“He said my name, and he said how the circle was the first of seven shields, and how the blood of the gods—the blood of our ancestors, his and mine—was shed there, and how it was poisoned and destroyed the shield and started the plague. And he took out his sword and lifted it. Lightning hit it and it went to fire. White fire. He asked me if I’d answer the call, if I’d take up the sword and the shield, if I’d fight and be strong, if I’d, like … come to be. He told me to choose.

“I don’t know if it was a dream or a vision.”

“It can be both.”

“Mom has visions, and sometimes … Sometimes I know where the boys are hiding or if they’re going to play a trick on me. I see it in my head. Not every time, but sometimes. Once a man stopped at the farm. He had scars on his arms, and on his face. I saw him in a fire, screaming, and running, and falling in the dark outside where they left him for dead. Raiders. I saw it.”

“It frightened you.”

She nodded, sipped her tea.

“You said ‘the first.’ You had other dreams.”

“One other. Longer, and it wasn’t clear like the first. It was blurry. Mostly. Like the glass was dirty, and the voices were far away. I could hear some, but not all. It was a different place. Like that place we rode through with all the big houses, all together?”

“Yes. They called them developments. A kind of community.”

“Okay, it was a place like that. Really big houses. Purity Warriors lived there. I know who they are.”

Some of the misery burned off in anger.

“They hunt us, kill us, just because we’re not like them.”

“They fear us, and any who are different.”

“They have slaves,” Fallon told him. “They make slaves out of people who don’t believe like they do. Even kids. And they keep magickal people locked away. They do terrible things to them. There was a boy, and I could see into his head. A little. Pieces of his thoughts, so I know the terrible things. They were going to hang him, and the woman with him, a witch. Her name … I lost it.”

“It’s all right.”

“He’s Garrett. Was Garrett. I don’t know when. Was it now or before or not yet? I don’t know. But he was Garrett, a shapeshifter. Younger than me. They’d beaten him and burned him and cut him and … and raped him. They’d cut off his hair, and the woman’s. They had her blindfolded and gagged, and both of them had their hands bound behind their backs. They had to walk barefoot down the street while people shouted at them, and one threw a rock that hit the boy’s head. They had—the boy and the woman—a mark here.” She touched her forehead. “Burned into them. A pentagram.”

“The Purity Warriors brand those like us they capture.”

“The slaves, too. But here.” She tapped the back of her left wrist. “They burn a symbol there. A circle with a cross in it. The boy, Garrett, could see, so I could sort of see, they walked toward this platform, with two nooses.”

“Scaffold.”

“Okay, a scaffold. And this I heard from his mind, clear. He would change, become the cougar that lived in him. He would fight before they killed him. Then, an arrow came out of the dark and killed the man who forced him to walk. Then another, and another, as the boy changed, and the cougar ran through the people who were screaming and running. But I saw a boy, another boy. Older though, older than Garrett, than me, go to the woman and take off her gag and blindfold, and pick her up when she fainted. I saw that, too. And I think he was maybe the younger brother or the son of the man from the first dream because I don’t know when that happened, either. And I only saw him then for a minute, with the woman who fainted, because I was with the boy, the cougar, and he was racing toward this place where they kept the others locked up.”

She took a breath, she took some tea, and found some of the twisting in her belly eased away.

“He’d never killed before, Mallick, not as boy or cougar, I knew that, felt that. But he wanted to now. But the man guarding the jail was on the ground. Bleeding and dazed, but not dead. I felt life still. There was a girl, really pretty, and she wasn’t afraid of the cougar. It gets all mixed up. I think there were others helping inside the jail, and the boy changed back so the girl helped him get away to where other people were waiting. A man and an old man, and a dog. An old dog. I heard the man say his name was Eddie and the dog was Joe. I know those names, Mallick. I know them.”

“Yes.”

She shivered a little at having Mallick acknowledge what she knew.

“The girl went back, and others came. The slaves and the captured. Another truck with more. Explosions back in the—the development? It was like a raid, but to save people, to free people and help them. Then the girl came back, riding on a motorcycle with the boy who’d helped the woman. Duncan and Tonia. I know those names, too.”

“Yes.”

“They all drove away, and when the boy, when Garrett asked Eddie where they were going—because I heard that clear, too—he said New Hope. I know that place. My father died there. My birth father, when the Purity Warriors came to kill. To kill me especially.”

The words tumbled out now, fast, fast, to lift the weight inside her.

“My mother ran from there to save me, to save the people who lived there. Her friends. Eddie was her friend. He had a dog named Joe. Duncan and Tonia—Antonia—were twins, just babies when she lived there. Their mother was my mother’s friend. They—Eddie and Duncan and Tonia and the old man, all the others, they risked their lives to save Garrett, the woman, the other people. It was too … tactical,” she decided, “to be the first time, the first rescue. I don’t like raid. Rescue’s better. Duncan and Antonia aren’t much older than me, and they’re already fighting. Garrett’s younger than me, but he was ready to fight.”

“Do you question why you’ve been shielded?”

She hadn’t realized, not fully, that this was the weight, so much heavier than the rest.

“If I’m The One, why aren’t I fighting? Why aren’t I helping people?”

“You will. Your mother and your life father provided your foundation not only with what they both taught you, but by giving you vision. A family, community, loyalty, and love. A war such as this can’t be only blade and lightning. You must believe, into your bone, the cause you hold is worth dying for. Killing for. And what you have yet to acquire, to know, to hold, even to believe is vast, girl. Vast. Some are warriors, some are leaders, some are symbols. You will be all. But your time is not yet come.”

“Is that why the sword stays up there, and that cabinet is locked?”

“You’ll hold the sword soon enough. Why haven’t you tried to open the cabinet?”

“How do you know I haven’t?”

He smiled. “I’m not without vision, girl.”

“Fine. Because that would be rude and disrespectful.”

“And you wouldn’t have that understanding and sensibility if you’d been denied the years with your family. They serve you, and will serve you.”

Maybe that was true, she thought. But … “Do you know the place in the first dream?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

“There are six more. If destroying the first killed almost everybody, what happens if the others are destroyed?” She had so many questions.

“The first wasn’t broken quickly or easily. It took a great concentration of dark power, and a lack of the light. Beliefs can fade, and when faith pales, so does power. Fears of the dark? They’re intrinsic, and so dark can build. And as it became easier to dismiss the light, it dimmed and the protection around the shield weakened. Just enough. It may have taken this horror to wake the light, to bring it beaming, but it is woken.”

“That doesn’t answer the question,” she complained.

“The shields are now more carefully guarded.”

“But?”

He sighed. A relentless mind, he thought, and had to respect it. “One by one, shield by shield? More would die, infected by a madness, crops would fail until they burned in the field, withered on the vine, rotted in the earth. So famine follows. And a plague runs through the animals. Fish and fowl, mammal. Only what slithers and crawls remains. And the rivers and streams, the lakes and oceans bloated with blood and death and rot become tainted even as they rise up in a flood to spread their poison.”