Prologue PROLOGUE
I’m sorry, Officer. Can you repeat that?”

Officer Danny Boyd would have preferred not to answer the dispatcher. No matter how hard he tried to shake the feeling, Danny knew someone, or something, was watching him from the trees encircling the tiny Virginia town. To speak would draw attention, alerting the predator to his presence just as a deer’s rustling in the forest guided his rifle’s aim. Danny was perfectly aware of what it was like to be the hunter, but never before had he known what it felt like to be hunted… until now.

His gut churned. He had already gambled with the last thirty minutes, spending more time in Dahlmouth than he’d ever wanted to, even before the chilling silence he found today.

“You heard what I said!” Danny barked into the radio as he brought the patrol car’s engine to life. “They’re gone.”

His eyes darted back and forth over the pavement and weeds sticking out of the broken sidewalk along Dahlmouth’s Main Street. Suddenly, Danny caught movement out of the corner of his left eye. He jerked in that direction, his hand gripping the butt of his gun in the leather holster. Danny tried not to exhale directly into the radio as he saw Officer Jack Carlyle, his partner, emerging from Dahlmouth’s police station, shaking his head as he walked back to the patrol car. Danny didn’t need to ask why Jack looked so befuddled. He had already accepted what his partner simply could not.

Danny knew they had a duty to explore further—to follow the obvious lead and start a sweep of the woods. Yet, an alarm bell was screeching in his ears. There was something very wrong with this call, those trees, this place. The moment he saw the carvings on the trees, a strange and primal terror shot through him.

The markings were unavoidable—a circular symbol punctured by a large V. The symbol was everywhere, and the image of some faceless creep wandering from trunk to trunk, methodically carving the sigil for hours on end, was the stuff of nightmares. But in his gut Danny knew something much more disturbing lurked in the shadows.

“Officer, who is gone?” The dispatcher’s nasally voice crackled over the receiver and startled Danny.

Sweat soaked the back of his neck. Jack ignored him as he swung into the passenger side of the car, and Danny took this as his cue to make one last sweep of the scene. Even if Dahlmouth’s entire population popped up now, it would take a hell of a lot to make him stay one second longer.

“All of them. Everyone is just… gone.”