Prologue Windale, MassachusettsOctober 31, 1999...blood, as black as crude oil, flows with a life and a will of its own, seeking a course through the rubble of the collapsed building, aided by, yet not prisoner to, the pull of gravity, occasionally rising over a rock when no lower outlet avails itself...an incomplete entity, still the blood has awareness and a driving instinct to find the warmth of human flesh...absent from this awareness are the memories of what it has been or even how it has been reduced to this tenuous race for survival...over rubble and glass, dirt and weeds, the blood courses with the cohesion of quicksilver...almost senseless, it seeks by touch alone any indication of humanity's presence wherever it flows...without a warm, living human host, its temperature starts to cool and its millennia-old awareness begins to fade into oblivion... * * * "Pull over, I'm gonna be sick," Angelina Thorne said from within a bundle of blankets on the passenger side of the blue Ford F-150 pickup truck. Shivering, her voice was a weak quaver."Sure, Gina." Brett Marlin swung the truck onto the shoulder of Main Street, passing a partially demolished gas station and an overloaded Dumpster at the edge of the lot before stopping the truck and shifting into park. As he loosened his grip on the steering wheel, his hands were trembling. He sighed, reached for his door handle, but Gina's hand caught his other arm. "What?"Gina Thorne's face appeared ghostly in the dashboard light. Her usual pale complexion had been reduced to sick pallor by the evening's events. She had dark rings under her light blue, almost gray eyes. And her long, strawberry-blond hair hung in sweat-soaked tangles. "She was already dead, right? Before you put her in the...?"Brett nodded, unable to give voice to the lie."She was so small...""Too small," Brett said, nodding again. "Wouldn't have mattered if..." He let the rest of this thought pass between them unsaid. Part of the lie was his alone to bear, but somehow he thought she knew all of it."It's for the best, right?" Gina asked him, searching his eyes."For the best," he said, his voice hushed."Because we're only seventeen. We have Danfield together next year. Our whole lives ahead of us," Gina said, then clapped a hand over her mouth.Brett reached for his door handle again. Gina shook her head, keeping him planted in his seat as she pushed her door open. Dropping the blankets, she staggered to the edge of the road, where the shoulder met the grassy incline that rose to the sight of the abandoned Windale Textile Mill. Since Gina wanted privacy, even after what they'd been through together less than an hour ago, and he was unwilling to be completely alone with his grim thoughts, Brett turned on the truck radio. He hit the scan button several times, searching for an upbeat song, and happened across the local all-news station."...golf ball-sized hailstorm, which disrupted the sixty-fifth annual King Frost parade, ended as mysteriously as it began. The brunt of the freak storm was localized in the downtown Windale area and the main parade route, and was responsible for several serious injuries among the twenty thousand spectators. Many outlying areas were also hit by the storm, where it caused numerous fires, damaged cars and windows. Property damage estimates will have to wait until morning, although Mayor Dell'Olio, himself injured during the storm, expects the totals will reach into the hundreds of thousands.Elsewhere, an unrelated fire erupted in Windale General's Childbirth Wellness Center -- ""Jesus!" Brett gasped. His hand jerked forward and switched off the radio before he could hear any more. As guests of the Harrison Motor Lodge, he and Gina had been as far from downtown Windale as possible and still they had heard the sirens. Easy enough to assume the crowd gathered at the King Frost parade h