The winter is upon us. The Survivors are in chaos. The war is coming.
One year ago, Sadie Matthau was living among humans, existing as one of them. But now she wakes each morning in a house in the Survivors' City, listening to the invocations and in...
The corners of his mouth turned up and his eyes glowed like a child's. This made him happy. Too happy. "I did love," he said. "It was a love that history would not soon forget."
"One I've heard of?"
"I'm sure of it. Do you know the story of Achilles and Penthesilea?"
"Sure. The greatest warrior in Greek history and the Queen of the Amazons. The only time Achilles ever fell in love was when he killed Penthesilea and their eyes met as she was dying. But it was too late to save her."
"It's his tragedy that he killed the only thing he'd ever loved before even having a chance to love it."
"You're telling me that that was you?" I asked incredulously.
"In a way," he said. "You could say that Achilles gave me that curse."
I rolled my eyes. Achilles? Really? "What other rare abilities have you had?"
"I once had a reading ability that I cultured carefully over time."
"And?"
"Someone acquired it from me in a moment of weakness," he said stiffly. It was clear that Alexander Raven didn't like weakness. "It feels right to have it again. I ought to know what everyone is when I have been so influential in the supernatural world."
"How so?" I asked.
"You all come from me." He pulled back his sleeve to reveal a crimson symbol on his left wrist:
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"You heretic. What do you see yourself as—some kind of messiah?"
"I walked this earth for two thousand years before your King of Kings was born. I had that symbol long before the Christians assigned it as a symbol of martyrdom. I'm no messiah, Sadie. I'm the only thing more powerful than a messiah. The Father. The Creator."
"The Point of Origin," I said reluctantly. I'd given in to his image of himself before I'd ever even met him.
"Precisely. You will not find a supernatural creature on this earth whose veins don't carry my blood. I cannot say the same for those who humans create unknowingly."
"Like the nosferatu and the vieczy?" I asked.
He nodded. "But Survivors are the rarest, strongest kind of supernatural. Though Survivors, too, are capable of inbreeding in such a way that they will create their own version of nosferatu and vieczy," he said matter-of-factly, "as you've seen."
"What makes us different?" I asked.
He ignored me. "I've been looking for you. I've been looking for those damned kids from Salem for three hundred years. And now you've found me," he smiled.
"Lizzie led us here," I said, "because she thought you were good."
"Lizzie didn't lead you here. I guarantee it was Beowulf," he said. My eyes widened. "You didn't really think I'd tell pitiful, poor Lizzie who loved me so where to find me? She'd have come for me, before they had produced sufficient offspring. But I knew she'd pass on the book."
