Bone felt it first—a low, gentle vibration in the ground, transmitted up through his feet into his legs. Then he heard it, a rumble in the distance, almost too low to perceive. Way behind the colonel and across the windswept hilltop, the sky lit up. Moments later the first set of lights appeared over the ridge and dipped down as they followed the narrow road into the valley. Behind them, higher up, clouds began to glow as the aerial contingents of Colonel Miles’s force made themselves known.

Bone should have been pleased. Here was power and might, the finest of America’s military come to face up to the strangest, most obscure threat they had ever known. He should have felt some form of comfort.

All he experienced was dread.

“I need you to talk to my people,” Miles said.

Bone nodded and forced a smile, but already he was planning his escape back down into the valley. The time for talk was long gone, and nothing would persuade the colonel from his mission.

Bone had to find his father and end his unnatural existence himself.

* * *

“Up there,” Angela said. “What’s that?”

“That’s war,” Vince replied.

“The military. Bone really did get them to come.”

“You doubted him?”

“I wasn’t sure what to make of him,” Angela said. “He’s strange.”

“He’s Kin, like me,” Sammi said. “Half human, half Kin, still finding his way.”

Angela was hardly surprised.

“So what happens now?” Dastion asked.

Angela and the others looked uphill towards the ridge where lights played through the darkness, cutting swaths across the hillside and down into the valley. She counted a dozen vehicles, maybe more, and there were at least six separate helicopters buzzing above them, describing wide circles over the valley, probably scanning the terrain with radar, or heat-sensitive equipment, or whatever the hell else those things carried.

“Now Mallian gets what he wants,” Angela said. “War between Kin and humanity.” She turned to Sammi, and the change in the girl shocked her. Just ten minutes ago they’d been huddled down together while Mallian stalked nearby. She had kept them silent and hidden from his view, but still seemed nervous and afraid. Now, Sammi was something else. There was a confidence in her eyes, a power, that had never been there before. There was also a weight of sadness, as if they had already lost.

“Sammi?”

“I’m ready to try,” she said. “I have to be close.”

“We just were close,” Vince said.

“Close to Grace,” Sammi said, and Angela realised where the sadness came from. To free Grace from Mallian’s control was to put herself at risk. Grace had sought out Sammi to drag her into the Fold, to be with her forever, and now Sammi would be presenting herself at the fairy’s feet.

Angela also recognised that there was no choice, and seeing that realisation in Sammi’s eyes made her so, so proud.