Twenty years ago, a darkness rose up out of the blistering heat of the Arizona desert and descended upon the Walker family of Tucson.

A personified evil, a serial killer named Andrew Carlisle, brought blood and terror into the Walkers' world, nearly murdering Diana Ladd Walker and her young son, Davy. Now much has changed. The family has grown larger.

There's Lani, the beloved adopted daughter--a beautiful Native-American teenager "kissed by the bees" and destined, according to Tohono O'odham lore, to become a woman of great spiritual power. And now the psychopath Carlisle has died in prison, so Brandon and Diana Walker believe they and their loved ones are safe at last.

They are wrong.

The monster is dead, but his malevolence lives on . . . in another.