

Chapters

§

Disclaimer

\- ONE -

This Year, Like Last Year, My Birthday Gift Is A Punch To The Side Of The Head

\- TWO -

90% Of What You Read In History Books Is Half Wrong

\- THREE -

A Sissy Game Played With 500 Warriors On A Side

\- FOUR -

I Don't Particularly Like Having A Nuclear Weapon Aimed At My Privates

\- FIVE -

I'm Not Paranoid. I'm just Well Informed.

\- SIX -

Revenge Is A Dish Best Served With A Little Chicken

\- SEVEN -

A Journey Of A Thousand Miles Begins With A Single Step-Brother

\- EIGHT -

You Never Forget Your Six Hundred and Fifty-First House

\- NINE -

Both My Adversary And My Deliverance Come Right Through My Front Door

\- TEN -

If He'd Only Seen The Sawdust, He'd Be Alive Today

§

About the Author

101 Montgomery Street, 800, San Francisco, CA 94104

Copyright © 2013 by Edward Savio

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of Babelfish Press, except for brief quotations in connection with a literary review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, places and incidents in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

Babelfish Press and the talking fish logo are trademarks of Babelfish Press.

For reprint permission: permission@babelfishpress.com

All other information: info@babelfishpress.com

Book One

Prelude

For Spencer & Jesse

§

"I would hate to be immortal forever."

—Alex Meraz

Disclaimer

I have been instructed by my client to release this document unedited and in its entirety. As his attorney, I would have preferred he had never put one word of this on paper.

Unfortunately, he has, and worse, he has ordered me to make it public.

He's being an idiot. But he's a teenager. And that's what they do.

The note accompanying the document stated there would be more coming. I can only hope for his sake there isn't. Except that might mean he was unable to send more, which would be even worse than the things he admits to in these pages.

You've heard about the explosion up in Boston, the one on Acorn Street at the top of Beacon Hill. Images of the destruction were beamed around the world nonstop for days. An entire block of densely packed homes in one of America's wealthiest neighborhoods was obliterated. Hundreds were feared dead.

It's astonishing that only four people were killed.

The heat from the fire was so intense it melted the bricks...which has made identifying the victims difficult. I hope he is not among them.

Initial reports blamed a ruptured gas line for the cause of the blast, but fire investigators discovered traces of chemical compounds they had never seen before, along with evidence that the explosion had been triggered deliberately.

At the time, I had no reason to believe one of my clients was involved. That is, until I received the document you are about to read.

I say "one of my clients" as if I have more.

Attorney-client privilege forbids me to disclose confidential information about the one and only client I have ever had, but I can say that he is an intelligent, resourceful, and unusual young man.

I only hope he is safe.

I am compelled to publish this in accordance with his wishes, but it is still my belief that this document should never see the light of day.

This is only a fragment, but I warn you that if you choose to read it, as I have, you may not sleep very well at night.

Because the destruction of Acorn Street might be just the beginning.

I cannot verify every word, but I have learned from experience to believe whatever this young man tells me. Even the most implausible things...have all turned out to be true.

Thomas ____________

Attorney-At-Law

\- ONE -

This Year, Like Last Year, My Birthday Gift Is A Punch To The Side Of The Head

Okay, first off, if you're reading this, I'm breaking about a dozen rules here. Easy. I'll probably get grounded for it. And by grounded, I don't mean I'll have to stay in my room unable to go out the next twenty-five Saturday nights, I mean, grounded. Into dust. And buried under a thousand pounds of rock.

That kind of grounded.

But that's the least of my worries.

The fact that you're reading this means that, at least where you are, people can still print things or electronically disseminate information. You're alive. You might even have electricity. I hate to tell you, I'm not sure how long that's going to last.

You see, they have a plan. And believe me when I say this, time is on their side.

Someone once told me my name means "the defender of mankind." Unfortunately, it may actually come to that.

They call me Alexander the Pretty Good.

Which is probably about right.

I'm a sophomore at Middleton—

No, wait...that was the last one.

—Monument High in a small town with a big name, nestled in the Berkshires, which are these really beautiful low mountains in the Middle of Nowhere, Massachusetts. The biggest thing that ever happens here is people come from all over the world to see the leaves turning colors in the fall.

Dead leaves. That's the highlight.

And in less than an hour, I've got a mammoth end of semester U.S. history test given by a teacher who rambles on like she knew our founding fathers personally—especially Thomas Jefferson, 'He was a cad,' she'd say with a grin—and looks old enough to actually have known them.

"You study?"

My friend, Daniel, looked worried. The kind of worried you are when you get a bloody nose in shark-infested waters.

"I'm ready," I said.

"That didn't answer my question," he wheezed. We were jogging along the short cut through the woods that led to school.

"Trust me, I'm ready for the test."

"Great," he said, getting very excited. "So, when you write, put your hand this way." Daniel motioned awkwardly with his arm, wrist, and fingers in a way that was supposed to mean something, I figured, but just made him look like an idiot. "That way I can see your answers."

"My answers?"

"Yeah, so, you know, you're not covering them."

"You're not copying off me."

His face turned white as if I had just run over his favorite childhood stuffed animal with a dump truck.

"Wha-why not?" His voice went up an octave. "C'mon, you gotta help me out. I'm not as smart as you."

I stopped on the dirt path and waited for him to catch up.

He did his best to look pathetic and helpless. Which wasn't that difficult for him. Like a dog watching you eat a turkey sandwich.

Hungry. Pitiful. And lazy.

"Daniel, if I just tell you the answers, I'm not gonna be helping you."

"Yes, you will," he said, nodding like a bobble-head on a bumpy road. He was still catching his breath.

"It might seem that way, but trust me, long term, I won't be doing anything more than setting you up to always doubt yourself. And by the way, you are as smart as me."

He didn't seem to believe me. On either count.

"I am soooo not prepared for failure right now."

"Daniel, this isn't that hard. I've endured enough years of U.S. History to know—"

"What are you talking about, 'years?'"

I caught myself. "I've taken the class before. Another school."

I pulled my history book out from my backpack and gently slapped it into his chest.

"Here."

He didn't take the book. Like it was radioactive or diseased or covered in pink hearts.

So I opened it for him.

"I've highlighted the portions I think are relevant," I said, trying not to come off like a total geek. I'm actually a lot cooler than I was sounding at the moment. Being smart is cool. Although you wouldn't know it from High School.

Daniel groaned as I pointed out my color scheme of pink, green, and yellow, denoting important information from lowest to highest probability of being on the test.

Much, much cooler.

"I just wanna know how you do so well in every one of your classes and play sports and hang out with me and go to every party and never sweat. SparksNotes? You hacking the computers and stealing answers? What is it?"

"Time. You gotta put in the time." I looked at my watch, "You've got fifty-five minutes. Just study the highlights, especially the yellow, and you'll be Ace, okay?"

I could tell he was questioning his entire year plus friendship with me. His eyes said it all. A real friend would just give him the answers.

"Actually, a real friend would do what I'm doing," I said.

That snapped him out of his brooding funk. "How do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Read my mind."

I ignored the comment. "Hard work beats brains."

"Yeah, beats 'em to a pulp," he said as he finally, reluctantly, took the book from my hands and started down the path again. "I hate school."

I followed after him. "You have no idea," I said under my breath.

We were about a quarter mile from campus. I could see it below, the grounds and the building carved out of a stand of trees. A convergence of oaks and sugar maples.

The leaves were turning. The yellows popped like they were superimposed on the forest, and the reds and oranges and lime greens and red-browns were stunning. There is perhaps nowhere in the world besides this area of New England where the change of season is so visually spectacular.

I told you, dying leaves are a big deal here.

Caught up in my admiration of the foliage, I wasn't paying attention. I'm usually more alert in these situations. I would've been dead a couple of hundred times over if I wasn't normally a lot more diligent. But they came out of the woods right at the start of a clearing, where the underbrush got the most sun and was the thickest.

Three of them.

We were maybe fifty feet from the school grounds, but Daniel and I were completely hidden from view by the dense growth.

The perfect ambush.

"If it isn't Alexander The Grating and his sidekick, Ohhhhh Danny Boy." He sang the last part like an Irish tenor.

Craig Coulter was the most popular kid in school. He was also the meanest. He was somewhat of an anomaly in that he was the class president, the star football player, and the biggest jerk. Most mere mortals could only pull off two out of three.

It was quite an accomplishment. I'm sure his father was proud. And his mother was reaching for another drink.

Craig had a couple of his football buddies with him. I had never actually seen the guy travel alone. Two was the minimum contingent. One on either side.

Most of the time, he walked around with his entire offensive line surrounding him. I guess we were just lucky today.

One of the bookends was built like a fridge. The other had arms the size of my legs. The Fridge grabbed Daniel and pushed him to the ground while Thigh Arms made sure he stayed there.

Craig strolled up to me. Alone.

Pretty brave of him, actually.

The guy stood about a foot taller than me and outweighed me by at least fifty pounds.

Alexander, The Still Growing.

"So, what's up with you?" he said, casually, as if we were sitting around eating pizza and watching the Patriots play on the big screen.

"Not much. Got a History test. Thanks for asking."

He let out a fake laugh. That was his standard response to sarcasm or anything he didn't really understand. "So, you're too afraid to play football."

"I play football."

"Yeah, I saw you at tryouts. You made a couple of lucky catches."

Lucky, because I didn't get my head knocked off.

Craig here, star quarterback, was lobbing up passes at tryouts so that the "rookies" would get clobbered by his upperclassman pals playing defense.

"Just want you to get the feel of a real game," he said at the time.

I've dealt with guys like Craig before. And played enough to know how to pull down a ball without getting creamed. Even when my quarterback was being a jerk.

"Why'd you priss out and go for lacrosse? That's a pantywaist game for sissies." His finger stabbed my chest with each word. He turned his head. "How's that dirt taste, Daniel?"

Daniel couldn't really answer. But I figured he was thinking maybe school lunch wasn't the worst thing on the planet.

"You might wanna avoid using the word 'sissy' when you're trying to sound tough," I said.

Probably not the smartest thing to say.

But I couldn't let Daniel take all the punishment.

Craig knocked me to the ground and pushed my face into the rocky path. I had no choice but to breathe in the dust he was kicking up. I started coughing as it got into my lungs.

"See? You're not even 'The Pretty Good,'" he said. "So, how does the dirt taste to you?"

"I prefer a bit more grass with my soil," I managed to hack out. "Although the clusters of rocks offer a crunchy satisfaction."

Craig kicked me in the stomach, knocking the wind out of me. His heart wasn't in it, though. I could tell he wasn't punting me as hard as he could. Didn't matter much—it still hurt like crazy.

I glanced over at Daniel out of the corner of my eye. My vision was blurry from the fine brown particles. I wanted to scratch at them.

I could see the two bookends were starting to mess with Daniel a bit more than was necessary. They didn't seem to have Craig's restraint. If they weren't careful, they were going to actually hurt him.

Daniel's one of those kids who's nice, easy going. He's able to make friends with almost anyone. He's not too smart. He's not very good at sports. But most people like him. At least, no one dislikes him. In high school, that's saying something.

I said he wasn't much of an athlete, but in a straight line, Daniel was by far the fastest kid in our class. He attributes his quickness to the fact that he got chased around his old neighborhood a lot by the bigger kids. He wasn't so much born fast as he was forced to develop speed.

I told him there were runners in Africa who trained by being chased by animals that could eat them.

He said growing up in New Jersey was pretty much like that.

I had to do something.

This wasn't about Daniel at all. Craig Coulter's problem was with me. Plain and simple. And I couldn't let my friend get hurt because of that.

Craig had a pretty good hold, keeping my face planted firmly in Mother Earth. He'd made me swallow enough of the path that I figured I'd need to use a Dirt Devil to vacuum out my lungs.

I probably could've surprised Craig with a Spear Hand strike to the throat. He wasn't defending against it because, 1) in this position, it would be a behind the back move for me, and 2) why the heck would anyone even think I knew something as dangerous as Ninjutsu?

But you can't be halfway about using something like a throat jab. Either you do it full tilt or don't do it at all. I considered it for a second, but I would've crushed his windpipe. Craig was certainly a jerk, but he didn't deserve choking to death. At least, not yet.

I had to be careful what reaction I chose. You know, sleepy little town. You don't want to bring too much attention to yourself. I didn't feel like having to move again so soon.

I figured a less straightforward approach was probably the best idea.

"Craig," I said, so smoothly, so evenly, that he didn't even bother to answer. "I want you to reeeally focus on pushing my head into the ground." My voice was calm, confident. "Can you see my cheek going into the dirt? Do you feel the power rushing through your hand as you press my skull into the path?" My body was relaxed. "Focus. Can you feel it? Just picture it in your mind the way it's happening in real life."

"Will you shut up! You're taking the fun out of this," he said.

I waited a moment.

"You're breathing. Feel it? In and out. Cool going in, warm going out. Then there's that itch at the end of your nose." He wriggled his nose. "The blood running past your eardrum. Hear it?" He twitched.

I was so calm, my voice so fearless, that I knew it was unsettling. I could feel the pressure lessen. His grip relaxed slightly.

He was focused.

Exactly as I needed him to be.

In one quick movement, I rolled my head, looked straight into his eyes, snapped my fingers and said sharply, "Sleep."

I had to put my arms up to keep him from falling on me. Not that it wouldn't have been satisfying to let him drop face first into the dirt. But I needed him to be pliant. Crashing to the ground would wake him.

He was heavy and I struggled even though most of his body weight was on the ground. But I couldn't risk asking him to move on his own just yet.

"I want you to tell your friends to leave Daniel alone. You have no quarrel with him. As for me, your feelings haven't changed, but your anger is gone. For the rest of the day, you may feel like you've forgotten something. But you haven't. You've remembered everything about what has happened here except that I'm speaking to you now. Okay?"

He nodded.

"I could make you cluck like a chicken whenever I say the word pickles."

Craig dutifully, although very quietly, complied. "Buck-buckaaah," he whispered.

I could have made him flap his arms, too, or pirouette, or suck his thumb like a baby. But that stuff just comes back to haunt you.

"This is over with. We're our normal selves, quietly loathing each other."

He nodded again.

And then, I snapped my fingers as I had done earlier. "Awake."

I turned my head and pretended to be sucking dirt under his weight. Craig seemed put out by the situation. Like it was too much trouble to be hassling me. He pushed himself up using my head as leverage. Which really hurt. I should have suggested something a little more graceful for him.

He turned to his buddies. "What the heck are you two doing? You're going to hurt the poor kid. I've got no quarrel with him."

By the look on his face, I don't know whether Craig even knew what the word quarrel meant.

His buddies were dumbfounded. Certainly a common feeling for them.

Craig pulled me to my feet. Not gently. Not like a guy lending a hand to a player on the ground. He was making the face you'd make when picking up a pumpkin that had rotted on your front steps six weeks after Halloween.

He looked me in the eye. A hollow gaze.

"Later."

"Later," I said.

As Craig and the bookends headed toward school, Daniel and I dusted ourselves off as best we could.

That's when I saw him at the other end of the path. Where the trail disappeared into the woods. With dark hair and even darker eyes, Braeden Ellis was a senior, but new to the school, a transfer student who had shown up a few weeks after classes started.

He seemed to be walking out of the forest, just as we had done a few moments earlier. But it was like a movie where the director yells, "Action!" and then the actors start moving.

It didn't feel right.

Braeden caught me gazing at him, and he smiled as he passed by me. "We're gonna be late," he said, as if he and I talked all the time. Only I can't remember saying one word to him. Ever.

The encounter left me far more uneasy than Craig or his goons ever could.

We ducked through a hole in the fence and all of us—Craig, his thugs, Braeden, Daniel and me—emerged onto the far corner of the track that surrounds the practice field.

There was a gathering of girls with their phones out. They were texting...probably each other.

Craig's girlfriend, Phoebe, was right in the middle. She had dark hair and light eyes, and she seemed to sense his presence before he made a sound. She glanced at Braeden in that way a person does when they're trying very hard not to appear to be glancing at them.

Phoebe detached herself from the group and strolled smoothly up to Craig and kissed him. On the lips.

Daniel winced.

It wasn't the idea of kissing that bothered him. Just the idea of anyone kissing Craig.

When Phoebe saw me, she gave me this disinterested, almost annoyed look. Like I was bothering her. "Alexander!"

"Yeah?"

Both of us talking a little louder than normal.

"You're a year older."

"Yeah."

I smiled. I couldn't have stopped myself even if I wanted to.

"See you in class, Old Man," she said, her eyebrow arched.

And that's when the suggested calm I had planted in Craig Coulter drained away. Hypnosis works only so long as the subject is suggestible.

Everyone was all smiles. Craig especially.

The bell rang.

"See you later," Phoebe said to him as she kissed him again.

"Later," he said, grinning.

Once her back was turned and she and the rest of the girls were hurrying to homeroom, Craig wheeled around and punched me right in the side of the head.

For the second time in ten minutes, I found myself on the ground. Only this time, I dropped like a cartoon character. Board straight. Landing flat on my back. Little stars floating around my head.

It seemed like a long time before Daniel's face appeared over me. "Dude," he said. "I'm so sorry." He stared down at me, a puzzled expression hinting at the baffled thinking going on behind it. "I totally forgot."

"Yeah," I said. The sky was very blue. And lying there in the grass, I could see a lot of it.

"It's your birthday."

"Yeah." My head was still buzzing, still fuzzy, making it hard to think, hard to say anything coherent. Hard to remember where I was or even who I was.

I took a slow, deep breath.

I'm a sophomore. At Monument High.

Great Barrington, Massachusetts. United States.

Today is my birthday.

My name is Alexander Justinian Tiberius Grant.

And at precisely 3:16 this afternoon, I turn fifteen—

—hundred years old.

\- TWO -

90% Of What You Read In History Books Is Half Wrong

I know what you're thinking.

A moment ago, I was bragging about my incredible Ninjutsu skills. If I was so great at deadly Japanese hand-to-hand combat, why didn't I get on my feet and stand up for myself, right?

I mean, better than lay there like a spineless cupcake.

Well...

First, there was the not wanting to draw too much attention to myself. I liked this town. I wanted to stay awhile. And second, there was the not knowing whether I could stand up at all, let alone for myself.

Craig Coulter had come about as close to knocking me out as you can without actually doing it.

I had this sense of déjà vu. You know the feeling that what's happening right now is something you've experienced before. I'm kind of used to it—having fifteen hundred years jostling around my brain to compare with the present. Isn't a big surprise when something matches up.

Usually you can't remember the previous event in detail. But lying there on the 20 yard line, my head throbbing, I had a good idea what was causing me to feel like I'd been here before.

Because I had.

Only I think I made it to the 40 yard line last time.

It was my 1,499th birthday. A senior thinking I was a bit too popular. A punch to the head. Me on the ground. The details aren't important.

I've been going to high school pretty much since there have been high schools. So I know how to play the game.

Be halfway decent at sports. Halfway decent in school. Halfway decent at the social scene. Pick your friends wisely. Pick your nose in private. Don't pick your crack at all.

And most importantly: have a sense of humor. If you can make them laugh, it goes a long way to easing the tensions of being the new kid, believe me.

Just don't look like you're trying to be too funny. You never want to be the class clown.

That loses you points. And can get you punched even more often.

Daniel was looking at me so that his head was upside down from my point of view.

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

My brain was still foggy.

I could tell Daniel was trying to come up with any reason, any reason at all, not to study, not to take the test. Maybe if I had a concussion, a cracked skull, even a case of whiplash, he wouldn't have to. I guess he figured he'd accompany me to the hospital like he was my legal guardian or something.

"You're not moving," he said.

"Yeah."

"You're saying 'yeah' a lot."

"Yeah."

"You're not paralyzed or anything, are you?"

The fog was lifting.

"I'm not going to the hospital, Daniel, and you're not getting out of taking the exam. My head's just a little fuzzy."

He thought about that for a moment.

"So, you're saying I probably shouldn't trust your answers on the test?"

That got me out of it. I jumped up and started chasing him.

But like I said, in a straight line, Daniel was the fastest kid in our class.

§

Okay, you're thinking: This kid is craaaaaaazy!

Fifteen hundred years old. Right! Get out the straight jacket and book him a padded room.

Listen, I understand, it's difficult to accept. Believe me, it took me years, literally hundreds of years, to come to grips with the surreality of my situation. It's not that easy for a kid to understand why everyone around him is changing, growing, dying while he just stays the same.

I look pretty much like any other fifteen year old.

I've got some facial hair that's been coming in slowly since the late 1960s. I've been battling acne for the past three hundred years. I've tried every potion, cream, and treatment there is, from ones made by medicine men to the ones sold by snake oil salesmen to the ones formulated by the biggest pharmaceutical companies on the planet. Including one concoction that involved having a frog urinate on me. They all work about the same, which is to say they hardly work at all. It's getting tiresome. Throw in the fact that these same hormones are battling it out early in the second quarter of puberty—the body hair, the smell, the strange things you feel whenever a pretty girl walks by, the mood swings—and I'm stuck with all the emotional turbulence that it brings.

Just like every other kid at school.

But I'm not like every other kid at school.

Like I said, I'm breaking about a million rules writing any of this down, so if you're reading this, my situation has deteriorated. Putting this out there might not help me. Might make matters worse. But I'm gambling that the risk will be worth it, that this will provoke you to take action, to inspire others to take action by giving you an understanding of what we are up against.

And when I say 'we,' I mean everybody.

You may be safe now. But don't count on it for long.

I can't tell you everything. I can only tell you what I know, which is this: there are perhaps a couple of thousand people like me in the world. Probably less. No one's exactly sure why, but there's a genetic defect in our DNA that short circuits the natural clock inside our bodies. Like several other genetic defects, the first year and a half after we're born, we develop like any other baby. We learn to walk, talk, all the normal things. But as we approach two years old (up to three years for some), physical growth slows down dramatically, until it settles into a constant, diminished rate.

I age roughly one day for every one hundred days I'm alive.

Some age a bit faster than that, but generally, that's the way it works.

One day for every one hundred.

This genetic trait is passed on from mother or father to child. But not every time. My father has had hundreds and hundreds of children, but none of them—other than me—have been this way.

I was born in a house on a hill over looking the Sea of Marmara in Constantinople in 515 CE, just after the fall of Rome, when Constantinople became the sole seat of power in the Roman Empire. You might have heard of it as the Byzantine Empire. But that's purely a modern convention, a name historians began using only a couple of hundred years ago. To me, to everyone who lived and died from the time of Augustus Caesar to the day the Ottomans took control of Constantinople—sixteen centuries—it was known, first in Latin: Imperium Romanum, and then in Greek: Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, simply as the Roman Empire.

I remember my mother, Delicia, even though I was basically a two-year-old for her entire life.

She was beautiful and kind and had a quiet strength about her. She handled my father giving her a baby that didn't age with elegance and dignity. She died in my 56th year. It was difficult growing up without her. And I miss her very much.

My father...looks a bit like a gladiator when he takes his shirt off. Or an MMA fighter. Chiseled features. Perpetually tan. The kind of muscles I wish I had. But along with that power and brawn, there is a regalness about him. Not an air of privilege—well, maybe a little—more a sense of breeding.

He is, by the way, over four thousand years old.

Sometimes, he still speaks to me as if I'm a child.

Let me get one thing straight: This isn't a fairy tale. This isn't some myth. I am not a descendent of the gods. I am not a wizard. I have no superpowers. I don't feed off other people's blood. I'm not immortal. If I step in front of a train, I die. I am simply a human being whose body ages at an incredibly slow rate.

My father calls us Eternals.

This is real.

There is no magic here, although there are many "magicians" among us. I'm pretty decent at magic myself. But what I do has nothing to do with sorcery. In fifteen hundred years, I've never seen anything that would make me believe that real magic exists.

We've all seen an illusionist do something that seems unbelievable. Pull a dozen boxes out of an empty bag. Make playing cards appear to change in our hands. Cause the Statue of Liberty to vanish.

I'm still awed whenever I see these things.

It's amazing.

It's exciting.

It's always a trick.

That doesn't take away from the beauty, the elegance, or the boldness and sheer confidence it takes to pull off something that spectacular.

In fact, I find it even more amazing when you know positively something is a trick and you still can't figure it out.

The truth is, what we call magic—what people only a few hundred years ago feared—takes a lot of planning and a lot of practice. The greatest magicians and illusionists have worked at their craft for years before wowing the world.

Today, the best of them make millions doing shows in Vegas and on television. A thousand years ago, the best influenced armies, rulers, and even empires.

Just imagine how supernaturally masterful a person would appear when they've been practicing every day for a thousand, two thousand, even three thousand years.

Actually, it doesn't matter what it is: magic, music, mind games, martial arts...war.

Given enough time, put in enough effort, anyone can become great.

And that's the problem.

Because although everyone has the ability to be great, not everyone has the ability to be good.

Not everyone wields power responsibly.

This is true of people everywhere. There are those who are good and those who are not.

But most people, whether good or bad, don't have the time to amass enough knowledge, wealth, and power to affect the course of history.

There are a few thousand of us, however, who very much have the time.

Some have decided for selfish reasons to no longer work for the good of humanity, to work only for their own benefit.

Some are corrupt, some malicious. Some are simply lazy. While others are diabolical.

But here, in the quiet, sweet, and somewhat boring little town of Great Barrington, Mass., Craig Coulter was about as evil as things get.

Nothing I couldn't handle.

What I couldn't deal with was that I was about to take my 3,298th history test.

I know for some of you it may seem like you've been in school for a thousand years.

I really have been.

§

I walked into history.

Most of the class was already there. Heads turned and eyes darted toward the door as I entered. Everyone relaxed when they realized it was me and not Mrs. Avery. You could smell the fear in the room. A couple of boys were cursing themselves for thinking it was a good idea to bail on studying last night and do a little gaming instead.

Daniel was in his seat, pouring over my history book, trying to glean as much information as possible in the remaining minutes before class started. He was cramming, stuffing every piece of data, every fact he could fit into his head. I don't think two hours from now he'd have any recollection at all of what he'd read, but I had to give him credit for trying. Daniel would remember long enough to pass, I was pretty sure.

He glanced up and sort of growled at me. I pointed at the book.

He glared at me another second, then put his face back in the Civil War.

I hated the Civil War.

Phoebe came in the room and avoided my eyes as she sat in her seat, which was just in front of mine. She kept her back to me.

I could hear her breathing. It was heavy. Through her nose. As if she were angry, annoyed, something. After a moment:

"You okay?" she said without turning.

"I'll be fine."

When she finally glanced at me, she seemed surprised.

"Looks like you're trying to give birth to a golf ball," she said, her fingers touching her head in a mirror image of where mine hurt.

I ran my hand over the area where the pain was coming from.

"I think it's going to be a...Titlest," I said.

The smallest hint of a smile flashed in her eyes. But then it was gone before it ever made it to her mouth.

The bump was throbbing.

I've been hit harder before. One time, when I was captured in France and mistaken for an English spy when, in fact, I was working for the Americans who were allied with the French, Napoleon himself took the handle of his sword and clobbered me. I ended up becoming a valet and trusted ally of the man. The history books say he was short—5 foot 2, but back then I was 5 foot 2, and he was at least four or five inches taller than me.

That's the problem with history. The people who are actually there are too busy trying to stay alive to write it.

"He's got a lot of pressure on him. Homecoming Game this week," Phoebe said without mentioning Craig's name. "Sometimes he can be a bit—"

"—of a jerk?"

She glanced down at the floor. "He's really very nice." After a pause, she added, "To me."

My head hurt. I wanted to say, Hey, I get it. You're pretty. You run around in a cheerleader uniform. And the King of the Cool Kids likes you. And why wouldn't he? You're funny. You're charming. You run up and kiss him whenever you see him. I don't even think his mother does that.

But I had the feeling Phoebe was a good person at heart. I decided to cut her some slack.

"What do you see in that idiot anyway?"

Not that much slack, I guess.

"He's captain of the football team, senior class president, annoyingly good looking," Daniel said without looking up. "That's what history really teaches. That the most powerful jerks get the hottest—"

"Daniel!"

He looked up, startled.

"Was I saying that out loud?"

I nodded, an irritated scowl on my face.

"Phoebe," I said. "I've known a lot of guys like Craig Coulter in my life. Some of them turn out halfway decent. But most of them become horrible husbands and terrible fathers. And the worst of them, the perpetual adolescents with family money and a little charm can end up bullying an entire town."

She looked at me, quizzically. "You have a strange imagination," she said.

She turned quickly, her hair gently twirling to catch up with the movement. I caught a glimpse of a displeased frown and a hint of jasmine. The scent reminded me of something, but I pushed it out of my mind. It was too painful.

Mrs. Avery walked into the room, and I heard a couple of audible gasps. She was carrying...a stack of paper at least ten inches high. "Good morning. Seats, please." She began handing out tests, dropping one face down on each student's desk. It had to be twenty pages, at least.

Mrs. Avery looked about a hundred years old, spoke like she was three hundred, and moved like she was twenty. She could hear a snide comment from across the room and be dragging you out the door by your ear in three seconds flat. I secretly wondered if she was like me. She had a huge school girl crush on Thomas Jefferson and spoke about him in the present tense.

Last time my father was home it was Parent-Teacher conferences, and I asked him about it. I thought he might tell me I was being silly or laugh at the question in that hearty, unrestrained way that he does. The way I've seen kings and generals and others of great power laugh.

But he didn't.

He sat across from Mrs. Avery and watched her as she told him that my class work was satisfactory, but that I needed to take history a little more seriously.

I nearly choked on that.

Afterward in the car, my father told me he was certain she wasn't like us, but I still had my doubts.

"Take history more seriously?" I said on the drive home. "What is that supposed to mean? I know everything there is to know about the past thousand years. I've either lived it, learned it from those who had lived it or studied it till I was sick of it because you made me." I looked out the window into the darkness. "Take history more seriously. Seriously!"

My father smiled. "You still have much to learn, Alexander. Believe me."

I sighed. "I want to do something. Living this quiet, laid-back life is killing me."

"I know it is difficult. But it is important that you keep yourself and your talents in check."

"Yeah, I know."

It's not easy being inconspicuous when you've lived a hundred lifetimes.

I wanted to be more. I could be great—monumentally great—if only he would let me.

There were long periods where my father forced us to remain anonymous, to live quietly. But then there were times where he allowed me to show off my skills.

But that was in the past.

Now, it had become increasingly difficult to be who I am—who I can be—and not be discovered. It used to be easier. I could hide in plain sight. Be a child prodigy, a protégé, a boy wonder and then move on. But the modern world made that nearly impossible.

Cameras on everything from stoplights to cell phones. The ever present media. The ability to communicate instantly across the globe. It all meant that anyone doing something extraordinary would gather attention, be recorded and, more importantly, be remembered.

Indefinitely.

The fact that there is a picture of me, looking pretty much the same as I do today, on the front page of every major newspaper in the world on September 30, 1948 after I came in third at the World Chess Championship held in The Hague...still causes my father to get furious at me.

And so, for the past fifty plus years, we moved from city to town, small town to even smaller town every few years. I've enrolled in more than a dozen schools, taking the same tests over and over and having the same three teachers time and time again.

The good. The bad. And the horrible.

Sure, every once in a while, a teacher stood out. But I found even the good ones not so great. It wasn't their fault. It's just difficult to hear someone droning on about Napoleon or Thomas Jefferson or Joan of Arc or Catherine The Great or Shakespeare, listen to them explain what these great men and women were really like, what their motivations were, what they were thinking about, when you've actually met these people yourself.

By the way, Shakespeare is one of us. He's a writer in Hollywood now. Television mostly. He still makes the actors say every one of his words. As written. He's kind of a nib that way. He gets away with it because his dialogue is still the best.

As for Mrs. Avery, I'd rate her somewhere between bad and horrible.

"Now, class," she barked, "I want you to put your books away, keep the test turned over and only begin after I tell you. You will have the full period to complete the test. If you happen to finish early, you may walk up to my desk, hand it to me, then sit quietly in your chair until the end of class. There will be no talking. And everyone, eyes on our own papers." She looked specifically at Daniel as she put the last exam in front of him and gently closed the book in his hand.

"Begin!" she ordered sharply, startling half the class.

I turned over the stapled stack and began the test.

Like the thing with Napoleon's height. Most of history, at least the history that gets written down, is just plain wrong.

Take for instance, question number 26.

In what year was the island of Manhattan acquired? By whom, from whom, and for how much?

The answer Mrs. Avery was looking for was: The island of Manhattan was purchased in 1626 by Peter Minuit from a local Wappinger tribe for beads and trinkets worth 60 guilders (often said to equal $24).

This makes the Indians look pretty stupid. I mean, a whole island, some of the priciest real estate in the world, for $24 worth of junk? Dumb.

Problem is, the only thing correct about that answer is the year.

After Shakespeare "died," I moved around Europe for a few years and found myself on a Dutch ship, heading for the first time to America, landing in New Amsterdam which sat on the southern tip of Manhattan Island.

I had money, troves of it, stashed throughout Europe. But it isn't like today where a small rectangle of plastic can give you access to thousands, even millions of dollars. Wealth until recently was unwieldy. And not very portable. It would take several ships to bring my fortune to the New World. So much for blending in.

Instead, I came with almost nothing.

And so, because I could pick up languages easily, I earned my keep by translating between the settlers and the local tribes.

What really went down in 1626 is that Pierre Minuit gave 60 guilders (a couple of thousand dollars in today's money) worth of technology including axe heads to the Canarsee tribe who didn't even live on Manhattan but inhabited an area that is now Brooklyn. Minuit never acknowledged this mistake. Over the next few months, the Canarsee wiped out the local tribe on Manhattan, clearing the way for the Dutch to settle there.

Not as cute a story.

It's like instead of buying a house from the owners, you hire a hit man then move in once they've been taken out.

This wasn't the only question I had a problem with.

The first President of the United States was not George Washington. We did not Declare Our Independence on July 4, 1776. Maine is not the easternmost state in the U.S.

Of course, if you answered these questions accurately, you'd almost certainly fail your history test.

George Washington was actually the ninth President of the United States. John Hanson was the first, followed by seven others between 1781 and 1788 under our original constitution, each serving a one-year term. Washington was the first President elected after our second and current constitution, which was ratified in 1788. The first one was so bad we realized we had to scrap it and start over after only seven years.

As for the Declaration of Independence, first of all, we declared our independence on July 2nd. In fact, John Adams, who would be the tenth president—the one after Washington—wrote his wife saying, "The second day of July, 1776, will be celebrated by succeeding generations from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore."

Not really. The 2nd of July I'm usually packing to go somewhere for the 4th.

The final text of the Declaration of Independence written in Jefferson's hand was approved by Congress on the 4th, but that was just a formality over some minor changes. I held the beautifully lettered parchment for the five seconds it took to ferry it between Jefferson and John Hancock who, as President of the Congress, was the only man to sign it. (It was attested to by the Secretary of Congress, Charles Thomson as well.) The original document was lost almost immediately. The copy sitting in the National Archives didn't get signed until August 2nd. It's Jefferson's words, but not his handwriting.

As for Maine being the furthest east? Seems like a no-brainer, right? Except several islands in the Aleutian chain are so far "west" of mainland Alaska, they're in the Eastern Hemisphere. Making Alaska the westernmost and the easternmost state.

I answered question 26 "correctly." Minuit, $24, 1626, blah, blah, blah.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Daniel straining to get a peek at my paper. You had to admire determination like that.

But it was something past Daniel that caught my attention and made my chest tighten.

Braeden Ellis.

I could see the recently arrived senior watching me through the windows that ran between the courtyard and our classroom. Unlike his slyness in the woods, Braeden made no attempt at pretense, no effort to hide his gaze.

His stare was fixed, black eyes unmoving.

Like a shark.

I've lived through so many events, had so many experiences, from the horribly frightening to the embarrassingly funny, that I'm not easily rattled. But something in the way that Braeden's eyes drilled into me stirred up trouble in the pit of my stomach.

Which I realized is how much of the rest of the class felt before the test.

Ready to puke.

\- THREE -

A Sissy Game Played With 500 Warriors On A Side

Even with Braeden eyeing me like a lion eyes a gazelle, I finished the test early. Seventeen minutes early. Not a record. Not even close. But still a little intimidating for the other students.

I heard Paul Polanski say, "You're kidding me!" a lot louder than he meant to when I put my pencil down at 8:28, got out of my chair and strolled up to Mrs. Avery with my test outstretched.

The ancient-faced teacher glared at Paul.

Then, she looked at me.

And I looked at her.

It was a stand off.

If this were a movie, I'd be hearing bad spaghetti western music right now. Do-do-do-da-doo, do doo-doo. I'm of the opinion that any song that's got doo-doo in it, isn't likely to be any good.

Mrs. Avery seemed like she was expecting me to ask a question—hoping, I think—especially since she had scribbled the words NO QUESTIONS DURING TEST in huge letters on the blackboard behind her, which she would casually point to after you asked her something.

She's not the only teacher I've had that enjoyed making her students feel like complete morons. But she took more pleasure in it than most.

Only I had no questions. Other than: how come your test was so flawed and inaccurate, Mrs. Avery? If that even is your name.

But I knew I wouldn't get a constructive response to that. I'd have been instantly ear-pulled down to the office to see Mr. Gulivin, which was more torture than I could take.

And it wasn't the ear-pulling I objected to.

I'd rather be burned at the stake—and believe me, I very nearly have been on several occasions, including the time I stupidly performed a magic trick in public while passing through Barcelona during the Spanish Inquisition—than be forced to endure five minutes with Mr. Gulivin.

If there are only three types of teachers—the good, the bad and the horrible—there are only two types of principals: The mean. And the meek.

The mean are militaristic ultra strict ex-drill sergeants (or frustrated wannabes) who believe that children should be seen and not heard and that any creative spark should be snuffed out of them immediately.

Kids need to understand their place in the world, which is a millimeter above pond scum and be grateful that it isn't a hundred years ago where they'd be working fourteen hours a day in a factory or out in the fields under the scorching sun. These I-hate-you-cuz-I-really-love-you types claim they want "to prepare children for the real world" where we're just gonna become another cog in the wheel.

Uplifting, isn't it? Who wouldn't be inspired by that?

"Lower your expectations in life, young man," a principal once said to me. "That way you won't be so disappointed."

And adults wonder why kids hate school.

The meek, on the other hand, are overly comforting, too kind and want you to talk about your "feelings." They fawn over you and say things like, "I know you can do better Mr. Grant. All you have to do is believe it, too," and "I'm going to let you get away with it this time, Alexander, because I know you're not a bad kid at heart."

Only some kids are bad. And pampering them isn't going to make them suddenly good.

You never heard me say this, but kids need boundaries, even though we'll never, ever admit it.

Without rules, things get out of control. And quick.

Mr. Gulivin was neither one of these types.

No, Mr. Gulivin was that rare specimen of undiluted mediocrity. He was both meek and mean, and worse, he was profoundly bad at both.

He wanted you to "understand" his thinking, but his vocal cords produced the sound of a mouse with a heavy Boston accent sneaking by a sleeping cat. What you could make out from his garbled, squeaking whisper always ended with, "en yah be spindin yah ahfta noons ahrrr-ite he-ah beside may."

I let go of the exam. It dropped with a thud on Mrs. Avery's desk.

She gave me a suspicious look that screamed, are you sure you wanna hand it in so soon?

"I'm sure," I said out loud.

Mind reading snot, she was thinking.

My answers were all correct, even if many of them weren't right. So, unless Mrs. Avery was looking to me for enlightenment, for something other than the "facts" in her flawed The American Experience textbook, I expected she'd give my answers a reluctant "A."

I would've finished even sooner if I hadn't gotten bogged down by several of the questions, including number 26, number 4, number 43, 45, and 19.

Some days it was harder than others to get my pencil to scribble out what the writers of history wanted me to believe instead of what I had witnessed.

I don't mean to imply that everything in these books is wrong. It's just that the simpler and easier-to-understand the authors try to make an event, the farther away it is from what really happened.

They say that those who don't learn from history are destined to repeat it.

I think that's true.

Which is why it's even more important to know what actually occurred.

§

"I think I did okay," Daniel said in the hallway after class. "How dumb was that tribe for selling Manhattan for beads? Seriously."

I doubted Daniel's life would ever depend on knowing what really happened, so I decided not to correct him.

"You finished in like three minutes," he said.

"Thirty."

"Whatever. It was annoying. I did enjoy the fact that you had to sit there for the rest of class, no book, no phone, no games, no texting. Nothing to do but sit 'quietly,'" he said, making quotation marks in the air. "Torture."

"Yeah," I said. But I really didn't mean it. Unlike most kids my "age," I don't have the need to be entertained every second. I enjoy moments of contemplation, where I can think. Or just clear my head. Meditate. I don't find it painful. I find it peaceful.

Besides, I spent the time watching Phoebe as she finished the test. Her hair. Her breathing. The movement of her arm. Stupid, I know, but there is something about her.

"You wanna get some pizza after school?"

"Practice," I said. Daniel knew this. But every day he would ask me.

"Right. It's the big game Saturday," he said. "Oh, and your game, too."

I gave him a fake laugh that sounded like a goat getting kicked in the stomach.

"After practice?"

"Sure, if your social calendar isn't too filled up." I swiped my history book out of his hands and started to walk away.

"Your highlights helped," he said. "Although the actual answers would have been even better."

"You'll thank me someday, Daniel."

"I highly doubt that."

Even though he tried to act cool, I could tell he was relieved and more than a little happy about how he had done.

The rest of the day crept by.

Third period, fourth period, fifth, sixth, seventh. This was torture. I know some of you know what I mean.

I don't want you to get the wrong idea. I crave learning. I seek out knowledge. And I genuinely love school.

That is, the first hundred and fifty times I went through it.

When the day's final bell rang, I sprinted out of class and hurried down to the locker room.

This was one part of the day I really enjoyed.

I changed into my gear and got ready to play tewaarathon.

Almost a thousand years ago, not far from here in what is now upper New York and southern Ottawa, the Huron and Iroquois created a game that was part sport, part boot camp, part religious ritual.

Played to honor The Creator, it was known by many names on both sides of the St. Lawrence River: dehuntshigwa'es ("men hit a rounded object"), baaga`adowe ("bump hips"), kabocha-toli ("stick-ball").

When I played it in the late 1620s and early 30s, I knew it as tewaarathon.

I was eleven hundred and something years old—still about a century from hitting puberty.

I only spent a brief time in New Amsterdam, which at the time encompassed only the land below what is now Wall Street. The place sprang up out of nowhere after Henry Hudson explored the area for the powers in Europe, who were still looking for a shortcut to Asia.

The West India Company and the Dutch were crazy about building. Forts, walls, houses, it didn't matter. There was a lot of chopping and sawing and hammering. It gives me a headache just thinking about it.

Still, I found the New Amsterdam settlement a little boring after being in Europe. New York may now be The City That Never Sleeps, but back then, it was a small village. Nice houses. Nice farms. Nice people.

Completely unlike the City it is today.

In other words, tedious and dull.

To me, all the action was with the tribes. They were getting pushed inland, either by force, by trickery, or by shady land deals—none of them as famous as Pierre Minuit's, but with outcomes pretty much the same. The pressure to relocate pulled the tribes out of their complacency, causing them to reexam and reinvigorate their traditions.

I used my language skills to get friendly with various tribes. Over time, I traveled up the Muhheakunnuk River—what is now called the Hudson—and finally settled in with a group called "eaters of flesh" and "man eaters" by their enemies. The tribe called themselves Kanien'kehá:ka. People of the Place of Flint. You know them but the name their enemies gave them: Mohawk.

Tewaarathon was their favorite sport.

I've taken part in games with as many as five hundred to a thousand combatants on a side, played on the plains that ran between villages. Some contests spanned an entire valley—miles wide and many miles long. At times, the goals set up at each end were simply a marked tree or large rock. More often, they were tall wooden posts sunk into the ground.

We would spend days, sometimes many days, sun up to sundown, fighting our way through the mass of men to get a single chance at glory—shooting the deerskin ball at the goals.

We would eat and sleep in the field of play.

It may be difficult to imagine a game of such great magnitude, a thousand men, miles of terrain and only one ball, but these contests were a mix of beauty and brutality, of elegant strategy and brute force.

Across the Heron and Iroquois Nations, the Creator's Game was played to resolve conflicts among tribes, to heal the sick, but most importantly, it was played to develop, to hone, to chisel boys into men, and men into warriors.

Those who took part did so with the goal of bringing glory and honor to themselves and their tribes.

Despite the fact I was a pale face, the leaders of the Mohawk trusted me, adopted me as their own. I appeared to be eleven or twelve at the time and so I was given the chance to learn the ways of the warrior and complete the transition into manhood.

During my time with the tribe, I became friends with the eldest son of the Chief, a boy on the edge of turning twelve.

Actually, Deganawa and I were best friends. He was the same size as me, and our speed and strength surpassed all the others of our age. We were highly competitive one-on-one, but on the playing field, we fiercely protected each other.

I closed my locker, making sure it was secure by absently spinning the combination lock longer than I needed to. I laced up my cleats. They had a velcro strap. Much better traction-wise than the leather moccasins I wore on the plains. I put on my helmet, snapped the chin guard, pulled gloves over my fingers, stretching open my hands to loosen up the leather. I closed my eyes and breathed in slowly, held it for a moment, then opening my eyes, I quickly blew out all the air in my lungs, grabbed my stick and headed out to join the rest of my team on the practice field.

I owe Deganawa my life.

My lighter skin made me an easy target for the opposing tribes. Although not as pink as most whites, I was clearly not "of the people."

On the eastern end of the sprawling Mohawk Valley, I stared at the Oneida across the valley floor. Even at that distance, I could see the men and boys of this tribe were not to be taken lightly. There was much riding on this game. Money and gold and even wives and children had been wagered on the outcome. But for Deganawa and me, the stakes were even higher. It was our first chance to play the game against men.

In the middle of the field, the deerskin sphere was tossed into the air as the leaders of the two teams dove for it.

It was impossible to see the ball. It was nearly a mile away. But the swarming movements of the men made its location clear enough.

All day, the action around us was fierce and territorial. After more than three hours, fatigue setting in, I was caught off-guard and blocked in the head with the end of a stick.

I felt warmth running down the side of my forehead and over my cheek as blood dripped out of the wound.

Deganawa, as he had many times before, came to my rescue.

"Are you injured badly?"

I didn't answer.

I was walking, but suddenly my legs buckled and fell to my knees.

One of the things you notice when you live a long time is that history repeats itself.

Often.

I have found myself knocked silly more times than I'd like to admit. I could take up your entire life listing them off for you.

I'll spare us both.

I was in danger. Still upright, easy to hit, but immobile. A deadly combination.

Now, killing an opponent on purpose had become less common, but it was still part of the game. And as a white man, the Oneida might not think the Mohawk would take any offense at my death.

They were mistaken.

Deganawa fended off three members of the Oneida. Then without much effort, he dragged me by the back of the neck and pulled me at least a hundred yards, knocking more attackers out of the way, until he dropped me into a small depression carved in the field by the annual rains.

I was hidden, which meant, I was safe.

There was still a slow trickle of water running under the long grass, home to about a million mosquitoes. Half of them started feasting on my exposed flesh. As soon as Deganawa let go of me, I felt the coolness of the still water and the warmth of my own blood.

"Do you think you can stand?" he asked me.

Without thinking, my body started to get up.

"Stay. Do not move."

A second later he took out another attacker with the end of his stick. An Oneida brave landed next to me with a squishy thud.

He was looking at me. Or maybe it was through me.

I could tell he was only marginally conscious. There we were, both of us, staring at each other, half out of it.

Deganawa patted me with his stick to keep me awake, to let me know I would be all right. "We will be men soon."

A few years later in 1636, a French missionary named Jean de Brébeuf witnessed a game I was part of. He was so amazed by the spectacle of it (to me it seemed pretty unspectacular—less than fifty players were on the field that day), that he wrote at length about what he had witnessed. He was ignorant of the Indian names for The Creator's Game. And Europeans liked naming things that were already named. Like turning the Muhheakunnuk into the Hudson. So de Brébeuf gave it his own: lacrosse.

Saturday finally came.

Homecoming. The final home game.

The football game was at 2:00 p.m. Ours would start at 10:30 a.m. on the same field. They'd have about two thousand people in the stands. We'd have maybe two hundred.

Didn't matter.

We'd play like there were ten thousand watching us.

Coach gave us his traditional Homecoming pep talk, which was pretty much the same pep talk he gave us before every other game of the year except he added a bit at the end—with an even bigger scowl on his face than he normally had—that during halftime of the football game, the Homecoming Queen and her court in their long, pretty dresses would be paraded across the field in classic cars, while during our halftime, Ken Swiner, the school's three hundred and fifty-pound grounds keeper, would spend the entire fifteen-minute break picking at his enormous butt as he rechalked the lines.

Pretty much the whole team winced at the image that popped into our heads. I'm not sure how coach thought this helped us, but the team was 10 and 0 on Homecoming Day in the decade he's been coaching.

We charged out onto the field to face our arch rivals, Housatonic Regional. When the adults weren't around, we called them Who'sMoronic.

The weather was crisp. The sky was clear. My stick felt good in my hands. A perfect day for The Creator's Game.

An hour later, the game against Who'sMoronic was going along fine. It was 24 for us, 23 for them.

As I expected, the stands weren't very crowded, certainly not as full as they would be when the football teams took the field, but there were more spectators than normal. Ironically, Who'sMoronic had a larger number of fans than we did most of the game. That was partly because they had twice as many students, but mostly because a dozen chartered buses packed with Who'sMoronic football fans not wanting to make the trip from Pittsfield by car arrived early to tailgate and barbecue.

The goal keepers were doing an incredible job. It had been more than ten minutes since the last goal. Lacrosse is a high scoring sport. And to go that long without either team getting a goal was unusual.

One of Who'sMoronic's middies stick-checked Richie Z., popping the ball loose from my teammate. The middie scooped it up and carried it across the midline, then fired it down the line to an attackman behind the goal, who took three giant steps, leaped from the back of the crease into the air and shot the ball over the top of the net.

It bounced off the shoulder blade of our keeper and in.

I cursed under my breath, then went up to our keeper and knocked him on the pads to encourage him.

Richie Zedman was our captain and one of the best players I've ever seen. And one of the most competitive. He hated to lose even more than I did. He ran up to me. I figured he was going to chew me out for not getting down field fast enough to help him. Instead, he seemed mildly impressed. "These guys are good," he said, quietly.

"It was a pretty shot," I said.

"Circus shot." He meant it as a compliment. "They're pressing down low. We might catch them out." Richie Z. hit me on the back with his stick.

"Nia:wen," I said, when I realized I had survived.

"You're welcome." Deganawa was watching something in the distance, his pupils fixed. "Can you stand up?"

"I think so."

"Good." He looked around. At what, I couldn't see. "Do you think you can run very, very fast?"

"I'm not sure."

"If you could be sure, I think that would be something we should do," he said matter-of-factly.

I stuck my head over the ridge of the depression and saw at least fifty attackers heading our way with an equal number of Mohawks in pursuit.

And something else—the ball.

Flying straight at us.

It bounced once at the top of the ridge and landed right in front of me, rolling to a dead stop at my ankles.

Normally, any brave would consider themselves blessed by the Creator to have such good fortune fall at their feet. Some men went their entire lives without being this close to the ball. Me, I cursed in at least six different languages.

But eventually seeing the ball three inches away jolted me like a lightning strike to my privates. Injured or not, I could have lifted a boulder at that moment.

There is a fever that one gets when playing this game, the need to take the ball and defeat the enemy. The native word for it is not important. It's extremely long and hard to pronounce. What it describes is a powerful feeling. One that takes over your entire body.

It's more than the adrenaline surging through you when seeing a hundred warriors aiming for you. It's more than the need for competition. Or even survival.

It is all of those and something else. Something basic.

It is the need to prove one's existence. To matter.

Lunging with his hands far apart on his stick, Deganawa took out the first of the Oneida to reach us. The dumbstruck brave wheezed as the wind was knock out of him and he landed right on top of his brethren.

"Run!" Deganawa screamed at me.

Without any thought, I snatched the ball from the ground with my stick and raced off.

The fact that Deganawa and I came out of nowhere surprised everyone, including those of our own tribe.

I was running for my life.

Literally.

And I did not look back.

I sprinted nonstop for over a thousand yards—about three quarters of a mile flat out. I blew by the last defenders and left Deganawa behind.

I shot the ball at the narrow space between the two twenty-foot high posts. The deerskin sailed through the hot, heavy air and past the keeper.

I didn't stop running.

There were a hundred screaming braves chasing me across the amber fields.

Deganawa later told me that I ran another mile before I collapsed. I was so far out of play no one bothered me. They had all turned around after a few hundred yards to celebrate or mourn.

It was one of the young women of the tribe who found me. She had been gathering some roots for the dinner when she stumbled upon my unconscious body sometime later.

I remember a warm hand on my skin.

Her name was Alanu.

The only daughter of the tribe's medicine man, she had long, black, silky hair that was—

—let's just say, Alanu had nice hair.

Phoebe had nice hair. Although, not as straight.

Whenever I had the ball or made a play, I could hear her voice cheering above the rest. "Gooooooo, Grant!"

The cheerleaders had arrived midway through the second half. They did impromptu cheers as a warm up before the football game. Phoebe was the only sophomore on the varsity squad.

We were tied with three minutes left. A lot of goals can be scored in a hundred and eighty seconds, and they had gotten the last two. It felt like we were playing on our heels, reacting instead of attacking.

And it cost us.

A minute later, they scored again. This time with a shot from ten yards out that blew by our keeper.

He didn't have a chance.

Richie Z. came toward me again.

This time he was not as cordial. "Hit that guy, A.G.! He never should've gotten a clean shot like that!"

I nodded. Richie was right.

I went for the ball instead of the man. I was trying to get cute instead of just checking him to the ground.

I walked to the center of the midline to take the face-off. I am one of the three midfielders and can go the entire length of the field. The three attackmen have to stay on the offensive side, just as the three defensemen must remain in the defensive end—unless one of the middies swaps out.

Two minutes to go. We had gone from being up by two to being down by one.

Some mistakenly believe Jean de Brébeuf called the game lacrosse because the sticks we used reminded him of the crosier staff carried by bishops—la crosse in French. To this day, our sticks are called crosses. But de Brébeuf thought our game seemed like a violent version of French field hockey, le jeu de la crosse. The game of the stick.

I laid my crosse down on the grass, horizontal to my opponent's crosse along the midfield line. The heads of the sticks were inches from the ball.

Since at any given moment the vast majority of the players spread across the valley were no where near the ball, the primary object of tewaarathon was to defend against and disable as many of your opponents as possible.

I found it funny that Craig Coulter called lacrosse a sissy game.

Tewaarathon literally means, "the little brother of war."

And like war, the game was deadly for some.

Craig would have lasted about thirty seconds on the grassy plains before he'd be knocked out cold—or worse—by a stick to the head.

One way or another, by the end of a game of tewaarathon, there were no sissies left.

When I began preparatory school in the early 1800s, I played rugby, golf, and tennis, by the middle of the century in what would become high school, baseball became my favorite sport. And in the early 1900s, I added football and basketball.

I avoided lacrosse.

I had played in some of the most epic, adrenaline inducing games in history. Modern lacrosse, confined to an area about the size of a football field including end zones, didn't inspire me.

For sixty years, I played football in the fall. I broke my arm twenty-seven times.

Bet Craig Coulter can't say that.

After the last fracture, where my humerus bone took a right when it should've kept going straight, I figured it was time to heed Nature's warning and play something else.

Soccer was my choice for two decades.

Then one day I saw Rutgers defeat Syracuse for the NCAA championship. The announcer called lacrosse the "fastest game on two feet."

Watching that game and the celebration afterwards brought back memories of glory.

I looked at lacrosse differently now—ten men on a side versus a hundred or a thousand—but cradling the ball, smashing through defenders, the acrobatic shots at the goal, the quiet tension before the ball is put in play, it now brought me the same joy as it did three centuries ago.

I've played it almost every year since.

I went out for football this year, just to change things up, but after dealing with Craig Coulter and his friends at tryouts, I decided I'd rather play a game I loved with people I liked.

We waited for the whistle from the ref.

I could hear my opponent breathing.

He was mumbling something, either to me or to himself. It sounded like, "Ball is mine."

The whistle.

I grabbed my stick off the turf and scrambled for the ball. I tried to clamp it under my crosse, but the kid was pushing down on my stick, and I couldn't flick it out. Finally, I was able to roll it behind me. I slid my crosse under my legs and poked the ball back to Richie Z. who scooped it up and carried it into the attack zone. He got slammed to the ground by a defenseman, and the ball came free. Another of our players picked up the ball, but was checked off it.

I came rushing in and shouldered the defender just as he was about to pass. The ball blooped into the air and I pulled it down into the netting of my stick, stealing it from the sticks of several other players.

"Go, Alexander," I heard Phoebe shout.

I could see Craig Coulter watching me from the sideline. The football team was beginning to show up. They were forced to dress in suits and ties, which always seemed like putting a tuxedo on a gorilla. The gorilla didn't like it. The tux didn't either. Craig glanced over at Phoebe as she cheered me down the field. His face turned red. I had the distinct feeling that at some point in the near future, I was going to get another visit from his fist.

Craig had anger issues.

I don't care how nice he was to her, he was a jerk.

I understand him being jealous—Phoebe was one of the prettiest girls in our school—but he had no reason to be upset with me. A half dozen other guys, sure, but not me.

I don't mean to sound arrogant, but if I really wanted to steal Phoebe Amara away from Craig, I think centuries of experience, the years I spent with Shakespeare listening to him compose love sonnets or learning from Leonardo da Vinci how to draw out the inner beauty of a subject, transcribing poetry for Shelley, Wordsworth, and Keats, delivering proposals for the matchmakers of Dublin, if I applied all of this knowledge—any of it!—I'd have a good chance of winning her heart.

And maybe the reason I didn't fight back, didn't give him the beating he deserved is because he was right. I hadn't acted, wouldn't act, but there was something about Phoebe that made me notice her. No matter where she was or what she was doing.

Nobody understands chemistry, of course, why one person likes another person. I'm not guaranteeing I'd win her over, but I could certainly make it a lot more difficult for him if I wanted to.

It would be so easy to say and do all the things that would make her fall for me. Not because I felt them, but because I had seen them work a thousand times before.

And that's one of the most difficult things about being fifteen hundred years old.

Not showing off.

I almost got clobbered because I wasn't paying attention.

At the last second, I hit the ground and rolled, avoiding the hit. The middie aiming for me fell awkwardly as he grabbed at an armful of air.

I almost forgot I still had the ball. I flicked it to Richie Z. who passed it behind the net to Tommy who sent it back to me after I got to my feet and rushed the net.

I jumped into the air to get some height over my defender and fired a bullet at the upper left corner of the net.

The keeper reacted late and clumsily stuck out his stick and—somehow—caught the ball.

We all were frozen for a moment.

I think everyone expected my shot to go in.

The keeper lobbed the ball down field, catching us off guard.

Thirty seconds left.

All of us were down low, just our three defensemen were back.

A Who'sMoronic attacker caught the ball and ran behind our net. He was ragging it. Taking his time, trying to run down the clock. He should have pitched it to his teammate along the crease. They had us outnumbered.

His hesitation gave me and the other middies time to get back.

As I was closing in on him, the attacker finally passed the ball out front. But Ben Lasker reached up with his long defenseman's stick and stole the ball. Ben charged back the other way, looking for a fast break.

Anticipating his steal, I had already turned and sprinted toward the midline. I got out in front of Ben, off to his right. I called for the ball, but he flicked it to Richie up the middle who raced straight toward the goal.

Two defenders closed on Richie from either side.

Ten seconds left.

He pulled back his stick. I thought he was going to shoot, but he no-look passed the ball back to me over his shoulder just as the defenders sandwiched him.

It was beautiful. With Richie double-teamed, I was wide open. I cradled the ball, rocking my stick back and forth to maintain control.

I could've shot, but I was far out. The keeper would have time to react. He proved he was fast. I wouldn't make the same mistake.

I ignored the defender charging at me.

Five seconds.

Richie Z. was still under the two defensemen. The rest of my teammates were covered or behind me. Not enough time left to wait for them to get open. I had the only shot. If I waited, I thought I could beat the keeper and tie the game.

But I was about to get a defender in my face.

I leaped. I was soaring. Before I could wrist it toward the upper right corner, the defender, who was at least fifty pounds heavier than me, smashed his stick across my arm. I felt a searing pain that spread through my whole body.

He not only slashed me, but then brought his stick up under my chin.

A graphite fiber upper cut.

I heard the horn sound—game over—and almost immediately, things started to go black.

I don't remember anything after that.

\- FOUR -

I Don't Particularly Like Having A Nuclear Weapon Aimed At My Privates

I came to as the paramedics were locking me into a head strap. I could see Phoebe looking down at me.

I was disoriented. The crowd in the stands seemed huge, like I was on the field in the middle of a Patriots game.

As I woozily glanced around, I saw Braeden. Him again. What was it with this guy?

And then I began to remember.

Braeden watching me from the sidelines. His stare much more intense than even Craig Coulter's. Craig was no longer satisfied with simply pushing my face in the dirt. The new Craig Coulter wanted to kill me—I can only imagine what Braeden was thinking.

As I was losing consciousness, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Braeden sprint onto the field. Was it before the horn? I couldn't remember. He shouldn't have been on the field, either way.

He was running directly at me. I was expecting another blow. I was defenseless. I was half unconscious and still in the air, heading to the ground. But he didn't hit me. As best as I could remember, and it's a little fuzzy, Braeden slammed himself into the defender that had taken me down.

"What's your name, son?" one of the paramedics asked me.

On a good day, if you catch me off guard, I might not be able to answer this question correctly. I've had so many names over the years.

"Alexander...ummm...." I've always been Alexander, so that's easy enough to remember, but the rest of my name has changed. Right now, my father and I are running through the surnames of famous generals. "...ummmm, Grant."

The guy didn't look too pleased.

"Alexander Grant," I tried to say more convincingly.

"Where are you?"

Another trick question.

"Lying on a gurney."

He didn't smile. "What town?"

I could see Phoebe's face. She was worried.

For almost a hundred years, I knew this as Mahaiwe.

"Great Barrington."

"What day of the week is it?

"Saturday. Homecoming."

The paramedic nodded.

"Okay, we're going to take you to the hospital just to be safe."

"It's just a bruise on my foreARRRMMMM!" my voice raised as I touched my arm and was hit with shooting pain. I tried to recover quickly. I wanted to avoid the hospital. I told them I didn't want to go. But the coaches said blah blah blah liability blah blah insurance claims blah blah blah to make sure I was okay.

The crowd cheered as they slid me into the back of the ambulance. Once the doors were slammed shut, we drove across the field, the ambulance followed by a cop car. My parade beat the Homecoming Queen's by a good hour and a half.

I don't really know how any of us have survived, and by us, I mean all humans, when you consider what goes on at the local emergency room.

It seems like if I were actually in need of medical attention, I'd be entirely dead by the time they got around to helping me.

For a place whose very name supposedly advertises that this is the place to come during an urgent situation, no one seems to move with any great speed or enthusiasm.

I had to be very careful dealing with the doctors. The subcutaneous skin on my arms had already begun to toughen, a reaction to sunlight, although on the outside, it still seemed soft and supple.

I saw a nurse try to give my father a shot in the arm once and watched the needle bend. It finally went in, but the shocked look on the nurse's face made me laugh. My father glared at me. When she tried to tell the doctor what had happened, he gave her a dismissive glance.

For people like me, the second most dangerous time—the first being the eighteen or so months after birth—is during puberty. Hormones are coursing through our bodies causing drastic changes as we transform from adolescents into adults. It's less of a problem with normal teenagers because these hormonal changes happen over a few years. For me, it's been a few centuries. And the affects on my mind and body are profound, pronounced, and irritating.

We are more vulnerable to injury than as an adult. And more likely to do stupid things to get injured.

Luckily, like a small portion of the general population, most of us have a variation of the gene involved in making proteins that helps repair neurons. We didn't know this, of course, until recently. We just thought we had harder heads.

"You check out fine in the cognitive tests," the doctor said. He had asked me some of the same questions—what's my name, where am I, how old I was—but I was feeling much better and answered them quickly.

"I'm a little concerned that you passed out," the doctor said.

"Probably as much from dehydration," I tried to offer.

"Maybe. Any headache at all?"

I paused as I took stock of my brain. Concussions were nothing to mess with. I didn't feel one.

"None."

"Hmmm. Okay, I'm not going to order a CAT Scan at the moment." He looked at my arm. "But I do want to X-ray that arm in case there's a fracture."

Yeah, that makes sense. Worry more about my arm than my head. There was nothing wrong with me, I knew that. I certainly didn't want either test, but of the two, I would think he'd err on the side of my brain.

"Listen, doc, I've broken my arm before and this doesn't feel like that. It feels bruised."

He jutted his lips out and pursed them. "Probably, but I wanna look at it anyway."

I tried a few more times to get him to change his mind, but I got the impression I was earning myself a CAT Scan as well if I didn't shut up.

I shut up.

I was wheeled up to the Radiology Department even though my legs were perfectly capable of taking me there on my own. To be honest, I was in a lot better shape than the person pushing me. The nurse behind me had to weigh at least three hundred and fifty pounds and had an asthmatic, here-comes-a-piece-of-my-lung cough that could only be cured by her next cigarette.

Of course, I didn't get directly to the X-ray room because my nurse had to stop for fuel along the way—two pit stops, actually, one at the cafeteria for a quick bite to eat and the next only ten yards from Radiology for a candy bar out of the vending machine.

I figured this would somehow all end up on my hospital bill.

The nurse wheeled me into the X-ray room.

The space was much bigger than it needed to be. It was probably built when X-ray machines were three times the size they are now. I found it more comfortable this way than years ago, when it was cramped and stuffed with ominous equipment.

The technician asked me if I needed help getting out of the chair—again, as if it were my legs that were the problem. I said, no, and I crawled onto the table and under the cross hairs of the X-ray machine.

I always find it discomforting when someone is aiming a nuclear weapon at my body. I don't care how much lead they give me to shield my privates, I'm still a little annoyed by the fact that no one has come up with a better way to see inside my body than to shoot radioactive material in my direction and send it careening through me.

"You guys put these things in the freezer?" I asked the skinny radiologic technologist as my bare skin touched the table. (Yep, that's what they prefer to be called, radiologic technologist. Not to be rude or anything, but he's an X-ray technician. It's like calling the guy behind the counter at the gas station a fuelologist.)

He was next to the obese nurse and they were talking to each other like they had a secret between them. It seemed like they liked each other. When they were standing there like that, they looked like a giant "10."

"No, that's just the way it is," he said after a moment. "The metal dissipates the heat of your body. It's a function of the fact that our bodies are at 98.6 degrees and the temperature of the room is somewhere around 72 or 74." He paused. "Even if I were to pump the heat up to 85 or 90, which wouldn't be comfortable, the metal would still seem cold to your skin.

He was talking to me as if I were five years old. Not fifteen. Forget the hundred.

I thoroughly understood the thermal dynamics of the situation. I was just annoyed my butt was freezing in addition to the humiliation of having it hanging out of this stupid gown.

That's another tricky thing about being fifteen hundred years old: Embarrassment. Unlike any other emotion, embarrassment simply doesn't fade with time. I am still as mortified by the stupid and cringeworthy things I did in Rome in the 1400s as the idiotic things I did last week.

With all the advances I've seen take place over the years, I've gotta believe someone out there is capable of making a gown that doesn't expose your booty so everyone in the hospital snickers at you as you walk down the hall.

So far, no one's come forward.

I sat there as the X-ray tech lined up my arm.

Tweaked the machine. Moved my arm. Tweaked. Moved. Tweaked. Moved. Okay, just right.

He and the nurse walked behind the protective lead wall.

I knew what was coming. The windup of the machine. Heard the little zap. Could almost feel the radiation oozing through me in that instant. Then the wind down.

The tech stuck his head out from behind the barrier.

"Turn it to the right."

I did what he said. He shot me with more radiation.

A few minutes and it was over.

And then I heard him make a sound. The one they always make.

"Huh?"

People like me are able, in essence, to replace and regenerate damaged material in our bodies. Our bodies continue to produce massive amounts of stem cells, basically blank cells, which give us the building blocks to counteract the wear and tear of everyday life. This is a side effect of our "defective" genes. But it isn't perfect.

If you look closely, you can see traces of a few of the scars I've received over the years. Accidents. Battles. Lacrosse games.

My forty-seven broken arms (twenty-seven of them, as I mentioned, from football alone) have all healed well, but the aftermath of some are still faintly visible. Maybe a dozen.

When the tech came out from the protective booth, he had a look of grave concern on his face.

"Son, is there anything that you'd like to tell me?"

He was maybe twenty-six. The paramedic—in his forties—I'll let him call me "son," but this guy...

I took a breath. Let it go, I told myself.

"I play sports all year round," I said. "I've also done a lot of rock climbing. Had a number of falls."

He looked at me suspiciously. I knew I had blown it. I had a perfect answer ready for him. I was a little too quick. Like I was waiting for the question.

"I think I have to call someone about this. It's very unusual."

"Listen, I know what you're thinking. I would tell you if something was going on. If anyone was hurting me."

"I'm sorry, but I need to inform the doctor. And we'll have to report this to the Department of Social Services. More than ten breaks on a single arm. What else would I find if I X-rayed the rest of your body."

I didn't answer. He wouldn't believe me if I told him.

I understand that in order to protect kids who really are being abused, it's important to have people looking out for them. But most times, a broken arm—even forty-seven of them—is just a broken arm.

"Social Services will need to speak to your parents."

Well, that's a bit of a problem.

My mother's been dead for 1,435 years.

And my father...well, my father was somewhere halfway around the world fighting evil. And I don't mean just any evil. I mean the kind of evil that takes thousands of years to develop.

Like I said, there are good people in the world and bad people in the world.

But when you've been alive for three, four, even six thousand years, have had all that time to amass great knowledge and ever greater wealth...let's just say: When one of us turns bad, it's extremely dangerous.

So, wherever my father was, whatever he was doing, was more important than having to deal with Social Services red tape.

Of course, I couldn't say that to the X-ray tech. I don't often talk to people about my father. When I do, the conversations generate questions not easily answered. What does your father do again? What's his work number? Where exactly is your father? Who takes care of you? Are you living alone? Should I be calling Child Protective Services?

It never ends very well.

The less said, the better.

I had to think quickly in order to get the X-ray technician off my back.

I came up with the only thing I could think of.

"If I showed you how I got most of these injuries, would you drop it?"

"How are you going to do that?" he said, as he started to pick up the phone.

Without answering him, I slowly slid off the table and got to my feet. I took in a deep breath through my nose. Focused. Then...

I ran straight for the wall.

The X-ray tech dropped the phone and instinctively tried to stop me, but I was just out of his reach. The nurse waddled into action too late as well.

Just as I was about to smash into the four-foot thick concrete barrier meant to keep in stray X-ray particles, I jumped and walked two steps up the wall, did a flip-twist-360 and came down facing the opposite direction in a full sprint away from the wall and back across the room.

I leapt off the edge of the X-ray table, launching toward the other wall, kicked off the wall, then the elbowed arm of the X-ray machine, then the wall again, then side-flipped on to the top of the machine.

I was twenty-five feet in the air in less than ten seconds, looking down at the X-ray tech and the nurse, who were both staring up at me completely dumbfounded.

The nurse's leg was wet. I thought maybe she spilled her drink, the one she had gotten on the way up here, but I realized it was still in her hand. She had peed on herself.

"Spider-Man," she said, wheezing a bit.

"More like Jackie Chan," the tech said.

I took two steps on the X-ray arm, did a front straight-leg walkover, landing gently with my right foot, then left foot on the X-ray table and immediately side-flipped to the floor.

My bruised arm never touched anything.

I was now standing right in front of the X-ray tech and the nurse.

"Can I go now?"

The tech nodded.

"I'll walk myself downstairs."

This time the nurse nodded.

It wasn't until I was strolling away from them toward the door and past the wheelchair that I realized I had done all that flipping and twisting wearing nothing but a backless hospital gown with my butt and probably my privates hanging out for all to see.

As I passed the chairs in the hallway, I grabbed my clothes and confidently headed toward the stairwell, my hospital gown continuing to flap open and closed in the turbulence created by my movement.

\- FIVE -

I'm Not Paranoid. I'm just Well Informed.

I prefer the stairs over elevators.

It's not like elevators have ever done anything wrong to me. I've never gotten stuck in one. Never had one fall while I was in it. Well, except that one time in the Tower of Galata—not the new, but the old one—when, so I'm told, the peasants working the pulleys decided to stop holding the ropes after their repeated requests for more food and water in their rations was denied.

I was young, only about a hundred, so I don't remember the details. No one was seriously hurt, if you don't count the peasants after they were caught, but whenever I get that sensation in my stomach like being on a roller coaster, my heart starts racing.

I just feel more comfortable walking on something solid, rather than being raised and lowered in a box that dangles hundreds of feet above a concrete slab.

People think elevators are a modern invention. They aren't. Variations have been around for over two thousand years. The elevator may be the safest mode of travel in the world now, but until Elisha Otis created his fail-safe braking system in 1852, I never used them after that incident in the tower.

Instead, I'd climb stairs. Scale scaffolding. Leap from rooftop to rooftop.

It just seemed safer to me. Besides, taking the stairs is great exercise for your legs, your heart, your lungs and your mind.

I think about taking care of myself more when I'm at a hospital. You have to understand, until recently, hospitals were places you actively tried to avoid. If you had any money at all, the doctor came to you. The home was the medical center of the past. Hospitals were gateways to death. They were incubators of infection and disease visited only by the destitute and the desperate. Even doctors wouldn't go near them in the early days. The fact that patients had to pay a deposit on admission to cover their burial didn't engender much confidence.

Even with all the advances, you look around a hospital today and realize, the longer you can stay away from a place like this, the better.

It's not like I haven't faced death in my fifteen hundred years on this planet. I've come close to it more than a few times. And in both brutal and quiet ways, I've seen a great deal of it. From the simple passing of time to the savagery of war.

When I was assumed to be a boy of only ten or eleven—in those dark years before the creative explosion of the Renaissance—I was forced along with many others of my age to be a soldier. Mere children ordered into the army to protect England from its foes.

It was vicious. It was unforgiving.

Because of my centuries of training and experience, I fared better than most.

When you read about war or see it on a movie screen or immerse yourself in a video game, it might seem exciting, dramatic, heart-pumping.

But war...

Real live war is terrifying. It's fear, mixed with unbelievable stretches of boredom, hunger and deprivation, followed by terror, shock and pain, and many times death.

It's the waiting that is the hardest part. If war were always intense, you would at least not have to worry about it. You can prepare for war. You can't prepare for boredom. It's having to be on guard, always looking out for danger. It's not like a video game where you choose when and where to play.

War for me has always been about the smell more than anything else. You could always turn away or close your eyes. But you couldn't stop breathing.

The choke of smoke. The sulfuric bitterness of gunpowder. The fetid reek of garbage. The stench of human waste. Of blood. Of decay.

Within the sterile walls of modern healthcare facilities, places like Fairview Medical Center, death smelled pleasant in comparison. But still, I tried to avoid them.

I stepped out of the quiet stairwell and into the busy lobby.

I don't consider myself completely paranoid or anything, but I instinctively scan a room when I enter it.

I mark the exits, calculate the fastest way to each. I instantly target obstacles. Humans or objects that might slow my escape. Judge the best course to neutralize each. And while all this is taking place in my brain, I try to get a feel for the attitude of the room. The vibe the people are giving off.

Friendly.

Agitated.

Festive.

A powder keg about to explode.

Finally, I look for anyone out of place, people trying not to be noticed, anyone dangerous looking or strange.

Sprinkled around this room were a lot of odd people.

It was a hospital waiting area after all.

In the center of all the strangeness was Daniel, sitting in a blocky sofa that appeared to be made out of giant Legos covered with industrial strength fabric that could withstand being dragged behind a truck for a hundred miles. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for your butt after sitting on the thing until they finally called you. This was furniture specifically designed to make waiting excruciatingly painful. The message was clear: we don't want you here. Even less than you want to be here.

Daniel wore a mask of anxiety and unease as he glanced around at the injured and/or disease-laden people surrounding him.

Every time someone coughed, Daniel stopped breathing, the color of his face moving far past red, toward purple, until he couldn't go another second without oxygen.

He'd finally suck in a morsel of air...but only through his nose, which he pressed into the sleeve of his shirt.

When he wasn't fighting off some feared pandemic, he was staring at the television hung uncomfortably high on the wall, delivering news, entertainment and neck strain. No matter what time of day I've ever walked into a hospital waiting room, it always seems the televisions are tuned to the kind of shows where people are brought on to supposedly work out their differences, but end up punching each other instead.

From the cuts and bruises and scowling faces, a couple of the people waiting looked like they may have just come from a taping of one of those shows.

Suddenly, the doors from the outside blew open, startling everyone. Paramedics rushed a man through the entrance. He didn't look all that hurt, but they were working on him as if every organ in his body was failing. It was hard to watch.

The man looked in pain. He was maybe 60 or so.

As paramedics hurried the man past me, with doctors and nurses pumping his heart, giving him oxygen, sticking tubes everywhere, the man, to the surprise of everyone, lifted his head off the gurney.

"You. Are. Doomed," he said, staring straight into my eyes. After the words left his mouth, he seemed relieved to have said them. He let his head fall back. He was going to accept his fate.

And then he was gone, disappearing into the treatment area.

The doors whooshed closed and there was an eerie silence.

Once again, my guard was down, I let myself get distracted by the mechanics of the doors to avoid having to think about what just happened, and I didn't notice Braeden approaching from my four o'clock until it was too late.

I reflexively made a quick defensive move, twisting my body, tensing my forearm, and hardening my hand into a formidable weapon.

Braeden was not at all as big as Craig Coulter, but he carried himself like someone who walked down dark alleys without fear. My first wushu Master said over and over and over again that victory is never about size. He was 4 foot 10. I once saw him take down a three hundred pound sumo wrestler with a single, elegant, one-handed move. Another time, I watched him fight off sixteen heavily armored swordsmen with nothing but his fists and a handful of sand.

When it comes to fighting, size doesn't matter as much as leverage and ingenuity.

Despite Braeden's slender build, I sensed...something. Power. Strength. Danger.

I was already setting my feet, getting ready. It's surprising how often my body tenses up in anticipation of an attack. I've always thought of myself as a calm, easygoing individual, but I don't notice anyone else ratcheting up their personal defenses as often as I do.

Great Barrington was the kind of place I usually felt at ease. But I'd been hit too many times in the last twenty-four hours, and I hadn't heard from my dad in two months.

I get on edge when I'm alone.

Braeden noticed my stance. "I'm a friend," he said.

I studied him, my body still prepared for battle.

He was scanning the room in the same way I had earlier.

I realized he wasn't concerned with me, so much as he was worried about something or someone else.

"Every time I look up, you seem to be there, staring at me. It's a little creepy."

"I don't mean to be."

"Well, you are. And my friends just say, 'Hey' or 'What's up?' They don't formally announce, 'Sum amicus.'" I watched his face for the slightest hint of recognition or confusion.

There was neither.

He took a step back, giving me space.

"Hey, what's up? You're not dead!" Daniel was running over. He had apparently just seen me.

Without thinking, Braeden knocked Daniel to the floor with a shot to the solar plexus. Daniel lay on the ground, gasping for air like a goldfish that had made an ill-advised escape from his glass bowl.

I glared at Braeden as I rushed over to Daniel.

"Sorry," Braeden said to me. "Reflex."

"Tell him."

His hand outstretched in friendship, Braeden gazed down at Daniel. "I am sorry."

Daniel put up one finger, indicating he needed a moment. "I'll just—" is all he managed in a pained whisper.

While Daniel caught his breath, Braeden pulled me into the far corner of the lobby.

It was quieter. Less crowded. More defensible. With an easy escape. Exactly the spot I would have picked.

"φιλαλέξανδρος," he said, which came out Philalexandros. Friend of Alexander. "Vidi patrem tuum."

It wasn't that I was surprised to hear Braeden speaking Ancient Greek and then quickly switching to Latin. I had already assumed he was like me, maybe a few hundred years older.

It was what he said.

"You spoke to my father?"

Braeden nodded. "He asked me to look out for you."

My face flushed red.

"What are you, my babysitter?"

"Call it what you like. He sent me."

"When?"

"Three weeks ago."

Now, my twinge of embarrassment turned to jealousy. Like I said, I hadn't heard from my father in over two months. Not that long ago, not hearing from him wouldn't seem strange. There were times I wouldn't see my dad for decades or hear from him for years, but now, with instant worldwide communication, it was more than odd. It meant something was wrong.

"Where?"

"I can't tell you that right now."

I pushed him aside. "Then leave me alone. I don't know you." I started to walk away.

"He said, 'Remane filiolum.'"

I stopped. Stay here, my little son. Now, I was really angry. I wanted to lash out, but I quickly got control of myself. "Only he gets to call me that."

"It's what he said to say. His message was very clear. Don't leave Great Barrington. Don't move. No matter what. He asked me to look after you."

"So, you are my babysitter. What were you doing running on the field?"

"The other player...I thought he was coming for you, I thought he was trying to hurt you."

"That's exactly what he was trying to do. It's lacrosse. He was trying to kill me."

I said these words as a figure of speech. But from the look on Braeden's face, I could tell he was serious.

"You really thought he was trying to kill me."

"Things are very precarious."

"What things, Braeden? Could you be a little more specific?"

He was silent.

After a moment, I turned and started for the exit.

He said, "You may be in a great deal of danger—"

"And I may not," I interrupted. I glanced around. No real threats. "C'mon, Daniel." I headed toward the glass doors that lead out of the emergency room and into freedom.

Daniel was being tended to by a pretty nurse, but he got to his feet and followed me.

"Where are you going?" Braeden asked, not moving.

"It's Homecoming. I'm going to watch a football game and then go to the dance with a pretty girl."

Braeden looked confused. He was at least a few hundred years older than me. I'd bet a million dollars that except for his brief time at Monument, he had never gone to high school. Let alone a Homecoming Dance.

I waved my hand in front of the sliding glass doors, whispered, "Open Sesame," and instantly, they opened. A hundred years ago, that would have been called magic.

Now, it's just a motion detector.

\- SIX -

Revenge Is A Dish Best Served With A Little Chicken

Before we could see the field, I could hear the fans on both sides cheering loudly.

Walking through the narrow gap carved into the hill that hid the stadium, Daniel and I arrived at the gate. The stands were full now, not mostly empty like they were for my game. I wasn't jealous. Not really. It's just more fun playing in front of a packed stadium. At my last school, in upstate New York at the very edge of Canada, lacrosse was the major fall sport and the games were almost always sold out. I loved hearing the rumbling that builds as you race down the sideline, the roar that reaches a sustained fever pitch until you miss the shot and it dies or you score and it erupts.

Okay, maybe it annoyed me a little that Craig Coulter got to play in front of two thousand people every Saturday. Two thousand make a lot more noise than two hundred.

Even though the game was well into the fourth quarter, we had to pay our three dollars to get in.

As we approached the field, I could see Craig talking to Phoebe. You could tell he was upset. His face was red and the veins in his neck were bulging more than they normally did

I started to say something to Daniel, but he beat me to it.

"He's tweaked because she tried talking to you when you were unconscious. Jealous much?"

I let out an exasperated sigh. "What's his problem?"

Daniel looked at me. "Really?"

I didn't answer.

"You stare at the back of her head every day in class for the entire period. I have no idea how you pass, never mind get straight A's."

That was one of my weaknesses. Not Phoebe, but grades. I had trouble acting stupid. For someone like me, someone trying to stay under the radar, it was a lot smarter to play dumb.

"I get it," he said. "She's cute. She's smart. She's pretty. She's hot. She's nice. She's really hot. And I think you—" He was thinking about continuing, but he let what he had already said hang in the air.

I pretended to be interested in the game.

Our defense had stopped Who'sMoronic on their own forty yard line, forcing them to punt. Craig would have to go out onto the field in a moment. One of the coaches was calling to him—yelling at him, actually—to get his butt over to the sideline.

Craig had more to say. Phoebe looked well past wanting to discuss the subject. Craig couldn't ignore his coaches any longer, the punt return team was running off the field and the offense—his offense—was huddling up waiting for their leader.

His eyes flashed with rage.

Showing a bit of control, he didn't unleash his anger on Phoebe. Instead, as he stomped toward the field, pulling on his helmet, he pushed one of the other cheerleaders doing a handstand, knocking her to the ground.

"He really is an absolute, total tool," Daniel said as we reached the crowded stands.

I nodded.

It was when I saw the cheerleader laying on the grass, struggling to her feet that I decided I would expose Craig Coulter for who he really was. I laughed to myself as it hit me that I had already seeded the way to do it. All I needed was a little help from the public address system.

But as soon as I climbed into the stands, heading toward the press box, people started grabbing me, shaking me, screaming at me in long, guttural battle cries. I had a flashback to the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 when I was "enlisted"—more like kidnapped—into service as a long bowman for Henry V. There was a lot of that kind of shouting back then. Seeing such brutal warfare...it's something I don't like to think about.

When one guy in the crowd slapped me on the shoulder, I yelped, wincing in pain. Another fan yelled, "He hurt his arm, idiot!" before turning to me and saying just as loudly, "That was amazing!"

I glanced stupidly at Daniel who hit his forehead with the palm of his hand. "Dude, I'm an idiot." He put up his hand to high five me. "That was the most unbelievable shot I've ever seen."

"What are you talking about?" I said, leaving his hand hanging without returning the high five.

Daniel looked at me, then at the fans surrounding me, cheering me, then back at me.

"I'm talking about your shot that tied the game. The crowd went absolutely berserk." His face lit up like he had swallowed the sun.

My mind was clear. Any residual affects of being knocked unconscious had been wiped away by my hyperactive immune system.

"My shot?"

"Yes. The one you took after getting bulldozed. Somehow, I don't know how, it went in the far upper corner before time ran out."

I tried to process this. I had begrudgingly accepted the fact that we had blown the lead and the match, which wasn't easy. I hate to lose. I don't much like winning in a rout either, but losing ignites a fire in my belly that isn't easily put out. Maybe it's part of the makeup of who I am, of what makes me more of a throwback to an earlier time. A time when survival was more uncertain. I am in many ways not as advanced as people born today. When I was a child, winning meant life. Defeat more often than not was death.

You didn't get ribbons just for participating. Usually you just got killed.

I replayed the last few seconds of the lacrosse game in my mind. Anything is possible, of course, but it seemed improbable that I could've gotten enough speed on the ball after being hit so hard.

"I— I—"

Daniel stepped into the uncomfortable silence. "Who'sMoronic was so completely demoralized, we beat them in overtime almost immediately. Richie Z. banked in a shot off the goalie less than three minutes in. Before the ambulance had even left."

"We won?" I said without much emotion. The victory felt a little empty. I guess because I couldn't remember it, but now, the crowd's reaction to me made sense. "I'm sorry I missed it."

Daniel smiled at me. "Don't worry. About a million people got it on video. I'm sure it's already on the web."

I cringed.

So much for me laying low. That's just the kind of video that goes viral. A hundred thousand hits later and my father would be in my face saying, "This is exactly the kind of thing I told you to avoid."

I just want to live, play, make mistakes.

"You are going to get sooooo much attention from this," Daniel said. "I bet you get scouted."

"You understand people went to war and died for the right to the freedom and privacy that people nowadays give up for nothing more than free access to a website?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Never mind."

It was a lost cause trying to explain to Daniel that someday in the future, not that far in the future for him, he would be going out into the world and getting a job, someday getting married and maybe running for public office, and out there preserved forever will be the time he made milk come out his nose. It's up on the web right now. You can see it for yourself.

For obvious reasons I've tried to limit my public exposure as much as possible. But long ago I accepted that if I was going to do anything—and be remotely good at any of it—there was going to be some record, an oral history by a Mohawk chief, a painting in oil, a photographic plate, a gramophone recording, something.

Besides that Chess championship photo of me in every major paper in the Western world in 1948, there are probably dozens of films of me playing sports in the 50s, 60s and 70s, hundreds of videos in 80s and beyond. But it wasn't until the last few years that everything exploded.

High definition cameras in phones can upload video to the Internet within seconds. In two years, I'd move and start high school all over again, somewhere far away, Montana, Canada, Alaska. Even then, it wouldn't be long before the images of me would catch up to the reality of me.

Someone, somewhere was going to notice the striking resemblance between me and that kid who once made a one-handed touchdown catch in Cedar Rapids to win the Iowa state championship in 1976.

§

The crowd was restless. It was late in the fourth quarter and we were up by 14 points. The Housatonic fans were getting ready to leave. The students on our side were thinking about the Homecoming Dance later tonight, what they would wear, who they would ask to dance.

It didn't help matters that Craig had run two conservative running plays up the middle. It was third down and nine on our own 25 yard line. There was less than three minutes on the clock.

Who'sMoronic's defense was pretty good, second in the conference. They had a fair chance of stopping us and getting the ball back with decent field position. At least, make a game of it. Now, a professional quarterback could do a lot with two plus minutes, but Who'sMoronic's quarterback was no Peyton Manning or Tom Brady.

The game was over and everyone knew it.

Still, Housatonic called time out. It ain't over till it's over. You had to give them credit.

I was making my final assault toward the press box, but was being slowed down by people high-fiving me as I scaled the steps of the bleachers.

Maybe it was the commotion around me that drew his attention, but the announcer spotted me, frantically waving his arms and motioning for me to come over, even though that's exactly where I was headed.

He was losing the crowd. I was running out of time.

Our needs converged.

The announcer was a high school student, part of the A/V contingent at school. The press box was enclosed on three sides with an angled roof. The front, facing the field, was open to the air and the stands.

"And here is Alexander Grant," he said in his best, deepest sports announcer's voice, "whose last-second, jaw-dropping shot with no time on the clock snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, sending today's varsity lacrosse game into overtime, where Richie Zedman put it away with a goal at two minutes and fifty seconds of OT."

The kid motioned to one of the other students in the booth who pushed a button on his computer. Suddenly, a replay of the kid announcing the lacrosse game blared out of the P.A. speakers.

"Housatonic is making another run for it, holding on to the ball, hoping to protect their lead out until time expires. They're passing it around the edges of the box. Wait! Lasker picks off a pass, scooping it out of the air. Monument gets the ball back! The Wolves are hungry. Thirty seconds to go. They're down by one. Grant is wide open up ahead, but Lasker tosses to Zedman, who is making straight for the goal. Housatonic comes to defend. Two defensemen close on Zedman. Fifteen seconds to go. He's going to get sandwiched. No way he can—Oh! He passes back to Grant who's all alone but still a long shot away. Ten seconds left. One defender is making a desperate sprint as Grant charges up the far sideline. It's a race to the finish. Can Grant get close enough to the goal in time?" You could hear the crowd in the background counting down, six, five, four. Even I was getting anxious and excited as I listened. "Grant cocks back his stick, he's going to shoot, he's...oh no! A crushing hit. A stick to the chin. Grant is knocked off his feet. But—he's gotten off a shot. It's in. It's in! It's in! It's in! I don't know how he did it, but it's in!"

The crowd roared. Both the one on the recording and the one listening to it live.

As the replay stopped, I could see Craig look up at me from the field. His eyes burning into me.

I was stealing his moment.

Just you wait, I thought.

The announcer kid suddenly turned Pulitzer prize-winning reporter. "You were knocked unconscious and had to be taken to the hospital. But you seem...like you're okay."

Before I could answer that I was fine, the kid snatched the microphone away from my mouth. "Anything to say to our boys in blue?"

Just as quickly, he shoved the mic back in my face.

"Uh," I stumbled for a second, my brain still wanting to answer his previous question. But I remembered why I was standing there. "It's Homecoming, let's make it a clean sweep with two wins today." Another cheer from our side, boos from Who'sMoronic. "And to everyone out there, let's all just be thankful for pickles."

Some of the people in the stands laughed, some of them clapped, some of them just had strange looks on their faces. But I had said the magic word. The one I had offhandedly imbedded in Craig's mind when my face was in the dirt.

The time out was over.

Craig Coulter was about to go up under center, when he began—without warning—to cluck like a chicken.

Buck Buck-ah.

He was jooking his head around, like a rooster while strutting back and forth behind the line of scrimmage. His teammates were trying to figure out what formation they were supposed to be in.

Then suddenly, Craig began to flap his arms.

Wildly.

A pass? Is that what he's calling?

Now, his coaches and his teammates were yelling to him.

Craig ignored them and, instead, pecked at his running back, who tried to get away.

Buck Buck-ah.

Craig Coulter had become a full on Chicken Man. Had he been wearing feathers on his head and a chicken suit, I don't see how it could have gone any better, been more satisfying. The Housatonic fans started laughing and cheering him on with chicken calls of their own.

And to be honest, a lot of our fans did the same.

It was one of the most embarrassing displays I've ever witnessed. And I've witnessed some pretty embarrassing moments.

Part of me wasn't all that proud of what I had done. It wasn't the most enlightened act. But Craig was a jerk. If I was the only one Craig had bullied, I would've let it go. But it was the way he treated Daniel. The way he knocked over that cheerleader on the sideline. How he took Phoebe for granted, and how he looked down on everyone else with his smug, superior attitude and open disdain.

He had it coming.

Scattered people in the stands started doing the "Chicken Dance." Craig would be seeing more of that later tonight as he was crowned Homecoming King and in the halls of school on Monday and far beyond. There were people taking video, which would go viral on the web and never disappear.

Ever.

Payback is unforgiving.

The coaches had to lead Craig off the field. He kept getting away from them in that infuriating way that chickens do. Slow and meandering until you reach out and grab for them, and they speed up just long enough for you to miss. Once out of range, they go back to their unhurried zigzagging.

Craig was still clucking. Buck Buck-ah. Forcing the team to call a time out to avoid getting penalized for a delay of game. At this point, pretty much everybody was laughing, and those that weren't were, frankly, mortified.

Here was our star football player roostering up in front of a couple of thousand people.

The ref's whistle seemed to scare Craig and he finally got off the field.

They sent in the junior varsity quarterback to fill-in. He was nervous, you could tell. Partly from coming into a big game cold and partly because watching your starting QB suddenly go cuckoo was unnerving. He made a good play to get the first down. Next play he handed off for a short gain. Then he got sacked for a loss. But on third and long, he was able to pass for a first down, which pretty much ended the game. He took a few snaps to run out the clock. Our fans counted down the last ten seconds and after time expired, everybody rushed onto the field, including the Homecoming Queen in her long, silk dress, her high heels sinking into the grass turf until a couple of linemen lifted her by her under arms. She looked like she was floating across the field.

Craig was clucking around on the sidelines. I didn't want to be too cruel. I figured I would put Craig out of his misery, let him regain whatever dignity he had left. I started back toward the announcer who was just wrapping up. He was smiling at me, but then, suddenly, his smile disappeared. At the same instant, I heard a deep creaking, like the sound you hear on the docks at night as the ropes moan and the ships grind against the piers.

Only...

It was more metallic than that.

The sun seemed to disappear, the world becoming darker, as if there had unexpectedly been a solar eclipse.

"Alexander, look out!"

I looked up, realizing seconds before it was too late that the sun's disappearance was caused by a bank of stadium lights that had somehow become detached from its tower.

A bus-sized rectangle plummeted directly toward me.

I had just enough time to dive out of the way before three tons of steel and glass crashed edge first into the bleachers, barely six feet from me.

I covered my face, protecting my eyes and exposed skin from the glass shrapnel that hit me a second later.

I stood there, along with the rest of the crowd, frozen in awe, staring at the monolithic structure balanced on its side.

Had that just really happened?

I didn't have time to ponder the question because the monolith moaned, the bleachers becoming unstable underneath my feet. It was pitching ever-so-slowly in the direction of the press box.

"Get out!" I yelled. No movement. "Now!"

People flew out of the press box in every direction as if it had exploded.

With a deep, drawn out wail, the light structure tipped over and smashed into the press box, flattening it.

Luckily, everyone had escaped the path of destruction.

All except for the student announcer who sat, dumbstruck, still gripping the mic, his headphones at an odd angle.

I was able to reach for him and pull him over the lip of the half wall seconds before debris from the roof fell right where he had been.

We didn't have time to celebrate.

The impact of the lights and the weight of the twisted steel were causing the bleachers to groan under their massive burden. There was a stampede as hundreds of people rushed to get off the stands, pouring onto the field like a wave crashing the beach.

The kid announcer was clinging to the floor of the bleachers.

"We've gotta get off this thing!" I said.

He shook his head. He wasn't moving from that spot.

"It's going to collapse!"

Then I realized, he couldn't move. He was too scared. In shock.

I tried to get him to his feet. But when someone doesn't want to be picked up, it's like trying to lift a hundred pounds of Jello.

The entire stands were swaying. I had no other choice.

I grabbed the kid's feet and pulled.

I dragged him down the center stairs toward the field, his head smacking hard on each landing until finally, he'd had enough and used his hands to help. We reverse wheel barreled toward the bottom of the stands, then jumped to the grass only seconds before the entire main section of the stands imploded.

"Oooowwww," he screamed, holding his head. "That hurt!"

There was a final, earth shaking crash as the stadium was reduced to dust.

"Not as much as that would have," I said, looking at the devastation.

Gazing at the rubble, he said, "You saved my life." He turned to others in the crowd. "He saved my life!"

From out of the stunned onlookers milling about the field, Braeden appeared, his jaw set and his look determined. He gripped me tightly by the arm. "This way, now!"

Braeden briskly, but calmly pulled me through the panicked, confused crowd in the direction of the woods as the kid yelled again, "He saved my life!"

This time, I didn't fight Braeden.

\- SEVEN -

A Journey Of A Thousand Miles Begins With A Single Step-Brother

At the far end of the field, opposite the entry gates, there was the start of a path that led to a ridge. To the right of the ridge, part of the hill had been cleared of trees and carved out to make way for a baseball diamond, leaving a crescent-shaped scar in the rise that sloped sharply down toward the home run fence at the edge of the outfield.

The path rose quickly, then ran along the ridge overlooking the ball field. It was used by the cross-country team as part of their 5K course. It wasn't an easy ascent. It was steep and narrow and left no room for error. One misstep and you'd tumble down the embankment. But if you alternated between the far right and the far left of the path, you could find notches in the dirt that had been etched by a decade of pounding feet.

"What's going on?"

"No time," Braeden said, charging up the near-vertical trail.

I like to think of myself as in shape, but I was breathing heavily as I got to the top of the ridge. If Braeden was fatigued, he didn't show it. About halfway around the crescent, the path took a hard left into the woods and descended along a rocky path that appeared to be a dry creek bed. As we dipped deeper into the woods...

Quiet.

The sounds of the cars and buses, the commotion, the shifting debris of the stands, all of it was silenced.

After another moment, I could hear water coming from somewhere nearby. A few steps further and the meandering Housatonic River appeared through breaks in the trees. But the wide, slow waterway was not the source of the sound.

We came to an outcropping of rocks that concealed a short waterfall that noisily dumped into the Housatonic. Braeden quickly ducked into the rock formation. Only then did he settle down. I wouldn't call him relaxed. Just slightly less ready at the slightest provocation to rip someone's head off.

Surrounded by the gray boulders, the air seem colder and I involuntarily shivered. It was only when I looked at the leaves and their warm, fall colors that the dreariness ebbed.

"Start talking," I said, my voice having more edge than I intended.

Either Braeden didn't notice or he was ignoring me. Instead, he rapidly scanned the area. "We have a good vantage point of all directions. This will do for the moment." Satisfied, he turned his gaze back to me with those eyes that had been watching me for the past two days. "Do you think it was a coincidence that a light tower happened to fall out of the sky and land two meters from you?"

"I—I don't know," I said. It hadn't hit me until that moment what had really happened. Of how close I had come to being crushed.

"I do," he said. "That was deliberate."

I shuddered. And then, perhaps in reaction to my fear, I got angry. "Since you seem to have all the answers, why don't you start telling me what's going on."

"Your father is in danger."

"My father is always in danger!" I said in a loud whisper.

For as long as I can remember, my father had one job. To disrupt the plans of those of us who abused their abilities and power. To keep them from doing too much harm. To protect the world from evil.

As a young boy, I would lie in bed and picture my father battling demons and monsters and giants, images from stories that had been taught to me as a child, mostly in secret because talk of them had been outlawed.

It was centuries before I understood that these superhumans, the Roman and Greek Gods and the fantastical creatures of mythology, were stories that had been told for thousands of years in an attempt to answer questions about life that did not have easy answers.

It seems silly now that anyone ever believed the god Apollo dragged the sun across the sky each day in a fiery chariot pulled by flying horses. But they did.

When I came to realize who my father was really fighting—our own kind—it was, for some reason, more terrifying than any monster could ever be.

"I know all about my father and what he does."

"I'm sure he's told you a great deal," Braeden said without much emotion. "But he hasn't told you everything."

I could feel my face flush red. I wanted to strike out at Braeden, but I didn't. Not because I was afraid of him, although I probably should've been, but because he had found my weakness, and if I reacted, it would've only made my vulnerability more clear to him.

The cunning warrior waits for his foe to act rashly.

"Why don't you enlighten me. What do you know that I don't?"

Braeden gazed at me. His eyes not as hard. "I am your brother."

I'm not sure what my face looked like, but my body felt like someone had put dry ice down my pants.

I have known scores of siblings over the years, whether through birth or marriage. I have watched them grow up, become old, and wither away. None of them were like me.

My father has had many, many wives. But a few hundred years ago, he stopped getting married, stopped having anymore children.

He once told me his truest loves had lasted far longer then their lives. It was simply impossible for him to add more weight to the burden of loss he carried in him.

I may not know everything, but of one thing I was certain: my father had no other children like me. There had been one, many years before I was born, but he did not make it past 600 years old. The boy died in an attack that left my father severely wounded and the boy's mother dead.

I was the only one.

"My father doesn't have any other Eternal children," I said to Braeden.

"Your father is not my biological father."

My mother wasn't an Eternal. She did not have the genetic defect that slows my body's clock to a crawl, the defect that would have allowed her to see me grow up. If she had given birth to another child, I would've known about it. I was with her her entire life.

Braeden could see my expression.

"My mother is like us," he said. "She and our father were married when I was very small, a little over fifty years old."

"You were a baby." I looked at him. He was definitely not as young as he was pretending to be. "How old are you?" I asked.

"Two thousand one hundred and eighty-six."

Just then, we heard voices from the top of the ridge.

"Alexander! Alexander!"

It was Daniel.

"Alexander!"

Phoebe as well.

"How well do you know them?" Braeden asked.

"Better than I know you."

They were getting closer.

"Alexander!"

"Alexander!"

Braeden let out a heavy sigh. "I'll take the boy. You grab the girl. We need them to shut their mouths right now." I could tell from his look this wasn't him being irritated by the interruption, there was danger in it. He nodded to me, his raised brow silently asking, Do you understand?

I nodded back.

It happened in a blink of an eye.

Braeden appeared out of nowhere, grabbed Daniel by the shoulder and put a hand over his mouth, muffling a scream. You should have seen Daniel's expression. It was priceless. I wished I had a camera.

I couldn't see Phoebe's face, but I assumed she was just as surprised when I covered her mouth and dragged her behind the rocks.

They were both breathing heavily. They were scared, confused, embarrassed and extremely—

"What the—" Daniel hurled a string of obscenities our way the second Braeden pulled his hand away.

Braeden clapped his hand over Daniel's mouth once again, this time pushing my friend's head into one of the rocks.

"Oww! That hurt!"

Braeden pointed his index finger right between Daniel's eyes. "I need you to keep quiet."

Braeden pressed his hand harder into Daniel's face as he looked over at Phoebe, studying her. Braeden had given Daniel only a cursory glance, having already sized him up at the hospital. I didn't particularly like the way Braeden was eyeing Phoebe. He was judging whether Phoebe was a threat or not, but, still, something about it bothered me. There was more to his gaze.

He finally let go of Daniel and nodded for me to do the same with Phoebe.

"You shouldn't have come here!" said Braeden. A fire raged inside him.

Phoebe glared at me. "We were looking for our friend," the last word dripping with contempt after what I had done.

"Well, you've found him," said Braeden. "And a whole lot of trouble as well."

Instantly, Phoebe's demeanor changed. "That wasn't an accident, was it?"

"She's smarter than you are," Braeden said to me. He turned to Daniel and Phoebe. "Stay here. If you see anything, signal us." He handed them each a stone. "Do not call out." Then he dragged me from the protection of the rocks.

"What exactly are we looking for?" asked Daniel.

"You'll know it the moment you see it," said Braeden, ominously.

I could tell Daniel had a lot more questions, but he smartly kept quiet. I don't think he really wanted to know anymore than he already did.

Braeden led me to a second outcropping, a little higher up. From our vantage point we could watch the ridge and the river and still keep an eye on Phoebe and Daniel.

"What are we waiting for?" I asked.

He didn't answer me for a moment. "I was hoping to lose them. But I fear that your friends have given us away."

"Who are they?"

"An old threat returning," he said. I had the sense he wasn't trying to be cryptic. I don't think he knew much more than that. "You are coming of age. And with that, you are becoming a concern for those we fight against. Father believes you are a target."

I knew this day would come. My father and I had often talked about preparing for it. It was why I spent decades as a young boy in China, and then more recently, in Korea and Japan, studying various martial arts. Why I attended military academies—Sandhurst in England, École Royale Militaire in Paris, Kriegs Akademie in Berlin, Whampoa in Guangdong. Why I learned stick fighting in Africa and trained in hand-to-hand combat in the Philippines.

So I would be ready to fight.

"I would suggest we leave. But I assume you don't want to abandon them," said Braeden, nodding in the direction of Phoebe and Daniel.

I watched as Daniel nervously chewed on his nails. It looked like he might eat down to his knuckles if we stayed here too long.

"No."

Braeden glanced up at the cliff behind us. "That complicates matters," he said. "Then we wait."

We stood, both of us, listening to the sounds of the forest, listening to the water and the wind, listening for any disturbances.

After a moment, I broke the silence. "What happened?"

"What do you mean?"

"What happened between your mother and my father?"

Braeden's head whipped around as a twig snapped in the distance. He breathed again only after it was clear it was an animal in the underbrush.

"They were together for almost eight hundred years," he said, glancing at the ground, a bittersweet expression on his face. "He left to marry your mother. To become your father."

I find it ironic that today's society makes a huge issue of the problems that come from broken homes. Because I can tell you that the modern family has nothing on the intrigue, betrayal and treachery of the ancient family. What people today consider a "traditional" family didn't even exist four hundred years ago.

Part of me wondered if Braeden's claims were true. Perhaps it would be more honest to say: I wanted it all to be a lie.

I had the sense, though, that he was telling the truth.

I pictured him as a little boy. The pain of losing the only father he had ever known. Neither he nor his mother would've been very happy about being left behind. About my father's new wife. Or his new son. No wonder he glared at me the way he did.

"I'm sorry," I said, thinking how much I missed my father.

Braeden nodded. "He has made it up to me over the years."

I didn't respond. I couldn't. I felt like I had been punched again. Not only had I been unaware of Braeden's existence, but my father—our father—had kept an important and ongoing part of his life a secret from me. A boy he treated like a son.

Why? Why would he do that?

All these years, I would've appreciated having a sibling that aged as I did, that didn't grow old before my eyes.

A brother. There was nothing I wouldn't have given for that.

Maybe Braeden was right. Maybe I didn't know very much at all.

I tried to catch my breath.

That's when I heard the snap of a twig, heard it over the sound of the water. Then I heard another crack. And another. Not animals this time.

We caught a glimpse of two hulking men, making their way from the direction of the fields.

"I don't know if I'm ready. It's been decades since I've been in battle."

"Well...ready or not...here they come."

There were six men, actually. The two coming down the ridge. Two coming across the river. And two that were approaching out of the forest to our left.

Braeden's eyes tracked the three sets of attackers. "You should encourage your friends to leave. They won't survive."

I knew he was right.

Staying low, I quickly made my way to Phoebe and Daniel. "You need to start moving up that hill," I said.

Daniel looked at me. "Are you crazy? That's not a hill!"

Made almost entirely of white quartz, the cliff behind us rose three hundred feet into the air and glimmered in the sunlight. The scree—the rocks at the base—looked like salt and pepper, angling away from the face at forty degrees. Difficult but not impossible. However, the cliff itself was nearly vertical with some outcroppings and crags along the way.

"There's a trail at the peak that leads back down toward the school." I tried to remember back to when Deganawa and I came here to play against the Mahicans. We had to escape into the hills after Deganawa tried to kiss the daughter of the local Chief. "If you stay to the right, you'll find a crevasse and a series of footholds and ledges that leads to the top." I pointed toward the area, hoping it hadn't changed in the nearly four hundred years since Deganawa almost got me killed.

"And why would I want to do that?" Daniel asked.

I motioned in the direction of the men headed our way.

Daniel saw them and was about to scream out when Braeden put his hand over Daniel's mouth, squelching the sound and banging his head into the rock again.

"Mmmmmmmmouuuuwwww."

"Next time, I'm going to cover your mouth and your nose and hold it until you pass out. Now, those men want to take Alexander and they will kill us without hesitation to get him," Braeden said. "Do you understand?" He only let go after Daniel nodded.

Phoebe had been quiet the entire time. "Take Alexander? What are you talking about?"

"We don't have time to explain." Braeden turned to me. "They're betting we can't make it up that cliff."

Daniel stared up at the wall of rock behind us. "And they would be correct."

"I agree. It's unlikely you two will make it. But the alternative is certain death."

Phoebe glared at Braeden. "Listen, I love the upbeat we're-all-gonna-die attitude. The whole sullen, brooding thing sort of works for you. But you don't know me. Don't tell me what I can and can't do. I bet I get to the top before you do."

"Then perhaps you'll survive the day."

"That's the cheery outlook I was looking for."

"Hey, I've seen enough movies to know, we go out in the open and they'll pick us off one by one," said Daniel, his voice cracking. "We'll be like ducks in a shooting gallery. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow."

"They won't use guns," said Braeden.

"Why not?"

"Because it would be dishonorable," I said.

"Dishonorable?" Daniel asked as if he had never heard the word before.

"They will only kill us with their hands," said Braeden.

"Oh, well, if it's only with their hands," Daniel said. "Much more honorable." He started mumbling to himself. "Now, I feel so much better."

"Unless you're prepared to fight to the death, kill or be killed, we need to leave immediately."

Daniel's eyes widened.

Phoebe was about to say something when four men dropped out of the trees, catching us off guard.

We had been focused on the six men heading toward us over land. We were thinking two dimensionally. A tactical error.

We were surrounded.

"Run!" I screamed. This seemed to startle Phoebe, who had up to that moment been extremely calm. I thought she was going to make her escape. Instead, she aimed a straight leg kick high toward my head. Her foot went over my shoulder and collided with the face of one of the attackers. The kick hadn't done enough damage to put the man down, but it surprised him. Before he had a chance to lift his hand to his stinging cheek, I whirled around and jabbed him in the throat. He gasped, trying to get oxygen into his lungs, and after failing to get enough, fell to his knees.

Another attacker from the trees tried to grab Phoebe. I pulled him off her and spun him away. I roundhouse kicked him across the face, knocking him into Braeden. He turned the man on his head, pile driving him into the ground.

In that instant, the blade of a sword, of a metal and design I had never seen before, a sword so polished I could see the leaves on the trees above in its reflection, came swinging through the air and sank deep into Braeden's side.

Immediately, he screamed in pain.

Everyone froze for a moment.

All I could focus on was the blood.

Braeden grabbed the back of the blade, along the dull edge, gripping it with his fingers against the bottom of his palm. He pulled the blade from his flesh, letting out another gut-wrenching scream.

Phoebe turned and sprinted towards the base of the cliff. One of the men chased after her. I instinctively stuck out my arm and clothes-lined him.

He landed hard on his back.

A fist rushed at my face. I moved too late, but it wasn't meant for me, I felt a breeze as it passed. It was Braeden's clinched hand, and he was aiming it for a guy about to club me in the skull with a wooden fighting stick. His fist connected. The guy didn't move. He just stood there as surprised as I was that Braeden was up and walking around. Then the guy just dropped.

I turned toward Braeden in disbelief.

"Are you okay?"

"It doesn't matter."

I could see the bright white of his hipbone. That was the good news. It meant there was a chance the blade hadn't sliced through his internal organs.

There were too many attackers for me to take on alone. Even if Daniel and Phoebe had been trained to fight...

I swept my leg in a wide arc in a desperate attempt to save Daniel, connecting with his ankles, knocking him off balance. Daniel crashed to the ground. The sword sliced through the air where Daniel had just been and lodged deep into the trunk of a tall maple. The man wielding the sword could not pry it free. Daniel had the wind knocked out of him and was sucking in deep breaths. Somehow he gathered enough strength to roll away from a kick to the ribs.

The blade was stuck. The man seemed glued to his weapon, unwilling to leave it. I took that instant to strike at him with a thick, fallen branch. The blow would have killed most men. It barely stunned him. But it did, just long enough for me to hit him again. Then again. Then again. Then again.

He slumped to the forest floor, his hand the last thing to hit the ground as his fingers finally, reluctantly released the hilt.

He had brownish red hair that was cut short. Made redder still by blood.

Phoebe was making progress up the rock face. "Daniel, if Phoebe can make it up there, so can you." It was slow going. But no one seemed interested in her.

Daniel was in shock, staring at the sword that had nearly sliced him in two.

The other six men converged on us.

What happened next, I can only give you fragmented details.

Braeden and I fought back-to-back. We moved in fluid motions. There were no hesitations or wasted effort. A ballet of violence.

We waited to the last second, until they were close and bunched together. They attacked. Two at each of us. Two staying back.

I saw the flash of a knife. Reacted. Blocked. Defended. Disarmed.

Two of the men were holding wooden sticks about four feet long. I caught the handles in my hand, pulled myself up and kicked the two other men, that had been lying back, stunning them, but not disabling them. Without hesitation, I kicked up my right foot, catching the man on my left off guard. A long breath in, and then I seized the wrist of the man to my right, bending it down, then twisting it counterclockwise in one movement. He countered by somersaulting into the air and unwinding his arm. His feet tapped the ground just long enough to springboard into a jump spin hook kick. The sole of his foot came around and nearly took off my head. I ducked at the last second and his foot glanced off the top of my head instead of hitting flush with my right cheek. Still, the force was hard enough to snap my neck to the left.

The way Braeden was fighting someone might have assumed his wounds weren't as bad as they looked. But for him, this was life or death. He was running purely on adrenaline.

I spun out of the way of another kick, then launched into the air, grabbing a tree branch above. I released and landed with my full weight on the attacker I was fighting.

I got hit in the head with a rock. I was stunned. I turned around and saw Daniel. His face was bright red.

"Seriously?" I had a lump on the back of my skull the size of a walnut.

"I'm sorry! I was trying to help."

"Don't. Any more help like that and I'll end up dead."

"But they're getting—"

I jumped up, grabbing the branches again. Two of the attackers had gotten up and were rushing at me. I swung my legs behind me to get some momentum, then shot them forward with my knees up under the closest man's chin, knocking him out and slamming him into the other attacker.

I saw the look on Daniel's face. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. Phoebe was climbing. It was hard, nearly vertical. What made it worse, was that it was trap rock, basalt that was brittle and easily fractured. It looked like someone had just dumped a truck load of gravel at the bottom of the face.

I turned my head to check on Braeden. He had two men down and was battling the third. That split second cost me. The first attacker I had jumped down on had gotten up. He grabbed my throat. I stumbled back into Braeden, which made him miss a punch. Braeden got kicked in the head a second later. He fell to the ground. He was losing a lot of blood. His attacker paused as he saw the open wound, the white bone.

I used that instant to kick up, using the man choking me as leverage and wrap my legs around the neck of Braeden's attacker.

Braeden was sitting up, that was good, but he could no longer defend himself. I kept my legs wrapped around the other man's throat to keep him from getting to Braeden.

I was starting to lose consciousness as my windpipe was being crushed. I grabbed at the man's hand around my throat, gaining a few sips of air, and focused on squeezing my thighs together. It was contest to see who would pass out first. Finally, the man locked between my knees fainted from a lack of oxygen. And as he fell, my legs were pulled downward. Building on that momentum, I leaned my weight forward into the man at my throat, tipping him back, his feet shuffling in reverse to keep his balance until he smashed into the trunk of the large maple. His shoulder hit the bark with a force that caused him to cry out. I jerked my body, swinging my weight from side to side. His right shoulder slammed into the sword stuck in the tree. Immediately, he released his grip. Struggling to find my breath, I hesitated for a second and he was able to recover enough to catch me in the cheek with his closed hand. Reflexively, I whipped my head back around and rammed my head into his chest, bringing my hard skull up under his chin, snapping his head back and knocking him out cold.

I stood there, panting like a dog, trying to catch my breath. I checked my body. Everything still attached.

Hyper-vigilant, I slowly backed toward Braeden.

Daniel looked at me. "What, what, what the heck was that?" He had no ability to articulate anything else. He asked me the same question half a dozen times.

Finally, I shook him. "We have to get out of here."

"That guy slashed you with a knife and it—" He looked at my arm. "Didn't cut you."

At some point, I got sliced. I didn't feel it at the time, but I remember the blade coming at me. Daniel wasn't entirely correct. I had been cut. But only on the surface. The tougher, deeper layers that fifteen hundred years of sun had hardened protected me.

I reached Braeden and bent to check his wound when I heard one of the men at the edge of the fighting writhing on the ground. The sound made me turn my head, and I realized he was weakly raising a crossbow and aiming it. His hand shook, but once he found his mark, his grip steadied. The arrow tip was not fixed on me, but on Phoebe who was struggling up the face, the tinkling of falling rock shards echoed from the cliff.

Her footing disintegrated under her weight, sending her sliding back down to the gravel pit at the bottom.

She was not too far away to be hit, and I judged this man capable of it.

I rushed him, jumping directly in the path of the arrow. I was confident he wouldn't release his dart, at least not to kill me, he could have done so already. He seemed resigned to my stopping him.

When I was two lengths from him, he surprised me. He had drawn me in. He was not injured at all. It was possible that his taking aim at Phoebe had been a ruse to bring me to him. He nimbly rose to his feet, lifting a long branch that was lying on the ground. The blunt end of the fallen branch thrust into my stomach. My vision blurred, and bright spots swirled around the edges of my sight. I could hardly see. Or breathe. I tried to control the panic. But the most effective way to do that is to breathe in and out slowly and deeply. But I couldn't get my body to inhale. If you've ever had the wind knocked out of you, you understand. The blow not only takes away your precious oxygen, it paralyzes the diaphragm momentarily, which seems like minutes.

The man let out a guttural roar and swung the detached tree limb. I used the last of my strength to move just enough to make him miss.

He was expecting the branch to hit, preparing himself for the sudden stop, but when the branch found nothing, his body weight was thrown forward. He lost his balance, stumbled over, and tumbled down the hill toward the water's edge. But he wasn't done. This man was a warrior. I don't think he was like me, but whoever he was, wherever he came from it was clear that he had done nothing his entire life but fight.

He rose up, slowly at first, then finding his footing, he charged at me with the jagged edge of the branch aimed directly at my skull. The frenzy of battle, the rage of adrenaline was overriding the desire to take me alive. I had not regained my breath. I tried to make myself move. I could feel my limbs moving in my mind, reacting, but in reality, I remained immobile, defenseless.

I would be dead in seconds.

Daniel screamed, "Alexander!"

I don't know how, but Braeden pulled himself up and got to his feet. He quickly limped forward. As the cutting end of the makeshift weapon neared its target, Braeden grabbed at a branch that hung low, nearly horizontal, and used it like a high bar in gymnastics to launch himself directly at the man, feet first. He struck the attacker in the chest, driving him to the rocky ground. Both rolled down the embankment.

Finally, my diaphragm reflexively contracted and pulled air into my lungs. Braeden had expended all his energy, all his strength. He had nothing left to defend himself against the man who was once again rising to his feet. This man who refused to give up.

What was driving him?

I struggled to my feet and stumbled toward Braeden. He had saved me. It was my turn to save him.

I had to stop this man.

My friends would not understand, but there was no other way.

As I lurched down the hill, I saw the man pick up a rock two feet in diameter and lift it over his head without trouble. He was about to drop it on Braeden's skull. In his rage, the man didn't see me coming.

I let out a guttural scream as I thrust a knife blade I had found into the side of his chest.

He dropped to the ground.

I heard Phoebe scream.

Exhausted, Braeden pushed the man lifeless body into the river.

Daniel ran down to us. "What the hell—" he was panting as he watched the man's body float away. "Is he dead? You killed him! You killed him!" He was hyperventilating as he grabbed me by the shoulders.

He wouldn't let go. I had to push him away. I had to tend to Braeden's wounds.

As I bent down, Braeden was already shaking his head, no.

What I couldn't see until I got closer and changed my angle of view was that when Braeden landed, he came down on the sharp point of the splintered wood. It wouldn't have done much damage to his hardened skin, except it had slipped through the gash already opened in his side.

"Braeden," I whispered.

He continued to shake his head.

"You must leave this place immediately," he said. "Leave town," he added, making his meaning clear.

Phoebe, her face smudged with dirt and dust from the cliff, appeared in a moment, her white cheerleading shoes now gray.

Through the pain Braeden said, "You are no longer safe here. You do not have much time." He was looking around. Almost sensing the air. Feeling something. "There will be more. They will be here soon."

"We can't just leave you here," Phoebe said.

"That is exactly what you have to do. Call for help, it may get here in time. But you must leave now. They do not want me. They want you," he said, looking at me. "I am of little value to them."

"Why me?" I asked.

"Because of who you are. Because of our father. Your father." He paused. "He is a great man, Alexander. A great many men."

Phoebe and Daniel looked confused.

Braeden turned to Daniel. He reached up and grabbed him with a bloody hand and said, "Are you brave?"

I was pretty sure Daniel was about to crap in his pants.

"Yeah, sure. Brave," he said, quivering.

"Hold your right arm out in front of you. With your finger pointed, rotate as far as you can."

Daniel did so and got two-thirds of the way around so that if he had started at twelve, like the hands of a clock, he had ended up around eight.

"Now, take this." Braeden removed a necklace, an amulet hanging from his neck by a thin cord of what looked like leather. He gave it to Daniel. This will give you power." Braeden's breathing was labored. Once the necklace was around Daniel's neck, Braeden said, "Now, try it again."

Daniel rotated his upper body. Only this time, he got all the way around to almost eleven o'clock.

"That's amazing!" Daniel said as he stared at the amulet.

Like I've told you, this isn't a story about magic. It's a story about people. Braeden could've had Daniel do the same thing with a crumpled up piece of paper instead of the talisman. And he still would have gone further the second time. It's simply a matter of mechanics. The first twist, the body is tight. The second twist, the muscles have already loosened, allowing you to go farther.

It's not that items don't have power. A ring on the left hand of a woman is very powerful indeed.

A lucky charm, a sacred stone, a rabbit's foot. It's not the item itself, but the meaning that we pour into an item that gives it its power.

A talisman draws attention to itself, becoming a powerful focal point, allowing the wearer to quietly do more because they aren't focused on the movement, the pain, the surroundings, the danger.

If there is any magic, it is that we can, with our minds, turn a stone, a hunk of metal, a piece of wood into a receptacle and amplifier of our most powerful selves.

I don't know if Braeden truly believed the talisman would help Daniel access his inner strength, or if he was counting on the simple placebo effect. But it worked.

Daniel looked down at the amulet hanging from his neck. "I, I don't—"

"It is yours now."

Braeden was losing too much blood. He wouldn't survive very long at this rate. I reached down and scooped up a handful of mud from around his feet and plastered the wound as best I could before Braeden, finally, calmly, told me I had to leave immediately.

There was something in the serene way he said it that I knew it was time for me to listen to him.

"You are in danger." Then he said something else, it was soft, a whisper. It was in a mix of parlances. Old French just after making the break from Vulgar Latin, the language of the streets. It took a moment for me to comprehend. The key is at the beginning of time.

One of the men was beginning to stir.

"Go straight to the safe house in New York. Do not go to your home. They will know where you live."

"You're right. It is probably compromised," I said.

I could tell that Daniel was looking at us. Because we were conversing in some foreign way. Perhaps, we were speaking Ancient Greek, or Latin, or maybe even English. It didn't matter. It was the meter. The phrasing. The idiom. I have spoken so many languages over the years it's easy to slip between them without realizing.

"Do not go home," Braeden said, repeating the warning.

"I won't."

I didn't want to leave him. He was in pain. I wanted to help him. I wanted to know him.

He looked at me. "If you don't get away, I will have failed." I could see it in his eyes that he meant it. "Go," he said simply.

With that strength that comes to you when there is nothing else you can do but face the truth, I nodded. "Be safe, my brother."

I wouldn't say that Braeden smiled, but he looked content. "And you as well."

§

As we ran out of the woods, I called 9-1-1 on my phone. Told the operator several people had been injured, at least one of them severely. I gave the emergency personal the location in longitude and latitude from memory. I wiped down the screen and every surface with my shirt, making sure not to hang up the call, then dropped the phone, leaving the line open.

By the time we got to the main road, I could hear the sirens.

\- EIGHT -

You Never Forget Your Six Hundred and Fifty-First House

The first thing we did was go straight back to my house.

Daniel wasn't pleased about this as we navigated a shadowed walkway that led from The Red Lion Inn, deeper into the middle of the block where my house was hidden. "I thought he specifically said, 'Don't go back to your house!'"

"Yes."

"That going there would be dangerous."

"Yes."

"Am I missing something?"

"Nope."

"Then why are we here?"

Phoebe questioned my decision to come back as well. "I can't believe I'm saying this...but Daniel might be right."

Someone leaving one of the adjacent guest cottages caused a door to slam shut.

"Hit the deck!" Daniel screamed as he dove to the ground.

Phoebe and I gazed down at him.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Gunsh—" his voice trailed off when he realized neither Phoebe or I had flinched.

"Get off the ground," I said, stepping over him. I continued onto the front porch, pulled out my keys and was just about to slide the gold one into the door when Daniel grabbed my hand.

"But..." he said, and then whispered, "...someone could be in there."

"Someone could. An elephant, a monkey or even an expendable solid-fuel rocket booster could be in there."

"Really?"

Phoebe rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Noooo."

I glanced at Daniel's hand, then up at him. "Braeden told me that loud enough so the men lying half-unconscious on the ground would hear it. This is the last place they're gonna be looking."

Daniel loosened his grip and I unlocked the front door, which was painted bright red. In colonial times, a red door let weary travelers know this was a place they could come for rest. There were many times as I wandered the colonies from Charleston to Boston that I found comfort and a hot meal behind a scarlet door. And it reminded me of my time in China, as well, where a red door symbolized the mouth of a home. But mostly I liked it because crimson added a pop of color to the gray wood siding, white trim and black shutters of the house.

The darker palette stood out from the other buildings along the street, most of which were ivory or white.

It's hard to call this house a home. I've been here just over a year. I try to set up certain parts of my homes the same for consistency. Kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms, if possible. And I try to appreciate and enjoy the parts of each that are different. But my home is Constantinople. Although even that doesn't feel much like home anymore.

It's not at all the city I knew as a boy.

This is my six hundred and fifty-first house. I'm not counting the places I've stayed in while earning room and board or homes where I was a guest. Or the tents, teepees, and caves I've sheltered in over the centuries. Six hundred and fifty-one represents the houses I've owned, or when I was younger, my father owned.

Buying real estate when you're pretending to be a thirteen or fourteen year old high school student isn't easy. Realtors and banks want to deal with an adult. Mostly that's because you can't sign a contract if you're under eighteen. Well, you can sign one, it just isn't legally binding. Even if it were binding, how many teenagers have the money to purchase a house?

Of course, I've had to devise methods to get around bankers since my father's often unavailable for months or years at a time, usually in another country, on another continent.

I've pretty much been on my own since I was nine hundred or so.

Years ago, I'd pay a surrogate to handle the details. Some were unscrupulous and I learned my lessons the hard way: by losing money. It's easier now. Much of my dealings are done through corporations. For the past several years, I have used a lawyer who lives in a small town in Connecticut. I hired him, offering him a top salary, despite the fact that the big New York firms had rescinded their job offers when he got in some trouble at the end of law school. We both have a healthy suspicion of each other, which seems to work for us.

My father has taught me to plan well. Not just to earn a good return on my investments, but to have as many options as possible for myself when it's time to move on. I have the ability to own hundreds of homes, although I usually don't have more than a few dozen at any one time.

There is a farmhouse nearby that I bought when I first came to town. It has a working farm that sells vegetables in the summer and Christmas trees in the winter and fresh, free-range eggs all year round. There are horses and pigs and chickens and thousands of acres where I spend at least one weekend every other month deep in the woods. I walk in carrying nothing but a knife and a flint. I hunt my food, build shelters out of whatever's available. I survive only on what I can find or kill.

Mostly, I do it to stay sharp. But sometimes I do it to get away.

My father and I saddle a pair of horses and take them into the hills whenever he comes to town. It reminds me of when we would ride in the valleys of the Pyrenees in Spain or the rolling hills of Britain.

I miss those times with him.

I like the farmhouse. But the place is too big for me. I hired a married couple in their fifties to act as caretakers. Both are skilled with horses, good cooks. The husband runs the fields, and the wife runs everything else.

Over the last eighteen months, I've grown to care about them, and I know they feel a need to be surrogate parents.

They think my father neglects me.

As much as I enjoy them and the farm, after the first few months, I decided I wanted to live somewhere else. The farmhouse is my official residence as far as school is concerned, and I spend the night there a few times a month and do my treks into the wilderness, but I needed to live closer to people. I prefer living in town or in the city verses out in the country. So, I rented this gray house with the red door behind the Red Lion Inn. The Inn is made up of a large main guest house and several guest cottages which surround my house. There are other cottages down a little lane across the street. The lighting at night is warm, and I like to go into the dining room and eat with the guests. There are several regulars that come in. They know me now. So do the people who run the place.

I like the mix of new people and familiar faces.

There are areas inside and out on the porch where you can sit and chat or play a board game.

It feels comfortable. There is a painting of the Inn under a blanket of snow by Norman Rockwell that captures its warmth even in the middle of winter.

§

As soon as I walked in, I knew no one had been in the house. There were several things I wanted to get. Personal items. Some IDs. Maybe a weapon.

I ran upstairs and scanned the bedrooms. I've gotten so used to moving, so conditioned to leaving places that there wasn't much I wanted to take. I opened up a drawer and pulled out two rings from the sixteenth century. A necklace with a pendant similar to the one that Braeden had given Daniel. A few other items. I took a pair of sweats for Phoebe to change into.

If there was one major difference between me and every other teenage boy, it was that my room was neater.

I'm not a clean-freak or anything, not at all. I'm just uncluttered.

I didn't see anything else. I thought I would want more.

Daniel was pacing the living room when I came down. He saw me carrying barely a fistful of items.

"You're not packed," he said. "I thought you were packing. You need help? Cause I think we need to, you know, fffffffft, leave." He accompanied the fffffffft with a gesture that ended with his index finger aimed at the front door.

"I think...you need to go home. Both of you should go."

"I'm not leaving," Phoebe said.

I looked at her. "This isn't your problem."

"We left a classmate dying back there!"

"I called for help."

"But we left him!" I could see Phoebe was upset. "We should have—we should go to the police."

"And tell them what?"

"That those men are dangerous."

"Very dangerous. They want me. They won't hurt anyone. Unless someone tries to get in their way. We get the police involved and people will start getting hurt."

Tears began to roll down Phoebe's cheeks. "We shouldn't have left him there. We should've stayed with him." She had been suppressing her feelings until now.

Her emotions filled me with the desire to comfort her. I resisted the urge to console her. The sooner we got out of here, the better.

The back wall of the living room was filled with books. I stepped up to the middle shelf and tipped the spines on several hardcovers in a specific pattern.

I couldn't bring myself to look at Phoebe as I said what must have sounded to her like the lamest excuse. "I would have offended his honor if I didn't leave."

I found my copy of The Riverside Shakespeare and pushed on it until it hit the back of the shelf.

Phoebe was about to respond to my apparent cowardice when part of the wall opened, revealing a large metal door. I swung the heavy bookcase outward.

I know it's cliche, book shelf, secret door, but it's not my fault, the house came with it.

I modified the locking mechanism of the shelves to make it more difficult to open unless you knew the exact sequence, like a combination lock.

Daniel's eyes widened. "What the—what is that?"

Inside was another door that looked more like a giant wall safe, this one with a modern keypad. Okay, I upgraded a few things.

"It's a secret."

I punched in the code: 0-5-1-5, then pulled open the thick metal door.

Surprise flashed on their faces. Inside the safe was a wheeled cabinet with flip up doors hiding its contents. I ignored what was inside and rolled it out of the way. Then I reached up and grabbed the edge of the ceiling panel, getting my fingernails in a tiny gap. I gently tugged downward and another keypad became visible. This keypad was horizontal with numbers running from zero through nine and the letters from A through F. I punched in a series of numbers and letters much more complicated than the first.

With a loud click, three bolts retracted. And I pushed on the back of the safe. I stepped through the safe into a room which was used to hide weapons and people from the British during the Revolutionary War.

Daniel let slip a few choice curse words as he got his first look at the room's contents. The safe had surprised him. This room made him giddy.

A number of guns from rifles and shotguns to handguns and assault weapons were lined up neatly. Some were mounted on the wall, others rested under plexiglass in a gun case. Revolvers on the right, pistols on the left. Bullets for the guns were housed under the case in drawers labeled by caliber size and gauge, smallest to largest. The weight of the bullets made the drawers hard to open. A rack of swords from around the world and across the millennia hung on another wall. I won't bother with the details. Let's just say they were kept sharp and very deadly.

There were various types of explosives in unlocked cabinets. And another wall that held an assortment of medieval and martial arts weapons.

The most dangerous items in the room, however, were kept behind glass. They were the half dozen or so photos hanging on the walls of me in various poses, the earliest from the mid 1800s. To the modern eye, they might look like some Photoshopped image you'd buy on a trip to Frontier World or some other tourist trap. A digitally aged sepia toned shot of you dressed in rawhide in an Old West ghost town. Or your face dropped into a shot of passengers waving excitedly from the deck of the Titanic.

Only these were real.

I was on the Titanic. And the photograph to prove it was hanging right behind Phoebe's head.

I boarded at Southhampton, England on April 10th, 1912 after taking the special train that the White Star Line had hired to get passengers for the maiden voyage down from London. We left dock at about noon, horns blaring, ticker tape flying. The deep sound of the air horns vibrated in my chest. It was one of those moments you know even while it's happening that you'll never forget.

I don't believe in curses, but if I did, this ship would be a prime example of their existence.

The Titanic nearly sunk three minutes into its voyage as it made its way through the crowded port, filled with ships that couldn't leave because a coal strike had left them with not enough fuel to steam out to sea. The massive ship passed the SS City of New York and RMS Oceanic which were moored nearby. The Titanic dwarfed the two transatlantic liners and its huge displacement caused the ships to be lifted by a bulge of water, then dropped into the resulting trough. Oceanic clanged against the docks and sent several crew members over the side. The City of New York's cables couldn't handle the unexpected strain and snapped. I heard the sound over the raucous celebrations. It sounded like a cannon boom, although I didn't see any smoke.

Instead, I saw a large wave caused by our wake push the New York away from the dock, sending it stern-first towards the Titanic. I immediately began looking for something to hold onto and yelled to the people around me to brace themselves. I watched a tugboat race into action—well, as fast as a tugboat can "race." The tug's crew tossed a line around a two-headed bitt on the New York, using the tug to slow the larger ship. Orders from the bridge of the Titanic shouted through the tubes were repeated on deck from crewman to crewman, "Full astern! Full astern! Full astern!"

There was a rush of water as the giant propellers churned violently in reverse.

Accidents between gigantic ships aren't like car crashes. Everything happens in slow motion. Even at two or three knots, the momentum of something the size of the New York can cause catastrophic damage.

With its engine past maximum, black smoke pouring from its stack, the tugboat was able to slow the City of New York just enough that it avoided colliding with the Titanic by less than three feet.

Three feet.

Disaster avoided by less than an arm's length.

The incident delayed our departure from port for more than an hour while the drifting New York was brought under full control.

Titanic's journey might have ended right there.

A collision would have caused considerable destruction and great embarrassment, but few injuries.

I've often thought of that heroic captain of the tugboat Vulcan and wondered if he ever regretted what he had done. There was no way for him to know, of course, that in less than four days, this luxury liner, the newest and biggest in the world, would be at the bottom of the sea.

Phoebe briefly glanced over her shoulder at the photo, but I was but one of a hundred faces looking down at the photographer on the dock and she didn't seem to notice. No, the picture that caught her eye was on the opposite wall. It was the oldest in the room, but the people in it were clear. The faces close up.

The image was faded. Surrounded by several men in uniform, I wore a grim expression. The soldiers posed with me as if I were their pet. The lighting and the dirt on my skin made it hard to see that it was me. It could easily be mistaken for a relative of mine.

The photograph was taken at the Battle of Gettysburg, though you wouldn't know it from the image. Just outside of the frame, nearly one hundred thousand men choked the camp all around us. Yet, they were invisible. It looked more like a picture from a camping trip. Except no one was smiling. Part of that, of course, was the wretched circumstances after two days of fighting, but mostly no one smiled because in those days you had to hold perfectly still for a long time in order not to ruin the picture. It was harder to smile without moving than it was to maintain a blank expression.

The picture was taken on the evening of July 2nd, 1863. Two days into the longest three days of my life.

The Battle of Gettysburg, like most battles, wasn't a battle at all. It was made up of several acts broken into innumerable scenes. Like some horrible, lethal version of a playoff series in baseball. You might a win an inning, even a game or two, but that doesn't mean you win it all.

I said I hated the Civil War. But the truth is, I've hated every war I've been involved with, but I've especially despise the ones where I was forced to fight and even more so, the ones where I was not allowed to fight. That may sound strange. But think of war as a game of chess. I'd much prefer to be a knight or a bishop or a rook than a pawn.

The day after that photograph was taken, I was a lowly pawn caught in the middle of what is now known as Pickett's Charge. We called it what it was: a suicide attack by Johnny Rebel meant to slice into the center line of the Union troops in hopes of capturing Cemetery Hill and the roads into Gettysburg that our high ground positions defended. Across from us was an imposing line of 12,500 Confederate soldiers nearly a mile across ready to attack. It was one of the most frightening, awe inspiring, terrible things I've ever seen.

Against this onslaught of men, I was armed with nothing but a large serving spoon.

But even a pawn, if it can get to the back of the board, if it can get all the way to the heart of the enemy's defenses, can become whatever it wants to be.

Throughout the third and final day of the Battle of Gettysburg, artillery from the Confederate side pounded us. I was an army cook, having been pulled into service by the local militia as all the able-bodied adult men were needed to fight. Hardly anyone had an appetite that day. The constant explosions rattled the nerves and squeezed the hell out of anyone's guts.

Despite the clamor, the shelling did very little damage to the Union's position.

There was one shot that blew up one of the "sinks," which were basically these twelve foot long, eight foot deep holes in the ground that the men had to be ordered to use to relieve themselves under penalty of having to sit in a barrel full of crap if they didn't. Soldiers from rural areas were fond of using the bushes and their actions were causing illness to spread throughout the camp, everything from dysentery and diarrhea to typhoid fever. It would surprise most people to learn that poor bathroom habits, and the diseases they bred, killed more soldiers during the Civil War than the brutal fighting on the field.

As bad as that sink reeked before, it smelled a whole lot worse after it was blown sky high and we got showered with a weeks worth of human waste. Luckily, no one was going to the bathroom at the time, but an officer everyone hated, Lieutenant T.K. Butler, got the worst of it. He had to be dug out from under a half ton of excrement.

Fitting, actually. Since the man was full of it most of the time.

To this day, I think the Southern generals saw the explosion, saw us scrambling for cover and thought they'd hit one of our munitions stores.

It wasn't the only mistake they made that day.

Confederate soldiers wore grey uniforms with light blue pants. However, many, if not most, had a combination of uniform pieces, some wearing portions of captured Union uniforms and items of personal clothing or uniforms that were handmade. A few had boots, most had something on their feet, but others went shoeless.

These proud, but ill-fated men charged across the open field. A dozen thousand men running straight toward us.

The Union cannons blasted away. They tore into the attack and exposed the weakness of that outdated way of war, of men standing shoulder to shoulder in lock step. It worked when wars were fought with swords. Less so when archers were added. Once the rifle came, it seemed immoral to stand up a line of men as human targets, hoping a few of the ones behind them would get through.

Hacking at each other with swords might be brutal, but at least you could fight back.

The few Confederate soldiers able to reach the low wall that protected the Union ranks couldn't hold their position and almost all were forced to scramble back to their line in full retreat.

They made for easy targets.

There was one man who made it past our defenses. I think the Union soldiers were so shocked to see this lone man refuse to retreat, they just let him through. He screamed the entire way, the bayonet on the end of his rifle outstretched in front of him.

I was standing there just as dumbfounded to see a Rebel in the midst of our camp as everyone else. By the time he got to where I was, there was no one else around. I was the only victim in sight. He headed straight for me. He was determined to kill a Yankee, any Yankee. Never mind that I had lived in the South almost as much as I had in the North. Actually, that probably would have made him more angry. I was a traitor. When I realized he was aiming the tip of his bayonet at my chest, I stood en guard. I felt ridiculous, but the serving spoon was all I had. I thought about turning and running, but not far behind me were a group of women. Nurses and cooks. They would be his target if I removed myself.

I readied myself. In my mind, the large spoon was a sword. A short one, like a Scottish dirk.

I stood sideways, giving him less of my body to hit.

I balanced my weight. And prepared to perform perhaps the most important parry of my life. I had one shot to strike my opponent's blade and deflect it. I had no guard on my weapon to protect my hand if I didn't do it quickly or powerfully enough. Properly executed, I would be in a good position to strike back.

With my spoon.

His howling did not stop or grow louder. It remained constant, even as he tried to run me through with his bayonet.

With the tip only a few inches away from my ribs, I parried, twisting my right wrist as if I was looking at my watch.

Any sooner and I would have mistimed it. I drove his blade to the side and down. I grabbed the stock of his Enfield with my free hand. The force of my blow knocked him off balance and his momentum carried him into me, but turned as I was, he slipped past. I struck him once in the head with the spoon, which sent his hat flying.

He staggered around, his battle cry just a whimper, then he turned to run at me again. He was exhausted and no match for me now. I would easily take the rifle out of his hands on this pass.

I never got the chance.

I heard a single shot a second before the man's chest exploded. He fell to the ground.

Thirty paces to the right, a soldier nodded to me, somberly, then he glanced down, opened the gun and cleared the priming from his rifle.

Pickett's Charge, like the charge of this unknown Confederate, failed.

Casualties ran over fifty percent.

It was a terrible, terrible day.

One that changed the fate of the United States. After Gettysburg, the Confederate Army would never regain its momentum.

A few months later, I watched President Lincoln give his elegant Gettysburg Address from the top of Cemetery Hill, not far from where I had defended myself with a spoon. Lincoln's address followed a well-written, expertly delivered speech by William Everett that ran almost two hours.

Lincoln's barely ran two minutes.

Everett's speech elicited numerous cheers and ovations.

Lincoln's words received only a smattering of applause.

I don't think many in the audience realized the impact the speech would have when printed in every newspaper in the Union. And how it would be remembered long after the war. I had the barest sense, a tiny but powerful niggling in the back of my brain that I had just witnessed something important.

It's easy to take an hour—or two or three—to talk about a significant topic. It is much harder to say in just a few words something powerful and meaningful that lasts forever.

Lincoln's final line still echoes in my mind.

"We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Contrary to the newspaper reports published the next day of rousing applause following the speech, Lincoln's last words echoed in the heavy silence of the crowd after he finished. When applause finally came, it was barely audible.

Seeing Lincoln speak on the same ground that had been littered with bodies of forty thousand dead and wounded, reminded me of the lone soldier who came so close to me, I could smell the foul salted pork on his breath.

That one man, and the Union sharpshooter who killed him, brought home the cost of that war more clearly, more personally than the half a million others that died.

Phoebe moved in closer to the picture. Then she looked at me. Through me more like it.

"That's you in the photo."

I nodded.

I always had an answer ready for these type of situations, but Phoebe had a way of clouding my thoughts.

"I—" I stumbled. "I took part in a Civil War reenactment a couple of years ago when I lived in Pennsylvania."

"You don't look very happy."

"It's exciting at first, but once you see your friends lying on the ground and realize what those soldiers went through, see their graves, it hits you."

"I don't know much about the Civil War. Seems pretty depressing. History's not really my thing."

I knew that wasn't true. Her lying made me smile. Craig was probably threatened by dating someone smarter than him. "I took a peek at your test."

"You cheat!"

"After I handed mine in. You're smarter than you give yourself credit for."

"Maybe, but it's not like a guy ever said, 'Hey, look at her. Nice brain.'" She motioned a curvy figure with her hands.

"A guy can't like both?"

"Can they?" She looked at me, holding the stare for a moment before returning to the photograph. "They did a great job on this. It looks so real."

People's inability, even in the face of truth, to fathom that someone could be a hundred times as old as they are has probably been the biggest reason we haven't been outed before.

Daniel saved me, thankfully, when he punched me in the arm and yelled, "You are a horrible friend, do you know that? The worst!"

"And why's that?"

"I've been to your house how many times?"

"I don't know. How many?" I said, feeling like I was in the middle of a comedy act.

"Like a thousand."

"More like fifty."

"A lot, okay? And you never showed me this?"

"There's a reason for that," I said, as he started to pick up a kama, which looked like a small sickle or a slender ax with a knife blade coming out the top at a right angle. "Don't touch those!"

"A good friend," he eyed me, "would let me touch whatever I wanted."

"Apparently your definition of a good friend is someone who let's you maim yourself. I don't want you slicing off your hand. Or worse my hand or Phoebe's."

Phoebe nodded in agreement.

Daniel slowly, reluctantly, pulled his fingers away from the kama. He continued examining the array of weapons with his hands behind his back and as if he were in a museum—just to highlight his displeasure.

Phoebe glanced around the room, trying to take it all in. She didn't have the same kid-in-a-candy-store gaze that Daniel had. Her expression was cautious. If she hadn't witnessed the attack against me in the woods, the fact that I had a room like this would have probably freaked her out.

Smart girls don't date boys with weapons caches in their homes.

Which, come to think of it, is a rule everyone should follow.

Got more than a hunting rifle or two. Red flag.

I guarantee if I walked into someone's home and saw this, I'd be quickly leaving through the closest exit I had scoped out when I entered.

I understand people are fascinated by guns and knives and swords. But I have witnessed what these weapons can do. How they can kill. I don't pick them up lightly.

I respect their power.

To respect something, you have to fear it without being afraid.

Most of these weapons took years for me to master.

If I had any one of them, the fight in the woods would have gone very differently.

I would not be weaponless again.

I wished I could arm Daniel and Phoebe as well. I didn't have much of a chance without help. Even with Braeden beside me, it wasn't enough.

I picked up a shinai, a rounded bamboo stick with a carved handle. I hefted it in my hands. It wasn't sharp, but I've been hit with one more than a few times and, to be honest, I much preferred being stabbed than getting whacked with one of these.

I handed it to Daniel.

"Start with this."

As he started swooshing it through the air, I grabbed one of my bokken, the wooden swords I used for training during my studies under the Samurai. Bokken allowed us to practice without killing each other.

I handed the bokken to Phoebe. "You handled yourself well out there."

"Fear, mostly. Mixed with six years of gymnastics, three years of cheerleading camp, and a year of taking the bus with the football team."

"I would have been down in the first minute if you hadn't stunned that guy with a kick to the face."

She nodded and absently played with the bokken. Her movements were naturally fluid.

"You should take that," I said.

She held the bokken up to her face and studied it. "I'm still trying to make sense of everything. Those people. Why did they want to take you?"

"I'm not sure. Probably something we shouldn't try to figure out here."

We had been in the house less than ten minutes. I didn't want to stay much longer. I needed a weapon. But which one?

"So...you know how to use all these?" Phoebe asked, gently poking me in the chest with the wooden tip.

I didn't mean to answer her so directly, but I had already picked up the Qiang and was in the process of throwing it when she asked.

"I don't practice as often as I should," I said, truthfully.

The spear pierced the heart of a training dummy.

"Yeah, you seem rusty."

I grabbed a Kunai and sent the throwing knife into the wall, killing a fly that had been buzzing around the room. I grabbed the other two in the set and slid them in my back pocket.

I swung a mace. Too bulky.

Flicked at the air with a set of nun-chucks. Maybe.

I wasn't satisfied with any of the weapons, except the Kunai, but they had limited use.

I wanted to take the katana, but I couldn't just walk around with a sword.

Despite my warning, Daniel put down the shinai, and before I could say anything, picked up the katana. Maybe he thought the samurai sword was similar to the shinai since the deadly blade was concealed within a lacquered wooden scabbard. It looked harmless. As soon as he swung the sheathed sword, the scabbard slid off the blade and hit me in the crotch. The weight of the blade almost knocked him over and he began waving it indiscriminately as he tried to regain his balance. I was bent over in pain and was spared a beheading. Phoebe barely had enough time to raise the bokken, deflecting the tip of the katana away from her face. The blade continued slicing through the air until it finally connected with something. The razor sharp katana effortlessly lopped off the head of my practice dummy. The decapitated head caromed off the spear I had just put in the dummy's chest, then the head landed on the floor with a loud thud, rolled into a floor lamp, knocking it over, which caused it to graze Daniel's back. He reacted by whirling around too quickly, sending the katana flying out of his hands where it buried itself, BOING!, in the middle of the forehead of a portrait on the wall right next to me.

"And that is why we don't touch the swords," I said as I gently pulled the blade from between the eyes of the unknown female figure in the one of a kind, never-before-seen sketch given to me in Florence by one of my mentors. It was signed simply, LV.

Getting de Vinci's sketch remounted in a new airtight frame without drawing attention would be difficult. But it would have to wait.

It was time to leave. No more delaying.

I charged out of the secret room. I would take the katana. I placed it on a side table near the door that held several days worth of mail I hadn't opened. I picked up a cordless phone from the table and started to call a clean up crew I trusted. There was one about thirty miles from here, across the state line in Connecticut. I put the phone back in its charger, deciding to wait until we had left.

The damage to the drawing wasn't the only thing tightening my guts. I had a bad feeling about coming here suddenly.

Phoebe and Daniel followed me out.

"I'm starting to think I don't know you very well," said Daniel.

"Don't talk to me right now!"

Daniel started to speak again when my stare caused him to close his mouth quickly. He nervously begin picking things up and playing with them.

His silence lasted all of ten seconds.

"Is your family in the mob or something? I mean, who has a secret room full of deadly weapons and a safe house in New York? Which, by the way, Braeden specifically told us to go to instead of coming here."

Daniel had a knack for choosing the most dangerous items in my house.

"Don't play with that bat!"

"Listen, I'm sorry about the sword, okay? It's just a bat! I know how to handle a bat."

I pulled on the knob at the bottom, withdrawing a slender sword.

"Okay. Remind me never to hit you with a pitch." He ran his hands tensely through his hair. "When I get stressed I need something to occupy myself. And I'm very stressed right now. Is this okay?" He flicked an umbrella that was resting by the door into his hands.

"That! has a needle in the tip that can inject you with deadly poison."

Daniel gingerly put the umbrella down.

He wrung his hands. Any harder and he might break a bone or two. He picked up the most innocuous item in the room, a baseball.

"And don't touch the baseball!"

Daniel froze. "Are you kidding me? What's in the baseball? Explosives? Some sort of nerve gas?"

"Babe Ruth signed it."

His body instantly relaxed and Daniel took a closer look at the ball, studying the signature.

"I thought you were a Red Sox fan."

In Great Barrington, being anything but a Sox fan got you painted as a heretic, a traitor, and several other things I can't mention. I started to tell him the truth, which is that he signed that ball when he was with the Red Sox, but Daniel turned the ball with his fingertip and we both could see the words "To Alexander" written in faded ink.

He glanced up at me and I sensed his dawning comprehension. "You make money counterfeiting sports memorabilia! That's brilliant."

Or maybe not.

"No, that's stupid and would land me in jail.

I grabbed the baseball, and with a sleight of hand, made it disappear into thin air.

"How did you—?" Daniel was looking around the room, trying to figure out where the ball had gone.

I had pulled off the trick cleanly, even though my hand movements were a bit sluggish. I hadn't practiced much lately. I like magic. I find it relaxing. But ever since that misunderstanding where I nearly got burned at the stake, I rarely did it in front of other people.

It had its desired effect. I had distracted Daniel.

The ball was safely in my backpack, where it was wrapped it in the sweats I had packed for Phoebe.

"I need to leave. And you need to go home. Both of you."

Daniel was still looking about for the ball when the realization of what I said hit him.

I looked at them. They deserved some sort of explanation, but anything I told them would only put them in more danger.

I wanted time to properly say goodbye. But I wasn't ready to do that.

Not that I don't know how. Believe me, I've gotten very good at leaving places, leaving people behind.

Of all the things you have to master to successfully live as long as I have, learning how to leave may be the most important.

In the time it takes me to look one year older, I've left behind twenty-five to thirty sets of friends. It makes it difficult to open up to people. To get close. Because you always know...you're going to leave. Maybe not today or next week, but soon. Three or four years. At the most.

Usually, I had time to prepare myself, but this felt like cutting and running to me. It didn't feel right.

"I'm probably..." I gathered my thoughts. "I'm not coming back. I've enjoyed living here." I turned to Daniel. "You've been a good friend."

I gave Daniel an awkward hug, made worse by his refusal to let go of me. I finally pried myself away from his sobbing grip, then turned to Phoebe. I wanted to tell her the truth. Not about me being fifteen hundred years old, but about the crush I've had on her from the first day I saw her.

But it seemed stupid to say it. If she didn't feel the same, I would feel like an idiot. And if she did, it would just make it worse.

I don't have much experience when it comes to relationships, but the experiences I have had, haven't worked out well.

I've rehearsed this moment, saying goodbye to her, probably a hundred times, at least. Gone over the words in my head and out loud, practicing. Trying to explain how I feel and why I have to go without revealing too much.

"Phoebe, I hope you realize..." I said, my heart pounding in my chest. "I want you to know...you deserve someone so much better than Craig. He may be nice to you, but he's an arrogant jerk to everyone else. And sooner or later, he's going to be a jerk to you."

Wow. I hadn't seen that coming. Not the way I'd rehearsed it.

Don't get me wrong, I've wanted to tell her Craig Coulter was a world-class jackhole less than five minutes after I'd met him.

Her eyes showed hurt. She was still holding the bokken. I thought she might hit me with it.

I let out a deep sigh. "Listen, I'm sorry. I'm sure you bring out the best in him."

She watched me as I began locking things down. "Where are you going?"

I pulled the rear door of the safe closed, punched a locking code into the keypad. There was a low clunk as massive bolt cylinders extended into the surrounding frame, sealing off the secret room.

"Somewhere else."

I slid the ceiling panel until I heard it click. Once in place, it was impossible to tell a keypad lay hidden behind it. Then I returned the rollout cabinet into the safe.

"So, that's it?"

"Unfortunately." I started to close the heavy metal door.

"What about, you know, the stuff in the safe?" Daniel said.

I stopped. Glanced at the contents, I realized some of it might be useful. I grabbed one of several cell phones off a shelf in the back. I handed it to Phoebe.

"You have your phone?" She nodded. "Call it from this so I have your number and you have mine."

As she phoned her cell, she moved toward the front door to get a better signal, the bokken tucked under her arm.

Then I opened several of the flip up doors on the rollout, revealing racks with several gold bars and wrapped bundles of cash stacked inside.

Daniel couldn't believe what he was seeing. "Who are you?"

I stuffed two stacks of hundred dollar bills into my bag. There were some smaller denominations, fifties and twenties, and I took two stacks of twenties and a stack of fifties as well.

"Are you serious? You're just going to leave all that?" asked Daniel as he stared at the four gold bars and two dozen half-inch stacks of bills I was abandoning.

A quarter million in cash. Something north of two million in gold.

"Take it," I said. "Leave the gold." The bars were heavy and cumbersome and two teenagers trying to peddle gold ingots without knowing what they were doing would attract the kind of attention that could get them hurt or put in jail.

Daniel stared at me. He didn't move toward the money. Like maybe it was marked or would explode if he touched it. "Seriously, who are you?"

A man appeared in my living room doorway. "Alexander Grant," he said.

Rugged looking, with an air of power and authority, the man was in his mid forties. He had a slight scar on his face and his skin was that deep olive color that people from around the Mediterranean have, especially if they spend time in the sun.

His body looked strong. His arms, powerful. But he wasn't bulky.

He was holding the katana sword I had left on the entryway table.

Adrenaline shot through me. My stomach twisted. Escape routes. He was blocking the front door. The couch was in the way of my getting to the back exit cleanly. The book shelf that was swung open prevented me from reaching the window quickly.

He waved his index finger as if to say, no, no, no.

I had the strangest feeling, an immediate need to show him respect. The only way I can describe it is, he commanded it.

\- NINE -

Both My Adversary And My Deliverance Come Right Through My Front Door

Like any kid in the middle of their teens, I have all of the classic symptoms of the untreatable disease known as puberty. The occasional adolescent angst, the hormones, the feeling of invincibility, the need to rebel against our elders. But on this last point, how I treat—and even defy—my elders, this is where I am different from those who are biologically the same age as me, even if we are not chronologically the same. Part of this difference is that centuries of experience have tempered and enlightened my mind. Time makes you humble. Truly. Even as it makes you more confident. Given enough of it, you will run up against someone who is better and stronger and faster. As much as I know, as much as I've learned, as many skills as I've mastered, there is always that place in the back of my mind where a healthy dose of doubt and skepticism lives. A place that reminds me that I have seen far too many others filled with pride and puffed up by overconfidence who have failed. Often tragically.

Over the last hundred years there has been a seismic shift in the way people raise their children and how they think about the world and privilege and class, social order, and rank. Kids are treated better, are listened to by their parents more, all of which is good, but it has led to the people of my age—at least, the age I appear to be—to have a cockiness and a confidence that isn't always warranted or deserved. In today's world, presidents even kings are spoken of irreverently and made fun of.

I grew up in a time where I feared my elders. I don't want you to think I was afraid of my father, but I was afraid of disrespecting him. The years apart gave me the confidence to handle my own affairs even at a young age, and with that came a strong will and strong opinions. But I would never dare to cross my father.

And not just because he was my father.

There have been over the many years a number of people who deserved a kind of respect and reverence far beyond what is expected of children toward their elders. These men and women commanded and received deference not just from the young, but from powerful adults and the most hardened soldiers.

It may be difficult for people facing the harshness of urban life to believe, but the world has become a kinder, more forgiving place. I did not grow up in this gentler time. And except for the fact that I feel constrained by the need to keep my identity and my talents and my longevity a secret, I enjoy the advances of technology and the blossoming of a more accepting society. But as I stood there, gazing at this stranger, I was sent back to a time where one should be very careful about even looking directly in the eye of a man like this.

"You know my name."

The man smiled. "I know who you are."

My eyes narrowed. "You sent those men."

"I have to tell you, that was quite impressive. I didn't anticipate the other boy being there. Still, you did better than I expected. If I had known, I would have sent three times as many."

"And yet, here you are, alone."

"I am. Seems strange, doesn't it?"

When he moved, it was fluid, relaxed. Nothing rushed about it. Always in balance.

"What happened to the other boy?"

"Your friend didn't make it."

I heard Phoebe gasp. She was about four feet to his right. He hadn't seen her because a short section of wall jutted out into the living room, obscuring her. He swung the blade in the direction of the sound so that the tip was only inches from her face.

"What have we here?" The man moved closer to her.

"He wasn't my friend," I said, harshly, drawing only a glance from him.

I tried to look disinterested, tried to cover my sorrow and my concern.

All the air left my lungs.

Phoebe was sobbing. I tried to keep my composure. Seeing the danger she was in made my heart race. I could tell she was trying to keep it in, but it was too hard. Sometimes fear keeps people quiet. Sometimes it makes them bold.

"You mean your people murdered him?" she said, defiantly.

"An unfortunate loss." The man looked at her. "He wasn't your boyfriend, was he?"

This made her swallow her tears. Her face blushed red and she shook as she held it together. "No," she said, the first consonant straining on her tongue.

He leaned in, keeping the point of the blade to her throat and sniffed her. "You smell..." He sniffed again, breathing in the pleasing scent I often enjoyed in History class. The hint of a grin spread across his face. "Hmm...older. What is your name?"

She was about to answer when I put up my hand for her to stop.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"I'll let Marcus explain that when he comes to save you."

Marcus was my father's name.

The man made a motion with his hand that said, let's get this moving along. "Now, as brave as that performance in the woods was, I want you to come with me. Peacefully." He said it in a casual, almost friendly tone. "I don't want anyone else to die."

Maybe his words were calculated to get a response. Maybe they were unintentional. Either way, the words cut me. Any deaths would be my fault.

Braeden. Dead.

This wasn't the way things were supposed to happen. We could die. I knew that. Accidents. War. Disease. But in my entire life, I had personally known only one person like me who died before this. It had given me a false sense that we were immortal.

I stood there nodding for a moment, putting my hands up in an okay-give-me-a-second sort of way. I was stalling. Trying to come up with something. I couldn't just go with him. What would that say? That Braeden's death was for nothing. If I was going to give up, I could've surrendered to the men in the woods and saved his life.

No.

They would've murdered Daniel and Phoebe. Maybe Braeden as well. Even if I went.

Daniel and Phoebe. That's why he died.

I relaxed my arms. "Fine."

The man with the scar lowered the tip of the katana slowly.

Without warning, while his attention was on me, Phoebe slashed with the bokken, knocking the tip down and away, then she did a handspring tuck off the coffee table—feet coming down on the sofa cushions—into a twisting double back somersault that vaulted her over the couch. She stuck the landing. She was as much surprised by her actions as the rest of us were. I shoved Daniel into Phoebe and both of them into the hallway.

"Go!"

If they did the smart thing and left through the back, they'd get away with their lives.

I could hear Daniel say, "C'mon!" to Phoebe. There was a shuffling of feet.

Now, it was just me and the man with the scar.

"Well done. I can see why you are enchanted by her."

"I'm not."

"Hmm, of course you aren't."

I couldn't let him get to me. I bit the inside of my mouth and drew blood to keep myself from thinking about her. Or Braeden. I savored the metallic taste and focused solely on the man.

He was bigger. Probably stronger.

My only advantage was that this was my home. My turf. He might have cased the place, but I doubted it. It didn't matter. The edge it gave me was small. There was a common four-over-four room floor plan to these colonial homes. This one was slightly different to make the hidden room possible, but other than that, it was a standard layout.

This man, whomever he was, was over four thousand years old. He would know his way around these homes.

He slashed at me with the sword. It missed my chin. Not by much. I could feel the wind as the blade rushed passed.

I had to be careful. I needed to keep myself between the man and the hallway. What were they doing? I hadn't heard the back door. I didn't want Phoebe or Daniel getting hurt. I also didn't want the man using them against me.

I glanced around the room for something, anything I could use to defend myself. If I could just get to the bat, I would have a proper weapon.

He swung at me again. The blade came even closer this time. He was playing with me, letting me know he could hurt me at any time. As he gave a halfhearted third swing, I picked up the floor lamp next to me, ripped the plug from the wall, tore off the shade and held the brushed nickel pipe out in from of me. I swung it around, guarding against the katana. He seemed pleased that I had decided to put up a fight. He charged at me. I flipped the lamp and using the round, flat base, rammed it into his chest. The force of the blow halted him for a beat. I may have knocked the wind out of him slightly. But not for long.

He was stronger than he looked. And he looked powerful.

He knew how to use the katana. He came at me and I deflected the attack as best I could with the lamp.

It was obvious he didn't want to kill me. He wanted me alive.

"I know what you're thinking," he said. "And you are right, I do not want to kill you. But alive does not necessarily mean unharmed." As he said the last word, he thrust the sword at me and this time he was more serious about it.

When I say serious, I mean his effort was more earnest, more determined. Because if you looked at his face, you would see he was enjoying this.

He rounded on me and with a good, strong swing of the blade, he sliced the floor lamp in half. The impact caused the plug and cord to whip up and hit me in the face, catching the corner of my eye. It stung.

The pain drove me to lash out. I wrapped the cord around the katana, pulling the blade to the side. For an instant, I was able to get close enough to drive my knee into his midsection. I might not have caught him directly in the groin, but I hit something. He stepped back, then circled around the couch, spending the moment to untangle the sword from the wiring. He lashed at me with the cord.

It may not sound warrior-like or the culmination of centuries of training in deadly combat skills, but I picked up several pillows off the couch and threw them at him.

He was startled. Then he laughed.

This gave me just enough time to make a move for the bat. I kicked the sofa and knocked the coffee table into his shins. He didn't let out a sound, not a peep, but I could tell from the creases at the corner of his eyes that what I did hurt him.

I reached out with my leg and flicked the bat into the air with my toe.

I grabbed it.

I didn't pull the sword out right away. Keep it a mystery a little longer. I didn't want him to know just yet what I really had in my hands.

Instead, I swung the bat at him, wildly.

I hit mostly air. But I glanced off his shoulder twice.

This was a man who could take a heavy pounding. He had already endured several powerful shots from me. Okay, maybe not the pillows. But the lamp. My knee to his eggs.

It was going to take a direct hit.

There is a way to block a blow from a bat or baton. The trick is keeping your arm parallel to the barrel of the weapon. If you've ever watched a relay race at a track meet, seen how a runner waits with his arm back for the previous runner to pass the baton by slapping it into their open palm, you have some idea of how to defend against a bat.

A club, a bat, or stick is most deadly when it strikes its target at a ninety degree angle. When it hits perpendicular.

No matter how good this man was, if I could get one shot at him, just one good slug, this bat would do some damage.

I only had to make sure that I did not swing the Louisville Slugger too wildly. If I did that and whiffed, if I didn't connect with anything, I'd throw myself off balance.

Do that and you're defenseless, out of position, usually with your back to your opponent.

We did not speak. We didn't engage in any clever banter.

There was no need for discussion.

He wanted to take me. I didn't want to go.

Every once in a while there was a tiny "yes" or a barely audible "very nice" that escaped from his lips.

I took another swing at him. As I figured he would, he used his forearms to deflect the attack. I was careful to make sure he couldn't grab the bat. I altered the speed and angle of my swings. If he seized the bat, he might disarm me or, at least, reveal too soon what was inside.

Showing superior ambidextrous ability, he fought with his left and right hands independently. This wasn't merely him using both arms at once. He was aggressively defending against the bat and attacking with the sword in a complicated, discrete way.

The blade of the katana sliced at me. He meant to end this fight. I caught the blade with the bat and knocked it aside. Force against force. I was going to lose that battle. He was much stronger, using one arm while I had both hands on the bat handle to keep his sword down. It wasn't enough. I took one hand and grab the ricasso—the dull section of blade just above the hilt—to sustain the hold. He came face-to-face with me, pressing in on me. And then, with his free hand, he slapped me across the face.

Not punched. Slapped.

Like I was a disobedient child.

He glared at me. "I said, I want you to come...peacefully."

We held that pose for five, maybe ten seconds. I could feel his breath on my face. It was hot and smelled vaguely of garlic, olives and fish. He did not sneer at me. He never took his eyes off my eyes. I blinked a dozen times before he blinked once.

After pushing me away, he increased the speed of his attack. The sword disappeared in a blur.

I am a fair swordsman. I don't fence very often because the weight of the weapons used in the sport—even the heaviest, the épée—were delicate and less taxing than the burden and unwieldiness of an actual battle sword.

Okay, I'll admit, I'm better than fair. But this man was obviously more skilled. And not just with the blade, but in hand-to-hand combat and strategy.

I knew then, it would be impossible for me to defeat him.

Once I accepted that, I understood what I had to do.

I swung the bat at him again, only this time I telegraphed my actions. He twisted his arm and grabbed the entire barrel just like the runner's baton. Exactly as I wanted him to. Using a burst of strength more powerful than anything I had gone up against before, he ripped the bat out of my hands. The barrel went flying and smashed through the front window, sending shards of glass everywhere.

He smiled.

Until he looked down and saw the slender blade left in my hand.

He had overextended himself, left himself open. Not completely. He knew I would try to defend myself by some other means, but he assumed he had disarmed me. That he had taken away my most lethal available weapon. Before he could blink, I shoved the blade at his throat, sending the tip straight toward the hollow under his Adam's apple, toward a pendant with a symbol I had never seen before, at least not consciously, but something that looked oddly familiar.

Despite being caught with his defenses down, he responded more quickly than my attack. He deftly raised the hilt of his sword just enough that the edge struck the cross-guard. Instead of piercing his esophagus, the sword point slipped across his cheek.

There wasn't much blood. It was more of a scratch than anything. It mirrored the deeper scar on his right cheek.

That's when he hit me again with his fist. This time it was a close-fisted punch.

I saw stars.

I don't know what it's like to get hit by a heavyweight boxer in their prime without gloves, but I'm pretty sure it felt kind of like this.

I had made him angry and this distracted him more than the surprise of my sword.

In that instant, Phoebe appeared in the front hall and ran at him. She flung a decorative pewter plate she must have grabbed from the eighteenth century breakfront in the dining room. The heavy metal disk nearly took my head off. It struck him right above the ear. I pushed him, using my legs to drive him back.

Daniel appeared from around the corner and opened the door to the cellar. With a final shove, the man tumbled backwards down the stairs. He grabbed at the railings and kept himself from smashing his head against the sharp edges of the steps and the concrete at the bottom.

We only had a few seconds.

I slammed the door to the cellar.

I turned to Daniel and Phoebe. "Get out of here now!"

Daniel sprinted out first. If there had been a line of pregnant women pushing infants in baby carriages in front of him, he would've bowled them all over without hesitation.

Phoebe looked at me. "What about you?"

I glanced around. I had the umbrella. I could use it if I had to.

I turned to her. "Get out of here. Now!" I grabbed the umbrella. "Now!"

She wanted to say something. I don't know what. Perhaps its the nature of all teenagers, their need to defy orders, any orders, even those commands that will save their lives. Finally, she turned and ran outside.

The house was suddenly quiet.

I could hear the man getting to his feet. I backed away from the cellar door. I didn't want to be in its path when he forced it open. And he would. He wasn't going to remain down there for long. Was there anything in the cellar he could use? I tried to picture it. I hadn't been down there in a while. I'm sure there was something.

It didn't matter. I would be ready for him. As ready as I could be.

I positioned myself slightly to the side of the door. I had to keep him pinned on the stairs. He would have less room to fight. Behind me, the front door was open. I could have turned and run, but he had found me. He had cut through the layered veil of my secrecy as if it had been tissue paper.

I wanted, I needed to know why he had expended so much effort to come for me. He had a plan. A plan that included my father rescuing me.

"Alexander!" the man with the scar called out to me.

He was angry, but I could still hear the smile. As if he was wiping blood from his lips and enjoying the taste of it.

I heard a disturbance outside. Screeching tires. Someone yelling.

"Who are you?" I asked.

From behind the door, I heard that incredible laugh again. Followed by the meaty part of his fist pounding against the wall, not with rage, but with pleasure. "You really don't know, do you?" he said.

For some reason his words annoyed me. I guess it tapped into that same feeling I had when Braeden started telling me things about my father I didn't know.

There is no emotion more powerful and lasting than embarrassment. And there is nothing more embarrassing than not being let in on a joke.

I had been kept in the dark. My pride was hurt.

The door flew open, having been kicked with a heavy boot. It smashed into the wall after coming off its hinges.

He stood on the top step and stared at me standing there with nothing to defend myself but an umbrella. It wasn't even open.

"Really?" he said.

"It's deadly enough. You underestimated me once before. I wouldn't do it again."

I was ready to jab him with the tip if I needed to. There was a small button that released the poison. If I tapped it briefly, it might only incapacitate him. But there was a good chance the man would die.

I didn't want that. For a lot of reasons. He was like me for one. And a dead man in my home would bring too many questions.

But I would kill him if I had to.

He smiled again, his head turned noticeably to the left so that his right eye bore into me more than the other.

He held out his hand. I thought he was offering it for me to shake. Honor or no, I wasn't going to take it. But as he opened his palm, my heart skipped. In it was the poison tip of the umbrella. I hadn't noticed it was missing.

Now, I really was just holding an umbrella as a weapon.

Talk about embarrassing.

I should've turned and run when I had the chance.

He charged at me and I did the only thing I could do. I opened the umbrella. Believe it or not, the awkwardness of it caused him to grope for me, blindly.

There was a crash. Louder than his kicking the door off its hinges. This time everything became hazy. Noise and dust and dirt filled the air. There was commotion all around me. Debris was everywhere. Dazed, I glanced around. The front porch had been destroyed, and I was staring at a pair of brake lights.

Phoebe had backed a car into the front porch, crashing through the wooden steps and into my home.

"Alexander?" she said, her voice steady.

I didn't stop to think. I jumped onto the trunk and slid down the passenger side. I clawed at the door handle and pulled it open, then leaped into the front seat. I wasn't all the way in when Phoebe hit the gas and the car lurched forward, sending a blast of two hundred fifty-year-old wood into my living room. The flying splinters kept the man from coming after us. But we were stuck. We had gone only ten feet.

"Put it in reverse," I screamed.

"What?"

"Put it in reverse. And floor it!"

Phoebe jammed the transmission in reverse and slammed her foot on the gas pedal. The car jerked backwards. I could hear the high-pitched whine of the spinning wheels, smell the acrid odor of burning rubber as the friction caused the tires to smoke.

"Now, throw it in drive."

She popped it in gear and stepped on the gas. The rear wheels spun, spitting out debris. The car rocked forward and jumped over the remnants of my front porch, sending grass flying. The tires squealed as they hit the pavement.

I was not going to get my cleaning deposit back.

It was at least a minute or two before any of us could speak. Daniel looked like he'd seen a ghost: his own.

After carefully rubbing away the dust and fragments of wood from around my eyes, I blinked and looked around.

"Whose car is this?"

"I don't know."

I stared at her.

Daniel blurted out, "She stole it! The guy was running into the little store across the street, probably for some milk for his kids so they could eat cereal in the morning, and she just stole it. We are living Grand Theft Auto!"

I nodded. "Huh." I was impressed.

She let out a sigh, all the tension leaving her, and she suddenly looked as if we were out for a leisurely drive. "Where are we going?"

"NewYorksafehousegottagettothesafehouseinNewYork," Daniel said this as if the entire sentence were one word.

"We're not going to New York," I told him.

"But that's where the safe house is. I'm not feeling very safe at the moment. I could really use a safe house. Even a safe condo. A safe apartment. I'd even take a nice, safe prison cell right now."

"The place in Manhattan is just one option."

"You have more than one safe house?"

I turned to Phoebe. "Boston."

\- TEN -

If He'd Only Seen The Sawdust, He'd Be Alive Today

The drive up to Boston was not pleasant. Oh, the foliage was beautiful. The little towns we passed through were charming and picturesque. The cute little cafe we ate in served up delicious food. We found some UMASS sweat pants at a gas station to replace the oversized ones I had brought, so Phoebe could change out of her cheerleading outfit. We avoided the constant road construction that usually accompanies a trip across Massachusetts. And as evening came, the sunset was simply stunning. No, the reason the trip was unpleasant was because Daniel peppered me with questions the entire way. Even if I had wanted to tell them, which I didn't, I wouldn't know how to begin or explain it so they wouldn't think I was straightjacket, padded-wall crazy.

At least, it was easy to ignore Daniel. It's not that the questions weren't annoying. They were. It's not that his interrogation wasn't constant. It was. I could disregard his queries, because the questions were pointless and absurd.

They weren't even questions. They were statements. Each one sounding more ridiculous than the last.

"Okay, so you're in the mob..."

"Maybe you're a gunrunner..."

"You're like a merchant of death or something..."

"You're a smuggler who ran off with whatever you were smuggling..."

"You're a criminal mastermind who kidnapped a mythical creature for ransom..."

"You're an international spy only pretending to be a high school student..."

There were a hundred others of these.

I stopped denying them after a dozen or so. I was starting to cut my tongue on my teeth from saying, "No. No. No. No."

Phoebe's scrutiny, on the other hand, was not as easy to dismiss.

About an hour into the drive, after having been quiet since we stopped to eat, she said, "The baseball." And nothing else for a moment. You could tell she was thinking. Her mind tossing the thoughts around. "It said, 'To Alexander.'"

I didn't respond.

"Babe Ruth," she added with emphasis. She kept her focus on the road, but I could feel her watching me out of the corner of her eye.

"That's why I like it," I said after a long moment.

She couldn't grasp the truth, I knew that. But she sensed something wasn't right. While Daniel was going off the deep end trying to figure out what alien planet I came from, Phoebe was slowly constructing a framework of understanding, building a fence around the tidbits of information and facts she had gathered. And with each passing hour, each new thought that came to her, she was getting closer to completing that enclosure and corralling the truth.

"You're really good at so many different things. I can understand being amazing at lacrosse or...playing the piano. Or mastering karate or whatever you did in the woods." She waited. I said nothing. "But you don't even have a piano."

"Cause he doesn't play the piano," Daniel said, groggily from the back seat. His constant questions had slowed as the food hit his system and made him sleepy.

"He plays," she said.

"No, he doesn't."

"Yes, he does," she said, glancing at Daniel in the rear view mirror. She turned for the first time to look at me. "I heard you. Last year, after school. There was this beautiful music coming from down the hall. I peeked in the window. You were playing with your eyes closed. I stood there listening for at least twenty minutes. You didn't have any music in front of you. I don't know what it was, was it Beethoven?"

"Chopin."

"It was mesmerizing. You were sitting there in your grass-stained lacrosse uniform, playing this incredibly intricate, passionate music. You still had your muddy cleats on."

She looked at me, her eyes begging to understand. She wanted to know. She needed to know. Was it me? Or just my secret?

"My father forced me to take years of lessons when I was younger."

Which was true. Hundreds of years of lessons.

Phoebe tilted her head. "But...like I said, you don't have a piano at your house. How could you play something that complicated that well—without sheet music—and not practice every day?"

She was quiet. The only noises were the engine, the wind, and the tires on the road.

"There's something you don't want people to know about. And it's not just what's in that room."

"And what about all that money and gold in the safe?" Daniel said.

Phoebe shook her head. "The gold. The money. The ability to play like a classical musician. Those aren't what he's hiding. They're all symptoms of whatever it is."

The fence was about to be finished.

Daniel started up again with his theories.

"You're the last of your race and your enemies are trying to kill you..."

"You're a vampire and you're in love with a mortal girl..."

"You're in witness protection..."

I couldn't figure out how my using nunchucks and ancient swords could lead Daniel to conclude my identity had to be changed for my safety.

"Daniel, will you shut up! You're making me want to crash this car into a tree!" Phoebe composed herself. "Whatever it is you're hiding, I did things I'm going to get in a lot of trouble for. I think I deserve to know the truth."

"So do I," Daniel chimed in from the back.

I put my finger to my temple. My head was throbbing. More from the conversation of the last few minutes than the slug to the head the scar-faced man had given me.

We finally reached the city limits of Boston. I know it was stupid, but I let out a sigh of relief as I saw the sign: Entering Boston, Est. 1630.

There were secure places we could go in the city, including a brownstone my father kept in Back Bay, a tightly packed neighborhood of row houses that edged the river. It took me a while to warm up to the place because the land underneath it had once been tidal flats that were submerged and exposed twice a day with the tide. The shallow shore was part of a Boston I used to know. A Boston surrounded by water. A Boston that no longer existed. Beginning in the 1860s, the land was slowly filled in. Houses were constructed as lots gradually became available, so that traveling west, house by house, block by block, you could clearly see the evolution of architectural tastes and styles from the 1860s through the early 1900s.

The house in Back Bay is where we would go. It was not far, less than a mile away. My father would have been there recently. Maybe there would be a clue to where he was.

"Telling you would put you in too much danger," I said.

"We already seem to be in danger!"

"That was nothing compared to the danger you'd be in if I told you."

As if on cue, as we approached the intersection, the lights in every direction turned green all at once. My eyes saw it, but it took an instant for my mind to catch up.

By then, it was too late.

Our car was T-boned by a vehicle speeding through the cross street.

It happened so fast. I could sense the object closing on us from the right in my peripheral vision. But I didn't "see" it.

The vehicle impacted our car along the center pillar separating the front window from the rear. This may have been what saved our lives. Glass shattered against the curtains of inflating airbags, which protected us from the flying shards.

I was disoriented by the loud pop that preceded the deploying airbags.

Then...

Everything went silent.

Just a ringing in my ears.

And...and the clicking of something electrical in the car. Perhaps it was the ignition trying to engage. I heard a hiss coming from my right and saw steam rising out of the radiator of the other car.

My heart was racing. I tried to pull myself together.

"Are you all right," I asked Phoebe.

"Yes," she said. "But I can't start the car."

I put my hand on hers and pulled it away from the key.

"It's okay." I nodded calmly to her. "Daniel?"

I heard cursing come from the back seat, and I knew he was alive and well enough to complain.

"We have to get out of the car." I grabbed my backpack.

Phoebe was gripping the steering wheel. An airbag had blasted from the middle and was hanging like a shower cap. Two shower curtains hung from the dashboard.

"Right. We have to get out of the car," Phoebe repeated. "We should wait for the police." She thought about it. "No, we can't wait for the police. I stole a car. I stole a car, Alexander!"

"Yes, you did."

"Why did I steal a car?"

"I can't get out." Daniel was trying to open the back door. The passenger side doors were useless, but the impact had jammed even the driver side.

The radiator steam was making it hard to see.

No, it wasn't steam. It was smoke coming from somewhere. The back seat maybe. I couldn't see any flames, at least not inside the car, not yet.

Daniel started to panic. He was kicking at the door, trying to get it opened. We had maybe less than a minute to get out of the car. I wasn't worried the vehicle was going to explode, although, I guess I should have been, seeing as that's exactly what happened. I was concerned about the smoke itself. It could kill us quickly. Simple asphyxiation.

Even worse, the interior contained plastic and other materials that created toxic particles when burned. Once in our lungs, they would irritate the delicate lining, causing swelling and airway collapse. Some molecules could disable the cell's ability to absorb oxygen. These effects could develop hours and days later.

We could survive the flames and still not survive the fire.

"Cover your mouth, breathe through your clothes," I said, coughing through the last few words.

I used my backpack to clear away the glass fragments on my window. I ripped out one of the deflated airbags and laid it across the opening, just in case there were any sharp edges. I started to see flames coming up from the floor. I pushed myself out, sliding onto the hood of the other vehicle. I helped Phoebe out of the car next. Then she and I grabbed Daniel by the shirt and pulled him through the window just as the car was engulfed in flames. He was still kicking. I thought maybe he was in shock, still trying to kick at the door, but it was because the soles of his shoes were smoking.

I told them, "Get to the middle. I'll meet you there." I pointed toward the wide, tree-lined mall between the two directions of Commonwealth Avenue.

"Aren't you coming?"

I motioned with my head. "The driver of the other car."

Daniel started off toward the trees, but Phoebe wasn't moving.

"I'm not leaving you."

"You need to go."

She refused to move.

"Get some help!" I said, roaring in frustration as I turned back to the scene.

The fire was spreading to the other car. I tugged on the driver side door. It was sticking, but I could feel it move. When it finally broke free, I was sent crashing to the ground.

I got up and did a visual check of the woman. She was in her forties and overweight.

"Are you injured?" I said.

She was staring at the flames like they were a television show. She turned slowly toward me. When she saw who I was, she started yelling. "You ran the red light! I had the green."

I glanced up at the signal lights. They were all green. Every direction.

There was a riddle that a jester in the court of Queen Elizabeth once told me. The only clue was this: If he had only seen the sawdust, he'd be alive today.

I could ask yes or no questions. If I asked anything that demanded an answer other than yes or no, or if I guessed incorrectly, the jester would repeat, "If he had only seen the sawdust, he'd be alive today." It was frustrating how many times I heard that sentence. Always the same phrasing, but the word he emphasized would change. Alive. Seen. Sawdust.

I thought about giving up. At one point, I even begged him to tell me the answer. The jester just looked at me and said, "If he had only seen the sawdust, he'd be alive today." I wanted to strangle him. It took me days to figure out. Hundreds of questions to narrowed it down. And then...as if a bolt of lightning had struck, it hit me. When I finally solved the riddle, I screamed, I was so elated and proud, like I had cured polio or invented fire.

The "he" in the riddle was a dwarf. And not just any dwarf, but the smallest man in the kingdom. As such, he was given a title, money, and servants by the King. The dwarf was only nineteen, but his legs were not well formed, and he needed a cane to walk.

There was another man in the kingdom—less than an inch taller—who because of that minute difference lived a wretched life. Poor. Hungry. Persecuted. It was this man who began to whittle away at the shorter man's cane, sanding fractions of an inch off the bottom each week.

The shorter man became alarmed, thinking he was getting taller. If he grew any more, he would lose his title and his life of ease. The other man would gain the favor of the King and all the comforts he had enjoyed.

The King, you see, had no use for the second smallest man in the land.

So the dwarf went to an apothecary, asking for help. The apothecary gave him an array of potions. Poisons, really. Things to make him stop growing. He drank the foul liquids every night. They made him sick. They made him vomit. But they didn't prevent his increase in height. Of course, he wasn't growing. The second shortest man was cutting down his cane week after week. The dwarf went back to the apothecary and asked him to make potions that were more powerful. The apothecary warned the dwarf of the danger, but the diminutive man would not back down. The apothecary finally gave in and prepared the stronger potions.

The shortest man in the kingdom took the poison that would take his own life. Willingly. Knowingly. But...

If he had only seen the sawdust, he'd be alive today.

I tried telling Daniel the riddle, but he gave up after ten minutes. I told him the story of how amazing it was to finally figure it out, the satisfaction I felt, leaving out the fact that it had been hundreds of years ago, in a kingdom that didn't exist anymore. And he just looked at me. "You spent several days, asked hundreds of questions, just to figure out that one midget was trying to off another midget?"

"You know, before television, before people had game consoles, and smart phones, people used to actually use their brains."

"Yeah, sounds like a nightmare."

The way the jester told me the details made me wonder if it was more than just a riddle, that perhaps there had been some truth to the story.

It also made me realize that the smallest details can have serious consequences.

If I had only seen the lights turn green and acted immediately, we might have avoided the accident. Hyper-vigilance is taxing on the body, but I would need to be much more attentive if we were going to make it out of the country safely.

"Everybody had the green," I said to the woman.

"Everybody can't have the green!" she shouted. "If everybody had the green there would be chaos. Anarchy. People would be getting into accidents."

Sawdust.

I looked around. People were approaching, a few from every direction.

"You need to get out of the car now, ma'am."

I had a penlight in my pocket and shined it into her eyes. Her pupils reacted slowly.

As people arrived at the scene, I tensed. I wanted to run. My survival instinct kicking in. Some seemed to be just watching. A few were taking pictures, probably video. I assumed these images were getting posted to the Internet. Thankfully, most were asking if we needed help. I was furtively gazing at every face, looking for an enemy in the eyes of these strangers.

Phoebe found one man who was big and brawny. He looked like he was in charge of people, maybe a foreman at a construction site. He was already giving commands.

"What can I do?" he asked.

"We have to get her out of the car. We don't have much time before the fire's going to engulf it."

"I'll get some of these people to help move her."

I glanced inside the car again. The woman was more than a little overweight. The man saw it, too. "We'll need something to put her on."

"I've got a dolly on my truck."

I nodded.

He immediately started enlisting several people, gesturing to them.

I went back to the woman.

"Alexander...the fire..." Phoebe was staring at the flames moving across the hood.

I didn't think there was anything wrong with the woman, other than she was dazed. She may have hit her head. You're not supposed to move people after an accident, but I didn't have any choice. The flames were getting worse. For a moment, I forgot about my own concerns and focused on getting the woman out.

It was difficult to get at the seatbelt release. I had to reach around her belly.

"What are you doing? Don't touch me."

"I have to get you out of the vehicle, okay?"

"It is not okay!"

She was fighting me. I pulled out a butterfly knife and flicked it open.

She screamed. "Help! Knife! He's trying to kill me!"

"He's trying to help you," Phoebe yelled.

I used the knife to cut through the tightly woven nylon of the restraint. Once she was free of the seatbelt, I flipped the knife closed and dragged her from the car.

I could see the flames getting closer, burning hotter.

The foreman and several men pushed the dolly under the woman. Other bystanders helped us move her away from the growing heat of the blaze.

We were not ten feet away when both cars erupted into a huge fireball. A second later, the stolen vehicle exploded. Everyone hit the deck.

I pushed Phoebe to the ground behind a truck as the mushroom of fire rose into the air. The woman was face up, and I covered her as best I could to protect her. I felt small pieces of hot debris hit my back. I shook them off before they burned through my clothes.

When I thought it was safe, I peered through the smoke and dust. There was nothing of the car we had been riding in but fragments of red-hot, twisted metal.

I glanced the other way and saw Phoebe staring at me from under the truck. My ears were ringing. I mouthed, Are you okay?

She nodded that she was.

More people got out of their cars. Others hearing the blast peeked through apartment windows to view the scene.

I got up off the woman and saw that her foot and ankle were twisted badly. The force of the collision had pushed the brake or gas pedal back, fracturing her leg—the tibia—right above the medial malleolus, the bony hump on the inside of the ankle. She was bleeding. I saw several faded political yard signs on the small front lawn of the corner house.

As I headed for the signs, I noticed several traffic surveillance cameras. I did my best to keep my face turned away. I rubbed my forehead, my cheeks. Rubbed my eyes. It was perfectly normal to be doing these things, I had just been in an accident. And my head did hurt. And my eyes were filled with soot. But mostly, I was screening the cameras to make it harder to get a clear shot of my face.

I pulled one of the signs out of the ground, ripping the stakes away from the cardboard. I kept the sign near my face as I went back to the woman.

"You're going to be okay," Phoebe said as the woman screamed in pain.

I tore some fabric off the bottom of my shirt. Another woman saw what I was doing and she made strips out a silk Hermes scarf that had to be worth at least $500.

"Thanks," I said.

There were a couple of men that caught my eye. I don't know what it was about them, but the sight of them triggered something inside of me.

I held the flat wooden stakes on either side of the injured woman's lower leg with my feet. I could just as easily use them as weapons if I had to. When I straightened the woman's ankle, she screamed, then passed out. I slipped the strips of fabric under her and tied each one with a double overhand knot. I took the widest piece of fabric, wrapped it twice and tied it off to keep pressure on the wound.

Even thought I didn't need it, I slipped the butterfly knife from my pocket and used it to trim the ends of the fabric. I wanted to have it out and available to use without seeming threatened or threatening.

"The splint should stabilize the leg, slow the bleeding. Can you make sure that she's okay?" I asked the foreman. "We have to go check on our friend. He's disoriented and dazed and babbling nonsense."

"Isn't he always like that?" Phoebe whispered under her breath.

I shot her a hard look.

"Sure," the man said. "I called it in. Paramedics should be here soon." He looked at me strangely. Like he was concerned for me. Was I cut? Bleeding? "You okay?" he asked.

"Going on adrenaline. I don't feel a thing."

I could hear the sirens. We had to be as far away from here as we could before they got here.

"Just take care of her. Make sure they know that leg is broken before they move her."

He nodded.

I went over to Phoebe. She was trembling. Now that the woman was being taken care of, she stood there, staring at the remnants of the two cars, and the enormity of it could no longer be ignored.

"We were inside that car."

"Yes," I said. "But we got out."

Standing beside her, I instinctively wrapped my arms around Phoebe, and she relaxed her shoulder into my chest. It was the need for human contact, for comfort in a moment of peril. I felt her breath, warm against my neck, and I closed my eyes. It's not like I've never brushed up against a girl in the last century. There have been hundreds of dances. Proms, sock hops, fancy balls. Thousands of notes passed back and forth between girls, which often ended with one of them telling me that the other one liked me. But it never felt like this. Never felt like time just stopped. The warmth of her body against mine. The smell of her hair. How could it still smell so good after all we've been through? I was lost in the embrace, breathing her in. I had started out trying to comfort her. But it became more than that. For me, at least.

Nobody understands chemistry. Not even someone with a thousand years to think about it. That spark of attraction, that feeling that runs through your body, it is a chemical reaction. And true chemistry is when that first touch feels the same—or even better—than the thousandth.

I would never get to that thousandth time with Phoebe. Maybe not with anyone.

I wanted to tell her how I felt. The words were forming on my lips when she spoke into my chest.

"My parents are probably freaking out right now. And I can only imagine how angry Craig is going to be."

I tensed up. And Phoebe noticed.

"I didn't mean—"

"It's okay," I said.

I could understand how Phoebe misunderstood, but I didn't flinch because of what she said about Craig. It was that her words made me open my eyes, and I realized in that moment that I wasn't paying attention to our surroundings. We were vulnerable. I couldn't relax until we were someplace safe, and even then, I wasn't sure if I could let my guard down. Not yet. If my house hadn't been safe, I wasn't not sure if anyplace would be.

"Let's find Daniel."

I grabbed Phoebe's hand.

I stumbled over one of the two men I had been worried about. He was on the ground, unconscious.

Luckily, I had a good grip on her arm because Phoebe saved me from falling flat on my face. "Thanks," I said.

I was about to slip into the crowd, when I saw at least a dozen people with their phones out, taking pictures. I walked up to one of them who was trying to get a close up of the woman on the ground, and I slapped the phone out of his hands.

"Hey!" he said.

"Did you call 911?" I asked.

He didn't answer me.

"I didn't think so. Post this!" I said as I crushed his phone with my foot.

I walked away.

It might've been stupid to do that. It might have only made it more likely he'd remember me when the police came and started asking questions. But I didn't care. He was more focused on his phone, lying in pieces on the pavement, than my face.

We found Daniel at the edge of the greenway in the middle of Commonwealth.

"You guys just leave me here? By myself? I'm totally having a breakdown and what are you two doing—"

"Saving someone's life," Phoebe said. She turned to me and saw something in my eyes. "Are you okay?"

Why was everyone asking me that? Did I have a piece of sheet metal sticking out of my forehead? I put my hand to my cheek, ran it through my hair. It came back dirty and smudged, but there was no blood.

It was just the look in my eyes that worried everyone.

Maybe it was anger. Maybe it was fear. I've been trained to fight, to survive, to play an orchestra full of instruments, treat battle wounds, but I've never had one of my own kind after me.

I wasn't really okay, but I nodded, halfheartedly. "Let's get out of here."

We left the scene.

Daniel kept glancing back and saying, "Oh, man," over and over.

I looked back only once. The signal lights on every corner were still all green. Just this one intersection. I had that feeling in my chest and in my gut that this was not some random act, some error in the system.

I faced forward, put my head down and tried not to look like we were in a hurry.

"You don't think that was a coincidence," Phoebe said.

I didn't say anything.

"Like the lights at the stadium," she added.

Daniel was a step ahead of us. I didn't think he was listening.

"You think somebody hacked into the traffic light controls and did that on purpose?" he asked. "C'mon! Glitches happen all the time. It's not like they've got state-of-the-art laptops running these things. They're like decades old technology."

This coming from the guy who had been spouting conspiracy theories the last hundred and fifty miles. "You're a cyborg coming back from the future..." Now he was the sane one?

"You have to admit it's a little strange we just happened to be driving through that intersection at the moment that glitch happened," said Phoebe, raising an eyebrow. "A second later, we'd have been through. A few seconds earlier, and other cars would have crashed, and we'd have stopped to avoid the danger."

Daniel scrunched up his face while he shook his head. "That would mean coordination on a massive scale."

"Exactly," I said.

That made him swallow hard.

"It's the sawdust."

"What?" Phoebe said.

Daniel turned around and started walking backwards. "Again with that stupid riddle about the midget?"

"Dwarf."

"Aren't they called 'little people?'" Phoebe asked.

"Whatever!" Daniel and I said at the same time.

"All I'm saying is, if he'd only seen the sawdust, he'd be alive today," I said.

Phoebe stopped. "What are you two talking about?"

I wasn't absolutely convinced we had been targeted. Daniel was right. Strange things happen. People are too quick to tie them up in a neat bow and say, "I'm cursed," or "I didn't forward that chain letter email to eight friends and now look what happened." Maybe I was letting the struggles of the last few hours get to me.

I was tired.

The constant dumping of adrenaline into my system was taking its toll. Just playing lacrosse got me pumped up, then how close the game was and getting hit at the end. My encounter with Braeden at the hospital, the stadium lights falling at the football game, the attack in the woods, fighting off ten men, the scar-faced man walking into my house, having to fight my way out of my own home to get away, and then being slammed by a speeding car, pulling my friends and the other driver out of the cars seconds before they exploded. My body had burned itself out. I was still running on adrenaline. But there's a point where you physically shut down. Could this be paranoia brought on by fatigue? Perhaps. But sometimes, as William S. Burroughs once said, "Paranoia's just having all the facts."

"I think we should assume anything is possible."

"What's the 'sawdust' in this scenario," asked Daniel.

"Stadium lights falling. A guy showing up to the house that even my father doesn't know about. Signal lights turning green in all directions."

Daniel thought about it for a moment.

"The stadium, weird. People finding you, okay, not good. But controlling signal lights? That's a whole different level of scary. If you have people after you that can do that..." Daniel stopped walking. "We might as well just lay down right now." To prove his point. He laid down on the grass in the middle of the mall. "We're dead."

"Get up!"

"What for? If they can hack a street light at the exact moment we're passing through it, what kind of chance do we have?"

"Not much with you lying on the ground."

"How far is this house of yours?" Phoebe asked. "I think we should get inside."

Phoebe wasn't just worried about our safety. I could tell she was exhausted.

I was tired as well, but I couldn't risk letting Phoebe or Daniel know that. I breathed in, filling my chest. The cold air pierced my lungs, the pain doing what I had hoped it would do. Infuse me. Stimulate me. There'd been many instances in the past when I had to draw upon my reserves. My monthly journeys into the woods were part of keeping that skill honed and ready. Hunger. Cold. Fatigue. They can sap your strength. Dull your senses. Slow your mind. Fear is a great motivator. On the battlefield it can keep you awake, and keep you alive. The problems begin when the body stops. Rest is for the weary. It's also for the dead. Rest in peace. Because at war, once a drained, worn out body relaxes, all too often, it shuts down.

Adrenaline jolted me, flooding a hot rush through my core as I caught a glimpse of the man with the scar. Immediately I realized he was someone else. Just a man heading home. Still, my heart raced and my muscles tensed as he passed. The man with the scar who came into my house, who seemed to know everything about me, he unnerved me. It wasn't just because he had held a sword to my throat, it was his magnetism, his confidence, his force of being that demanded respect and fealty. I've met kings and I've met presidents, and even among them, very few had a presence equal to the man with the scar.

Rare is the person—my father being one—that commanded such a sense of power.

I have fought for myself, protected myself, taken care of myself for over five hundred years, but I knew I needed my father's help if a man like this was after me.

"I agree," I said. "We should get off the streets as quickly as we can."

I spun around, trying to get my bearings. We were on Commonwealth Avenue close to the restaurants and shops on Newbury Street. About three short blocks from my father's house. Eight long blocks away from Boston Common.

The brownstone was close. Two minutes away at most. Warmth. Rest. Safety. I pushed the thought of rest out of my mind.

"C'mon, it's this way."

Phoebe followed immediately. We didn't bother to wait for Daniel who was still on the ground. Either he would come or he wouldn't.

He caught up with us about half a block later.

"You were just going to leave me there?"

Both Phoebe and I answered in unison. "Yes!"

We got off of Commonwealth. It was less conspicuous to make our way down the side streets. We were close to the brownstone now.

I was conflicted. The man in my house had found me once. And if he had something to do with the lights, then he found me twice. I had to assume he knew where we were. Maybe he knew everything.

I could evade the police. Slip from one identity to another easily. Keep myself hidden from the government. Stay off the grid. Remain anonymous. But this was beyond my abilities. I was in no way prepared for eluding someone who had all my skills and an additional three thousand years of practice, training, and resources.

It was a block later that I realized someone was following us. I couldn't make out who the figure was, but I knew that it wasn't the man with the scar, or any of the attackers from the woods. No, the person following us was much smaller. They could be young, maybe even a girl. The person wore a black hoodie that obscured their face.

"C'mon," I said, quickening the pace.

"What is it?"

"Probably nothing."

Daniel looked around. "When has it been nothing so far today?"

The figure passed under a street lamp, but the hood cast a shadow so that there was nothing but blackness where a face should be. It reminded me of the Angel of Death, and even though my rational mind knew it wasn't, I still found it unnerving.

What is it about us that made us fear the unknown?

The safe house was just around the corner.

The person's gait was unsteady. Awkward. In my mind, I began to manipulate what I had seen, reenvisioning the mechanics of the walk to understand what might be causing it. Was it a chronic state, an injury, or was there something else affecting the stranger's walk? The less optimistic side of me figured the person was hiding a weapon—probably a shotgun. The optimistic side figured it was just a handgun.

We reached the next intersection. My father's house was thirty seconds away if we sprinted. I could see it, half a block to the left. I started to step in the crosswalk when I saw someone on the steps of a house across the street from my father's. They couldn't know about this place, could they? I didn't think it was possible, but I watched the man suck on his cigarette, the tip glowing orange as he leaned against the iron railing, his foot on the stone half-wall. Nobody smoked like that here. They'd take a walk, or smoke on the roof or the back porch. Not on the steps. Not in this neighborhood.

It was probably nothing, but given everything else that had gone one, I couldn't risk it. I quickly changed directions. "This way."

I hurried Daniel and Phoebe around the corner.

I knew this street, the houses, the places to hide. I glanced to the right, and saw a darkened alcove beside the staircase of one of the row houses. Before they could protest, I pushed Daniel and Phoebe into the cramped, shadowy space.

"What are you doing?"

I put my fingers to my lips. "Shhhhh."

We waited in silence. I heard the footsteps as the person turned the corner. The steps quickened for a moment, and then stopped. Whomever it was realized we couldn't have made it to the end of the block that quickly. We had to be somewhere close.

The footsteps started and stopped several times, but the person didn't seem to be approaching.

Then...

Nothing.

The night air was cold. Daniel was against a door that lead under the house. Phoebe was against him, and I was pressed against Phoebe. I could feel her body, her chest rising and falling with her breath. We were packed tightly together. Even more than the warmth, the closeness of Phoebe comforted me. I could feel her, and again, I fought hard to keep my attention focused on the street.

The door in the alcove creaked on its hinges at the weight of us against it, and I felt movement behind me.

"Oh, God. Daniel, what is that?"

"Shhhhhh!"

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was—it's just the adrenaline."

"Seriously?"

"It's not my fault."

"Stay still, and be quiet," I whispered.

I couldn't see it in the darkness, but I knew Daniel was turning red with embarrassment. Phoebe exhaled an annoyed sigh at me.

"Disgusting," she said under her breath.

I tried to calm my breathing, and listen.

After a moment, the footsteps started up again. Slowly, surely. At the sharp sound, a cold shiver ran through me. The clack-clack, clack-clack was uneven. It could be a shotgun causing the asymmetrical pattern. Or maybe a sword. Although, I doubted that. No one carrying a sword—at least, no one skilled at using one—wanted their blade at the unnatural angle hiding it in a pant leg would require. Besides looking ridiculous, it made unsheathing the weapon difficult and awkward. With a blade, quick reaction was paramount.

Not likely a sword then.

I ran through in my mind disarming a person with a long barrel gun, picturing different scenarios depending on the hand the stranger shot with. My advantage was surprise. The stranger knew we were here, but they didn't know where exactly. I knew by the sound precisely their location.

They were approaching from our left.

The footsteps began to speed up and grow louder, echoing in the quiet street. Closer. Louder. Closer. Louder. Just a few feet away now. As the small figure passed by the alcove, I launched out of the darkness and grabbed them.

Wrapped in my hands was nothingness. A ghost. Fabric without substance. I continued to hear the footsteps, but there was no one making them. No legs. No shoes. No body. I frantically rifled through the jacket. In the pocket of the hoodie, I felt something hard, rectangular. I hunted for the opening, found it, reached inside, and pulled out a smart phone. This was the source of the sound. The app showed the date and time stamp of the recording. It was made only moments ago.

Suddenly, I was struck from above.

Phoebe and Daniel screamed.

Someone had jumped off the front steps of the row house and landed on me. I grasped at anything I could get a hold of, which wasn't much more substantial than the nothingness I had snatched at the moment before. The person struggled, and I easily flipped the slight figure over me. A fist flew by me, a flash of spotted gray-white flesh that missed my cheek by a few inches. And that's when I saw it. They were holding a gun. Not a shotgun, or a pistol, but a stun gun. The armed hand reached for me, and I quickly ducked out of the way. Phoebe jerked instinctively to the side. There was no one left but Daniel. The stun gun connected with his chest, and sparks flew, illuminating the darkness like lightning in a bad horror flick. He shook violently. I knocked the person's hand away, lessening the jolt Daniel received. In an instant, my friend was laid out on the sidewalk. A twitching rag doll.

I thrust my forearm into the stranger's throat and forced them against the brick wall. The arms and shoulders were bony and frail. The skin on the hand holding the weapon was pale and wrinkled. I whipped off the black wool scarf covering the face and I heard Phoebe gasp behind me. I have to admit, I was shocked as well.

"Mrs. Avery?"

"Mrs..." Phoebe trailed off.

What the hell was my U.S. History teacher doing here, a hundred and forty miles from home?

I figured the best tactic was just to ask her. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Get your hands off of me, Grant. Striking a teacher. That's a suspendable offense," she said in her rough, untold-decades-of-being-a-smoker voice.

Even though we weren't in her classroom or the halls of Monument High, I had the strangest feeling like I had done something wrong. Like I might get sent down to the principal's office. It might seem strange that with as many teachers as I've dealt with—the great and the grating—I would be hesitant to face down someone as craggy and cantankerous as Mrs. Avery. But she had taken years to perfect her intimidating persona.

I had never seen anyone as old as Mrs. Avery, at least, not anyone that was still upright and walking around. That she could follow us at our hurried pace, and then jump off a staircase onto my back, it boggled the mind.

But we weren't in school. And she wasn't a teacher here in the shadows.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Avery, but right now, I'm the one asking the questions. And you're the one that needs to answer them correctly. Or there's going to be serious consequences. And I don't just mean a failing grade."

She stared at me, as if she was considering whether or not I had the guts to stand up to her.

I pressed my forearm a little bit harder into her throat. "Don't test me tonight, Mrs. Avery. You won't like my answers."

"Alexander," Phoebe said, her voice calm and velvety.

I think she was hoping her tone would defuse the situation, but my mood was a cool kind of dangerous.

"It's okay, Phoebe."

I glanced down at Mrs. Avery's feet. She was barefoot. Her toes were gnarled and the nails were thick and yellow. She had a marking on her ankle. Tattoos had become commonplace. There were even some kids at school who were inked. Not me. I needed my body to be clean and clear of any markings, piercings, anything that could give me away. My face and DNA were enough. Still, it was a strange for a woman as old as Mrs. Avery to have a tattoo. It was a simple design. A circle with a slash through it. It looked like the international 'NO' symbol, except that the slash angled the opposite way and hung out past the lower left side of the circle.

I looked at the hoodie and the cloak that were spread out on the sidewalk. There were two stakes just like the ones I had ripped from the political signs and used to split the woman's ankle. They formed an X. Wrapped around the wood and hooked to the clothes was a long strand of translucent monofilament. Fishing line was something I always had close by. That and duct tape. You could do a lot with fishing line. You could, of course, catch fish with it, but there were a lot of other uses that might mean the difference between living and dying. It was an effective weapon. You could set traps with it. You could use it to hang food in the woods or pictures in the house. You could cut a cake with it. Nice, even slices. You could even create a life-sized marionette that might trick someone into thinking you were walking down a darkened street.

"Clever."

"You aren't the only one that's clever, Mr. Grant."

I was fairly sure Mrs. Avery wasn't like me. My father had confirmed it after my Parent-Teacher conference. Unless...

"Did my father send you?"

"What do you think?"

Honestly, I didn't know what to think.

I looked into her eyes that were slightly cloudy from cataracts. She had been at the school for decades. My father preached planning, multiple exit strategies, contingency plans, stock piling. I had chosen Great Barrington myself. Of course, I selected it from a number of options my father suggested. It was possible Mrs. Avery was working for him. My father paraded in and out of my life. Traveling the world, keeping others like us in line. He was a caring father, but not a doting one. There were always people in his employ whose sole charge was keeping an eye on me. More now than when I was younger. I was easier to control then. It was a game he and I played. I'd try to figure out who his minions were so I could keep some of my teenage life private, and he would devise new ways to thwart my efforts. Technology was good for some kinds of intelligence, but as any spy master will tell you, it's boots on the ground that give you the greatest advantage.

Unless Mrs. Avery could give me some verifiable information, something unique of the kind that Braeden had, I couldn't trust her.

I pulled my arm away and she breathed fully for the first time in over a minute. I grabbed her makeshift puppet and used the fishing line to bind her hands.

"I've been following you since your house." She turned to Phoebe. "Nice job stealing the car, young lady. I always knew you were a juvenile delinquent."

Phoebe was taken aback.

"And that one," she nodded toward Daniel. "Was he dropped on his head a lot as a child?"

"What were you doing?" I asked.

"Trying to save you idiots. There were two of them following you." She kicked at the stun gun. "I took them both out. Bought you some time to get away. But more are coming."

I thought back to the man I tripped over. My instincts told me to be weary of him when I noticed him at the scene. And then...there he was, lying unconscious on the pavement. Mrs. Avery had safeguarded me at a vulnerable moment.

"Come with me, Alexander. You need to get out of here."

It all fit together. Maybe too well. Which is why I still couldn't trust her. She might have used her accomplices, knocked them out on purpose, to gain my confidence.

"I'm not leaving without them."

I finished tying the knots. Not too tight. Just enough to hold her for a while.

She glared at me, her milky blue eyes boring into my soul. "How do you do it? Huh? The tests. Tell me. Do you hack into the computers and steal the questions?"

No, she was not like me.

"I know my history." I picked the hoodie off the sidewalk and put it over Mrs. Avery's shoulders. "See if he's okay," I told Phoebe.

"You'll never get away with them weighing you down. You know that."

I watched her for a long moment. She was being sincere. At least, she believed what she was saying.

"Excuse me, can somebody tell me why I'm lying on the ground?"

"He's awake," said Phoebe.

"I can't move." Daniel said as he looked up from the ground. He actually was moving, well, twitching, at least, but he was conscious. He would feel like he ran a marathon when he stood up.

Mrs. Avery sneered in Daniel's direction, then turned back toward me. "The darkness is coming," she said. "Autarky." The word came out of her as if it were a death curse. But I knew she meant it as a warning. The word and her delivery sent a chill through my body. "Only those will survive."

I stepped back away from the old woman. Phoebe came into view out the corner of my eye. She was watching me. Concerned. In a moment, I was going to lose her respect, and probably destroy whatever feelings—if there were any—she felt for me.

"I'm sorry I have to do this," I said as much to Phoebe as to Mrs. Avery.

I snatched the stun gun off ground, pressed the electrodes into Mrs. Avery's right pectoral muscle, pulled the trigger, and shocked her. It was a quick burst, no more than a couple of seconds. Mrs. Avery slumped to the ground.

Phoebe let out a horrified cry that she muffled instantly.

Daniel gazed into the old woman's blank stare. They were less than a foot away from each other on the cement. "God, I've wanted to do that all year," he said.

Phoebe went to her. "You could have stopped her heart."

I bent down and checked Mrs. Avery's carotid artery to make sure she was alive, putting two fingers against her neck. Her pulse was surprisingly strong and steady.

After spending a semester in her classroom, I had the feeling it would take a lot more than 50,000 volts to kill this woman. "She's fine. We have to keep moving. C'mon, get up." I tried to help Daniel to his feet only his legs weren't working. In fact, his entire body didn't seem to be working. "Daniel, I need you to get up!"

I bent down, my hands on my knees and stared into his face from above. Much like he had done when Craig Coulter laid me out near the twenty yard line on my birthday.

"I'm moving my legs," Daniel explained.

"No, you're not."

"Well, they're moving in my head."

"I need them moving on your body."

I motioned to Phoebe and she stepped to the other side of Daniel. We lifted him, our arms locked under his armpits. It was like trying to make water stand up on its own.

We dragged Daniel along the sidewalk, the front of his sneakers making a popping noise as they caught on the cracks in the sidewalk.

"Keep your legs moving. That will get rid of the lactic acid. And increasing your circulation will also get more blood sugar to your muscles."

"I need a candy bar."

"We'll need to get you something to eat."

My father's house was only a block away. I wanted to go there. There'd be food and maybe answers to my father's whereabouts. From here I could still see the man on the steps across from the safe house. That would mean four cigarettes, maybe five. He was waiting for someone. Waiting for us.

Phoebe saw me staring behind us. She glanced back in the direction of Mrs. Avery. The old woman wasn't visible from the street, she was hidden behind the steps of the row house.

"Do you really think she'll be okay?"

I nodded.

She was quiet for a moment. "I understand," she said. "You were just protecting us. Thank you for not leaving us behind."

I could feel a wave of relief flush through my body. It lasted only a moment. A beautiful, wonderful moment. I had to push the relief aside. I couldn't relax. I had to remain vigilant.

"I want to go home," she said.

"I know." I didn't want her to go home. "We'll get you home."

"I want to stop walking like a Jell-O man. I'm really tingly. What happened?"

"Mrs. Avery zapped you with 50,000 volts of electricity."

"She never liked me." He tried putting more weight on his legs. After a few more steps, we were able to let go of him. "Why was she talking about anarchy?"

"Not anarchy. Autarky."

"What's that? Sounds....kinda goofy."

"It means to be self-sufficient. A group, a city, or even a country that is self-sustaining. That can survive without outside help. It can also mean any group that can defend itself on its own."

"What do you think she meant by it?" Phoebe asked.

"I don't know."

Darkness is coming, she said.

It felt like it was already here.

After three blocks, far enough away from the accident and the unconscious Mrs. Avery, we cut back up to Commonwealth and walked down the pathway in the center of the mall.

"Where to now?" Phoebe asked. I could hear the concern in her voice, see the weariness in her posture.

"We're going to need help." And I knew where to find it. Beacon Hill was just north of the Common. Another five minutes at most.

I tried to keep the pace as fast as I could without drawing attention to ourselves.

Commonwealth Avenue dead-ended at the Public Gardens. We cut through the park, past the statue of George Washington, drawing his sword, which was missing its blade this evening. It had been stolen so often, it's now replaced with plastic, when it's replaced at all.

We took the bridge over the lagoon, then across the street to the Common.

Although visitors to the city usually lump the Garden and the Common together, they are separated by more than Charles Street. Boston Common was created in 1634, the Public Garden two centuries later. While the Garden is filled with flowers, well-manicured lawns and pretty lights, the Common is pastoral, spare, and practical. Its walkways get you directly to where you want to go. The paths in the Public Garden meander.

I led them onto one of the Common's diagonal walkways, heading northeast. At one point, Phoebe took my hand. I wasn't sure if she did it to make us look like one of the other couples walking in the park, or if she did it because she wanted to hold my hand. Either way, it felt nice.

"I've only been to Boston a couple of times," Daniel said, looking around. "Never by myself."

I wondered if he'd hit his head in the crash. He was acting strange, even for Daniel. And that was saying something. Perhaps, the stun gun had something to do with it.

"Last time, I was ten," he said. "We always go to the aquarium." He paused. "I hate fish."

We made our way across the Common in silence except for the occasional comment from Daniel.

When we reached the far edge along Beacon Street, I stopped.

"What is it?" Phoebe asked.

"Shhh. I'm trying to figure out which way it is. The street's only a block long and if you're off, you miss it. I haven't been here in twenty years." As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew, I had screwed up. I tried not to react.

There was a second of nothing and I thought maybe I had gotten away with my colossal boneheadedness. We waited for the traffic to pass, then we crossed Beacon. We weren't halfway to the other side before Phoebe said, "Twenty years?"

"It's a figure of speech."

She nodded. Then a second later: "No. A figure of speech is 'I haven't been here in a million years' or 'This suitcase weighs a ton.' 'I haven't been here in twenty years' is pretty specific."

I could tell she was having trouble getting over that last hurdle, the one that led straight to the truth. It was an enormous mental obstacle. Too high for most people to climb.

"It's not much farther. I'm sure it's this way."

We turned left on Chestnut.

But Phoebe wasn't listening. She was processing everything. I could see the truth starting to bubble up inside her. From the look on her face, the final realization exploded inside her head.

Her head, literally, snapped back.

She couldn't speak.

She let go of my hand.

Her legs were moving, but they were just mindlessly following mine.

Her mind was lost in the deep. Overloaded.

Daniel was blissfully ignorant of the whole scene.

A block later, forehead wrinkled up, she looked at me. "That baseball was signed to you."

I kept walking. This was definitely the way. The street lights were gone, replaced by gas lights.

"Those pictures..." She stepped away from me. As if I was contagious.

I felt a stab of pain in my stomach.

It was probably the worst bit of timing to have to turn up a narrow, dark, mist covered alley, but this was where we needed to go.

Acorn Street was one of the oldest in Boston and one of the last with its original cobblestone.

"It's up ahead at the top of the hill," I said.

She hesitated, looking into the dark passage that was so beautiful in the daylight and so foreboding at night.

"We just need to get to the last house, and we're going to be okay. "

"No, we're not going to be okay. Nothing is going to be okay." She started to shake like there was an earthquake within her.

Acorn was eerily quiet. The tiny crooked cobblestone street rose up from West Cedar, lit only by gas lamps that revealed the white shuttered windows and brightly lit doorways of the row houses along the slender path. The street crowned in the middle, and was lower on the sides. The slope to the top was gentle. This wasn't San Francisco, although Boston reminds me of that Bay Area City. The hills in Boston weren't as steep, having been leveled, the rock and soil used to fill in the surrounding water. Once we were a few yards in, any semblance of modern Boston dissipated. The houses surrounding us stood as they did before cars and electricity. The street was cleaner now and didn't smell of horses and manure and hay, but a fire burning in one of the living rooms dropped smoke into the street and the scent and the haze brought me back.

I could almost hear the carriages in the distance.

Our footsteps echoed off the brick walls. Daniel's shoes were the loudest, the heat from the burning car had melted the bottoms of his soles, causing the spongy material to harden. The sound of our steps were irregular as we tried to navigate the uneven cobblestone. I found the hiss of the gas flowing to the lamp comforting. It wasn't raining, but a light dew had fallen as night washed over the city and there was a sheen of moisture on the stones.

"This is what it was like back then." Phoebe's voice was soft. The tirade in her head had settled down.

"Yes," I said.

As we got to the top of the gentle rise, everything started to look familiar. I walked over to one of the black doors with a "2" on it, the house flush against the street.

I would have to reveal the truth to Phoebe and Daniel. Taking them here made that inevitable. They would soon learn everything whether I wanted to tell them or not.

"How is it possible?" she asked.

I shrugged. This was not the time or place for explanations.

"How is what possible?" Daniel said.

I knocked on the solid oak door. Number 2 Acorn Street. And waited. The gaslights hissed. A breeze meandered through Beacon Hill and up over the cobblestone street. I breathed out and let my breath mix with the breeze and the drifting smoke from the fireplace. On the other side of this door was safety. On the other side of this door was help. On the other side of this door was the one person who would know what to do. After a moment, a man who appeared to be in his eighties answered.

When I saw him, the stress drained from my body like water after stepping out of a pool.

I smiled at him. His amber eyes lit up.

"How are you?" My words were muffled as I hugged him.

"I was expecting you," he said.

I raised an eyebrow. "Really? That's not good."

"Perhaps not. But it is good to see you."

I turned to my new friends and introduced them to my very, very, very old friend.

"Phoebe, Daniel, I would like you to meet Stephen Engel. He's my oldest friend in the world." I heard Engel chuckle at my words. I smiled at him, then glanced back at Phoebe and Daniel. "He's almost nine thousand years old."

Phoebe gasped. Daniel didn't understand. And I relaxed.

We were safe.

_____

The document ends here with the arrival at Acorn Street.

In his note, my client said there would be more coming, but it's been some time now and I haven't heard from him. He hasn't attempted to access his bank accounts, either in person, via ATM or online, and there's been no activity on his credit cards.

Which concerns me.

Because along with the rest of the historic homes on the block, the house at Number 2 Acorn Street was completely incinerated in the blast. In fact, Number 2 Acorn appears to be the epicenter of the explosion.

The four who lost their lives have yet to be identified.

For the sake of my client and his friends, I hope they somehow escaped the destruction.

As each day passes, I grow less confident in that hope.

Thomas __________

Attorney-At-Law

END OF BOOK ONE

§

About the Author

Edward Savio grew up in Connecticut. He has written numerous film projects for Walt Disney Studios, Sony Pictures Entertainment and others. He makes his home in San Francisco with his family.

You can send comments to the author at:

writeme@edwardsavio.com

Read Book Two Now!

Battle For Forever: Revelation.

What If Everything You've Ever Believed

Turned Out To Be A Lie?

