His windpipe sealed up; his muscles burst with agony as he tried to pull free. His legs were ripped out from under him, and the darkness dragged him down the stairs, chin banging against each step. He skidded into the pile of corpses and rolled onto his back as the darkness spread around him, swallowing up all but a faint glimmer of the overhead light. Above him, a figure loomed: the little white girl, her body still mangled, shadows oozing from her many wounds.

Phillip did the only sensible thing and screamed.

She lifted one arm, rotten darkness spilling out of her seams. Stretched her hand toward Phillip, as if to caress his face, sending an array of images crawling like spiders through his thoughts. A world on fire, a circular chamber, a featureless face looming over him, waiting, wanting, demanding answers he couldn’t give.

Somehow he had the thought to raise his pistol, but his limbs were locked in place. Of all the goddamned things Al had trained him for . . . Absurdly, he wanted to laugh. The army’d never guess in a million years how he’d gotten himself killed.

More, the girl hissed—the words like teeth and claws digging in. We need more.

Just then a rifle shot pierced the veil of darkness, whizzing over his shoulder from behind him, and a hole bloomed in the girl’s face. She rasped with a scream, but it was like a deflating balloon, all rushing air as the shadows gushed out. In a gale of whispers and shrieking, the darkness collapsed on itself, leaving only the mangled body behind—just as before.

Phillip crumpled, the back of his head hitting the cellar stairs.

A young woman towered over him, her upside-down face snarling as she clutched her smoking rifle.

“You’re late,” she said.

CHAPTER FIVE

SIMONE

The American shoved off of the cellar stairs and whirled on her with a pistol in one hand and a fire poker in the other. “Who the hell are you?”

Simone slammed the barrel of her rifle against his poker in a riposte. Both rifle and poker clattered to the stairs. His eyes widened as he gripped his sidearm, and his thumb fumbled for the cocking mechanism. But she was already lunging at him, pinning his pistol arm to his side as she backed him against the cellar wall.

“Okay, okay.” He held his free hand up. “You win. Let me go.”

Using her forearm to hold him against the wall, she dug around in her hunting parka’s pockets with her free hand until she found what was left of her pack of Gauloises and jammed one between her teeth.

“What,” Simone growled, “is the code?”

He stared back at her with glassy, deep brown eyes. “Are you fucking kidding me? Did you see that thing—”

“The code,” she said again, fishing out her lighter.