The Unblessed Ch. 8

 So Four Days Later we find ourselves in Sudan with Daniel Hunt again. Remember him? No? It's only been ~240 pages since we last saw him. Anyway, he's at another dig when a native digger, an Egyptian named Hesepti, tells him that someone is here to see him with a letter of introduction from Raymond. It's one of those, "If you are reading this I'm dead" type missives and of course it was brought by Collin.

"To Daniel Hunt, Collin looked dangerous. He had the cold, menacing aura of a cat at bay."

""Mason is dead," he said simply. The cold emotionless quality of the voice sent a chill up Hunt's spine." p.258

If you've read these sorts of books before you know that Collin is now a hardened man who will do whatever it takes no matter the price. He's suffered, you see. He's incompetently manfully done battle with evil forces and he's battle scarred, both in and out. He's been toughened by adversity and has no time for finer feelings. Bet you two bucks the next woman who wanders on scene will be his new love interest. But he's been hurt. And he can't put her in danger. Or something. We'll see. This author has steered clear of any romance so far, even with Collin's fiancée, so maybe he's not really interested.

Rather than tell Hunt that Raymond died in an ill-conceived and badly botched plan Collin tells him that he was murdered by the demon from the temple he's digging up. They head outside to talk.

Then we get an interlude where a "small executive jet" carrying the only other two men who knew about the Ostium dig flies out over the ocean despite repeated attempts by flight control and two Navy jets to get the pilot's attention. And it crashes. That's it. That's the scene.

Back in the cave Hunt and Collin take a look at some remains that might be demon remains? So they think it might be an undiscovered species that has unknown reproductive habits? Which means there could be more, I suppose. Anyway, they're interrupted by a woman.

"She was rather pretty, in an understated way, with shoulder-length blond-hair, tied back. She wore light brown shorts that tended to downplay trim, tanned legs, and a jacket that obscured the shape of her upper body effectively." p.264

They hold her at gunpoint, which doesn't thrill her, and we learn that Samantha, Raymond's assistant, does make a repeat appearance.

""What are you doing here?" Collin asked coldly, still not lowering his pistol."

She also has a letter from Raymond and she tells them a story about how, months ago, Raymond sent her to Smith's village to be initiated into the priestess-hood there, get her own fancy amulet, and hear Hasha's story. He paid her well but when he stopped his check-ins she was notified, realized he was dead and that was the sign to look up Hunt.

So they have dinner and talk. "Hunt and Egan had come away from the session deeply shaken by Collin's brief but unsparing narrative, and both of them looked at Collin with unabashed respect afterward. Neither could have conceived the details of his ordeals." p.269

Samantha explains that she learned how the amulets work. "Magic, you see, real magic, is not a supernatural phenomenon. The force by which magic operates is supplied by human emotions." p.270 So, you know, the kind of magic that requires your feelings to have power over other people.

Anyway, they're interrupted by "the trim form of the Egyptian" Hesepti who Collin realizes is possessed and armed, allowing him to jump away before he gets shot. Samantha tackles Hesepti giving Collin time to gets his own gun out and shoot him. "Once, twice, three times the blood-quenched bullets slammed into the Egyptian's trim torso." p. 271-2

The three take stock and the lights go out. Samantha gasps, they turn to the corpse and freeze in shock. End scene.

The Unblessed Ch. 7 and Ch. 8 prologue

 A short action-oriented chapter that starts off with Smith and Collin in an airplane flying toward the compound they discovered in Montana. Smith, oddly, has been put under hypnotic suggestion by Raymond who apparently specializes in this field along with hypnotic regression and, as we will see later, helicopter piloting, so that he will think the plane is in danger when it isn't and will emergency parachute out right into the hands of the enemy minions. See, he's been made to forget that the amulet protects him and therefore it no longer protects him.

Collin bails at the same time to skulk about with thermal and night vision googles to follow where Smith is taken. Right before Smith is led into a cave cleverly disguised as a cave Collin speaks a code phrase into a radio Smith has on him to snap him out of it and remember that the amulet protects him. Then Raymond flies the helicopter in and Collin starts shooting and honestly I'm not sure what their plan even was because at this point the whole enemy compound comes pouring out firing at them.

Smith and Collin make a break for the helicopter and while Smith makes it a bullet "creases" Collin's ankle and he goes down. Raymond takes off but Collin manages to grab onto the edge. Unfortunately he lets go about thirty feet up and someone shoots something vital on the helicopter and it explodes.

So Collin falls into a "thicket" and wakes up the next day to find his friends dead and the crash site and battle ground partially hidden and cleaned up. He sees the C-47 taking off and realizes the demon is escaping again. He knows Mr. G will hunt him down and he will never be safe as long as the demon exists. He limps off down the road reflecting on his losses.

Seriously though. What was their plan? What the hell was that? They were so well kitted out. They had thermal and night vision goggles, automatic rifles, walkie talkies, a small plane, a helicopter... What did they intend to do? I just...I don't get it.

The Unblessed Ch. 6

So Collin gets to have a little tête-à-tête, discounting the minions Demetre and Peter, with the Guardian. I'm getting tired of calling him that. From now on he'll be referred to as Mr. G.

It all starts very civilly, cozily almost. Collin offers Mr. G a drink. "No, thank you. I never touch it." p.221 Things are a bit awkward while they look at each and around the room. Then Mr. G announces he knows about the others helping Collin and he wants to know where they are. Collin refuses, naturally and also naturally, Mr. G brings on the torture. Demetre brings a lit candle and "began to pass the flame back and forth under the palm of Collin's hand" which actually sounds like a game I played as a kid at restaurants when I was bored. At least until I accidently extinguished a candle with my hand. They do that for a minute or so before Mr. G decides that's good enough and asks again.

They have a small discussion where they debate whether eating meat is the same as eating people where no one really wins and then Mr. G pulls out his ace. A young woman has been in the bathroom this whole time: "She was a natural blond, with striking blue eyes set in an innocently lovely face. Her figure, though not voluptuous, was very well proportioned. She looked intelligent, sensitive, vulnerable." p.225

If you've been paying even the remotest attention you can probably figure out that this is Collin's fiancée, Sandra, and Mr. G threatens her with the same fate as McPhearson if Collin doesn't spill the beans. (I'm just going to say that Collin really sucks at secrecy and covering his tracks. He may as well have stayed at home and married her for all the good it did.) Collin still refuses which saddens our modern day vampire who feels the need to monologue a bit before having him bled for his sustenance:

"It is, in a way, a shame to kill you. We are like the dog and the cat, you and I, fire and Ice. Eternal enemies by nature. The cobra and the mongoose, to be pitted against each other by warring forces greater than either of us." And blah blah blah.

Sandra is currently hypnotized and those qualities described up there? We're going to have to take his word for them because at this moment Raymond knocks on the door and that gives Collin the distraction he needs to overpower the help. He knocks them both down one after the other. Peter gets one shot off before Collin gets the gun and shoots him. Demetre falls on his own knife. Mr. G opens a window and climbs down the fire escape.

Raymond and Smith burst in only to find the action over and Sandra is dead, shot by Peter accidently. "It was a terrible pity that she had to die here." p.228

Collin is sad. "Collin looked over briefly at the flower printed dress, the supple legs partially visible. "She was lucky, " he said quietly."

Anyway, Demetre is still alive so he decides to cheer himself up with a spot of torture in the pursuit of information and fade to black.

A week later in a rental unit we find our team creating weapons based on the story they got from Collin while under hypnosis about heating up a blade, killing a possessed man with it, and then being able to kill the previous Mr. G. So they're bleeding themselves and tempering knives and iron in blood. The iron cores are to be put in hollow point bullets because they may as well give it a shot.

Something something, the story about Bathory without mentioning her name, something, Christian Communion blood of Christ, something Egypt killing slaves with new weapons imparting magical powers something. Oh hey Mr. G drinks blood maybe blood that's been heated up will something metabolic, something systemic poison something.

I mean, I don't know, why not?

The Unblessed Ch. 5

 Collin arrives at the Melville Hotel, new name Hotel Earth under new management. Now, remember, this is "a supposedly haunted hotel on the outskirts of the little community of just over twelve hundred people" where guests regularly disappear and locals see and hear "mysterious things". Yet when we get inside the three story wooden building we come across quite a few people. At least four other guests have signed in that day. One of them is Dr. Raymond.

After being checked in by "a very old and unpleasant looking woman" he's directed to one of the cheaper rooms on the third floor. After a quick nap Collin makes his way down to Raymond's room, passing where "a couple of redneck-looking characters with bulging briefcases were sitting in the lobby, earnestly involved in a game of checkers." p.176 When Raymond doesn't answer his knock he indulges in a little lock picking and "within seconds" he has the door open. Our boy has been learning many new skills.

So he carefully tosses Raymond's room learning that his middle name is 'Winston' and he's a the III. Did I type William last update because that was what was on his nameplate? Well it's Winston now. Keep up. He was born in Bangor, Maine, he's 57, lives in London and travels a lot. He's carting around a number of old books on ancient demon cults and articles on missing persons, including a list of forty people who have disappeared in Montana on I76. This is apparently information that is readily available but that no one has ever bothered to check out. Raymond also has black clothes, lockpicks, a gun and photos of dead bodies in a cave.

At this point Raymond walks in on him and they get to exchange stories about their respective experiences in Africa. Raymond has a nice bangle he found on the cave floor that can protect him from evil influence. Which is good because suddenly a scream!

They rush to the hall only to be bowled over loony tunes style by a black-clad figure who escapes through an "Employee's Only" door. When they get to the room where the scream came from they find several people "milling around" over the body of a dead woman with "the covers pulled down to her waist, revealing naked, shapely breasts." She also has "a bloody, two-inch long cut at the base of her throat." But that's the second thing Collin notices. Another woman "sobbing and shaking" was "blindly pounding her fists into the chest of the man who was trying to comfort her." Which makes me think that maybe he should just let her go. Dude, maybe she doesn't want a strange man holding her while she's in shock. Nobody asked you to. This is the dead woman's sister and Collin needs information so he "jerked her out of the grasp of the older man" and when she struggles against this new strange man hauling her around he backhands her across the face. As you do when someone has just discovered the corpse of their murdered loved one.

So she collapses half-conscious into a chair and Collin decides more but gentler slapping is what is required in this situation and eventually he gets the oh-so-important intel that she saw a man standing over her dead sister. And that his face was horrible. Totally worth assaulting a hysterical woman for that sort of information. 

They decide to follow the guy that knocked them over and find themselves in a cellar, the same cellar from the prologue of chapter four. They're attacked by "the Guardian" in the body of Grey, blood dribbling from his mouth who has "All-knowing alien eyes, set in an extremely handsome Latin face" and "strangely distorted Latin features." p.199 What does that even mean? Does he mean Roman or Latino or what?

Mr. not quite a vampire laments the "barbaric necessity" of what he just did; not blood drinking but doing it that way. What way? "I drank the blood but I did not suck it hungrily through enlarged canine incisors." This clears up nothing for me. He scoffs at Raymond's cross but is pants-wettingly scared by his bracelet and the torches he suddenly has. He and Collin light them on fire and keep the Guardian away. He recognizes Collin, calls him 'Camurious'  and then makes his escape through a coal chute.

I guess he returns to the cellar after they've gone? Because next scene we're back there with the whole satanic set-up but sporting a dead human this time and a bunch of naked followers including the "old hag" who works at the desk. "The pendulous breasts sagged uncleanly to her protuberant paunch". Thanks for that, man. There are many "misshapen" people there but "none as repellent to the gaze as the hag." p.204

They drink blood and their master tells them they have to find Collin. Fortunately he got Collin's name from the mind of a friend, presumably McPhearson, and they have his rental car license plate somehow. They just need to track down his address and kill him. Mwahaha!

Back in LA Collin, Smith and Raymond sit in a faraday cage and regress Collin through past lives until they get to Camurious. He tells some tale about a possessed pretender emperor and how he killed him and how he found a demon in a cave and killed him and then got killed himself. To be honest I found it a bit boring. Upshot though - he's always been immune to demon possession. And there are two evil entities, I'm taking from this. The demon and the Guardian who possesses a human body. 

Also, we learn they followed the Guardian's tracks to a "state work camp" where a lot of people have been brought who were "never sentenced to serve time there by any court in the state" to excavate an old mine. p.217 How do they know that the people there weren't sentenced? It's not like you can just look this stuff up on the internet, it's 1970. I can't imagine they got their names. If they got this fact from people nearby why doesn't anyone look into this apparent forced labor? Maybe these are actually deluded cultists?

Collin heads back to his apartment to relax and finds it ransacked and invaded by the Guardian and a couple minions. There're gonna kill him but first, says the evil immortal spirit, let's sit on the bed and chat.

Still an amusing read but the way women are depicted it feels like the author hasn't quite figured out yet that we are, in fact, human beings rather than simulacrums or vaguely sentient objects. It's been 38 years since this was published though so hopefully he's matured.

The Unblessed Ch. 4

 We skip forward to November and change locations to Los Angeles and check in on Collin who has apparently spent eight months trying to locate Anansi, the demon who pilots C-47s. We get an update on how he has been spending his time and follow him through a day in his life.

Smith stayed in Africa to liaison with Hasha who gets periodic impressions from the mind of the demon, like that he's in a wooden structure, that could potentially lead to its location. Amazingly, these "hints" haven't been very helpful. Smith sends coded messages to keep Collin up to date. ""Van Helsing" was Smith's highly literary code name for Collin, Van Helsing being the name of the vampire hunter in Bram Stoker's Dracula." Yeah, only high literary types know the characters from Dracula. Why, you'd have to be the sort to read Plutarch's Lives to get the comparison!

Collin has been living under the pretense that he's researching a "major investigative report on the phenomenon of missing persons in America" to explain his activities to his family and friends. He's spent all his money, sold his possessions, and borrowed huge sums to fund his search. He's put off his fiancée, Sandra, even. (My prediction: She'll either never be brought up again or will be killed to create angst.) Hasha believes that some of the info from the demon is from the mind of a member of the Lord Sedgewick party so Collin has had PIs checking their personal lives. In fact, he has an entire obsessed investigator home office going with the map full of colored pins, files of reports and even that corkboard with the articles grouped together. He doesn't mention string going from lead to lead but you know it's there.

As soon as he gets up he checks his window and the string tied around the doorknob. We find out he's terrified of being tracked down by...the demon? I don't know. He's carrying guns everywhere but it doesn't look like anyone has even remotely threatened him in the last eight months so, boy be a bit crazy.

Then he drinks a smoothie. "The liquid was a homemade diet supplement, a mixture of brewer's yeast, eggs, lecithin, salad oil, bone meal, and bananas, along with a few additional unlikely ingredients. He had gotten the recipe from an Adele Davis nutrition book, and drank a glass of the stuff every morning in place of a normal breakfast in order to assure that he was properly nourished for the day regardless of whether he was able to get balanced meals." p.118 Sweetie, no. That's not how nutrition works. One, it's a smoothie, it'll go right through you and you'll be hungry again in no time. I tried the smoothie thing after a 22 mile bike ride and it is NOT good enough. Two, that can't possibly contain all the calories you are going to need for the day you intend to have. Three, I had to look up Adele Davis and seeing as how a lot of her work was discredited I'm not sure you should be following her advice. at least put some chocolate in there good lord

Collin heads out to a seedy neighborhood populated by stereotypical Mexican thugs to partake in Karate training from "Sinsi" Mishiori. We then get three pages of description of a two-hour practice that involves several hundred kicks, a reminder that power comes from the stomach, that Collin still can't maintain a basic stance correctly, and an hour of just staring at each other. On the way out he catches the Mexican street thugs trying to jack his car and punches them into unconsciousness. But you see what I mean about a smoothie just not cutting it?

He finds his way to Swenson's gun shop where he picks up his specially kitted .45s and this leads to a page of gun talk with phrases like, "The trigger guard had been squared off and the front of it, as well as the front strap, had been checkered with twenty lines to the inch." p.137 There's more but the upshot is he has two "fully accurate" guns and we find out he's been participating in combat pistol shoots. Man's been busy.

Next up is a group at a lab in the Neuropsychology building at UCLA where "people attended in order to improve their personal extrasensory perception." This group is led by two psychics named Jerry and Larry who regularly lend their abilities to law enforcement which begs the question of why we don't just solve crimes this way all the time.

Collin has discovered that his mental abilities tend toward being able to sense a person's "mind" or "soul". Apparently sessions where people try to sense another person's thoughts about some other person can be very accurate although of course, this science is still in its infancy.

This night Jerry has something new in mind. That European and American hunting party that disappeared in Africa? Lord Percy Sedgewick's mum wants this random group of psychic wannabees to help locate it by holding his shoes. Poor Collin is extremely nervous because of course he knows what happened and he doesn't think this is a great idea but instead of faking a seizure or taking a bathroom break and pulling the fire alarm he feels there's no way to stop it. So everyone holds hands while passing around the objects and calling out extremely accurate impressions from poor Percy's last thoughts. It's actually a pretty well-written scene. Unfortunately it also ends with Jerry's eyes being burned out.

When Collin gets home he checks his mail again and finds that one of his PIs has dug up the fact that a member of Percy's party spent a summer in 1961 with his grandparents in Melville, Montana. He has newspaper clippings  "written in the rather unsophisticated style of country journalism typical of small midwestern communities." A bus load of people vanished during a thunderstorm in that same town several months ago. There's also a hotel there where guests have mysteriously vanished. Ah ha! A wooden structure!

Suddenly, a knock at the door! He immediately goes for his guns. Dr. Mason William Raymond is at the door. Remember him? I forgot to mention he had several pages in the second chapter showing him continuing research into the legends and myths of the Anthracidies from the dig in the prologue. He's the director of the London Archaeological Society and he has a research assistant named Samantha. I have no idea if she'll be important later but right now here's Raymond.

Raymond says he's been following Collin's work because he is also looking into missing persons in America with backing from the Congressional Subcommittee on Crime and Violence. He has written previously to offer collaboration and never received word back and being in LA decided to peek in because Collin's obsession with secrecy doesn't tally with his ability to be secret. Anyway, Raymond wanders around looking at Collin's files and fixes on his pin-heavy map while Collin decides shooting him would probably bring negative attention. And he's trying to avoid attention. Raymond says "mmmmm" a lot and fixes Collin with his "piercing orbs" and then moseys off after giving him a business card with an 800 number on it which is not weird at all.

Collin packs for Montana.

The Unblessed Ch. 3 and 4, Prologue

 So Collin (Why is he always referred to by his last name?) enters the cave which is notable for a few features. One: It's huge and man-made. Two: Phosphorescent crawly things. Three: Piles of dead people. Four: A demon.

The demon is described as "a mass of glowing bioluminescence so blindingly brilliant that he could not make out the true form of its body. The rays of multicolored light played on the walls of the cavern... towering at least fifteen feet..." So it's giant, amorphous, colorful and glowing. It sounds like something you'd see advertised for three installments of 9.99 on late night tv. Does late night tv still exist? If it does they're definitely selling this to somebody as a guaranteed way to help your children not be afraid of the dark or as a ward against home invasion or maybe as a holiday decoration. I don't know what holiday would require a dazzling rainbow demon on your front lawn but if someone could find a way to sell kitsch they'd create one.

There are also brain-washed "Devil's men" lined up. In the cave, not on late night tv. Also on late night tv. But these ones are all wearing "jungle clothing" rather than "European clothing" so none of them belong to his group or the hunting party they were looking for. Oh, wait - there they are! The hunting party is all dead except for the tracker, Chaka, who is soon brought in for the demon to feast on. As Collin watches from the shadows Chaka is submitted to terrifying, hallucinatory images that float in front of him like a macabre light show. All the horrors of "Gargoyles, unicorns, and sea serpents." Eventually the demon gets tired of entertaining horrifying his victim and starts the drawn out process of feeding on him with tendrils that burn his head and eyes, leaving him dead.

Collin finds his friends, still caught in the grip of the demon's control, forced to watch the death of Chaka. When the "Devil's men" go for McPhearson he decides it's time to act and explodes their heads with his gun. Of course he's overpowered almost immediately and McPhearson is taken away but he manages to shove the medallion down Smith's shirt which helps Smith fight off the demon's influence. The two of them start walloping and shooting their way free. In the meantime, McPhearson succumbs to his horrible fate and Collin shoots him to put him out of his misery. (What did I say about McPhearson? He was a happy family man; do I know my clichés or what?)

Once outside the cavern, Collin and Smith make for a distant ranger station where they get to collapse in safety. Five days later they head back with a camera and explosives intending to document I'm not entirely certain what. The cave entrance? The people who from a distance just look like people? Were they actually going to sneak in and take pictures of the devil? After their well-thought out plan, I'm sure, they were going to blow everything up. Before they can, everything collapses by itself and they see "a brightly, glowing object, a large C-47 cargo plane... Clearly it had taken off from a hidden airstrip in the valley beyond the next hill." I didn't know there was a valley, I thought we were in "deep jungle" or "rain forest" but apparently the demon owns enough land to build an airfield.

"It's gotten away from us," Collin murmured in disbelief. "God in heaven. Now it could be anywhere. Anywhere on this earth. How are we ever going to find it?" p.110

I'm not sure why he came to the conclusion that the demon made it's escape on a C-47 instead of say, someone else getting wind of this apparently open secret of where this thing lived and coming to destroy it as well but nevermind. The demon absconded in a C-47. Aren't those kind of big? It's meant to cart troops around. Maybe he took all the brain-washed men Collin and Smith didn't kill with him.

Anyway, they resolve to go talk to Hasha about where it might be because that poor, sad bastard still has a minor mental connection to it.

The prologue to the next chapter opens like this: "A feeling of brooding menace pervaded the basement room that was roughly square, and perhaps thirty feet on a side." p.112

The set-up within that room has your typical satanic accoutrements: pentagram, candles (blood red), altar, chalice (gold), book (gilt-bound, though he probably meant -edged), mirror, dagger (silver) and a dead animal (small, species unknown). There's also Maximillian Grey (dark, latin good looks) performing a ritual. He chants words, tosses powder around and drinks blood, the usual, and soon a figure appears in the mirror whereupon Grey offers the "Master of the Outer Darkness" his body. To wear. "After an absence of ages, the Guardian had returned to Earth." p.115

I'm digging this book. It's so action-packed and quite frankly, ridiculous. I love it.

The Unblessed by Paul Richards Ch. 1-2

 I've been on an old horror books kick recently, started by reading Henderson's Paperbacks from Hell.

There's something nice reading fiction totally removed from the current world. No internet, cell phones, hacking, pandemic, nationalist movements, etc. Diseases tend to be very non-specific, technology is often either benign or a force for good. People still have to go to stores to buy things and go to the library to research matters. It feels so foreign. You also get more unconscious misogyny and racism but you can pretend that belongs in the past.

Currently I'm reading "The Unblessed" by Paul Richards published by Zebra Books in 1982.

The author's foreword assures us that he researched a lot for this book, even the "various psychic phenomena".

The prologue takes us to Sudan in January, 1970 where Dan Hunt arrives at an archeological dig to meet Dr. Mason Raymond and John Garfield who have discovered something amazing, a sacrificial altar from 3500 years ago and an inscription corresponding to legends about a demon named Anthrada, a priest named Cymonatha and the hero who took him down, Niyikang. (According to the foreword this guy is "an actual person whose exploits have been handed down from generation to generation through the oral tradition".)

The trio makes their way into this recently uncovered site while info-dumping about the legend until they get to a giant cavern whereupon they view "the hideous contents of the deep, hollow depression" "aghast". At this point Garfield is apparently possessed and makes at the other two, presumably with murder in mind, but unfortunately mister clumsy trips on a rock and goes whoopsie down into the pit. Where, I guess, he dies. The other two resolve to seal off the site. "What if there were more such creatures?" What creatures, you might ask? I don't know. Whatever possessed Garfield. What did they see in the pit? Beats me. Bodies?

We forward 11 days to Zaire and a small village containing one Christopher Arthur Collin, a journalist researching the illegal ivory trade, there with his partner Terry McPhearson. Collin has "fiery, animated eyes" and "lean weathered features". "The Levi's-clad American" is worried because the "Sedgewick hunting party" is overdue back and he worries for his fellow countrymen. Lord Sedgewick though so I don't know if an Englishman is employing Americans or Richards just wanted to sound fancy or what.

Collin decides to take it upon himself to find them and approaches a "native ranger" he knows "whose tribal name was Lianga" but calls himself Smith. He finds Smith in his small quarters reading "Plutarch's Lives" of course and Smith resolves to take Collin and McPhearson into what is alternately called the deep jungle and the rain forest but only if they stop at a village along the way to find out why going into Anansi, the Spider God's land is verboten.

They reach a village where the chief, Luba, takes them to an old man named Hasha whose "eyes themselves had somehow been burnt out completely, as though red-hot pokers had been thrust ruthlessly into his sockets and held there." Through Smith, Hasha tells a (long, rambling, ungrammatical) story of wandering into the wrong land while hunting and being taken captive by mind-controlled men. He was brought to a cave where the demon spoke into his mind to feed off his brain and had his eyes burned out. Unfortunately for the demon, Hasha has a benign brain tumor and his thoughts are poisoned? Or something? So he was let go and found by another group later on. He's kept by the village as a warning.

Smith is given a medallion to keep him safe and they go on their way. We learn McPhearson has a wife and sons so I'm calling his future death. While on watch McPhearson is invaded by the demon, cuts the medallion off Smith and wanders with Smith off into the trees leaving Collin to wake up alone and confused. Yolana the Priestess said she believed that her entire purpose in life was to be there to give her Great-great grandma's protective amulet to Smith but boy did it seem easily bypassed.

Collin goes looking for them but when he finds them of course they're evil or whatever. They try to bring him into the fold but something about him wards off possession. They try to shoot him and he gets away. He can't stand the thought of leaving them behind so he follows their tracks and comes across a cave entrance being guarded by two men. He uses the Hitman approach to lure them away - throwing things far from where you don't want them so the NPCs will alert and investigate the very obvious distraction. As he slips inside he hopes he can save his friends.

It is a wordy book; not only in length of description but it's the sort where "cogitate" is used when "thought" would do. Also, we keep getting reminded that Collin is "white" and Smith is "black" which is awkward and weird. But despite that it's an entertaining read and I'm curious as to where we're going to end up.