Thirty yards behind him, Don Bradley was still staring at the mask as if mesmerized, unable to tear
his eyes away. For even as he'd started to walk on, he'd seen the mask's eyes light up with a brilliant
cobalt-blue flare. Don opened his mouth to call to Louie, but he felt suddenly dazed and disoriented,
unable to remember what he was going to say.
Slowly and deliberately, he reached out and unhooked the grotesque wooden mask from its hanging.
The blue light shone hypnotically. Trembling slightly, knowing he was about to do something he
shouldn't,
Don turned the mask over and held it in front of his face. Vaguely wondering why he was doing this,
he tied the plaited reed fastening behind his head.
Instantly, a ripple of energy surged down to flood through his body. His thoughts seemed to float a
vast distance away, so far that he couldn't tell what they were. He felt his heart throb thunderously in
his chest A terrible rage grew out of nowhere, filling his mind, so strong it turned the edges of his
vision red. A low, guttural snarl escaped his lips as he snatched up a large flint-headed ax from the
neighboring display table.
"What'd you say?" Louie Beltrani called over his shoulder, his attention still wandering back in the
misty depths of human history.
Hearing a clatter behind him, Louie turned to see a figure from a nightmare leaping toward him, eyes
blazing, stone ax raised high above its head. Then the razor-sharp flint edge sliced down through his
skull, cleaving it in two.
Louie was dead before his body hit the floor.
Snarling and growling, Don Bradley held up the bloodied ax. His tongue reached out through the
mask's mouth, licking off blood and flecks of gray matter. Then, with surprising delicacy, he used the
ax to shave off several splinters of wood from the desktop. Piling them together, he struck the ax
against a stout flint grinding stone. Sparks leaped from the impact