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whatever evil they’d summoned would turn on them.
    A confrontation with her mother would likely kill Moira, but she also knew that if she didn’t stop her, Fiona would destroy innocent people in far more painful ways. It was now or never.
    On the horizon, in the direction they were headed, lightning slashed the fog. It was too close to the ground. Rivers of bright lava crossed the road in front of them. Above them, a fluttering of bats … but they weren’t bats. They were an “it,” one large dark cloud with mass, with volume, evil to its core.
    She screamed and Jared jumped.
    The fires were gone, but she’d seen them. She’d seen them. Hadn’t she? Was she losing her mind?
    “What the fuck? You scared the he—”
    “Didn’t you see it? The fire? The … dark cloud?”
    He frowned. “I—it was just birds. It’s the middle of the night; they got startled or something.”
    “Denial will get you killed.”
    “What do you think that was?”
    She swallowed. She didn’t know, but whatever it was, it wasn’t supposed to be here . “Hell on earth,” she whispered. Then, more urgently, she said, “Go faster, Jared.”

THREE
Lonely is the night when you find yourself alone
Your demons come to light and your mind is not your own
—BILLY SQUIRE, “Lonely Is the Night”
    “Dear God, why are you doing this to me?”
    Biting back a curse, Rafe Cooper stumbled along the rocky cliffs that, to him, marked the edge of the world. It was a long, long way from his youthful island home in the blissful isolation of Sicily’s St. Michael’s.
    Earlier tonight, he’d been in a hospital bed. He’d opened his eyes with the overwhelming, undeniable compulsion to leave. How he got from there to here he didn’t know, only snippets of his two-hour journey remaining.
    When he tried to think—to remember —knifelike pain sliced through his head, lights and shadows exploding, and he had to stop until the intensity subsided.
    He knew who he was—Raphael Cooper—and he knew why he’d been in the hospital—the attack at the mission. He’d been the sole survivor. Uninjured while the others had been butchered. Comatose, according to the doctors, but that couldn’t be right. He’d been unable to see or speak, but he heard everything. He heard far too much, so why couldn’t he remember now?
    Again, pain sliced through his skull as he tried to recall what had happened during the months he’d been in the hospital.
    A grove of cypress trees provided a canopy and a place of rest. He sat on a lightning-split trunk and let out a long breath. Every limb shook, his feet were numb, and his mind raced faster than he could think. He didn’t know why he’d come here, why he was compelled as if he had no control over his actions.
    A car was parked on the north side of the cypress grove, but no one was inside. The tick-tick of the engine told him that someone had stopped here recently, and he looked around, confused and curious. He seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, but he wasn’t alone.
    South of the grove he saw light within the thickening fog. Flickering light, from candles, a mere football-field length from him. Shadows of people—a dozen or more blurry figures—moved within the fog, among the flames. Fear clawed at the base of his skull; his blood alternated between hot and icy cold. Something evil was at hand.
    How do you know that?
    He considered, and shards of pain stabbed his head again, blinding him, bringing him to his knees in supplication, until his mind again went blank. He screamed, but no sound came from his lungs.
    He refocused on the scene, the still, low fog casting an ethereal glow in the vicinity.
    Be quiet, be very quiet, don’t think, don’t think a word …
    Salt air rising from the inky depths of the ocean mingled with the pungent fragrance of myrrh and musk and other scents he couldn’t identify. The candle-holding figures wore white, their gowns shimmering in the quickly disappearing moonlight.
    A