CHAPTER ONE

- Tennyson, "The Dawn"

The woman screamed again and again, short, shrill screams, as if someone was poking her with a stick. She was a stocky, middle aged woman in hunting camouflage, her face free of make up but her fluffy blonde hair incongruously well-coiffed. Breaking away from the medics who'd been evaluating her, she now stood there right in the middle of the crime scene, her boots planted in a puddle of blood, letting out staccato shrieks and jabbing her finger at the corpse, pulling her hand almost back to her ear and thrusting it forward with each scream. The EMTs hovered outside the perimeter wearing helpless expressions, clearly not wanting to trample potential evidence by fetching her back themselves.

"Get her out of sight of the body," Sheriff Randall snapped.

The deputy officer, with a long suffering sigh, took the screaming woman by the arm, herding her around the splashes of gore and back behind the yellow police tape strung through the bushes. "Please, calm down, ma'am. Just take a breath and calm down."

One of the field evidence techs glanced up from the corpse. "Victim's wife?"

Randall nodded. "There's blood all over her," he said.

"Deer, probably. There's a half-dressed carcass in the back of their truck." He looked down at the victim in professional disgust, not at the condition of the body but at the contamination of the evidence. "I don't know how much of this is his and how much might be deer."

The forensics guy waved him closer. Randall complied reluctantly. It couldn't be just another hunting accident, could it? One fat, drunk, out-of-state redneck hunter mistaking another bubba dressed in bright orange for a deer and filling his blubbery ass full of buckshot. Nice and simple. After everything that had been happening the last two weeks, he deserved a simple, straightforward case.

Something told Randall that nothing about this was going to be simple.

The dead man, one Thomas William Morgan, looked like he'd hugged a threshing machine. He lay on his back on the frost covered grass in a red puddle of his own making, arms and legs outflung. Half of his face had been ripped off, and numerous deep gashes covered his forearms, apparently defense wounds as he tried to protect his face from the attacker. A tactic that ultimately proved futile.

With prompt medical attention, he might have survived that grievous face injury, although he would have been hideously scarred and probably lost the eye. The killing blow, however, had been to his abdomen. What appeared to be a series of powerful downward swipes with a thick, bladed weapon which had viciously eviscerated him. The murder happened less than a half hour ago. Steam still rose from his exposed bowels.

"Think it might have been a bear? Attracted by the blood scent, maybe," Randall asked.

There hadn't been an attack in the state forest for almost ten years, and that had been a hitchhiker from New York chased down and clawed by a bear interested in the candy bars in his backpack. The man had survived. Most of the bears in the Pine Barrens were blacks, smaller and shyer than the brown species, more likely to run than attack at the sight or scent of a human. Dog maulings were more common and caused more fatalities than bear attacks, but bears were of course more spectacular.

Randall could imagine the panicky news reports already, the feature stories on "what YOU can do to be safe" because the newscasters knew that their viewers, like any human beings, were basically self centered and could only be aroused to interest (and persuaded to sit through the local car commercials) if their own personal safety were threatened.

The FET stood up, putting his hands on his lower back and stretching. He left smeary red handprints on his overalls. "Might could be, but I doubt it. Those look like knife wounds, not claws. Two different weapons. See, here? Whatever made this was conical and sharply pointed, like a tent peg maybe. You can see the shape of the divot. Stabbed into him at the corner of the lower jaw here and dragged upwards."

He indicated the deep, ragged wounds gouged into the man's face. Most of the flesh of one cheek had been ripped away, exposing teeth, shattering the cheekbone and leaving the eye dangling. Randall felt his stomach twist up, and tasted acid on the back of his tongue. It was the teeth that did it, gleaming and perfectly intact in the ruined mess of the face. He looked away, but the FET kept talking.

"Here and here, though, on the arms, those were made by something with a sharp point and a sharp edge. Nothing that looks like bite marks, though. Unless the bears are carrying machetes nowadays, this wasn`t an animal attack."

"Animal? It was no animal."

For a moment, Randall was confused by the female voice. Then he realized it was the victim's wife, Brenda Morgan. She sat on the bumper of the ambulance, daubing her streaming eyes with a wad of gauze.

He wondered how much she'd heard. Sitting down beside her, he took her cold hand between his and rubbed it, ignoring the greasy feel of what he sincerely hoped was deer blood. If it wasn't, he knew they'd already gotten samples of it.

This was not something you were supposed to do, of course. One consoling pat on the back and the next thing you know, you're slapped with a harassment suit. Mrs. Morgan had the look of a woman one thread away from snapping completely, though, and his instinct told him a little kindness might pay off big in information vital to the investigation.

"Do you feel you can make a statement now, ma'am," he asked gently.

She sat there for a moment, her shoulders jerking with silent sobs, then said in a ragged, hoarse whisper, "I can."

Randall gestured subtly for some of the other officers to approach. "Just tell us what happened in your own words. Take your time."

Slowly, in fits and jerks interrupted by spasms of weeping, the story came out. Enthusiastic hunters, they'd had a stand in this area for several seasons now, and almost never failed to come home with enough venison to last them the rest of the year. But the weather had been unusually bad and the hunting poor, and knowing that a winter weather advisory was issued warning of impending blizzard conditions, they'd decided to pack it in and head back to their hotel. This was roughly forty minutes before sunrise.

Just as they'd made the decision, however, Tom had spotted a nice young buck and brought it down with a single clean shot. Brenda field-dressed the kill while Tom gathered up their equipment. She'd had her back turned when the attack happened.

"Tom started shouting."

"Did he say anything?"

"I'm not sure. Get back, go away, something like that. I thought it might be foxes or raccoons. They try to sneak off with bits of offal if you don't watch it. All of a sudden, he was screaming, these terrible screams . . . " Brenda Morgan stopped, gulping. Randall waited patiently but although tears once again spilled over her cheeks, she managed to continue. "My rifle was still loaded, so I grabbed it. I don't know what I thought was happening. I just came running, and that's when I saw it."

"Saw what, ma'am?"

She raised her head for the first time, her eyes wide, bloodshot. "The devil."

Almost before Randall could process this, she turned on him fiercely. "I know what you're thinking, and I'm not crazy! It was the devil, the Jersey Devil! I never believed it either, but I know what I saw. It was standing on its hind legs hitting Tom, tearing into my poor Tom, slicing him up and he couldn't get away."

The woman slumped forward again, dissolving into bitter tears. "Couldn't . . . get . . . away . . . oh, god, why? Why?"

Randall stood and let the EMTs bundle her into the back of the ambulance. He'd get nothing useful out of her now. She was too distraught. Maybe later, in the hospital, after a handful of tranquilizers and some time to absorb the shock. Maybe never. It was hard to tell with these things.

A car was pulling up along the dirt road, an unmarked and unfamiliar civilian vehicle. Randall had never seen anything quite like it. Vintage whatever it was, a big silver monster of a car that looked as if it was meant for ferrying Rockefellers to and from society balls.

"Godammit." Randall made a mental note to read the riot act to whoever had let it through. He stepped out and held up his arms, blocking the path.

The car purred to a stop, and a man in a sharp black suit emerged from the driver's side like a whip uncoiling. The man was as unusual as his ride, if not more so. Tall, slat-sided, with an angular, pale face and hair that must have either been bleached out or gone prematurely white - he only looked to be about thirty five, far too young for that color to be natural. Without a word, he stepped up to the police tape and crossed his arms behind his back, leaning over and giving every appearance of studiously examining the corpse.

"Hold on there, now," Randall said, one hand reaching automatically for his belt.

Another man in a considerably cheaper suit stumbled out of the passenger's seat, looking half-awake and miserable. He grinned apologetically at Randall.

"Sorry, Sheriff. We tried calling ahead, but I think your phone's out of range, and Agent Pendergast wouldn't wait any longer."

"Agent who?"

The man in the suit drew a wallet out of the inner jacket of his suit and showed his badge for moment, then tucked it away again. The twitchy fellow with him flashed his ID, also. He was local office, no doubt the liaison assigned to Pendergast. He didn't appear terribly thrilled about the assignment, either.

"FBI?" Randall exclaimed in disbelief. "Well, I'll be damned. You sure know how to make an entrance, fella."

He stuck out his hand, but the agent kept his arms folded behind his back and bowed slightly from the waist, leaving Randall shaking hands with the thin air, looking and feeling like a dope. He jerked his hand back and shoved it deep in his pocket.

"How can I help you, Mr. Pendergast?"

"I don't require any immediate assistance, I simply need to examine the crime scene." The man's voice was another surprise, unmistakably modulated by a rich, syrupy Southern accent, Louisiana or Georgia unless Randall missed his guess.

"Our forensics team is already going over it with a fine toothed comb. Anything you need to know, just ask them."

"Thank you," he said in a cool tone. "I prefer to work independently. We may not be seeking the same evidence."

Just what in hell did that mean? Randall turned to the other man, Kittredge, who seemed refreshingly normal next to Pendergast. "So what do we need the FBI here for, anyways, if you don`t mind my asking?"

"I'm not sure if I'm at liberty to say." Kittredge looked meaningfully at Pendergast.

The man had crouched down on all fours, peering at a splash of dried blood on a patch of dry leaves. The tip of his long nose almost touched the ground. Randall wondered if he were nearsighted, or if they had actually missed something important. Either way, something about the man's intense concentration was a bit eerie.

Kittredge cleared his throat. "Ah, Agent Pendergast here has been investigating what he believes to be a group of spree killers operating out of New York."

"A group? Jesus! Some kind of Satanic cult?" Randall swore, and Kittredge swallowed again.

"He seems to think, ah, that some members of this group may have fled apprehension and are now sheltering in the state forest here."

Devils and FBI agents. The sheriff saw his hope of any kind of simplicity in this case vanishing like the steam puffing from his mouth.

"He seems to think, huh?" Randall nodded at the man, who was now creeping forward in the pose of a bloodhound following a scent. In fact, Randall was dead certain the man actually was sniffing. The forensics team and half his officers had stopped to watch him, too. It wasn't every day you saw a weirdo in a nice suit crawling around in the forest. "What do you think, Kittredge?"

The FBI man clamped his mouth shut, obviously unwilling to say anything uncomplimentary about a fellow agent, but the unhappiness on his face was clear as a black and white line drawing. There was some kind of story here, Randall was sure of it.

If this Pendergast was going to go running around like a dog, Randall was damn well going to put a leash on him.

He strode over to the agent and stood over him, rocking back and forth on his heels. Pendergast ignored him completely. His body was statue still except for a tremble of tension in his fingers. That sort of exquisitely rigid equilibrium might be excusable if perhaps he were aiming a gun for a difficult shot or attempting to surprise a suspect, but the agent was staring at an unremarkable patch of ground with no footprints, blood or any other kind of evidence apparent.

Randall coughed. "If I could interrupt - "

Pendergast's head snapped up, and Randall took a startled step backwards. A rivulet of bright blood drained from the corner of the man's mouth. His eyes flicked back and forth, tracking the erratic zigzag trajectory of something that was either invisible to Randall or purely imaginary. He looked quite insane.

Randall took another step away and bellowed for Kittredge. As the other agent came running over to them, Pendergast snatched something out of the air, then slowly pitched forward and landed on his face in the grass. He didn't move again.

In the ensuing commotion, as the agent's unconscious form was strapped to a backboard, subjected to a hurried exam by the EMTs and then bundled into the ambulance and borne away with sirens and lights, no one thought to check and see what Pendergast might have caught.