ALLISON MASON cracked open her eyelids and winced at the too-intense light flooding the hospital room. A quick scan of her surroundings revealed that she was alone—the assortment of chairs provided for visitors were, at that moment, all empty.

She called for a nurse, who came in and checked her vitals, then declared she was doing well given her circumstances. Allison couldn’t help but agree. How many people managed to get themselves stabbed in the chest and lived to tell the tale?

“Is my husband still here?” she asked Dominic, the nurse, before he left the room.

“I don’t know, but I can find out,” he said, giving her a reassuring smile. “Knowing Phil, he’s probably been camped out in the waiting room all night.”

Dominic disappeared, and Allison heaved a sigh. Phil and Dominic had worked together once upon a time before each had gotten different nursing jobs. The man was right—Phil wasn’t likely to leave her alone. He’d probably gone down to the hospital cafeteria, solemnly scrounging up a good breakfast.

Dominic popped back into the room about ten minutes later, looking apologetic. “It looks like Phil left with your daughter last night and hasn’t come back this morning. Right now, though, the police want to ask you some questions about yesterday. I can send them away if you’re not feeling up to it.”

Allison managed to heave an even heavier sigh that sent searing pains through her chest. “No, no; just send them in so I can get it over with.” Nothing like an interrogation to start the morning off right.

The nurse slipped away once more, and in walked two uniformed officers—an F. Jergens and a D. Dodgson, based on their name badges.

“Thanks for letting us in,” the stern-faced Officer Jergens said as she took a seat in one of the visitor chairs. “We’re glad to hear you’re doing better.”

“You’re not the only one.” Allison tried to sit up straighter in the bed but gave up when the pain became too sharp. “What do you need to know?”

“Last night we got some basic information from your daughter,” Officer Dodgson said while remaining standing, “but we need to get the details from you. First of all, approximately what time did you get home from work yesterday?”

“About two-thirty, same time as usual. I didn’t know anyone else was in the house with me.”

“There was no indication you weren’t alone? No unexplained noises, no signs of forced entry?”

She shook her head. “If there were, I would have noticed; and we always keep the doors locked. I have no idea how he could have gotten in.”

“The report from the crime scene states that a window was shattered in your solarium.”

Allison grimaced, at the words “crime scene” in particular. That was her house they were talking about! “We keep the door between it and our kitchen shut,” she said, “and I didn’t go out there when I got home. It’s too cold to use during the winter. Not enough insulation.”

Officer Jergens scribbled something on a pad. “Would you describe your actions as best as you can remember?”

Allison closed her eyes to think, but thinking was hard, given her fatigue. A body could only handle so much in twenty-four hours, and it hadn’t been a full day yet since the creep decided to poke holes in her. “I…sat down on the couch to read. I couldn’t really focus on it though because my old friend Frank…” She choked on an unanticipated burst of tears. “He died unexpectedly the other night. It was a shock.”

Officer Jergens nodded in understanding while Officer Dodgson remained stoic.

Allison went on. “I changed clothes and went to get Ashley off the bus. When she came in, I went to make her a snack—celery and peanut butter. While I was doing that, she said she wanted to put on her pajamas and have a ‘sleepover’ the whole rest of the day. When she went into her room…” Allison’s voice caught in her throat again as indignation got the better of her. “He was in her closet. What kind of creep does that to a little girl?”

“We don’t know, ma’am. That’s what we’re trying to find out. Now what happened right after Ashley went into her room?”

“She said she heard someone in her closet. I ran in, and he came at me. He cut my arm first, then stabbed me in the chest.” Allison felt ill as she replayed the memory. She’d been so sure she was about to die. “It wasn’t like they say.”

“What wasn’t like they say?” Officer Dodgson asked, tilting his head.

“My life didn’t flash before my eyes. All I thought about was Ashley. I thought, God, please don’t let him hurt my little girl.” Allison’s vision blurred with tears. “I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” Officer Jergens said. “Now what did the assailant look like?”

Allison sniffled, and Officer Jergens offered her a tissue from a box sitting on a small table between two of the chairs. “Thanks,” she said while dabbing at her nose. “He wore Phil’s grim reaper costume—Phil wore it for Halloween a few years ago. I guess he thought it would scare us more being dressed like that.”

Officer Dodgson lifted an eyebrow. “Did it occur to you the assailant may have been trying to conceal his identity?”

“Oh, I don’t think that at all. He pulled back his hood so I got a good look at his face. I’d never seen him before.” She cleared her throat. “He was white; about regular height and weight for a man. He had blond hair…and kind of a narrow face. No beard, but a little bit of stubble, I think.”

“Was there anything unique about his appearance that might help us identify him?” Officer Jergens asked.

“I’m trying to think.” Allison replayed the scene again and again, as uncomfortable as it made her. “He wore gym shoes. Nikes, maybe? I know that doesn’t help you much.”

Officer Jergens scribbled something else on the pad. Officer Dodgson consulted a wristwatch, and Allison had the sudden feeling she was wasting their time. “I’m sorry I don’t remember more,” she said. “It all happened so fast. Wait a minute.” She played the attacker’s face through her mind once more and said, “He had a scar.”

Both officers waited for her to elaborate.

“On his face,” she went on. “Left cheek, I think. Maybe three inches long? It looked old.”

Officer Jergens began to scribble more fiercely. “How was it situated on his face?” she asked.

“Sort of diagonal. It was thin, like from a knife or something. That’s really all I remember.”

Officer Dodgson opened a folder Allison hadn’t realized he’d been holding and withdrew an eight-by-ten photograph of Ashley’s bedroom wall. “Do these words mean anything to you?” he asked.

Allison’s stomach made an acrobatic flip. In red, dripping letters, someone had scrawled the words “Surrender Servant or all will die” on the wall. “Is that…blood?”

“It’s your blood.”

“Oh, God.” Allison fought the urge to vomit. Surrender Servant or all will die? What did that even mean? Something to do with Bobby, but she couldn’t exactly tell the police about the kind of things Phil’s young friend got himself into.

“What did he mean by ‘Servant’?” Officer Dodgson asked. “He capitalized it.”

“I—I don’t know. He was a crazy person. It probably doesn’t mean anything.”

“It clearly means something to him.”

“Good luck figuring it out. I hope you catch him.” Allison closed her eyes. She needed to rest awhile—all this talking taxed her energy. Oh, where had Phil gone? She needed to talk to him about that bloody message.

The officers took that as their cue to leave her alone, and once they were gone, Dominic slipped back into the room, his face awash with concern. “Nobody seems to know where Phil is. His friend Randy just showed up. I don’t mean to alarm you, but he says that…oh, what the heck. I’ll just send him in.”

Thirty seconds later, a gray-faced Randy took a seat in the chair Officer Jergens had occupied minutes earlier. “You’re looking good,” he said, his tone flat.

She shrugged. “I’m sure I’ve looked better. Now where is Phil?”

Randy stared at her with hazel eyes. “I don’t know. He took Ashley to our house last night and then left after she fell asleep. He told us to look after her until he got back, but he still hadn’t returned when we got up this morning.”

“And you didn’t ask him where he was going?”

“You know me. I try not to be too nosy if I can help it.”

“Where’s Ashley now?”

“With Lupe. We both took the day off work, for reasons. Ashley keeps asking where Phil is. How do you tell a kid their dad has gone missing?”

“I’m sure there’s a logical reason for it.”

“No offense, but Phil didn’t seem too logical last night. He looked like a man on a mission.”

“That doesn’t sound like Phil at all.”

“Tell me about it.”

Allison put a hand on her forehead. “Oh, Phil, please tell me you didn’t do something stupid.”

PHIL’S HEAD throbbed like he had a terrible hangover, not that he’d know from first-hand experience.

He tried to move and found that he could not. It felt like rope bound his wrists to something. Apparently Vance had reclaimed his pair of glasses, because beyond a foot or two in front of him, Phil could barely see a thing. It was sort of dim in this place, the only light being a faint glow somewhere in the distance. He didn’t feel too cold at the moment, which meant that hypothermia had set in once more. If he got out of this one, he’d have to ask Allison if she’d be willing to relocate to someplace less frigid, like Mexico or Cuba.

For a few minutes he wondered why Vance had put him in the cave after trying to warm him up in the cottage, then realized that Vance was toying with him like a cat playing with a rodent it wanted for dinner. Vance, not Thane’s parents, had been the one to stow him in the cave in the first place, and then wanted to let Phil think he had a chance of returning home, only to take it all away again.

Such a friendly man.

Something moved in front of him. Phil tugged on his restraints, but they bound him too tightly for him to slip free.

The “something” stopped before him, and for the first time he was grateful for his diminished vision. The being seemed neither human nor animal and, oddly enough, it seemed as though the colors of his surroundings had all been reversed upon its arrival.

He had a fairly good guess of what it was.

“Awake again, I see,” it said in a voice both languid and melodic. “Lucky you.”

Phil started to squint out of force of habit, then reminded himself he didn’t really want to see his companion. “What did you do with Vance? The real Vance.”

A soft laugh emanated from the being. “Vance is a fiction. He never existed.”

“But why? What’s the point?”

Phil thought he saw the thing shrug. “Why not?” it asked.

Gritting his teeth, Phil said, “You’re not going to let me go, are you?”

“I already said you would have been free if you’d minded your own business, but no, you insisted on finding this cave again, so I trapped you inside of it like I was trapped so long ago. I let most people free. It’s better if they don’t know I exist.”

Phil hated to ask, but the words came out of his mouth before he could censor himself. “What are you going to do with me?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’ll figure something out, though. I always do. In the meantime I’m going to keep you here so you don’t get into any more trouble. I didn’t expect you to crawl away the first time I put you in here, so I thought tying you up might help. I hope you enjoy your stay.”

“YOU THINK the man who attacked me is the person Bobby was supposed to be cleansing?” Allison asked Randy, who had opted to stay with her since Phil remained absent.

“Phil and I were talking about it last night. Ashley said the man was blond. Bradley is blond.”

“So are a billion other people. Does Bradley have a scar on his cheek?”

Randy’s eyes narrowed. “Not that I noticed, but I didn’t pay too much attention to what he looked like.”

“When did you see him?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll ask Frankie so we can find out for sure; he was there when Bobby was trying to cleanse Bradley.” Randy pulled out his phone, tapped in a number, and said, “Frankie? It’s Randy. Allison and I would like to ask you some things about Bradley. I’m putting you on speaker.”

He set the phone on the small table. “Allison, I pray you’re feeling somewhat better today,” Frankie said in a clipped tone. “Now what is it you need to know?”

“I remember what the man who attacked me looked like. I just want to know if it’s the man Bobby was helping at the church.”

“Go on.”

“He was blond and about normal height and weight, and had a narrow face.”

“That does sound like Bradley, though I’d say he’s a little thinner than average.”

“And he had a long scar on his left cheek.”

Silence came through Randy’s phone as loudly as if Frankie had been shouting.

“Are you still there?” Allison asked.

“I remember no scar. That’s not something I’m likely to overlook.”

“You’re sure?”

“I spent hours with him the other night,” Frankie said. “I’m sure.”

BRADLEY HURRIED through the cold, keeping out of sight of the road, dreading what might have happened if the priest had shown up at the Barkley woman’s house while he was still there. He’d hidden inside a shed for maybe a half an hour before moving onward, only then realizing how hungry he felt. Was it normal for the dead to hunger? He wouldn’t know; this was still a new experience for him.

He’d been walking for about fifteen minutes now, staying along fences and behind dead shrubs, when the sound of sirens filled the air.

He halted and poked his head over a brown hedgerow just in time to see a cavalcade of law enforcement vehicles roar by in the direction of Ellen Barkley’s house. His empty stomach twisted into a knot. It was probably just a coincidence that the cop cars were going that way. Yeah, that was it. A coincidence.

He hugged his arms against his chest and trudged onward with no destination in mind, knowing only that he needed to find more secure shelter, and maybe a bite to eat.

“YOU’RE CERTAIN the shooter had a scar on his face,” the tall officer said to Ellen, who had been brought down to the police station with Terence for questioning.

Ellen crumpled a tissue in her fingers and nodded. “I don’t remember seeing it the first time I saw him, but as soon as he’d shot Preston, he stared straight into the bathroom at us, and it’s the first thing I saw. I thought he’d kill us too, but he just turned and left like Terence and I meant nothing to him.”

Terence had his arms folded tightly across his chest, and his face had grown so gray he looked like he needed oxygen. “He just wanted to kill the priest,” he said, his voice hollow with shock. “Once he finished, he ran.”

“Can you think of any other details that might help us determine his identity?”

Ellen furrowed her brow, trying to think, but her thoughts had scattered in a thousand directions. Preston, her dear childhood friend, was dead, and the only reason he’d been there in the first place was because she’d felt the need to call him. What had she even hoped to accomplish by having him come over? The disturbed young man had been gone for the moment. It seemed almost as if the priest’s arrival had initiated the so-called demoniac’s return.

What if he really…? Ellen started to think, then shook her head. Demoniacs did not exist, because demons did not exist. The only evil things in the world were flesh and blood people, and they came in no short supply.

“His name was Bradley,” Ellen said at last. “That’s what Preston called him.”

“He had on a dark blue jacket,” Terence said.

Ellen shot him a glance. “No, he didn’t. It was gray.”

Frustration shone in her husband’s eyes. “It was blue. I remember because it had a rip on the sleeve.”

“Okay, it was either blue or gray,” the officer said. “Is there anything else?”

“His forehead was bleeding,” Terence said, looking to the officer. “He may have cut it on some broken glass coming through the window.”

While Terence continued to provide the man with details, Ellen’s thoughts wandered again. She pictured Bradley as she had seen him when she came home from the store and found him in her living room. He had most definitely been wearing a gray jacket then, but had he been wearing it still when he came up to the bathroom with a gun? She couldn’t really remember, having been too shocked witnessing Preston’s death.

Ellen settled back in her chair. Maybe Bradley had been wearing two jackets the first time she saw him, and he got too warm and shed the outer layer. It was the only explanation.