The fire goes out with a hiss.

“No.” His mother, a bare silhouette, braces and says, her voice rising, “They’re here.”

Isaac tries to stand.

His mother turns to Isaac, her face ashen. “Haste!”

His father shoves the casket. “Now. Take it.”

The wind rises to a howl. A shadow falls across the already gloomy room, and an enormous creature appears just outside the door. The hair on the back of Isaac’s neck stands straight out and his breath catches, and the pendant sends a searing charge through his heart, the hum growing in his brain to a piercing whine.

He thinks he hears a whispered word. Guardian.

The room is as black as pitch. His mother cries out, and the shadow-creature standing at the door screams, and his father shouts, “Isaac.”

Isaac places both hands on the casket. His fingers cramp, and he can’t lift his hands away. He hears a sound like a faint chime coming from inside the casket, like the ring of a small bell.

Wings unfurl behind the creature and a stench of rot fills the air and Isaac gags, then gasps. The monster turns toward him with eyes that glow as red as burning coals. Isaac is frozen, hands still on the casket, frozen by that deep hum that fills him, the hum from the cold pendant that sends another charge through his heart. As the fear inside Isaac explodes to panic, the room, the monster, and his parents glow with brilliant blue light—and he cries out, yells out loud, as, with a blinding flash, all falls to darkness.

CHAPTER 7

Isaac

1942

Isaac, still yelling, eyes shut tight, hands still clutching the casket, tumbled head over heels in space, over and over until he landed on his knees on the floor of the hut. Then he opened his eyes again and pushed up from the floor, legs shaking.

His mother and father were gone and the monster was gone, too. Isaac was alone, the pendant cold against his skin, the casket clutched tight in his hands.

It was a late winter afternoon, light pouring in from above through a vast hole in the roof of the hut that was ruined—but not by a blast. It was ruined by age. Thatch littered the floor. The table and a chair were the only furnishings. The windows and doors were gaping holes. Dust filled his nose, and the wood creaked as the rotting floor bent beneath him.

The pendant pressed against his skin. What had just happened?

Isaac turned. Thank all the prophets, the monster was gone.

But so were his parents. Isaac thought his heart would break.

He sat down, his muscles turned to jelly. The casket slipped from his hands to the table. The wind stirred the thatch that drifted down from overhead. He heard the distant cry of a seabird. The smells of peat and old farm filled his nose.