Fiends

Book excerpt: As a child in 1906, Arne Horsfall finds a sealed crate, addressed to a professor at a local college, that has fallen off a train. His father stores the object in the barn until the wayward professor can pick it up. But the crate operates like a Pandora's box on Arne and his mother; overcome with curiosity, they pry it open and unleash an evil spirit. Physically, the spirit looks like a mummified dark-skinned man--not, however, like a black man—and his mother recognizes it from the stories of her childhood as one of the huldufolk , the "unwashed children of Cain," evil and immortal. When the spirit awakens and escapes, Arne's life is changed forever. He senses them…waiting in the shadows. In the frozen pit of blackest hell, Death sleeps. Ravishing beyond words, evil beyond our darkest dreams of Satan, Her eyelids flutter. Rising from Her pit, She wakes her vampire brood—and frees them from their ancient graves. No, no one is safe, no one—from the unwashed Children of Eve.