"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."