We knew all too well that Haven Valley would endure a great test before the end. A final attempt of evil to gain entrance into our hearts by coming to us as an angel of light. If our guard was down, we would never recognize it.

I hoped Jamie was listening. For his sake and mine, I hoped he was even now seeing the foolishness of his defiance.

Even as I thought it, Jamie shifted on my right. A sign of guilt. Good.

And then he was standing.

“What if the evil of the world’s already gone?” he asked.

The entire room stilled. I felt the blood drain from my face. He was committing suicide!

“What if we’ve already been tested and passed that test and we sit here without knowing? I think it’s time to leave this place and find out for ourselves.”

The congregation was too shocked to react.

Harrison’s right brow arched. “And what would cause you to believe this?”

I knew what he would say. And a small piece of me knew that as soon as he said it, Haven Valley would forever be changed.

“Because,” Jamie said, “I’ve been out beyond the perimeter, and there are no more Fury.”

Chapter
Four

BEN WEATHERS WATCHED AS THE FLAMES OF THE FIRE he’d built inside the small rock pit lapped against the night. He leaned back in the squat folding chair and stroked his thick, unkempt beard. Refining fires, he thought, were the kind he’d been walking through the last several months. Turning what he thought he knew to ash so that something new could grow in its place.

A beautiful thing indeed. A single tear slipped from the corner of his eye. The thought of his transformation stirred his emotions. He hoped to never get used to the way it felt, but he knew it would surely happen. This was, after all, still the world of up and down.

Ben chuckled at himself and wiped the tear from his cheek. A smaller laugh joined his, and Ben raised his eyes across the fire to where Eli sat.

“Something funny?” Ben asked.

“I’m laughing because you’re laughing,” the boy replied.

“You think my laugh is funny?” Ben teased.

Eli grinned and gave Ben a grin. How he loved the boy. The sheer expansiveness of the emotion caught him off guard at times. He had the same love for his other children, the one gone too early, the two stolen and taken off the grid to live separate from him. Or at least that’s the story his mind always wanted him to believe. The story he was still letting go of.

It didn’t matter if they’d been taken or if they’d gone willingly. It only mattered that, with any luck, he would see them soon and share with them the gift he’d discovered.

Eli.