The Hungry Dark (Templar Chronicles #1.5)

An urban fantasy thriller where a Templar team faces a winter nightmare in Germany's Black Forest—and discovers that some demons don't just possess bodies, they remake them.

From the internationally bestselling Templar Chronicles series comes a terrifying mission into the heart of darkness.

Echo Team is in Europe, training recruits at the Order's headquarters in Rosslyn, Scotland, when reports reach them of strange occurrences in a remote Black Forest village: people acting strangely, violent incidents, disappearances. The local parish priest has seen things he can't explain.

Knight Commander Cade Williams jumps at the chance to get back into the field. He and his command squad—Riley, Olsen, and the recently transferred Duncan—head to the isolated village of Durbandorf, Germany, population 300, surrounded by primeval forest and medieval claustrophobia.

They arrive after dark. The streets are empty. The buildings dark. Then they find the first body.

A heart-pounding supernatural thriller where demonic possession meets body horror, and a routine investigation becomes a desperate fight for survival.

The corpse in the street has its chest ripped open, ribs jutting skyward like broken fingers. Bullet hole in the forehead. No blood on the pavement. The body's only been dead thirty minutes—but who shoots a man, then tears his chest open without spilling a drop of blood?

That's when the second figure appears. A man with his leg broken below the knee, foot twisted backward at an impossible angle. Starved features. Eyes sunken like a plague victim. He should be screaming in agony.

Instead, he charges them at inhuman speed.

Cade puts three rounds into the creature's head. It doesn't drop. The neck elongates like a stalk, dodging Riley's shotgun blast. When they finally put it down and sever its head, something erupts from the back of its skull—a many-legged insectoid horror splattered with blood and brain matter.

Protean demons. Parasites that burrow into human hosts and remake the flesh to suit their needs. Tentacles instead of arms. Multiple legs. Drooling snouts. Each host becomes a unique grotesquerie, perverted beyond recognition.

And the entire village has been infected.

When a blizzard traps Echo Team in demon-occupied territory, Cade must use his ability to see into the Beyond—or watch his team get torn apart by creatures that phase between dimensions.

Within minutes of the first contact, demons pour from every shadow. The team fights their way back to the SUV, four-to-one odds, ammo burning fast. They escape into the forest as a winter storm rolls in, visibility dropping to zero, temperature plummeting.

Stranded. Cut off. Surrounded.

They take shelter in an abandoned farmhouse and discover something worse: the demons aren't random. They're organized. Coordinated. And somewhere in the village is a master demon controlling every single protean drone like puppets on strings.

The priest, Father Nils, is still alive—barely. He tells them the truth: the demons were summoned deliberately. Someone in the village opened a doorway to Hell and lost control. Now the master demon is consuming souls, growing stronger, preparing to spread beyond the forest into the rest of Germany.

Echo Team has one chance. Find the master demon's lair. Kill it before dawn. If they fail, the infection spreads. If they wait for reinforcements, it'll be too late.

The only problem: Cade's guns can hurt the drones, but the master demon exists partially in another dimension. Bullets and fire can't touch what isn't entirely in this world.

Unless Cade does something he's only done a handful of times—step fully into the Beyond and face the demon on its own ground. Where one mistake means his soul stays trapped forever.

Perfect for fans of action-packed urban fantasy, survival horror, and body horror that doesn't hold back on the grotesque.