The coffin lid cracked open and let the moonlight in.

  The light was dull and silver. Smoke spilled into it from a Panamanian man in a magenta vest who puffed on a fat cigar. The cold air hit his face, thick with salt and steam. The sweaty faces of four other Panamanian militia removed the heavy lid and tossed it into the grass. They joined their boss’s side and lit cigarettes.

  The jungle around him was alive with the distant howler monkeys who cried like sirens in the trees. Somewhere beyond the Atlantic tides hissed against the tangled roots of the forest. Above him the clouds parted enough to reveal the full moon which was swollen and white. It hovered directly overhead and casted its spears of light through the thrashed canopy. On any other night, the light would have comforted him. But it seemed to be watching him.

  Trailing smoke, the soldiers followed their boss away from him, down the forested trail.

  “Gracias,” Ashley said.

  Sawyer tried to sit up, but he failed and collapsed back into the coffin. His arms shook from fatigue.

  All around him, the jungle closed in. The crickets chirped a rhythm that felt wrong. The leaves trembled without a breeze. He felt surrounded by predators.

  Ashley stood above him like a wraith. The moonlight etched her in silver. Her dark jacket clung to her from the mist and the water beaded along her sleeves and hair. In her gloved hand she held a small book. It was unlabeled, old, and wrapped in a clasp of bone and threadbare leather. It smelled dingy and old.

  She opened it.

  She spoke some language, not one he was familiar with. Her words sounded slippery and curved.

  Sawyer seized.

  Pain shot through his spine like a cattle prod. His throat tightened and he let out a scream. He couldn’t move and he couldn’t breathe.

  Ashley kept assaulting him with her alien language. She spoke low and ritualistically.

  “Stop!” he choked. “Stop reading that!”

  She read two more lines. Then she stopped. The sound vanished. Sawyer exhaled. He slumped back into the coffin, eyes wide and teeth bared.

  Sawyer wiped the blood from his mouth. “What did you just read?” he asked, eyes flicking to the strange book before she stashed it away.

  Ashley stood over him, tall and unblinking. Her raven hair and black leather jacket clung to her like second skin. This was the Ashley he knew. Well, it was the ‘cool punk girl’ version of her that he remembered. Her skin was moonlight pale and her lips were still and red. Her storm gray eyes were rimmed in black. She looked straight through him, cold but not uncaring. “I just read a binding verse,” she said, voice low and precise. “It’s a verse from the Book of the Damned. It’s black magic. Ugly stuff. I don’t like to use it. But without it? You would have been completely feral by sunrise. You’d have no memory. You would only know a deep unquenchable hunger. You’d tear into the jungle and you’d kill women and children first because they’re easy prey. The Panamanian militia would catch you, drag you to their spot by the canal, give up your soul as an offering to Lucifer, and then crack open your brain and feed from your flesh.”

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  He stared at her. His pulse thudded in his throat.

  “I should have stayed back home.”

  “Yep.”

  It started in his gut but it didn’t stop there. It spread up through his spine. And then down his arms and into his fingertips and teeth. And then into his skull and then it sunk deep into his soul. It wasn’t hunger, it felt more like a deep absence. Inside of him, his body screamed to be filled. His veins felt dry and his muscles twitched in waves like they were trying to eat themselves. His gaze dropped to the blood crusted on his wrists. It was dark and flaked. He brought his arm up and dragged his tongue across it. It was salty, rusty, and full of life. He moaned softly and licked again, hungrily, like an animal at the rim of a dry bowl. He didn’t care. His pupils dilated. The pain inside of him dulled and that empty void was being filled. He pressed his mouth to his skin and licked what was left of him.

  “No—hey—Sawyer—stop.”

  He didn’t hear it.

  She grabbed his wrist and wrenched it from his mouth. Then she unscrewed a dented steel flask and shoved it between his teeth like a pacifier.

  “Drink.”

  The first swallow hit his throat. His eyes rolled back. His fingers unclenched. The tremors in his spine slowed. His thoughts returned to a manageable speed. He blinked at her. He saw her. She wasn’t quite human and he felt it for the first time. She was gone, too. She was something else.

  She released his wrist.

  He clutched the flask like a holy instrument.

  “I need it,” he rasped. “I need more blood.”

  The forest grew clearer. Every drop that touched his tongue seemed to unlock something. He heard the rush of blood in Ashley’s veins. He heard the tremor of bat wings far above him. He heard the shiver of vines as a monkey passed through branches across distant canopies.

  He felt everything.

  Once he drained the flask, his hands stopped shaking.

  Ashley’s voice came again, quieter now. “Welcome back to the living, Sawyer. Well…not quite the living.”

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. “Did I just die?”

  “Yes.”

  She closed the Book of the Damned with a snap and slid it into a side pocket of her coat.

  “You’re part of something bigger now. Something much older. And you’re not alone…but before we get into all of that, there is something we have to discuss.” She pulled a slim black leather wallet from her pocket and flicked it open. The CIA seal gleamed in the moonlight. “We need to talk,” she said, stepping back. Her eyes remained steady. “It’s about the Black Ledger.”

  Sawyer sat upright.

  “The Black Ledger?” He hadn’t heard the name of that book spoken about in a long time. It was his father’s lifelong project that he never finished. Once he passed, it it disappeared and Sawyer never thought about it again. “What about it?”

  “Where is it? Where is the Black Ledger?”