ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to the usual crew for their efforts: my wife, Mary; my editor, David Hartwell; Elizabeth Monteleone; Steven Spruill; and my agent, Albert Zuckerman. Special thanks to David J. Schow for the guided hajj to hallowed Bronson Canyon and its infamous “caves.”

GROUND ZERO

Surreal, he thought as he watched the twin towers burn.

His rented boat rocked gently on the waters of New York harbor, a thousand feet off the Battery. The morning sun blazed in a flawless cerulean sky. But for the susurrus of the light breeze and the soft lapping of the waves against the hull, the world lay silent about him.

A beautiful, beautiful day . . .

. . . unless you were anywhere near those towers.

He tried to imagine the pandemonium in the streets around them—the Klaxons, the sirens, the shouts, the confusion, the terror. Not a hint of that here. The towers belched black smoke like a couple of chimneys, but all in silence.

He checked his watch: nearly ten o’clock. The plan was to allow an hour or so of chaos after the Arabs completed their mission. By then, though fear and terror would still be running high, the initial panic would have subsided. The situation would be considered horrific and tragic, but manageable. The second jet had hit at 9:03, so the hour mark was almost upon him. Time to initiate the second phase—the real reason for all this.

From a pocket of his Windbreaker he pulled a pair of gray plastic boxes, each the size of a cigarette pack—one marked with an S for the south tower, the other with an N for the north. He put the N away for later. After all, the south tower was the important one, the reason for this enormous undertaking.

He extended an aerial from the S box, then slid up a little safety cover on its front panel, revealing a black button. He took a breath and pressed the button, then watched and waited.

The vast majority would blame the collapse on the crazy Arabs who hijacked the planes and the Islamic extremists who funded them—the obvious choice. A few would notice inconsistencies and point fingers elsewhere, blaming the government or Big Oil or some other powerful but faceless entity.

No one, absolutely no one, would guess—or be allowed to guess—the truth behind the who and the why of this day.

MONDAY

1

Diana stared at herself in the mirror. She did that a lot. Maybe too much. No, definitely too much. But she didn’t have much else to do.

She hated her life. So boring.

Mainly because she was so lonely. Not that she was alone. She shared this big house with three men—grown men, sworn to protect her with their lives—but they weren’t friends. She could talk to them, as in have conversations, but couldn’t really talk to them about things that mattered. She chatted online all the time, but that wasn’t the same as having another flesh-and-blood fourteen-year-old girl in the same room.

But that flesh-and-blood girl wouldn’t stay long once she got a look at Diana’s eyes.

She stared at the reflection of those eyes now. With their black pupils, black irises, and black everything else, they looked like ebony marbles stuck in her sockets. Sometimes she wanted to rip them out. Yeah, she’d be blind, but at least then she could go to school instead of having tutors. And she’d have a true excuse for wearing wraparound sunglasses all the time instead of lying about a rare eye condition.

She guessed it wasn’t a lie. It was rare—only a few Oculi left around the globe—and it was definitely a condition.

So she was an Oculus. Big deal. These black eyes were supposed to allow her to see things regular eyes were blind to, warnings from Outside.

Alarms.

She’d yet to experience one.

Not that she was complaining. She’d seen her father when he’d received Alarms and it didn’t look pleasant. In fact, it looked awful.

Why was she thinking of Alarms tonight? She hadn’t—

Something flashed to her right. She turned to look but it flashed again, still to her right. She realized it wasn’t in the room, but in her eye. A scintillating scotoma. She’d looked it up. The flashing lights always preceded her migraines. This wasn’t the sparkle she usually saw, more like wavy lines, but she knew the sooner she dug out her bottle of Imitrex and took one, the better.

And then the room tilted. For an instant she thought earthquake or tsunami, but then the pain stabbed through her head—much, much worse than a migraine—and the lights flashed brighter and longer and fused to blot out her room as her knees gave way and she dropped to the floor.

As she lay there shaking, shuddering, writhing with the pain that suffused her, a tunnel opened through the light, revealing . . .

. . . a man in a loincloth, standing on an old-fashioned scaffold and carving a huge block of stone more than twice his height into some sort of thick pillar or column . . . his hammer striking the chisel again and again but making no sound . . . all eerily silent . . .

. . . the same man carving strange symbols into the side of the pillar . . .

. . . and others . . .

. . . and carving a cavity, perhaps three feet across and five feet deep, into one end of the pillar . . .

. . . and suddenly she is grabbed from behind and bound hand and foot . . .

. . . forced into the cavity . . .

. . . sealed over with a stone plug, plunging her into darkness . . .

. . . as she struggles for air she feels the pillar tilt as it slides into a deep hole in the earth and is covered over . . .

. . . she thrashes in the small space until her air runs out and darkness claims her . . .

. . . and then . . . a spark in the distance . . . growing . . . swelling . . . to become a glowing egg . . .

. . . the egg fades and darkness regains control until a booming voice splits the silence . . .

IT HAS AWAKENED!

. . . and then the egg reappears and a spot of darkness materializes within it . . . growing . . . growing until . . .

. . . it bursts free . . .

. . . a strange, formless, flickering, alien being . . .

. . . and as it emerges, an odd word forms in her mind . . .

Fhinntmanchca . . . Fhinntmanchca . . . Fhinntmanchca . . .

The vision faded, and with it the pain, replaced by beckoning oblivion. Diana fought the draw of the temporary reprieve it promised and forced her eyes open. She pushed herself off the floor and staggered to her bedroom door. She had to tell them . . . she had to go to New York.

She had to tell the Heir. She had to find Jack. But where was he?