What to do? He had nowhere to go. Nowhere in this world.

He was pulling at his hair when the great noise of a sudden crash outside took the air away from the room. The power was out. Yoan jumped to his feet and ran to the door.

Outside, diagonally across the bend in the street, a late-model white Infiniti had smashed head-on into a parked pickup truck with such force that it had driven the truck onto the sidewalk and cracked a telephone pole, the top two-thirds of which now lay over the Infiniti. The driver lay flat on the collapsed front seat, bloody, dead. A live wire sizzled on the street like an asp. The Infiniti had to have been traveling upward of fifty miles an hour in order to inflict that much damage, a speed unheard of in this residential area.

Nfuri.

Yoan looked around. The spirits were invisible, but still one looked for them, it was human nature. What would the taking feel like? he wondered.

Nothing happened at first. He retreated to the front step of the house and sat down, weeping, to await his fate. He cursed himself for the mistakes he had made—for the desecrations he had sought—for the blasphemies he had performed. Between vomit-like, throat-heaving sobs, he looked openmouthed at the sky.

Chapter

Obediah sensed the spell of protection, recently cast at the entrance to this place. Its magic had dissipated, but a trace of the incantation remained, showing the entity it was at the right place, on the right track.

The grave robber sat on the brick step tearing at his hair. The man awaited his possession, was resigned to it. Almost—welcomed it.

This angered Obediah. The entering was violent, the takeover traumatic. The grave robber submitted with a terrible scream that faded into a groan.

Obediah took the man, stood. Walked back into the house. The destruction inside further incensed the entity, for whom destruction was its essence. It walked to a mirror, centering the grave robber’s face between the cracks in the glass. It took the man’s hands with their long, filed, pointed fingernails and began scraping at its face.

Grating away the flesh to reveal the tissue beneath.

Obediah searched the madman’s memory for information about Blackwood. It found there the agent as well—the very one he had passed over at the house where it took the agent’s partner.

Yes, it thought. Blackwood’s agents. His accomplices.

All Obediah knew was that it was on the right path now. Beyond that, the vehicle told it very little. Obediah regarded its revealed face, the blood and meat of this human, and twisted it into a smile.

And then it ran. Sprinting through the streets of Englewood.

Past the screams.

Running hard until the expressway came into view.

And then the overpass.

Climbing the curved safety fence. Goring itself on the top spikes.

Getting over the top.

And then falling.

Until impact.