PROLOGUE

AMbrOSE

I crouch in the thick, muggy shade of an old metal shed, listening to the road two hundred feet in front of me. Rust has eaten holes into the metal so the baking Texas sun comes streaming in, filling the shed with stars even though it’s two in the afternoon and I think I might sweat away into oblivion.

Who knows how long this thing has been sitting out here, or why it was built in the first place; I’ve claimed it for my purposes now.

I take a long drink of water and swish it around in my mouth. Silence. No one comes out this way unless they’re headed to the Church of the Well compound, and that works in my favor. Because that compound is exactly where I need to be.

Something stirs in the distance, the faint hum of tires on asphalt. I spring into action, launching myself over to the little slat I peeled away when I set up my trap this morning. When I look out, I see the road, mirage heat shimmering like an oil slick. Everything around us is flat and dead and dusty. Not a lot of places to hide, but tacks on the road are an old trick, and they’ll get the job done .

The van comes into view. White-paneled and plain. Nondescript. The sort of van you’re meant to not look at twice. When the Church of the Well sends one of their members out into the secular world, they don’t want to draw attention to themselves.

I peer out through the slat, holding my breath like I’m watching deer in the woods. When the van hits the tacks, it’s like a gun going off. The tires explode, the rubber shreds to ribbons, and the metal frames rattle and scrape along the asphalt. Sparks fly up, pale in the sunlight, as the driver slams on the brakes, the van screeching and spinning. For a minute, I think it’s going to tip over. It doesn’t.

I pat the knives hanging on the side of my belt: a carving knife on my right, a gutting knife on my left. Just reminding myself they’re there.

The van idles. I steady my breathing, waiting to see if this van really does belong to one of Sterling Gunner’s flock.

A dark-haired man gets out, wearing the loose, old-fashioned shirts the men all wear. I grin, excitement bubbling up even though this is a killing of necessity, not pleasure.

He mills around the van, cursing to himself in Spanish. I slick back my hair and plaster on an affable grin and shove out through the shed’s rickety door.

“Hola!” I call out. “Tienes problemas con tu camioneta?”

The man looks up at me, confusion and suspicion warring across his features. If his clothes didn’t give him away as being from the Church of the Well, his distrust certainly does. “Who are you?”

“Name’s Gabe,” I say. “I was doing some deer hunting and I heard your tire blow out.” It’s a dumb story, but he’s not going to be alive long enough to really think about it.

“This close to the highway?” He frowns and looks around, as if a deer might come trotting out of the endless flatlands.

“Well, hey, it ain’t exactly hunting season, you know?” I amble up to him with a touch of cowboy swagger, and he keeps watching me with narrow, guarded eyes. Fair enough. He should be suspicious of me.

I notice his gaze dropping down to my knives.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Something on the road.” He kicks at the asphalt. “Shredded my tires. Nails or something.”

I peer through the front windshield of the van. The passenger side is empty. I walk closer, aware of the man watching me with suspicion, as I crouch down beside the tires and let out a low whistle.

“Damn,” I tell him. “These things are shredded to hell.”

“Hijo de puta,” he mutters softly. He pushes his hands through his hair and drags open the passenger side of the van. “Let me get my phone.”

“Where you headed?” I rise to standing. “You from that church down the road?”

He glances over my shoulder at me. “Yes,” he says stiffly.

Perfect. I just needed the confirmation.

“You want me to give you a ride? Hot as balls out here. No sense in you waiting for the tow truck.”

“I can’t leave the van alone,” he says, burrowing around in the front seat.

“It’ll be fine. Ain’t nobody comes out this way. Why do you think I was doing my hunting out here?”

As I talk, I walk toward him, my steps soft and light. Too light for a human like him to hear.

The man slides out of the van, holding his phone, and that’s when I attack with my carving knife, slamming it straight into the base of his spine. He goes rigid; the phone drops out of his hand and cracks on the asphalt.

“Lo siento.” I breathe it into his ear. He’s not dead yet, just paralyzed, and I can smell the fear wafting off him, thick in the heat. “Nothing personal. Wrong place, wrong time. ”

I ease my gutting knife out of its holster, running my thumb along the glossy wooden handle. The entire set is over a hundred years old, crafted by a knifemaker down in my hometown of San Angelo when I was still a young man. Or youngish man.

“Esto terminará rápido,” I tell him, which is the truth. I didn't trap him here, on the road to the Church of the Well, to feed my bloodlust, strong as it is. No, I need a body. One of the faithful, so I can display him by the river, throw them into disarray, and worm my way into their trust.

I need to get through those compound gates. And this is the easiest way I know how.

Plus, I could do with some more meat.

So I gut this poor Christian like he’s the deer I said I was hunting. He doesn’t feel it when his belly splits open and his intestines spill out. That’s why I stabbed him in the spine. A killing of necessity like this doesn’t require suffering.

But I feel it. The heat, the coppery stench, the slippery delicious wetness of all his insides. When he tilts forward, I catch him and lick the blood off my fingers. The van’s keys are in his pocket, and I pull those out before I toss him over my shoulder and take him to the back of the van, which isn’t even locked. It’s full of groceries from the store in Cocana, nearly forty minutes in the opposite direction. Bread and milk, big chunks of cheese.

He was alone. Good.

I take the keys and the body and hike back across the flatlands, moving quickly in the hot sun. My Oldsmobile is parked about a quarter mile away, on an old dirt road that’ll lead me back to my ranch house, where I can get to work on the next part of my plan.

If I’m going to earn a spot on that compound, I need them afraid.

Good thing I’ve been sowing fear for two hundred years.