WAIF

The night is large and full of monsters.

Detective Sean Byrne thought he'd seen every kind of murder the city could offer. Then Jessica Naomi turned up dead—brutally tortured, with a message scrawled in blood: "Eat Your Heart Out."

The investigation leads to Damon Gables, a wealthy writer with perfect alibis and a past that doesn't exist before the year 2000. But when forensics reveals handwriting samples identical to murders spanning four decades, Byrne realizes he's hunting something that defies every rule of criminal investigation.

Armed with police instincts and procedures, Byrne and his partner Jake Anders must confront the impossible: their suspect may not be entirely human. When Gables breaks his silence with an offer to reveal the truth, the detectives face a choice between rational training and mounting evidence of the supernatural.

Because some killers don't follow human patterns. Some have been perfecting the art of murder since before the American Revolution, moving through history like shadows, leaving identical crime scenes in their wake. And when Europe's forgotten monsters find new hunting grounds in Texas, conventional police work isn't enough.

In the shadows between the normal world and the supernatural one, Detective Byrne discovers that some cases require more than badges and forensics. They require believing in things that shouldn't exist—and stopping them before they kill again.

Someone has to stand guard against the dark.

C.L. Stegall spent a decade in U.S. Army Military Intelligence, which taught him two invaluable skills: how to keep secrets and how to make things up convincingly. These days, he channels both into fiction under the Studio Valensi banner, crafting modern fantasy, contemporary thrillers, and horror tales designed to keep readers up past their bedtimes.A former President and Senior Editor at Dark Red Press, CL now splits creative time between the page and the recording studio, producing original music demos alongside his written work-because apparently one artistic obsession wasn't enough.CL lives in Plano, Texas, with his wife Mona and a black cat named Shoyu who has never once offered feedback but judges everything with silent, unwavering disapproval. When not writing, CL can usually be found researching something deeply strange and insisting it's "for a book."