"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside while still alive." - Tupac Shakur

My plan was to go alone, but I was quickly outvoted.

"I can't stand for you to go away like that again," Michael said. The dark circles under his eyes were the prominent feature of his face. He'd aged as much in the past year as he had in all the time we'd been together. I had no satisfactory answers to give.

"You should take the cargo trucks. You can bring people out with you faster than they can get out on their own. You need someone who can make a fast fix if things go wrong," Eddie chimed in.

"I may be a tottering old man but you'll never find anyone who knows their way around that town better than me," Jed offered.

"My personality is fabulous. You'll miss me if I'm not there," Freyja chirped, breaking the tension and sending everyone into a fit of laughter.

"Well, if they're going, I'm not sitting around here to fret like an old woman!" Michael insisted.

In the end we decided that ten of them would go with me. The vampires, whose speed and strength couldn't be matched would join us. Atsheena would be there too, and Freyja would bring her daughters, Hnoss and Gersemi. We would leave the following evening, at sunset.

I left the table with a heavy heart. I had no fear for myself, but I hated that these people looked to me as a leader. What if something happened to one of the others? It would be my fault. Yet I had no special ability to protect them. I wasn't a warrior or a military strategist. I'm just a mom, I whined in my mind.

"Mom?"

I jumped, feeling a bit guilty for my self-pitying thoughts.

"Sorry," Donovan said. "I didn't mean to scare you."

I dredged up a smile. "You're fine, champ. I'm just getting extra jittery in my old age. What's up?"

"I need to come with you," he said.

"No, Donny. Not this time. We'll only be gone one day."

"I know but..."

"It's going to be a mess. It's best you stay here with Jake and Emma and the others," I said. "Help them out with Ike."

He shook his head. "I can't, Mom. I need to come with you."

Can't. Need. "Tell me what's going on." I went back to the now empty table and pulled out two chairs so we could face each other. His face bore an expression far more serious than any child of his age should experience. I listened as carefully as I knew how to the chatter around us but could detect nothing especially out of the ordinary.

"I don't know," he said. "I just... I need to come with you."

My heart screamed against the very idea. I wanted him here, safe in our little corner of the world. There was no place for a boy of his age among the sick or the warring.

"I need you to believe in what I know," he whispered. "You promised."

"I believe in you, Donny. I just..." I leaned forward, wishing I could take his hands in mine, but he still couldn't stand my touch. His hands were still so small and unlined. They were a little boy's hands. "It could be really bad there," I told him. "I want you to be safe."

He wouldn't meet my gaze. "I don't think I am though. I don't think I'm ever safe. Not here. Not anywhere."

"What do you mean?" I asked him, trying with all my strength not to belie the rising panic in my heart.

He didn't say anything but waited in silence. I closed my eyes and attempted to sort my thoughts. You know exactly what he means. He carries darkness in him. It's his future and you've known all along. I pushed that thought back into the dank basement of my mind.

"OK. You can come with us but you do exactly what you're told, at all times, with zero questions or arguments. If we tell you to wait or hide or run, you do it."

"I will," he agreed and my blood ran cold. I was certain no good would come of this, and I was about to be proven right.

The approach to this city was so different from the approach to Kansas City as to be laughable. If that was a well-oiled machine, this was a long-neglected landfill. Truth be told, it had been in decline for years before the others revealed themselves. Now it was a complete disaster. There were burned out cars overturned in the middle of the streets, and hills of stinking garbage piled in the gutters. Stores were boarded up and the ruins of houses smoldered.

Occasionally we would catch a glimpse of a nervous face behind a curtained window, ducking as soon as we looked in their direction. A young man sat on the porch of one house with a rifle, watching his children play in the yard. We pulled to a stop. Eddie rolled the window down. "Tesscati's army is on the way. You should get out while you can," he shouted.

"You're the one who needs to move on, my friend. I'll give you ten seconds to roll that window back up and go before I shoot you dead right here in front of my own little babies."

Eddie glanced at me. "Go," I said. "We can't save anyone who doesn't want to save themselves.

Jed had told us there was a bomb shelter at the city zoo. It was one of the old WPA buildings that housed their amphibian collection. We agreed that would be the safe house. Adam, Denisa, and Jen would go there and wait for us. Donovan had strict instructions to stay with them, no matter what. The rest of us went toward the large medical complex that sprawled across a considerable portion of the downtown area.

I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Before we'd left, Raziel had appeared just long enough to tell me that the Light would shine brightly for me, I didn't know what that meantThe angel annoyed me more every time he popped in and out of my life with riddles and ridiculous missions. Michael reminded me that Mother Theresa had spent her whole life with the sick and dying. Most weren't healed, physically, but her presence was a comfort to them. Freyja spoke about water out of the rock. I just wanted to be certain of something, anything, in my life again.

There were more people as we drew nearer to the hospital. They moved through the streets with the wary look of mangy street cats. Creatures of legend were on every corner.

It was impossible to get to the actual medical building. The sick, and those who cared for them, filled the streets and parking lots around the structure. Tents and makeshift shelters of cardboard and scrap covered the diseased and the dying. The dead were simply left among them. I could hear the feeders in this realm and others nearby. Their laughter and comments of satisfaction and gluttony filled my mind and wrenched my soul. My heart beat faster and faster. My hands shook and cold sweat ran down my spine. So many! Thousands upon thousands. Were there more dead than alive now? What had happened to the thriving world?

I caught sight of a young woman dressed in cheap, filthy clothing. She couldn't have been more than sixteen or seventeen years old. Her lifeless eyes stared at me. A fly walked across the bluing flesh of her face. Her arms were wrapped around a baby who had apparently died in his sleep. No one else saw them. They had been among the invisible in life and now, in death, it was as if they'd never existed at all.

He was right.

We are winning!

I'm so full.

She's here.

She can do nothing.

A tightness, so immense I strained to breathe, gripped my chest.

"Simone, did you hear me?" Freyja's voice broke through the ringing in my ears.

She reached out toward me and touched my shoulder. Her warm, gentle spirit filled me. On its heels, the Power poured into every part of me and thrummed in me. I glanced around myself with sharpened senses and then reached up to make sure the veil covered my face and no part of me showed. To some here, looking upon me now would be their undoing as surely as any disease. Confidence and surety filled the corners of my being, where fear and doubt had festered only a moment before. I moved toward the crowds and came to the first tent. A man with fever-bright eyes was holding a cup to his wife's lips. They looked up at my approach, neither knowing nor caring who I was. I knelt down with them and spoke. "That Which Is has not left this place.

The man shook his head and lay down next to his wife. "Go away. You're a fool. If God never left here, it's because he never came in the first place. Leave us to die." But his wife reached a feeble hand toward me.

"I will not leave you to die!" I said, perhaps a bit too forcefully, for they both flinched a little and a shadow of fear passed over them. "Life is precious and, today, you get a second chance. Live every moment. Love. Be in peace. Give thanks for every moment, for every breath, for every gift that has been given to you. Even in the darkest times, you will find that they are many." I took the woman's outstretched hand and the healing energy flowed through me, into her. She gasped and, even as I watched the color flooded back into her skin and she took on the appearance of health.

"Who are you?" the woman whispered.

"I am only a servant. Go and be a servant also.

I left them staring after me and moved to the next little group. Five elderly women huddled together. "Ladies, the wisdom of your years is a priceless treasure. Your day to depart has not yet come. Go. Be a blessing to the young ones. Love them and care for them." I pressed my fingertips to each lovely, wrinkled face and each sat up, strong and restored. The Power thrummed and pulsed and radiated out from me. When my fingertips showed from under my long, voluminous sleeves they glowed with weird inner light. Not unpleasant, but not the lovely, pure, golden tone that illuminated Freyja's home, either.

I knelt at the side of the young, and the old, and the generation in between who often looked the weariest, as they seemed to be relied upon to care for everyone else, while no one ever seemed to worry much about them. I must have touched hundreds that day. Thousands. Each time The Power would fill me and flow out of me and each time it took the tiniest piece of me with it. Not a large piece. Just a smidgeon. A dab of my own essence. Word spread. The sick drew nearer to me. They began to crowd around me and Michael and the others held them back. What began as a feeling of strength and invincibility evolved in to a draining of my life force.

All day Freyja and Michael directed people into the trucks. Eddie, Jake, and Susan drove them to the edge of town, and came back for more. Hnoss and Gersemi flanked me. My very own Amazon bodyguards. As the people left, the voices in the realms grew ever more chaotic. They shrieked at me, and at one another.

Sometime after dark, hours after we'd arrived, I tried to rise up from the ground one more time and found I couldn't. I simply didn't have the strength to plant my feet on the ground and lift my body. Hnoss and Gersemi lifted me and held my arms as I moved to the next group. And the next and the next. At some point I simply couldn't go on. The power beat in my body but my body could not respond. It felt like being shocked with a constant low-level electric current that made my muscles buzz with energy that I was helpless to respond to.

Shadow figures danced around me.

You're dying, Prophet.

Quit now.

You've already failed.

You are too weak.

Ridiculous mortal.

You can save all these but what did you do to save your own son?

We will devour your flesh and rejoice.

As the last voice spoke I felt the hot, rancid breath on my neck and the cool wetness of an alien tongue tasting the tender spot behind my ear. I cried out and tried to wretch myself away. Then all was blackness. I slept in blessed oblivion.

I was loaded into the truck like so much cargo and born away with my little entourage. There are parts of the trip I remember, like vivid dreams I will never forget. At one point, I became overwhelmed by the voices on the other side, taunting me. They were running their terrible hands (and claws and tentacles and appendages for which I had no name) over my body and the horror of it set me to shivering violently. I knew that Freyja and Michael were there and yet they did nothing.

"Help me," I whispered. "Please make them leave me alone. Please get them off me. Make them stop touching me. I can't stand it."

Through my tears, I saw them exchange a worried glance. Freyja held my hand. She spoke in a sweet, comforting voice. "It's OK, Simone. You're OK. There's no one there. No one at all. Not in this realm or any other. Just us. You're safe now."

At her words the voices and the terrible caresses faded and stopped. They weren't there. They never had been, had they? I closed my eyes and tried to perform my old exercise of the mind. The swaying of the truck, that was real. The rough fabric of my shirt was real. The soft endearments Michael whispered were real. These things were real and good.

Lies. None of it was real.

The next time I woke it was to the sensation of falling. The truck was turning: turning too fast and tipping up onto two wheels. An explosion ripped through the night. We stopped with bone-jarring abruptness. Michael was pulling me to my feet and I was trying to follow him, trying to remember where I was. A soft sprinkling of fire and ash rained quietly around us and then there was a second thunderous explosion.

Running footsteps echoed behind us, punctuated by angry shouts.

"It's them!"

"They're with her."

"It's the Prophet. Stop her!"

"Don't let them get away!"

"He wants her alive."

These were no whispering voices from another realm but creatures in my world, bent on our capture. My mind cleared. Adrenaline fueled me. I ran. The fatigue of the previous hours dimmed in the fresh surge of strength that flooded through me. We had no weapons to fight them. We could never out-run the others.

Stand, said the voice in my head.

We continued to run. We ran as fast as we could, clustered in a ragged group like so many participants in the world's most desperate marathon. Freyja dragged me. My legs were fire. The ground shook with the footfalls of those who pursued us. They were stronger, faster, and more powerful in every way. Not far in the distance another explosion sent a bell-choir of tinkling glass clinking to the pavement.

Stand, said the voice in my head.

We ran like frightened antelope in a panicked herd. The lions closed in behind us. The slowest and the weakest and the most vulnerable were at the back of the pack. They would be devoured, for sure.

STAND! Said the voice in my head.

I stopped in my tracks. My companions poured around on either side of me like a river parting around the impenetrable surface of a slab of granite, thrusting up through swirling currents. The daughters of the goddess led them toward safety. I spun to face the monsters that chased us, ripping the veil from my face. I planted my feet and held my arms to Heaven. Lightning screamed down from rolling storm clouds into my outstretched fingertips and burst forth from me with the force of a hurricane. The mighty wind overturned cars in front of me, sending them flying through the glass window fronts of the modern mirrored towers. The demons fell to the earth in wretched agony. Their snarls were reduced to howling cries for mercy. Still, I stood.

The ones I loved, and those who'd joined us at the hospital, raced on toward our safe haven and I stood. I couldn't move if I wanted to. The Power fastened me to the ground until I felt I was one with the very planet beneath my feet. Molten heat rose into me from below and the wind warmed. One beast, crawling toward me, bucked forward in a snarling thrust and burst into flame. I opened my mouth and a wordless roaring bellow tore at my throat. My own blood ran from my nose, and ears, and mouth. Still, I stood.

One by one and in groups, the demon creatures crawled away or were tossed from my presence by the fiery, shrieking wind. As the last one disappeared, the Power left me and I fell to the earth, gasping and sucking in oxygen like one who had been drowning. I lie, shivering, on the buckled pavement and I heard rapid footsteps approach. Freyja knelt beside me, lifted me like a child and bore me off to the sanctuary that had been prepared.

We didn't have far to go. There was one major road to cross. Only one, but it was filled with Tesscati's soldiers. On foot and in armored vehicles, they poured into the city.

We hid in the overgrown shrubbery of a home that had been neglected for a long time before the current crisis.

"Whoever thought crossing the road would be the hard part?" Eddie muttered.

I leaned against Freyja and watched the movements on the road for a few minutes. Those on the street were clearly moving as quickly as possible. They weren't paying much attention to the left or right. They were just moving forward. They were under orders to destroy this place and they were ready to be at their mission. Those who had joined us that day whispered and shifted. They were frightened. I didn't blame them.

I looked for any kind of cover and saw, not more than a few hundred feet from where I stood, a tiny brick building. It looked like an exceptionally well-built brick gardener's shed from a day long past. A little stone sign in carved bass-relief hung over the wooden door with its black iron hinges. "Subway."

"There," I said, pointing. "That's where we're headed."

"That's the bomb shelter?" someone said, incredulously.

"No. That's an entrance to the zoo. It's a tunnel under the road. It comes up right at the main gate on the other side. But look, you can't see the main gate from here. It's inside the fence. We'll be out of their line of sight."

Michael nodded. "I'll go first with Eddie to make sure we can get the door open and you come on behind. Quickly!"

"I promise to be fast."

I had no idea how to keep that promise. I could barely hold myself upright. My body and spirit were utterly spent.

He waited until there was some small break in the movements on the nearby road, crouching low to the ground raced to the building and pressed himself against it. He pressed on the door and, for one horrible moment I was certain it wouldn't work. It would be locked or it would stick and we'd be stuck in an open parking lot with nowhere to go, but it swung open under the pressure of his hand and they disappeared inside.

The second group ran forward and slipped inside, and then the third and fourth. Freyja and I were the only ones left when a walking soldier raised a hand on the road for his comrades to stop. He sniffed the air in a distinctly not human way and scanned the parking lot slowly, saying something to the one next to him that I couldn't quite make out. They moved in our direction when a commotion across the street caught my eye. Jeb appeared, walking down the road with his hands in his pockets, singing some old hobo tune as merrily as could be.

"Evening, fellas," he called out.

Their attention snapped to him.

"What are you doing here?" the soldier demanded. "These streets should have been cleared."

"Well, that's just what I'm doing! Heard I was supposed to be on my way so here I am. Moving along like I've been told."

I was wide-eyed with horror. I knew what he was thinking. He knew that we'd be found for sure without some kind of distraction. We couldn't waste his effort. I understood that we needed to run but it was tearing my heart out to leave Jed! My soul had seen too much today and weariness weighed at my bones. And then they came into view: two creatures as horrible as any I'd ever seen. They were seven feet tall, built like a dogs walking on their hind legs but with long, thin arms ending in long fingered, sharp-clawed hands. They had long black hair on their heads that nearly touched the ground behind them and thin, patchy fur on their gray-skinned bodies. They wore only loin cloths and carried no weapons. Wendigos. I choked back a sob. Why? Why now? Why when we were so close?

Jed's smile faltered a bit, and then his bravado reappeared. "Well, howdy, guys! I was just telling your friends here that I was on my way out of town."

"These are no friends of mine," one of them hissed. "And I'm hungry," and with a single powerful stroke he ripped Jed open from his throat to his belly. The light simply vanished from his eyes as his hot blood sprayed across the disgusted looking soldiers. I covered my mouth with my hand to hold in a scream and felt my gorge beginning to rise. I was rooted to the spot and it took me a moment to process the insistent pulling on my arm. With tears running down her face, Freyja was tugging me toward the subway. We needed to get to cover now faster than ever. She half-lifted me. With wooden legs, supported by Freyja's strong arm, I made my way to the little building and entered it, pushing the door shut behind me. The whole group had questions in their eyes about what had taken so long and why we looked so upset. The only light was the greenish yellow glow-stick that Eddie held up and it cast its eerie glow off walls that were damp and covered with patches of blackish-green moss.

Water dripped somewhere up ahead in the darkness, echoing with absurd volume through the narrow space. The floor sloped sharply downward into the unknown. I motioned for them to move. No one else was coming. Eddie hesitated, sensing that something had happened but he said nothing. He began walking, the rest of us trailing behind him in the pathetic light that danced off of spider webs on the ceiling. The sound of our footsteps on the damp stones bounced around us, multiplying and teasing us with their movement. We walked in a row but the steps were in front of us and behind us. I could feel the hot breath of the wendigo on my neck. I shuddered but there was nothing there. Nothing but darkness.

Somewhere ahead, someone stepped on a drainage grate, causing a crash of metal on metal that reverberated around us. I thought surely there was no way that those on the street directly above our heads failed to hear us. How long was this tunnel, anyway? I felt like we'd been walking for a mile. Didn't it just go from one side of the road to the other? My legs trembled under me.

Finally, the path, which had leveled out at some point, began to slope upward. We'd passed the halfway mark.

It seemed we'd walked for an hour when I heard the quiet groaning of the wooden door swinging on its hinges and the quality of light changed. Eddie stashed the glow stick and, thanks be to God, we left both the ruins of a poverty stricken city and the tomb of the tunnel behind us and entered the surreal landscape of the zoo.

A wide path stretched through the middle of the space. The path was divided by a garden of mature trees and wild, tangled, untended undergrowth. To the right was the first of the big stone buildings, wide steps leading up to an ornate, columned entrance—an aviary, if memory served. To the left was a waterway where ducks and exotic birds of all sorts were bobbing along in the darkness, sleeping with their heads tucked under their wings, oblivious to the commotion of the world around them.

I couldn't stop seeing Jeb's bright red blood blossom across the front of him. My legs trembled. Reality swam in and out of focus. I rubbed my eyes, and took the lead place. Eddie wasn't sure where to go.

We hurried straight ahead toward the carnivore house, trying to stay in the shadows. When I was a child, the big cats had lived in indoor/outdoor cages, all in a row, in this building. Later, in more enlightened years, it had been converted into a restaurant and the animals had been relocated into larger habitats, more suited to their natural inclinations.

The trees, shrubs, buildings, and little stands and carts where vendors had hawked souvenirs and sno-cones provided all manner of cover, though there was no sign at all of any kind of human (or human-like) life. The smell was stunning. Animal dung had been left to accumulate for all this time and all around us there was the stench of rotting flesh. I'd assumed it was because the animals had been left to die in their enclosures until we came to the chewed up carcass of a gazelle lying on the sidewalk. I glanced at the cheetah enclosure nearby and noticed the fence was ripped open. Behind us was where the sloth bear had spent her days behind walls of thick glass, glass now broken into shards that covered the grass and sparkled in the starlight. Apparently someone had taken it upon themselves to release the animals. Lovely.

Suddenly the ground shook and the night sky lit up in a burst of fire. A moment later the sound of the jet engine overhead reached my ears, followed by the wild and exotic sound of birds from all over the world screeching in fear. The bombing was beginning on the north side of the city. A second explosion followed closely on the heels of the first. "There!" I said and pointed to a sprawling brick and stone fortress off to the left.

We ran to it, growing less mindful of staying under cover by the minute, and just as we reached the doors another explosion sounded, much closer this time. My feet stumbled over the pavement. Freyja grabbed my arm to keep me upright. Gersemi yanked on the handle of the door so forcefully that the top hinge snapped and it was left hanging at a bizarre angle. Eddie produced his light once more and I lit another to add to the glow.

The place was a maze of rooms and steps, hallways and alcoves but I remembered clearly that the first archway on the right led down to the basement shelter. We began our descent just as another explosion ripped through the night, so close that a press of warm air shoved us toward our destination.

Finally we reached the room with the yellow and black sign on the door. Michael was in front of me. I allowed him to pull me into the dimly lit interior and slam the door shut behind me, blocking out the outdoor world with its booming sounds and vivid horrors.

The room was not totally dark. Two battery operated lanterns placed on round tables cast a soft illumination on the tiny group huddled in obvious terror. I frantically searched the faces there.

"Where's Donovan?" I asked.

Something was wrong. A knot as hard as steel formed in my stomach and my entire body broke out in cold sweat. "Where is he?" I asked again.

No one answered.

"WHERE IS MY SON?" I screamed and light flashed through the air, causing Michael to flinch away.

Adam stepped forward. He couldn't meet my eye. "We tried to stop them. We tried... but..." he held out his hands. "There was nothing we could do, Simone. She had us all blinded. Vampires came. Denisa: she set us up. She told them where he was. She was their leader."

I would have fallen if Freyja hadn't been behind me, to support me. "Denisa? But..." I had no words.

Do you think Denisa could go with you? She looks at me weird.

I hadn't listened. Not really.

"I'm so sorry," he said, his voice was a distant ringing in my ears. "I swear we tried. He might still be OK. He was alive when they took him from here."

"He might be OK," I heard Michael echo in the faintest whisper next to me, as if forcing the words from his lips could make them true.

I grasped at his words as a lifeline. "Yes. He might," I, too, was whispering. I had no more strength left to speak more loudly, and I didn't believe a word of what I was saying. I didn't accept for a second that they hadn't killed him. There was not a doubt in my mind that they'd drained my young son's body and left his corpse to burn in this doomed city.

The cold laughter of the hateful others filled my head, even as Freyja pushed warm numbness into me. Under the influence of her calming touch I gave myself over to the pressing exhaustion and slipped from consciousness once more. I was utterly broken.

We hid in the darkness of the basement room for two days while the city was ravished. On the third day, we drove through the smoking remains of the deserted landscape. I idly wondered how many of those who had been healed heeded our warning to run in time to save themselves. A few had thrown in their lot with us and rode in the truck now. There was a stranger sitting across from me: A handsome young man with warm brown eyes that seemed constantly to be searching me. Though I heard a few of the others talking from time to time in whispers and muffled voices, the new guy never said a thing. I couldn't really bring myself to care who he was. I was pretty sure that caring about anything at all was beyond me at that point.