PROLOGUE

"How is she?" asked a panicked Dan as he ducked under the police tape outside of the building and rushed to the paramedic that he spotted 25 feet from an ambulance in which Chloe was sitting with a blanket around her shoulders.

"She'll be fine, but she does appear to be in shock. She was shot in the chest, but was wearing a bullet-proof vest at the time."

"Thank you," he said hastily, and rushed over to the ambulance. "Chloe! Chloe? Are you okay? I'm here, it's okay."

Chloe's eyes were vacant but she nodded slightly and murmured, "I know."

"They said you're gonna be fine, there's nothing to worry about, you're just fine," Dan continued. He took her hand in his and held it on his lap. She grasped onto it tightly, though he saw no outward signs of recognition in her face. "Chloe, it's me, Dan, I'm here, I'm here."

"I know," she repeated. "I'm okay."

Her feeble reassurance did little to alleviate his anxiety, but he just said, "Okay, good," and continued patting her hand.

After a few minutes, he heard Ella call his name softly and saw that she was standing slightly behind him, to the side of the ambulance. Dan cast a glance at Chloe to satisfy himself that she was okay to leave alone. He placed the hand he held in her lap. She didn't appear to notice.

"Ella, what's going on, what happened here?" he asked as the two of them walked out of Chloe's earshot.

"Dan, I don't know what happened up there. You need to see for yourself. Pierce is dead."

"What? Where's Lucifer?"

"No sign of Lucifer." A flash of rage flared in Dan's chest. He glanced back at Chloe, looking weak and dazed. Of course he just ran and left her here like this. Why should I be surprised? "Come with me," Ella urged. "You gotta see this."

For a brief moment, when he first set eyes upon the scene, Dan wondered if he left real life behind when he stepped through the door. Three corpses, two of them near the perimeter of the large room, and one laid out in the middle of the floor. A gaping hole in the wall and a pile of shattered glass where a large window had been blown out looked like the result of an explosion, only there were no signs of fire. The floor littered with bullet casings, gore, and hundreds of blood-stained feathers. When he realized the haze that enveloped him was actually downy feathers, he realized that, while bizarre, the massacre in front of him was real. "Oh my God," he whispered. "What happened here?"

"We're still trying to figure that out. There were two other guys too, one who was shot in the leg and is currently in surgery, and the other is in a coma. These guys here," she indicated to the corpses lying around the room, "were mowed down by an AK-47 that was registered to a Kevin Miller, the guy in the coma. And Pierce"—the two of them walked towards the corpse in the middle of the room—"died of a single stab wound to the chest. He was the only one who was stabbed."

"And the feathers?" Dan asked.

"No clue—yet. We haven't seen any sign of the birds except for all the feathers, and I have no idea what kinds of birds even have feathers like this—a couple of them are over two feet long, and all are completely white. I don't know if it's a message, or…" She just shook her head. "No one who was here is fit to give a statement yet—"

"Except Lucifer," Dan interrupted.

"I mean, maybe. Like I said, no one has seen him, but come here, look at this." She led him to a table set up with bags of evidence. "This," she lifted one of the bags and showed it to him, "is…"

"…Maze's knife," Dan finished.