Lonely Places

LONELY PLACES

Musky air from the fireplace clouded the small hunting cabin. From across a wooden table, green eyes burned into Derek Barton’s soul. He didn’t want to be here, but he’d nowhere else left to go.

“What’s happening to me?”

A leathery voice creaked. “Somethin powerful, boy. Old Magic powerful.”

Fear slithered in his guts as he stared at this . . . man. Rumors called Clive Hartley many things—brujo, shaman, zombie, the walking dead, even—but Derek had never believed them, always figuring they were bullshit stories and nothing else.

Now, however? He desperately hoped the stories were true, because if not . . . he was fucked. “People say you know about this kinda shit. Ya gotta help me.”

Clive Hartley leaned into hissing lantern light, bright green eyes narrowed, deep lines creasing his thick skin. “Somethin’s growin inside ya. Ken see it in yer eyes.”

“Please.”

A pause. Hartley folded his hands on the wooden table. “Tell me how.”

Derek shuddered as pieces of himself f