August 2016. Air Force pararescueman Edmon Leroy returns home after a yearlong deployment to Afghanistan. His wife, Michelle, and their five-year-old son, Steve, are supposed to meet him on the flight line. When they don't, Edmon discovers that he has returned to a nightmare instead of the life he spent a year dreaming about.
Michelle and Steve have been murdered in their kitchen, strange symbols carved into their bodies. Three weeks pass without a suspect. As the investigation stalls, the fire that once drove Edmon begins to gutter, leaving him to accept that their killer may never be found. Then a whisper reaches him from the darkness and leads him to a trail the police were unable to follow.
But the path he follows soon leads beyond anything his training could have prepared him for. A seventeen-year pattern emerges: families destroyed, survivors left broken, and the same hooded figure watching from photographs taken years apart. When Lillie Noel, an old friend and former Air Force investigator, joins the search, they follow the pattern toward horrors beyond human comprehension. To face them, Edmon must decide which part of himself will survive: the rescuer or the executioner.
When Ashes Fall is a dark supernatural thriller and the first book in a fantasy-horror saga.
