“It wasn’t all dark either. We felt both.” Cal looked at Fox. “We saw both.”

“Yeah. It’s just the big, black scary mass got most of our attention while we were being blasted off our feet.”

“But the other gave us most of his, that’s what I think. I walked out of here not only without a scratch, but with twenty-twenty vision and a hell of an immune system.”

“The scratches on my arms had healed up, and the bruises from my most recent tussle with Napper.” Fox shrugged. “Never been sick a day since.”

“How about you?” Cybil asked Gage. “Any miraculous healing?”

“None of us had a mark on him after the blast,” Cal began.

“It’s no deal, Cal. No secrets from the team. My old man used his belt on me the night before we were heading in here. A habit of his when he’d get a drunk on. I was carrying the welts when I came in, but not when I walked out.”

“I see.” Cybil held Gage’s eyes for several beats. “The fact that you were given protection, and your specific abilities, enabled you to defend your ground, so to speak. Otherwise, you’d have been three helpless little boys.”

“It’s clean.” Layla’s comment had everyone turning to where she stood by the stone. “That’s what comes to my mind. I don’t think it was ever used for sacrifice. Not blood and death, not for the dark. It feels clean.”

“I’ve seen the blood on it,” Gage said. “I’ve seen it burn. I’ve heard the screams.”

“That’s not its purpose. Maybe that’s what Twisse wants.” Quinn laid her palm on the stone. “To defile it, to twist its power. If he can, well, he’ll own it, won’t he? Cal?”

“Okay.” His hand hovered over hers. “Ready?” At her nod, he joined his hand to hers on the stone.

At first there was only her, only Quinn. Only the courage in her eyes. Then the world tumbled back, five years, twenty, so that he saw the boy he’d been with his friends, scoring his knife over their wrists to bind them together. Then rushing back, decades, centuries, to the blaze and the screams while the stone stood cool and white in the midst of hell.

Back to another waning winter where Giles Dent stood with Ann Hawkins as he stood with Quinn now. Dent’s words came from his lips.

“We have only until summer. This I cannot change, even for you. Duty outstrips even my love for you, and for the lives we have made.” He touched a hand to her belly. “I wish, above all, that I could be with you when they come into the world.”

“Let me stay. Beloved.”

“I am the guardian. You are the hope. I cannot destroy the beast, only chain it for a time. Still, I do not leave you. It is not death, but an endless struggle, a war only I can wage. Until what comes from us makes the end. They will have all I can give, this I swear to you. If they are victorious in their time, I will be with you again.”

“What will I tell them of their father?”

“That he loved their mother, and them, with the whole of his heart.”

“Giles, it has a man’s form. A man can bleed, a man can die.”

“It is not a man, and it is not in my power to destroy it. That will be for those who come after us both. It, too, will make its own. Not through love. They will not be what it intends. It cannot own them if they are beyond its reach, even its ken. This is for me to do. I am not the first, Ann, only the last. What comes from us is the future.”

She pressed a hand to her side. “They quicken,” she whispered. “When, Giles, when will it end? All the lives we have lived before, all the joy and the pain we have known? When will there be peace for us?”

“Be my heart.” He lifted her hands to his lips. “I will be your courage. And we will find each other once more.”

Tears slid down Quinn’s cheeks even as she felt the images fade. “We’re all they have. If we don’t find the way, they’re lost to each other. I felt her heart breaking inside me.”

“He believed in what he’d done, what he had to do. He believed in us, though he couldn’t see it clearly. I don’t think he could see us, all of us,” Cal said as he looked around. “Not clearly. He took it on faith.”

“Fine for him.” Gage shifted his weight. “But I put a little more of mine in this Glock.”

It wasn’t the wolf, but the boy that stood on the edge of the clearing. Grinning, grinning. He lifted his hands, showed fingernails that were sharpened to claws.

The sun dimmed from midday to twilight; the air from cool to frigid. And thunder rumbled in the late winter sky.

In a lightning move so unexpected Cal couldn’t prevent it, Lump sprang. The thing who masked as a boy squealed with laughter, shinnied up a tree like a monkey.

But Cal had seen it, in a flash of an instant. He’d seen the shock, and what might have been fear.

“Shoot it,” Cal shouted to Gage, even as he dashed forward to grab Lump’s collar. “Shoot the son of a bitch.”

“Jesus, you don’t actually think a bullet’s going to-”

Over Fox’s objection, Gage fired. Without hesitation, he aimed for the boy’s heart.

The bullet cracked the air, struck the tree. This time no one could miss the look of shock on the boy’s face. His howl of pain and fury gushed across the clearing and shook the ground.

With ruthless purpose, Gage emptied the clip into it.

It changed. It grew. It twisted itself into something massive and black and sinuous that rose over Cal as he stood his ground, fighting to hold back his dog, who strained and barked like a mad thing.

The stench of it, the cold of it hammered down on him like stones. “We’re still here,” Cal shouted. “This is our place, and you can go to hell.”

He staggered against a blast of sound and slapping air.

“Better reload, Deadeye,” Cybil commanded.

“Knew I should’ve bought a howitzer.” But Gage slapped in a full clip.

“This isn’t your place,” Cal shouted again. The wind threatened to knock him off his feet, seemed to tear at his clothes and his skin like a thousand knives. Through the scream of it, he heard the crack of gunfire, and the rage it spewed out clamped on his throat like claws.

Then Quinn braced against his side. And Fox shouldered in at his other. They formed a line, all six.

“This,” Cal called out, “is ours. Our place and our time. You couldn’t have my dog, and you can’t have my town.”

“So fuck off,” Fox suggested, and bending picked up a rock. He hurled it, a straightaway fast ball.

“Hello, got a gun here.”

Fox’s grin at Gage was wild and wide as the feral wind battered them. “Throwing rocks is an insult. It’ll undermine its confidence.”

Die here!

It wasn’t a voice, but a tidal wave of sound and wind that knocked them to the ground, scattered them like bowling pins.

“Undermine, my ass.” Gage shoved to his knees and began firing again.

“You’ll die here.” Cal spoke coolly as the others took Fox’s tack and began to hurl stones and sticks.

Fire swept across the clearing, its flames like shards of ice. Smoke belched up in fetid clouds as it roared its outrage.

“You’ll die here,” Cal repeated. Pulling his knife from its sheath, he rushed foward to plunge it into the boiling black mass.

It screamed. He thought it screamed, thought the sound held something of pain as well as fury. The shock of power sang up his arm, stabbed through him like a blade, twin edges of scorching heat and impossible cold. It flung him away, sent him flying through the smoke like a pebble from a sling. Breathless, bones jarred from the fall, Cal scrambled to his feet.

“You’ll die here!” This time he shouted it as he gripped the knife, as he charged forward.

The thing that was a wolf, a boy, a man, a demon looked at him with eyes of hate.

And vanished.

“But not today.” The fire died, the smoke cleared as he bent over to suck in air. “Anybody hurt? Is everybody okay? Quinn. Hey, Lump, hey.” He nearly toppled backward when Lump leaped up, paws on shoulders to lap his face.