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count. Assault rifles were slung over their shoulders, and they all wore black ski masks.
    Who are these people?  
    For years she’d suffered from PTSD. Nightmares, tremors, anxiety attacks—a whole slew of emotional problems had tormented her long after she’d walked away from her hard-earned battle with the demon.Time had healed some of the wounds, but the events back at her apartment viciously reopened them.The memory of Ashley bleeding out over her comforter cut through her mind, and tears started to flow.  
    This couldn’t be happening…
    The door of the barn creaked open and the soldiers deferentially turned toward the new arrival. This man was larger than the others, taller and with a bulkier physique. Corded muscles and a massive chest bulged under a black shirt, but Nicole barely paid any attention to the man’s stature, transfixed by his face.  
    The face of a monster.
    The features were brutally malformed and distorted with high, inhuman cheekbones and protruding Neanderthal brows. The skin stretched over the misshapen bones was the color of blood. The worst thing were the eyes, twin pools of black with no distinction between pupil and iris. As the figure drew closer, she made out the long incisors filed to sharp points and rows of metal horns poking from the bald skull.  
    A demon made flesh.
    At first Nicole thought the man was wearing a Halloween mask. But there was fire in those black eyes. Most people would have cowered in fear in the face of such a monster. She was afraid—possibly terrified—but Nicole wasn’t like most people. She’d experienced true evil in her short life. She’d come face to face with real monsters, creatures no Hollywood special effects wizard could do justice to. Nightmares beyond imagination. This man was an impostor, a pretender to the title.  
    Now that he stood at the edge of the pentagram looking down at her bound form, she realized the demonic visage hadn’t crawled out of the pits of hell but was carved into reality by the hands of a skilled plastic surgeon. Silicon to distort the skull and make it seem inhuman, dyes to change the hues of the skin and eyes, metal implants for the horns and teeth. Body modifications with a demonic twist.  
    What sort of individual would subject himself to this type of radical transformation? Nicole didn’t doubt that this man who dreamt of being monster was someone to fear. But she’d faced far worse.  
    The leader nodded at his soldiers. Three of them peeled from the group and began to light the black candles that surrounded the pentagram.
    “What do you plan to do to me?” Nicole asked in a tightly controlled voice.
    The apocalypse soldier extricated a Ka-Bar as he stepped into the circle. He bent closer, and Nicole could see the subtle network of scars from his radical transformation.
    “You’ve shed blood and taken life, opening yourself to the darkness that once took root inside of you.” The voice was intelligent, almost refined, forming a sharp contrast to the bestial appearance.  
    “Who are you?” she asked. She was surprised at how strong her voice sounded, her fear tightly kept in check.
    “I’m Amon, and these soldiers are my infernal legion.”  
    The cult leader switched to a foreign language, guttural and timeless, and the itching sensation on her belly turned to outright pain. Her hand touched her scar and her fingers came up gloved in red. The old wound oozed the way it had on the day the beast’s talons had rent her vulnerable flesh. Drops of crimson hit the markings on the floor and became one with the pentagram.
    “You’re about to be reunited with an old friend,” Amon said, and the dark promise in his voice sent a chill down her spine.

C HAPTER E LEVEN

    THE STARS PAINTED the white sands of the desert an iridescent blue. Laying flat on his chest behind a small ridge overlooking the horse farm, Talon scoured the terrain with a pair of night vision goggles. His keen hearing strained, growing