Love Is Stronger Than Evil

By Kathryn Meyer Griffith

An ancient demon lies trapped behind the stone walls of an Incan cave prison; for centuries it had demanded blood sacrifices, and had schemed to escape. Then it discovers a pathway into the world of men, forging itself into a malevolent and cursed killing object, and making itself capable of giving misery and bringing death to all who touch it. Through decades it torments, destroys, the lives of the unlucky people it comes into contact with until a loving married couple, Emily and Sam Walters, have enough love and faith–and the help of a mysterious priest who’s much more than he appears to be–to fight against, and destroy the ancient evil forever...and to finally send it back to hell where it belongs. (Originally a Leisure mass market paperback titled Blood Forge; and later as Blood Forged.) ***

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kathryn Meyer Griffith
• Release date: May 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9798201748883

Kathryn Meyer Griffith

About Kathryn Meyer Griffith...Since childhood I’ve been an artist and worked as a graphic designer in the corporate world and for newspapers for twenty-three years before I quit to write full time. But I’d already begun writing novels at 21, almost fifty years ago now, and have had thirty-one (romantic horror, horror novels, romantic SF horror, romantic suspense, romantic time travel, historical romance, thrillers, non-fiction short story collection, and murder mysteries) previous novels and thirteen short stories published from various traditional publishers since 1984. But, I’ve gone into self-publishing in a big way since 2012; and upon getting all my previous books’ full rights back for the first time have self-published all of them. My five Dinosaur Lake novels and Spookie Town Murder Mysteries (Scraps of Paper, All Things Slip Away, Ghosts Beneath Us, Witches Among Us, What Lies Beneath the Graves, All Those Who Came Before, When the Fireflies Returned) are my best-sellers.I’ve been married to Russell for over forty-three years; have a son, two grandchildren and a great-granddaughter and I live in a small quaint town in Illinois. We have a quirky cat, Sasha, and the three of us live happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though I’ve been an artist, and a folk/classic rock singer in my youth with my late brother Jim, writing has always been my greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I’ll probably write stories until the day I die...or until my memory goes.2012 EPIC EBOOK AWARDS *Finalist* for her horror novel The Last Vampire ~ 2014 EPIC EBOOK AWARDS * Finalist * for her thriller novel Dinosaur Lake.*All Kathryn Meyer Griffith’s 31 novels and 13 short storiesare available everywhere in eBooks, paperbacks and audio books.Novels and short stories from Kathryn Meyer Griffith:Evil Stalks the Night, The Heart of the Rose, Blood Forged, Vampire Blood, The Last Vampire (2012 EPIC EBOOK AWARDS*Finalist* in their Horror category), Witches, Witches II: Apocalypse, Witches plus Witches II: Apocalypse, The Nameless One erotic horror short story, The Calling, Scraps of Paper (The First Spookie Town Murder Mystery), All Things Slip Away (The Second Spookie Town Murder Mystery), Ghosts Beneath Us (The Third Spookie Town Murder Mystery), Witches Among Us (The Fourth Spookie Town Murder Mystery), What Lies Beneath the Graves (The Fifth Spookie Town Murder Mystery), All Those Who Came Before (The Sixth Spookie Town Murder Mystery), When the Fireflies Returned (The Seventh Spookie Town Murder Mystery), Egyptian Heart, Winter’s Journey, The Ice Bridge, Don’t Look Back, Agnes, A Time of Demons and Angels, The Woman in Crimson, Human No Longer, Six Spooky Short Stories Collection, Haunted Tales, Forever and Always Romantic Novella, Night Carnival Short Story, Dinosaur Lake (2014 EPIC EBOOK AWARDS*Finalist* in their Thriller/Adventure category), Dinosaur Lake II: Dinosaurs Arising, Dinosaur Lake III: Infestation and Dinosaur Lake IV: Dinosaur Wars, Dinosaur Lake V: Survivors, Dinosaur Lake VI: The Alien Connection, Memories of My Childhood and Christmas Magic 1959.Her Websites:Twitter: https://twitter.com/KathrynG64My Blog: https://kathrynmeyergriffith.wordpress.com/My Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/KathrynMeyerGriffith67/Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/kathryn.meyergriffith.7http://www.authorsden.com/kathrynmeyergriffithhttps://www.goodreads.com/author/show/889499.Kathryn_Meyer_Griffithhttp://en.gravatar.com/kathrynmeyergriffithhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/kathryn-meyer-griffith-99a83216/https://www.pinterest.com/kathryn5139/You Tube REVIEW of Dinosaur Lake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDtsOHnIiXQ&pbjreload=101

Book preview

Other books by Kathryn Meyer Griffith:

Evil Stalks the Night

The Heart of the Rose

Love is Stronger Than Evil

Vampire Blood (prequel to Human No Longer)

Human No Longer (sequel to Vampire Blood)

The Last Vampire (2012 Epic EBook Awards Finalist)

Witches

Witches II: Apocalypse

Witches plus bonus Witches II: Apocalypse

The Calling

Scraps of Paper-First Spookie Town Murder Mystery

All Things Slip Away-Second Spookie Town Murder Mystery

Ghosts Beneath Us-Third Spookie Town Murder Mystery

Witches Among Us-Fourth Spookie Town Murder Mystery

What Lies Beneath the Graves-Fifth Spookie Town Murder Mystery

All Those Who Came Before-Sixth Spookie Town Murder Mystery

When the Fireflies Returned-Seventh Spookie Town Murder Mystery

Echoes of Other Times-Eighth Spookie Town Murder Mystery

Waiting Beyond the Veil-Ninth Spookie Town Murder Mystery

Egyptian Heart

Winter’s Journey

The Ice Bridge

Don’t Look Back, Agnes

A Time of Demons and Angels

The Woman in Crimson

Spooky Short Stories

Haunted Tales

Night Carnival

Forever and Always Novella

The Nameless One erotic horror short story

Dinosaur Lake (2014 Epic EBook Awards Finalist)

Dinosaur Lake II: Dinosaurs Arising

Dinosaur Lake III: Infestation

Dinosaur Lake IV: Dinosaur Wars

Dinosaur Lake V: Survivors

Dinosaur Lake VI: The Alien Connection

Dinosaur Lake VII: The Aliens Return

Memories of My Childhood

Christmas Magic 1959 non-fiction short story

*All Kathryn Meyer Griffith’s books can be found

in eBooks everywhere; paperbacks, and audio books.

Prologue

Peru 1530

The sun was setting in a tawny blaze of light, turning the cool mountain mist into dark patches of gray and blue. The mists swirled and eddied about the sharp rocks and paths of the mountain and clung lovingly to the slim brown ankles of the Inca maidens as they trod carefully along the stone pathway up, up toward the ominous temple.

The temple of the Beast, from which no one was ever known to return...alive.

The young women, seven in all, walked slowly with heads bowed, as if they were merely children sent on an innocent errand. But their faces were blank, trancelike, and their eyes were full of terror, their hearts dead even though they’d partaken of the special drink that their priests had given them before their journey up the long mountain. The priests were compassionate, not altogether unfeeling, and they were but girls after all. Their hair, dark as ravens’ wings, hung loose and flowing in the breeze, stark against the white ceremonial robes that swished against their bare feet. They wore delicate golden chains about their throats with a tiny, dangling charm, the sign of the God they were going to meet, a coiled snake.

Theirs was a necessary sacrifice if the great snake God was to be appeased and peace kept in their valley. Their precious young lives, their sweet blood shed on its evil and stained altar; given for the lives of all their people. It was a high price to pay but one that had been paid since the High Priest, Kuru, had summoned the great snake God from hell for power and then not been able to control Him. This was the punishment they must now accept to keep him behind the temple walls, not loose among the people. He demanded blood sacrifices and would only take those pure of heart and soul or He’d ravage them all without mercy.

Soon it would be night and He would come.

Before them now, across the rope bridge, the entrance to His temple loomed like the blackened pit of hell, protected by towering stone snakes poised to strike, red jewels glittering as full of malice as their reptilian eyes. They watched from their great height, two fiends from hell. When the women looked up, the layered and polished stones on the temple walls circled before them as far as their frightened eyes could see.

For the last time they gazed sorrowfully upon the terraced farms of their beloved people, then walked the remaining steps toward the temple. They would never see them or their people again.

It was said that sometimes when a sacrifice pleased Him, He would take form in the darkened shadows above the dais behind his bloodied altar and watch the sacrifices with fierce yellow eyes. As the blade rose and fell and the screams rose to a fever pitch of agony, He could take any form He wished.

So they said in whispers as they huddled below in the valley and watched the temple above. No one really knew but the priests, and they never loosened their tongues; fear of their God’s terrible wrath kept them silent.

As the priests completed the last stage of their journey and the coming night was full of the soft, haunting sounds of miniature bronze and copper bells and the cries of the shell trumpets, the maidens were hurried through the entrance. With terror freezing their hearts, they heard the grating of the heavy wooden doors as they shut slowly behind them. Some of them cried softly then, their hands trembling against their faces.

Now they belonged to the Beast. Forever. There was no escape; they were doomed.

Outside the temple, in the valley beneath, in the dusk of the falling mountain night the people waited and watched. The night torches were lit along the temple’s walls and an eerie green glow pulsated from deep within the stone enclosure. The priests’ chanting grew louder as the night claimed the mountain, and there were the screams of such terror and agony that there were those who hid their faces in their hands and wept in helplessness. For a long time the screams echoed across the valley, and not one of those below didn’t realize that next time they could be the screams of a loved one or of themselves.

When the night fell silent once again the people sighed with relief and turned away from the evil towering above them and slowly trudged toward their homes, grateful that the Beast was behind strong stone walls.

A terrible price to pay, yes, for their safety and the power the Beast bestowed, once appeased, upon the people. They were feared and respected for their great powers in battle—the Beast could give a man great strength and cunning. He could give prosperity or he could create such havoc, there would be no end to it.

An awful price and there were some who were weary of it, and believed the Beast’s gifts were not worth it. There must be a way, they schemed, there must be a way they could rid themselves of the evil parasite that had come into their lives. The priests must be wrong. There must be a way...and they were determined to find it even if they must die trying...someday.

Someday.

Centuries later

deep in the bowels of a mine in a place called Cerro de Pasco, northeast of Lima, Peru....

The filthy, ragged - looking Indians huddled at the mouth of the last cave deep in the earth under the mountain. They were frightened and refused with whimpers and garbled entreaties that made absolutely no sense to the angry overseer standing above them, his whip poised over their heads as a warning to obey him. Now. Yet still they would not enter.

Why the bloody hell not? the overseer, a fat, surly fellow sent by the Company a few weeks before when the trouble had begun, roared. "Get your worthless flea-bitten brown bodies down that shaft now, or you’ll be whipped. Twenty lashes each! Get moving!" The overseer glared at the trembling Indians, and when he saw they weren’t going to listen, no matter what he threatened, he threw his dirty hands up in the air in a gesture of hopelessness.

What the hell was wrong with them lately? Ever since they’d found those damn statues of the snakes a ways back in the outer chamber the whole mess of ’em had acted as if the place was full of ghosts or something. It was utterly ridiculous, wasn’t it, what they whispered late at night over their crackling campfires as they ate their beans and drank their strange concoctions, wasn’t it?

That the statues were the guardians of the old Inca Temple of the Beast—the temple in the legends that housed a terrible Snake God that actually existed and was given human sacrifices to keep it from wreaking untold damage on their people. A heinous and insatiable God that it was said created a reign of such terror over the ancient Incas until one day they found a way to collapse the Beast and his hideous temple beneath the mountain it sat upon, thus freeing them from its bloody curse and its evil, voracious appetites.

Ridiculous! The man with the whip shook his head as he eyed the pitiful excuse for a crew cringing before him in the dark cave.

He threw down his whip and hefted the sputtering torch above their heads and peered into the yawning crevice that the earthquake the night before had spawned. In the feeble light he could see the ore crisscrossing the far wall glimpsed through the crack. There was ore in there and, by God, they were going in to get it!

Snake God. Buried temples and bloodied altars...curses...what rubbish. Of course these savages would swallow that nonsense. They were too stupid not to believe.

How to make them get off their lazy asses and get that ore out? How? He snarled at them, waving the whip at their terror-filled faces and uttering a string of vile curses and promises of dire punishment if they didn’t get moving. Nothing worked. Some of them stirred to weep and wail like old women and scurried back up the tunnels of the cave.

Get the hell back here! he screamed at them, licking the flesh of a few of them with his whip; shoving a couple to the hard floor, where they continued to cry and beg and whimper like beaten puppies. They disgusted him! Finally he stalked after the ones who’d fled, into the light far above. He could hear the rest of them scampering after him in the dark. They didn’t want to be left alone so close to the buried ruins they feared.

The overseer knew he’d have to make do with the men he had. There was some working now in another section of the cave, mining the precious ore that was fetching a steep price on the world markets. They weren’t afraid of anything, not even ancient curses. Hard men seasoned to this kind of work who spent their lives like moles laboring in the bowels of the earth. He’d round up a bunch of them first thing tomorrow morning and get them down there with their picks and carts. He’d get that ore no matter what he had to offer them to do it. No ancient Snake God was going to keep him from that rich vein down there, no sir.

God, he wished he were home in England and not in this hell hole with these filthy Indians. Bah, their ancestors might have once been a great race, but look at the poor creatures now, afraid of their own shadows, for heaven’s sake. What a useless bunch they were.

But that night there was growing unrest around the campfires. There was praying and ugly silences, stealthy glances as he rounded up the select crew to descend into the forbidden area with the dawn’s first light. He was surprised when all but a few accepted the offer of higher wages to go down and mine in the narrow cave.

In the middle of the night half of his Indians crept away into the hot jungles, never to be heard of again. Or so he believed. Though there was some of the more superstitious who told him that the Snake-God himself, released from his grave, had come in the night and stolen them away.

You bloody fools, his voice sounding like a snarl. Nothing will keep me from my job. I have quotas to fill. Or his bosses would replace him quick enough. So far the site hadn’t been nearly as profitable as they thought it should have been. He had to have that rich vein he’d seen down there.

With a mangy crew of twelve men he entered the lower cave the following morning and began the digging. Inside the narrow chamber, he noticed the strange flat stone half buried in the far wall. It must have once been huge, but most of it had crumbled away. His men were frightened of it, and the more they saw of the chamber the worse their fear became, until he was sure they, too, were going to abandon him. Growing short-tempered, he used the whip to keep them in line. What had come over them? Why were they terrified of some bloody rocks and artifacts they found buried in the rubble?

When one of them began screaming in a dark corner about a monstrous snake coming to get them, he’d had enough and called the digging off for the day. Perhaps, he thought, as he leaned against the cold stone of the cave’s wall, he should telegram the home office in the States and tell them of the find?

Wouldn’t the archaeologists of the world have a field day with this ancient Inca Temple and Snake God legend malarkey? He chuckled out loud. Yes, he’d telegram the Company and ask them what he should do now; with most of his men hiding like scared rabbits in the jungle rather than be near the cursed place. Let them have the headaches.

Maybe they’d scrap the whole project and send him to another mine. Let the archaeologists have the site to chalk up and dissect into tiny grids. Or maybe, he thought gleefully, they’d send him some real men to dig out the ore. Real men not afraid of spooks.

As the first of the carts were loaded, as if defying the Gods himself, he chipped off a large hunk of the strange stone while the Indians watched with wide eyes and whispered like angry bees behind him in the shadows. He tossed it defiantly into the cart before it was lugged to the surface.

Now there was a full shipment ready to transport to Lima. He saw to it that the raw ore was on its way before he went back into the mine that day.

A good thing, because he, and his men, were never seen again.

Up above those men who’d remained to guard the camp heard the vengeful rumbling of the earth long before the big quake hit. The trees in the jungle, the tents, everything, began to jump and quiver as the full force of the earthquake came upon them.

Screaming, the survivors fled into the jungle until it was over.

Later when they returned to camp there was nothing left but rubble and a mound of fresh earth where the cave entrance had been.

The earth had taken back its own, the cave had collapsed and disappeared as it must have done centuries before, swallowing up the mine and the men in it. Everything and everyone lost. There was nothing salvageable or so it was decided by the Company, who after a half-hearted investigation, decreed that surely no one was left alive down there.

It was just a shame that only one load of ore had been taken from the new mine before the earthquake, when the site had seemed so promising.

Yes, what a shame.

The States...early 1950’s

Todd Cummings had been a master gunsmith since 1910; his father, a master gunsmith before him, had died of consumption and heavy drinking in the hot spring of 1909. Joshua Cummings had left Todd not only his special tools and implements but the love of the craft and the intricate knowledge needed to create the firearms.

Todd, as his father before him, was known in these parts as the best. He could fashion any type of firearm, old or new. Copy any drawing or concept. As a child, at his father’s knee, he’d learned how to pick the best grade of ore and smelt it down into the iron that, along with the carbon and manganese, would later become the steel that would be shaped into the small rectangular ingots from which he would then hammer and forge the guns.

Being a master gunsmith was like being an artist. It was a demanding and precise art that required an excellent eye and a strong, steady hand.

Todd Cummings was fondly reminiscing about his father as he pulled up in front of his lonely house on the edge of town and turned off the sputtering old gray and white Ford. It shook and shuddered even after he’d pulled the key out.

Poor old Nelly. He patted the torn dash of the car lovingly and smiled into the night. His door was a few feet away, but he was almost too tired to get to it. Poor old thing, just like me, eh? Too old to hardly move anymore these days.

He reclined against the faded seat and tapped the hot steering wheel absentmindedly. He was thinking of the beautiful gun he’d finished the day before. It was the best piece of work he’d done in years. He’d picked up the ingots a few weeks ago at the foundry up in Murphysboro—got the whole load dirt cheap because the guard on duty owed him. Just scrap ore anyways, Fred had told him as he’d handed over the small package. Left over from a larger shipment from somewhere in Peru.

Good old Fred, an old dog that had seen better days, too, just like him. Old Fred and he had been friends forever.

Todd Cummings grunted as he scooted out of the car and shambled into his home, turning on lights as he went. He hated the dark. Always had.

He didn’t have to look at the calendar to know that in a few weeks he would be 70 years old. Where had the years gone anyway? He scratched his head and rubbed his tired face. He walked by the gold mirror in his cramped living room and a stranger glared back at him, a man he didn’t seem to know these days, with long, tangled snow white hair and faded blue eyes above a wrinkled face.

He’d been a good-looking fellow once, too, yes siree. In his memory he saw himself the night he’d asked Martha to marry him all those long years ago. She’d been a beauty, too, in her day. Where had that young fellow gone? Martha had been dead for nearly—what was it—twelve years, and his father for almost forty. His brothers, Chad and Mosely, were dead too. More friends and relatives than he could keep count of anymore, all dead and gone like dust. Except his and Martha’s boy, Rodney. Todd never saw much of him, though, ‘cause he lived in another state with his own family where he owned a construction business.

Rodney. A good boy, but distant. Always had been, and in more than only miles too. Rodney had been closer to his mother than to him.

Since Martha had passed away he hadn’t seen much of their son. Short telephone calls at the holidays, and postcards; a hurried visit with the family, a wife and three girls, once in a great while.

Well, the old man sighed aloud, what else could he expect? He hadn’t been much of a daddy to the boy as he was growing up. Always too damn busy in his gun shop or at his gun-making to have time for the boy. He didn’t blame his son for the way things were between them. He’d long ago gotten used to living out here in the woods by himself, just him, the squirrels, and his workshop in the back, where he still made the damn best guns in the county, even if his eyesight wasn’t what it once was and everyone told him he should retire and take it easy.

Humph! If he took it any easier, he’d be in a coffin sleeping the long sleep.

No, he needed his workshop and his guns. His work. He wasn’t really old. He straightened up, and a couple of bones cracked in his back. His arthritis was flaring up real bad today, even if it was hot enough outside to fry an egg on the sidewalk. You’d think a body would have some relief in the warm times, wouldn’t you?

He made a childish face at the old man in the mirror...that old bag of bones! That wasn’t him.

Inside he was still young.

He shuffled into the kitchen and couldn’t help but steal a proud, possessive glance at the shiny gun laying in the velvet box on his kitchen table; the one he’d just finished.

An exact replica of the spanking brand new 357 Magnum Colt Python, a six-shot weapon with a lovely blue cast to its sleek metal. He’d loved the original design so much he’d made himself one, or as close to it as he could get. He chuckled as he leaned over and softly caressed the cold metal.

In his youth, during a real lean time for his family, he’d held down a job in an automobile factory as a tool and die maker, and that training, that valuable knowledge, along with his natural born talents, had left him in good stead. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t make. He had the feel for it.

This gun was a beauty all right.

Later tonight, after supper, he’d have to put the finishing touches on it; carve his initials in it somewhere real tiny. Leave his mark. Like a true artist, he thought.

He grilled himself a couple of toasted cheese sandwiches and found the newspaper he’d brought home. Turning on the radio that sat square in the middle of the scratched kitchen table, he leaned back comfortably in the one red chair in the kitchen that wasn’t ready to collapse and grunted with satisfaction as he drank his cold beer and munched his drippy sandwiches.

Life was so easy when you only had yourself to care for. But awful lonely, too, he reflected morosely as he finished his sparse meal and gulped down his beer. The radio was too low, and he reached over and turned the knob until the volume was just right.

God, he loved that Milton! What a funny, funny man. He found himself chuckling at the jokes. He got up and came back with a wet rag to wipe the crumbs off the table.

The sun was falling behind the trees and night was coming. He hoped the dark would bring cooler temperatures. It was still ungodly hot for almost eight-thirty. He wiped the sweat off his face and reached up to tug at the heavy string attached to the ceiling fan. That helped some.

He turned the light on in the kitchen and sat down in front of the gun. Last night he’d sat and blued it until the shine was a deep midnight cobalt. For a moment as he laid his hand on it lingeringly, he toyed with the idea of going on down to Sadie’s Bar in town and hoisting a few cold ones with the boys; maybe even taking it along and showing it off. You’ve outdone yourself this time. He proudly studied his work.

No. He lifted the gun in his gnarled hands and inspected it up under the light. I think I’ll just stay here tonight and polish her one more time. Maybe etch my initials in her stock.

Suddenly, as he stood alone in his kitchen holding the gun, he had a terrible feeling that someone, or something, was watching him. A cold shiver traveled through his body, and he turned and looked over his shoulder at the black squares of the dirty windowpane.

His eyes peered, squinting, into the darkness through the glass and the lower screens, but there was nothing out there. Nothing except the lush woods and the black sky of night. He listened to the katy-dids and the crickets singing out in the limbs and shivered again when a strange hush fell over the woods.

Total silence.

He made his way to the open rear door and, with the gun still in his hands, walked outside behind his house. Still no sounds. No night animals calling to each other, no crickets or birds rustling around in the bushes. Nothing.

Strange, isn’t it, he mulled. Then he turned and reentered the house, shaking his head.

He took a large brown bottle and a bundle of white cloths down from an upper shelf in the kitchen and strolled back to the table. He sat down again and with his head cocked as if he were listening for something out among the trees, he undid the bundle of stained cloths and extracted a thin glass etching tool he used to lay in designs in metal. He took the cap off the bottle of hydrochloric acid and dipped in the narrow piece of glass.

Tediously, because his eyes weren’t what they used to be, he started to carve a tiny bird on the end of the barrel of the gun, rinsing the area every so often with water from the pump to clear it off. He was about ready to add the finishing flourish, his own initials TJC, when he heard peculiar noises outside in the woods. A sort of hissing sound; at first like bees far away, it grew steadily in intensity until he almost wanted to cover his ears and flee.

It was as he stood up in confused shock, his eyes darting to the windows that he carelessly knocked the bottle of hydrochloric acid over and watched in genuine dismay as the light yellow liquid spilled across his beautiful gun.

Damn!

The acid began to hiss and steam and, cursing aloud at his stupidity, he snatched up the dissolving hunk of metal using the closest thing at hand, two knives, and tossed it into the sink.

It was ruined. He gasped, his hands grabbing at the sink as he stared at what was happening to the gun. He couldn’t believe it. It was impossible. That amount of acid should have melted the metal, instead of....

He glared at the gun after the water had washed away the sizzling steam. He rubbed his eyes and looked again, closer.

What the hell? he muttered, unsteady, backing up a few steps. The gun lay there, not destroyed or even really scarred. But something had happened to it. Something weird.

There, along the sleek barrel, instead of his tiny bird there was something else etched, beautifully and intricately branded into the hard steel of the gun ...a snake coiling around the barrel, in such precise and realistic detail, it could only have been etched by an artist. It was perfect, exquisite, and the most frightening thing he’d ever laid eyes upon.

At the end of the twisting long tail that ran along the spine of the gun there was something still smoldering and taking ghostly shape—he’d seen something like it before—it was a...what was it called? A pentagram. The six-sided star of Satan. The symbol of ultimate, incarnate evil.

Stunned, he stumbled away from the sink and the atrocity inside it.

How had it happened? The acid should have eaten the gun up. Where had that picture come from?

He moaned out loud as a bitter coldness permeated his very being and suddenly, beyond the night windows, he heard again that strange hissing out in the forest. This time it was so loud and grating, he covered his ears and cried out. He didn’t know what he was crying about, only that he couldn’t stand that noise! Then it dawned on him. The thing in the sink was causing it.

He had to get away. Run. It made no sense, yet his eyes desperately sought an escape route. The door.

Suddenly there was a green glow all around him in the small kitchen. With a startled wail, he turned, knocking a chair to the floor as he scrambled over it and out the door into the night woods.

He ran and ran through the black, hulking shapes of the foliage, feeling the sharp tree limbs tear at his clothes and skin...ran...but still that hissing sound followed him; still that feeling of being watched by something malevolent and hungry slithering along close behind him.

He ran, gasping in agony at the strain and holding his aching sides, for what seemed like forever. The full moon snickering down at him and the woods he’d known all his life was suddenly a fearful place in which he couldn’t hide.

Something was chasing him. He had to get away.

The hissing gained on him, coming closer, closer, and with one final scream he felt the world fall out from under him. He fell head over heels into what seemed to be a bottomless pit.

His last prolonged screams of terror and pain were never heard by anyone.

There was no one there to hear.

Chapter 1

An August night in Korea, 1952

David Willows wondered for the hundredth time what he was doing there.

In Korea. Damn!

He was an artist. Or, at least, that’s what he’d hoped to be; not a soldier. Not just some set of dog tags; not one of these tired-looking dogfaces sneaking through the woods of an alien, hostile land and having potshots taken at them like they were wooden ducks in a penny arcade.

What the hell was he doing here?

Sweating and bone-weary, he stretched his aching muscles under the stiff fatigues and inhaled a gulp of the Korean night air, heavy with the pungent aroma of freshly dug earth that was heaped up in piles around him and his buddies. Fox hole. They’d dug into the warm earth as quickly and deeply as they could as the woods plunged into blackness in the oppressive heat that never seemed to leave this ravaged land.

Korea, torn and bloodied, fought over like a prize bone with no meat left on it; a foreign hell that David Willows had swiftly grown to hate in the few long months he’d been there.

God, how he ached to go home. Collect up his rusted gear and run to the nearest train, plane, wagon, or army Jeep and get the hell out of this nightmare.

A series of white flashes shrieked across the inky sky above their lowered heads. Rockets. Mortars tearing into helpless villages and killing more victims of a useless war. The innocent always paid the dearest price. While the generals and politicians sat safely behind the lines and took body counts like it was some damn game or something. Didn’t they realize that the pawns they so easily sacrificed were human beings with feelings, needs, and dreams, families, just like them? People, not cattle, there to slaughter.

Why didn’t they see how futile war was?

He sighed above the digging sounds around him. This wasn’t a nightmare, he thought. This was real. He wiped the sweat from his brow and reset his helmet upon his aching head and continued his digging like the others around him. In the darkness he could hear, could almost smell, because of the perspiration of fear, his fellow soldiers as they silently scooped out the dirt of their deepening bunker and piled it higher above their heads. David wondered if they were silently praying to God for their safety as he was. Promising Him anything if He would just let them get home in one piece.

David cringed inside as he remembered the way Jeffers, one of the newer recruits, died the week before. A hidden punji pit. No one had seen a thing until after the whistle of the released trap and then there, suddenly and horribly, was that bloody pointed thing sticking out of Jeffers’ face, impaling him. How the poor devil had screamed until their stone-faced CO, Colonel Marsh, had mercifully shot him. He’d had no choice. The stakes had ripped Jeffers’ guts out, and they’d no facilities to take care of such a horrendous wound. Jeffers was better off dead; they all knew that. But still, David thought, the look on Jeffers’ face before he died was hideous, he would never, never forget it.

It could have been any of them. It could happen to any of them at any time.

Every so often insidious whispers haunted the night around them as they dug in, out beyond the perimeter of their camp. Above the swaying trees, behind the trees, under the trees; embedded in the very air around them like the stars in the night sky.

The enemy.

Always out there. Waiting, watching. Scheming their little surprises and planting their pointed sticks. Hiding their mines and baiting their traps. Out there crouching behind the lush bushes and dead trees. Grinning with dirty teeth.

They were sitting ducks.

David stopped digging, his entrenching tool paused in mid-air, and listened, cocking his head to the left. Was that them? He heard suspicious rustlings beyond the looming shadow that was a tree. Were they coming for him now? Far away he could hear the artillery advancing. The front. Was it theirs or ours and what the hell difference did it make? He’d heard stories about how their own men were dying from friendly fire.

He snorted in disgust. Friendly fire? What difference did it make? Dead was dead, no matter whose bombs they were. Under his fetid breath David swore viciously.

It was so crazy. Being here. Skulking and hiding in the woods at night, digging filthy holes in the ground to disappear into like some damn mole. Your stomach growling and your muscles clenching in agony as you slithered through the damn weeds in the heat trying to kill an enemy you really couldn’t even call an enemy because you were in his land and he didn’t want you here. Losing limbs that could never be replaced and spilling your blood in a God-forsaken pest hole like this...dying. And for what?

He was barely twenty. Was he going to die before he’d had time to live?

If you asked him, Pvt. David Willows of Little Rock, Arkansas, who’d always dreamed of going to Paris to learn how to paint, an artist, who’d never in his short life had the slightest desire to hurt anyone, he didn’t think anyone could give a decent answer to why they were really in Korea. Not the green boys quivering in their mud-caked army boots or the civilians back in the States. Not the enemy out there in the woods simply trying to get the invaders the hell out of their land. Only the damn righteous fat cat politicians and statesmen safe and far away from the front might be able to give reasons, not that any of them made any sense anyway.

They weren’t here.

Hell, if the lousy politicians wanted a war, let them get their butts over here and take his place in the stinking bunkers. Hell, let them put their butts where their loud mouths were. It was easy to talk; not so easy to do the actual fighting and dying.

He must have sworn louder than he’d thought because someone behind him hushed him with a sharp hiss of air and a brutal shove to the back with a rifle butt. David jerked his head to the side, but it was so damn dark he couldn’t tell who it was even though the guy’s frightened white face hovered not more than a few inches from his. All he could see was the gleam of the other soldier’s eyes.

David resumed his digging though his hands were bloody and aching from what he’d done already. Wasn’t the hole deep enough yet? But he knew better than to complain or say anything until Sergeant Conners, their leader for this mission, told them it was. He’d be razed too much by the others. Once or twice he’d been stupid enough to question something he’d thought at the time seemed pretty idiotic and had been openly ridiculed for it.

He’d learned to keep his mouth shut. He wasn’t stupid. Not like some, who ended up either in the stockade or dead for their trouble, or worse yet, ostracized from the other men. In combat that could be the kiss of death for a soldier.

No, not him. No way.

So he kept digging. Harder, wilder strokes, and the dirt crumbled and cascaded around his hands as he pitched it out into the weeds. The strenuous labor helped him keep his mind off the futility of the whole thing; the almost uncontrollable anger he’d begun to feel lately for the whole bloody mess. It’d seemed to escalate immensely and he couldn’t understand why.

For a second his fingers brushed the butt of his pistol, snug in its holster, and a cold wave of fresh anger hit him.

So he dug in angry silence. With an unseen, sadistic smile shaping his lips, he mused: we’re probably digging our own graves.

A couple of days ago the CO had picked David and five other men to go on a search-and-destroy mission. There’d been incidents with snipers around camp lately, and he wanted the surrounding area cleaned out of any enemy activity.

Men, their CO had grunted as he stood them at attention before they left that morning, go out there and find those damn Commies. Kill ’em! That’s right, for Mom and our great country, do me proud. Shoot ’em so full of holes their own mommas won’t know ’em. Kill ’em good for me...and Jeffers. That’s all, men. I know you’ll do us all proud.

He’d spun on his polished heel and marched away. The punctilious bastard. It was easy for him to say, he was staying behind. Nice and safe in the protected compound. The bastard.

So out they’d marched, six toy soldiers, to find and kill the elusive snipers in the woods. Six young men, none any older than twenty, except Sergeant Conners, who was almost twenty-two. Six scared children, really. Into enemy territory. So far only the sergeant had actually seen real combat. David hadn’t; none of the others had either.

None of them knew what the hell they were doing. None of them had killed a man yet.

It was ridiculous, David fumed. After three days traipsing through the bush in what David could have sworn were large rambling circles he was convinced beyond a doubt that they were lost. Lost! They never should have gone out this far without someone who knew the territory.

Like the others, he didn’t dare utter a word or question anything they did, no matter how crazy. That was the army way, all right. Mine is not to wonder why, mine is just to do or die. David’s lips twisted into an ugly smile. He brooded, glancing about him in the dark, if the others were as sick of the fear as he was. You lived, breathed, and ate it at all times.

Weren’t they sick to death of it?

Here’s as good a place as any, men. Start digging in for the night, their sergeant barked every evening as the light began to fade. "That’s it, men. Dig! Get those tree limbs and brush over here, start piling them up. Move those skinny dogface asses. No time, Willows, to play tiddly-winks," he’d huff.

The sergeant had never liked David from the moment he found out he hadn’t wanted to join the army and fight for his beloved country, that he’d been drafted, fighting and kicking all the way. That he’d wanted to run off to Paris, a sniveling coward, to paint pretty little pictures with all the other good for nothing bohemians. So he taunted and razzed him every chance he got.

The only reason, David believed, that Conners hadn’t outright decked him or put him on report at times was because Conners had learned from the CO that David’s father had once been a great war hero and had earned a shit load of medals in World War II. He’d been honored by the president even, and had been in all the newspapers.

David eyed his belligerent sergeant from beneath lowered, smoldering lashes, and wondered what they all would say if they knew how much David hated his father for that. Truly despised his brave, war hero, famous, loud-mouthed daddy? What would they say if they knew that?

Well, it made no difference. The other men had still turned against him. Didn’t like him because he was different. And he didn’t care. He didn’t need them either. All he truly needed and wanted was to get the hell out of here and go home, or to Paris, where he belonged.

It was so goddamn hot.

Someone passed a canteen of water around, and David wished it was straight bourbon. He could hear the men checking their gear, their rifles and pistols; snapping down the leather flaps after they were assured their weapons were still working. A few misplaced snickers in the midst of the terror. Why was it, he thought as he so often did lately, that whenever you were so damn afraid you could almost wet your pants all you wanted to