PROLOGUE
CALEB
Post–Civil War II
Mayhem, Pennsylvania
Agust of winter wind smacks me in the face when I dart out of the house. Snow feathers down on me as I cut across blanketed lawns and trip over Christmas displays that have gone dark for the night. Shivering, I wrap my thin arms around my equally scrawny body. My friends may tease me because I’m skinny as shit, but in reality, my size doesn’t mean a thing.
I proved that tonight.
Goddamn, it’s cold. This old sweatshirt and dirty jeans do nothing to ward off the brutal weather. Should have grabbed a jacket. Didn’t even put on shoes. Just raced out after…
I glance down at the bloody knife in my hand. My muttered curse gets lost on another blast of bitter wind blowing in off the Appalachian Mountains. ’Bout time I hurt the bastard, but it doesn’t feel like enough. I don’t feel vindicated. He needed to die. Needed to get wiped off the face of the world. Emmett would be in hell now if my mother didn’t stop me, where the fucker belongs.
At least he’s gone from our lives.
For good this time.
Because he knows—he knows—I’ll kill him if he comes back.
“Jacob.” Panic rips through me. My toes are damn near frozen as they slap down on wet concrete. “Where are you?”
My little brother shouldn’t be out here. He’s ten. He should be tucked in bed, dreaming about innocent things little kids dream about. Not out here in the middle of the night, hiding from a monster.
The steady fall of snow blanketing Mayhem is all that answers me.
“Come on, baby bro, it’s me,” I call out louder. “It’s okay. He’s gone, and he ain’t coming back. I swear it.”
I stabbed Emmett good right in the leg and threatened to do worse if he didn’t leave. Of course, Alice Taylor cried because I chased away her precious boyfriend. She hit me with a solid slap across the face and told me she regretted the day I was born.
Boo-fucking-hoo.
Yeah, you and me both, lady.
As if I give a flying shit what she thinks about me. I stopped caring about her opinion the first time I found her passed out on the floor with a crack pipe stuck between her lips.
I was six.
She was lying in a puddle of her vomit.
But my hatred for her set in when she brought Emmett Johnson into our house.
Our mother forced an evil on Jacob and me two years ago, and it’s something I’ll never forgive her for.
“Christ, Jacob, where are you?”
By now, Jacob can be anywhere. He ran as soon as Emmett grabbed the kitchen knife and threatened to kill me for pulling him off my brother. Guess he didn’t like being…interrupted. That filthy animal is lucky I didn’t cut off his goddamn dick after I snatched the weapon from him.
It’s the least he deserves for what he’s done.
And now Jacob is gone, and he’s so little. Tiny for a ten-year-old. Like me, he’s malnourished. Alice rarely buys groceries. For survival’s sake, he’s become a master at hiding, and when a noise echoes behind me, I whip around, hoping it’s him.
“Found you,” a pretty female voice says.
I squint and struggle to see through the flakes. The haze mutes the streetlights. “What the hell are you doing out this late?”
Faith Decker hurries toward me. Her long, brown hair is wet and plastered to her head. Her slim body is hidden beneath so many clothing layers, all I see is her ashen face. “I heard the fighting.”
