DEAD PACIFICA Prologue

Somewhere outside of Point Hope…

In the year of the Death Core's reign.

The massive farmhouse loomed in the horizon. The kind of homes people would be obsessed with on Zillow, even sell their souls to live in out of jealousy; a two-story mansion with white siding, black window frames, hundreds of acres of land around it, and a back porch with a pool that begged for iced tea and pool parties. But tonight, all the lights were off, and the whole place sagged in the dark, waiting for tragedy to strike. Fog crawled across the ground thick as dish soap. The moon was nothing but a pale fingernail peeking behind the dark clouds. The sound of insects were nowhere to be found.

Here, in the middle of nowhere, the farmhouse was steeped in silence.

Closer.

And closer.

Moving to the back of the house now.

A commotion broke from inside, muffled at first, but getting louder.

The sound of glass shattering.

A brief shadow moved from one of the windows.

Closing in.

Gliding forward like a dolly-track through the darkness, toward the back door.

Then—

WHAM.

The back door exploded outward, slamming into the siding. A woman in her early thirties, Stella, burst through the frame, screaming. Barefoot, white tank top and blue jeans caked with blood, red hair plastered to her cheeks with sweat and tears. She ran with all the strength she could muster, stumbling once in the mud before catching herself. Her scream ripped out of her throat raw and wild, carried by the fog like a flare.

"HELP! Somebody—anybody!"

But no one answered. Her scream tore loose before she could stop it, raw and desperate.

Behind her, something moved inside the house. Shadows fleeting just beyond the threshold of the door. Several of them. Slow, unhurried, as if giving her a head start just made the game more fun.

Stella didn't look back.

"Help me!"

She bolted toward the barn, the squat, leaning structure at the edge of the property. The fog thickened around her ankles, dragging her as if they were ghostly wet hands. Twice she nearly went down and once she bit her tongue hard enough to taste blood.

The barn's door was already partially open.

Stella shoved through and pulled them mostly shut behind her. But not all the way. Her trembling fingers couldn't manage the latch and she didn't know how far the others were on her trail. She needed to hide. Fast. She looked around the barn, but it was bigger than it looked from the outside. To her right were some hay bales rising high enough to climb behind or maybe even burrow into?

Further down the aisle was an old tractor, half-covered by a mildew-stinking tarp. Its wheels were sunk into the dirt floor. There was just enough space beneath its rusted undercarriage for someone small to wriggle under. There were also horse stalls, four on each side. On the left was a toppled metal feed bin, lying on its side. She could crawl behind it, maybe even tip it upright with her inside. But it would make a horrible, metallic scraping that would give her away instantly. And then there was the wooden ladder leading to the hayloft above.

A sudden noise outside startled her out of her thoughts.

She darted toward the hay bales. They weren't the perfect cover, but they were something, and something was better than dying screaming in the open. They rose just high enough to hide behind, but close enough to the wall that, if someone walked past, she'd be invisible unless they leaned down and shoved their face into the stacks. She slipped behind the second row as the hay prickled her skin and filled her nose with the sharp, dusty scent. She tucked her legs close, folded herself as small as she could, and pressed her palm against her mouth.

A long, long moment passed, and by this point, she knew they were toying with her. They must be.

She had no where to run, really. She knew she should have never agreed to come up here. She should've dug her heels in, refused Todd's wide grin and "Come on, babe, it'll be romantic. Just the two of us and the beautiful scenery. Don't you like a little adventure?" She should be on a beach in Tulum right now with the rest of their friends, burning a tan on a lounger by the pool, drinking something pink with a stupid name and a stupid umbrella in it—not hiding in a barn in the ass-end of Oregon while a pack of strangers closed in on her.

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Todd. God, Todd.

Maybe Todd won't be dead. Maybe she wouldn't be replaying the image of Todd's face going slack when the first blow of the axe landed if she just tried hard enough to convince him from this trip. But he thought it would be nice to celebrate their third-year anniversary at his parents' summer house in Oregon for two weeks. From the moment she arrived at that damn house, she'd felt eyes on her. Todd laughed it off, told her she was acting crazy when their neighbors were a mile away.

Until tonight.

Stella wasn't crazy.

No, she was right all along.

Right about the thumps she'd heard above the ceiling. Right about the missing food. Right about a woman humming inside the walls. Right about the strange, sour smell in the upstairs hallway.

There were people, squatters, living inside Todd's house ever since they got there, watching them eat, sleep, take a shower, or worse, times when she and Todd were intimate. They must have been living in the house for a long time when Todd discovered them in the attic.

Discovered a shrine to some fucked-up thing.

And now Todd was dead, and she was next.

Stella crawled toward a narrow gap between two warped boards of the wall nearby. She pressed her eye to it.

Fog curled in the yard like cigarette smoke. Figures moved through it—five? Seven? More? Hard to tell. They drifted toward the barn in wide formation, like a hunting party stalking a wounded animal. They clearly had done this too many times to bother with a surprise. Stella's stomach flipped as panic threatened to boil over. She stumbled back into her hiding space.

Then—

CREAAAKKKK.

The barn door slid open.

A huge shape filled the doorway, stepping quietly into the barn, and dragging an axe. Two more shapes followed after him, and they started looking for her. The axe-carrier walked between the horse stalls, pausing every few feet like he was smelling the air for her. Stella tried not to breathe. Her heart was a nail gun ricocheting in her ribs.

Her toes brushed something under the hay. She froze.

A garden fork.

She picked it up and brought it close to her chest.

The strangers fanned through the barn now, their footfalls muffled by dirt and straw. A board creaked not ten feet from her. Another came around behind the hay stack. A soft, amused grunt came from one of them when he knew how close he was.

Stella gripped the fork so hard her knuckles ached. She could hear her pulse in her ears.

Then the axe man stopped.

Right in front of her hiding spot.

Oh, please, God. No, no, no, no…

But he leaned down and slowly reached forward—

Now!

Stella exploded upward, thrusting the garden fork with every ounce of strength left in her body, aiming for the throat. The man jerked aside like he'd been expecting it, her swing cutting only empty air.

But behind him—

A wet, choking gakk!

The fork punched deep into the neck of another stranger standing just behind the axe-man, three inches of steel sinking into the meat. Hot blood sprayed across Stella's forearm like someone flung a ladle of soup at her.

The wounded man fell to his knees, clutching his throat, eyes widening with panic.

Stella let go of the garden fork and bolted between two stalls, ducking away from the axe-man's swing, and sprinted toward the back of the barn. Her shoes skidded on hay just as another hand almost swiped at her shirt. The back door glowed faintly with moonlight through the cracks. Almost there. Almost free.

She shoved it open—

But a curly-haired woman already stood outside, waiting for her.

"Hello, sweetheart," she said, smiling mischievously.

The knife drove into Stella's stomach was so fast her brain didn't process it the pain hit: sharp, bright, and scalding. She folded in half, breath exploding out of her lungs as she staggered backward into the barn, the knife sliding out of her belly with a soft, obscene scchlickk!

"She's over here! I've got her!" The woman shouted to her companions inside.

Stella collapsed onto the dirt and tried to crawl, her fingers digging into straw. A warm stream poured down her stomach in waves.

More shapes closed in on her. Men, women…she lost count how many they were.

Stella's vision tunneled. The curly-haired woman with the knife stepped over her, calm as a nurse approaching a patient. Stella tried to say why, please, not like this. But only a strangled gasp came out. Her attacker wore blank expressions, some even curious, like children watching an insect crawl on the ground.

"Wh…why…" she croaked weakly.

Another shape materialized in the doorway.

He wasn't dressed like the others. The newcomer wore jeans, a dark jacket, and a kind smile. Young, maybe twenty, maybe younger. His hair wet from the drizzle of rain outside. His eyes were bright with something that felt almost excitement and fervor.

He stepped inside and the others parted for him without a sound.

Xavier Yates knelt beside her, gently parted the strands of hair that covered her face.

Up close, his face was shockingly handsome—freckled, strong jaw, almost sweet, the kind of man who would volunteer at animal shelters and held doors for old ladies. He leaned in, his breath warm on her cheek as if he were trying to catch her last words.

"What was that?" he asked gently.

"Why…" she whimpered, saliva and blood bubbling out of her lips.

Xavier smiled softly. Kind. "Because we can."

The knife flashed once from its sheath, and Stella's world tore open.

Heat spilled down her chest from her neck. The pain was so enormous it became a single, deafening note. She slapped her hands against her throat, trying to hold the life inside, but it poured through her fingers like hot syrup. She tried crawling away, clutching at the dirt, her legs kicking weakly against the floor.

The strangers stepped back to give her room to die.

Someone groaned nearby; the man she'd stabbed earlier.

A puddle of blood glistened beneath him, thick and black as ink under the moonlight. He coughed, choking on it, and Xavier moved to him with the same patient tenderness he'd shown Stella.

"Brother," Xavier murmured and knelt down, cradling the man's head. "I'm here."

The man's eyes fluttered. His voice came in thin threads. "I don't…I don't think I'm going to make it."

Xavier brushed a hand across the dying man's hair, gentle as a parent tucking in a child. "Rejoice in your death, brother. For you will be in His shroud forever."

A smile cracked across the cultist's blood-soaked mouth. "I am…ascended."

His chest rose once, hitched twice, then stopped.

Stella watched all of this through a shrinking tunnel vision. Her fingers wouldn't obey her anymore. They slid from her throat, sticky and useless. The cold crept into her limbs as she tried to push herself up, tried to crawl again, tried to cry out one last time.

Her head lolled sideways.

The last thing she saw was Xavier rising to his feet, turning toward the open barn doors, facing the direction of the mountain. He and the others lifted their hands and his congregation knelt as one.

"My Lord Dungeon…hear our offering…your children in the shadow of your light…" Xavier said.

They bowed toward the distant slope, toward the darkness as their voices rose together, a droning chant that slithered across the building.

Stella couldn't make out the words.

She didn't get the chance to.

The biting cold reached her heart.

And then she fell into the swelling darkness.

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