tree every year.

Curious, he stepped closer, only to realize with rapidly escalating horror that they were actually human entrails.

In the back of his mind an evil little voice began singing, “A Slinky, a Slinky, a wonderful, wonderful toy, a Slinky, a Slinky, they’re fun for a girl and a boy.”

Vomit surged back up into his throat, and this time he barely managed to choke it back down, leaving a foul taste in his mouth that matched nicely with the reek of death that hung in his nostrils.

In all his years of police work, he had never seen anything so vile.

So twisted.

So undeniably evil.

Conflicting emotions ran through him as he stared down at the carnage before him, the sickness he felt warring with his need to study the scene and understand just what had happened.

Anger reared its ugly head, and he let it come, knowing it would help calm nerves that were dangerously close to the breaking point. Anger would get him past his revulsion, would allow him to look at the situation objectively. He clung to it, wrapping it around him the same way a child might envelope itself in a comforting blanket on a cold winter’s night.

I’ll make the bastard who did this pay, he vowed to himself, and felt a little better for the thought.

For the first time Damon noticed a police photographer was in the room with him, had indeed been clicking away the whole time Damon had been standing there, ignoring his presence, wanting to finish up and get the hell out of there.

Damon didn’t blame him.

“There’s more, boss,” a voice said from behind him. “The rest is worse, if that’s possible to imagine.”

Damon didn’t trust himself to speak, so he just turned to look at Frank. The rest of it? Worse? What the hell could be worse than this?

Castiglioni motioned the Sheriff towards the bed and Damon followed, his feet as heavy as cement blocks. He didn’t want to get any closer, didn’t want to see what his fellow officer had to show him, but duty compelled him to follow. Frank ducked under a low hanging piece of intestine, and drew back the hanging curtains, exposing the bed itself and what lay atop it.

Damon felt the breath sucked from his lungs at the sight.

A human corpse was on the bed, and from its musculature Damon could tell it had been a male. From its chest gaped a savage wound, and it was from here that the internal organs had been pulled and stretched forth to the canopy around them. If that wasn’t enough, the body had also been dismembered.

And beheaded.

The sheer brutality of the act was sickening. Damon hoped to God that the victim, whoever he had been, had been dead long before the killer had performed his grotesque artistry. To even contemplate what the man might have endured had he been alive was unthinkable; his mind balked at the very concept.

When he had recovered sufficient breath to speak, Damon asked, “Where’s his head?” He noticed his voice trembled when he spoke, and wondered if Frank had noticed it, too.

Frank laughed, a strange eerie chuckle. Wilson instantly recognized it for what it was; the type of laugh you make to chase away the willies when you’re alone in an empty house in the dead of night. It was the sound of a man doing his best to reassure himself.

And miserably failing.

It was anything but comforting.

“In the bathroom,” Frank replied. He hesitated, clearly considering how much to say, and then decided against saying anything at all, for he merely indicated once again that Damon should follow. The two of them crossed the room, to where a door stood next to the bureau.

It was not the extravagant master bath Damon had expected. An oval-shaped mirror hung over a marble sink. A toilet stood to his left, a claw-foot tub to his right.

Frank nodded at the open toilet.

Damon stepped over and looked down, peripherally aware that Frank had moved back out of the room.

The man’s missing head was stuffed in the toilet bowl, the once blue-tinged water a sickly purple hue from the blood that had been spilled into it from the leaking head.

The man’s white hair writhed about his head like living seaweed. His ghastly dead face was frozen in an expression of horror; his mouth open wide in a silent scream of pain, his empty eye sockets still leaking blood.

For just a split second, Damon’s mind told him it wasn’t real.

But it was.

And deep down inside, he knew it.

He turned away, unable to face that eyeless, accusing stare a moment longer, only to find he could still feel its gaze burning into his back.

“You poor bastard,” he muttered under his breath.

Numbed by all the destruction, he stood there for a moment, seeing himself in the bedroom mirror, his eyes reflecting the questions that were rushing around inside his head.

This was worse than anything he had imagined. That he was the best man to be in this position was beyond a doubt; the rest of the men on the force had never dealt with any type of violent crime. They were good, yes, but something like this was beyond the scope of their experience. They were police officers in a small town, and things like this just didn’t happen in a place like this. In the city it was different, and Damon knew that from too many years of personal experience.

Now he wondered if those years would be enough.

And then another, more chilling thought occurred to him.

What if the bastard killed again before they could stop him?

The thought of bodies piling up around him while the investigation floundered sent a stream of sweat rolling down his back, dredging up all the old concerns and self-doubts. The mountainous weight of responsibility settled about his shoulders like a cloak, and he was suddenly more scared of failure than he’d ever been.

What if my best just wasn’t good enough? he asked himself.

What then?

He forced his doubts away, knowing he needed to concentrate in order to get the job done. Frank was waiting for him in the bedroom.

Now that the initial shock had passed, Damon found he could think a bit clearer. He asked the first, obvious question, “The radio call mentioned two bodies. Where’s the other?”

Frank glanced away, uneasily. “Look around,” he directed, waving his hand about the room.

Damon did. All he saw were bits and pieces of flesh everywhere.

The implication of his officer’s words sank in slowly.

He turned to face him. “You mean…”

“Yeah. There’s not enough flesh missing from the male’s corpse to account for all this mess, so most of it had to come from the guy’s wife. We can’t find the rest of her body though, so we think maybe whoever did this took it when he left.”

“We got an I.D. on the body yet?” Damon asked.

“Yeah, but its still unconfirmed. Some of the pictures in the house match this guy here, near as we can tell. George Cummings. We have to wait until the coroner does the prints to be sure, but I’d bet next week’s pay on it. We’ve got an A.P.B. out on the wife, just to be sure she isn’t the cutter and that it wasn’t some young bimbo that got chopped up with him.”

“Anyone call Strickland?”

“Yeah. Should be here any minute now.”

Damon nodded approvingly. The officers were doing their jobs despite the atrocity around them, and of that he could be proud. “Okay then, let’s get out of here and let the techs do their jobs.” He waved Frank out of the room before him, and the other man seemed more than happy to oblige. Damon didn’t blame him, if he had to spend another moment in that room he thought he might scream. Back downstairs, the two of them gathered the other officers who weren’t currently involved in securing the sight from the crowd that was beginning to show up, and assembled them in a loose huddle by the patrol cars.

Damon began giving out assignments, doing his best to get the situation under control and the investigation rolling. There was no time to lose. He knew the cardinal rule of homicide investigations; most killers will be caught in the first forty-eight hours of the investigation, if they were going to be caught at all. When he was finished, one of the men raised his hand.

“What do we do about the press?” the officer asked. “The local papers have got people already out there, mixin’ with the crowd and tryin’ to get inside. The TV crews can’t be that far behind.”

Damon swore under his breath. He knew he couldn’t contain this for long, but letting it out now would just cause panic in the streets. He thought hard for a moment. “Okay, listen up. I want all of you to keep your mouths shut on this one. If they get one hint about what we got upstairs, I’ll come down on every one of you, you got that? At the moment we’re the only ones who know how bad it is, and we’ve got to keep it to ourselves until the P.R. people can assemble a press conference in the morning. We don’t know if this is a one-timer or not, and we don’t need any other loony out there starting to act like a copycat. Keep the details to yourselves. If anyone asks, let ‘em know we got a suspicious death, and leave it at that. If anyone gives you any trouble, you send ‘em direct to me, got it? Questions? Okay then, get to work.”

The men moved off to follow their orders, leaving Damon alone for the moment. He slumped against the side of his vehicle, suddenly drained. He stood there and stared out into the night, wondering about the killer.

Who was he? What did he look like?

More importantly, where was he now?

At the moment, Damon didn’t have any answers.

But he would discover them in time.

He had to.