No true concern in their voices, not yet. The dogs had gotten away a few times in the past couple of months, which was why Ansel had dug the iron stake into the ground here in the shed, so they could be chained up securely at night.

Their calling voices faded in his ears as the thrum took over his head: the steady rhythm of blood circulating through their young veins. Little hearts pumping hard and strong.

Jesus.

Haily came to the doors. Ansel saw her pink sneakers through the gap at the bottom and shrank back. She tried the doors. They rattled but wouldn’t give.

She called to her brother. Benjy came and shook the doors with all his eight-year-old might. The four walls shivered, but the rake handle held.

Thrummity…thrummity…thrum…

Their blood. Calling to him. Ansel shuddered and let his focus fall on the dog’s stake in front of him. Buried six feet deep, set in a solid block of concrete. Strong enough to keep two Saint Bernards leashed during a summer thunderstorm. Ansel looked to the wall shelves and saw an extra chain collar, price tag still attached. He felt certain he had an old shackle lock in here somewhere.

He waited until they were a safe distance away before he reached up and pulled down the steel collar.

Captain Redfern was laid out in his johnny on the stretcher bed inside the clear plastic curtains, his lips open in a near-grimace, his breathing deep and labored. Having grown increasingly uncomfortable as night approached, Redfern had been administered enough sedatives to put him out for hours. They needed him still for imaging. Eph dimmed the light inside the bay and switched on his Luma light, again aiming the indigo glow at Redfern’s neck, wanting another look at the scar. But now, with the other lights dimmed, he saw something else as well. A strange rippling effect along Redfern’s skin—or, rather, beneath his skin. Like a mottling, or a subcutaneous psoriasis, blotching that appeared just below the surface of the flesh in shades of black and gray.

When he brought the Luma light closer for further examination, the shading beneath the skin reacted. It swirled and squirmed, as though trying to get away from the light.

Eph backed off, pulled the wand away. With the black light removed from Redfern’s skin, the sleeping man appeared normal.

Eph returned, this time running the violet lamplight over Redfern’s face. The image revealed beneath it, the mottled subflesh, formed a kind of mask. Like a second self lurking behind the airline pilot’s face, aged and malformed. A grim visage, an evil awake within him while the sick man slept. Eph brought the lamp even closer…and again the interior shadow rippled, almost forming a grimace, trying to shy away.