What Rough Beast — Richard Quarry

Frank Barton lives life on the run. Many lives. Ever since the Civil War, when instead of dying from his wounds, he turned into a snake crawling across the battlefield, absorbing life from others.For years Frank struggles against the killer serpent inside him. Sometimes, for a while, he wins. Then the bad dreams return, people die … and he runs from another attempt to build a life.Now in 1912 he thinks he's finally found the precise middle of nowhere -- Bride's Creek, a former gold town deserted after a series of gruesome murders in the mines ten years before.Perfect. Or it would be, except for the two feuding revivalist groups come to this remote mountaintop to await the End Days foretold in Revelations. Worse, Frank falls for the fiery preacher who leads one of them, even though he knows the serpent is a jealous god.Then winter snows cut off the town, and the killings begin. Frank fears the serpent prowls once more. Or has something older and more foul come to stalk mankind?