Mark remained firm. 'No.'

And then as if his denial had given him newfound strength, Mark vaulted from the ground and started to run as fast as his tired limbs could move.

'Mark!' Damien shouted after him.

But Mark kept on running. 'Get away from me!' he yelled back.

'MARK!' Damien shouted in a voice that Mark had heard only once before, in the hallway outside of Neff's office when Damien had called out to Teddy. 'Look at me!' he commanded.

Mark stopped in his tracks. He found himself unable to move. ‘Please get away,' he begged.

But Damien's voice held him there. 'I'll ask you once more,' he said calmly, in full control now. 'Please. Come with me. Be mine!'

Mark turned around slowly until he faced his cousin directly. 'No,' he said, with a sudden calm even stronger than Damien's. 'You can't escape your destiny, Damien. And I can't escape mine.' Some other force was speaking through him. 'You must do what you have to do.' And he stood there, suspended, waiting.

A rage entered Damien, a rage borne of rejection, and as the fire blazed even more brightly in his eyes, he stood up tall, to a height that now seemed suddenly immense. Tears welled up in his eyes, and he looked up to the sky and began to tremble...

***

Richard and Ann had found the boys' footprints in the snow and were following them. Ann seemed very calm as she walked at her husband's side, leaning against him from time to time. But Richard kept glancing up, as if sensing something foreboding in the air.

***

Suddenly Mark heard the sound, the same sound Teddy had heard in the hallway that day outside Sergeant Neff's office.

A clattering, like thin metal rulers being clapped together.

The sound of raven's wings.

Mark thrust out his arms to protect his head against the invisible thing that was attacking him. He screamed, he cried, he tried to get away, but the dreadful beak and claws of the invisible bird tore at his head until blood began to drip from his nostrils, from his eyes, even from his ears. He fell to his knees in pain and howled, and all he could see through the blood that coursed across his eyes was the evil sight of Damien: erect, relentless, at his full height, haloed by the rising sun behind him—implacable and impossible to fight against.

And then the bird's beak seemed to cleave Mark's skull and penetrate his brain. The boy fell forward into the snow, his face a ghostly white, his eyes rolled back into his head.