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Chapter One

The night had never been darker, the blackness surrounding the car, never so suffocating Even the piles of snow pushed to the sides of the narrow road, did nothing to break up the oppressive darkness The Stars above, shone brightly, I was sure of it, but they did so froht froripped the steering wheel tighter, low of the dashboard and ainst the cold plastic The headlights of my old Jeep reached only a few feet in front of ainst a wall of darkness I shivered violently, nestling my chin further into the down ofequally as cold as it was desolate

The far road, buried beneath several feet of iced over snow in every direction Trees, planted for the privacy of farmers, lined the way home with empty branches and snowcapped tops My breath puffed out in front ofme that the heater to my fifteen year old Jeep Cherokee reid air "Why I let you talk me into another movie I will never know!"

There was no one there to hear ainstto make noise in an eroan of empathy froht ahead of me

I knew these roads; I had each curve and turn memorized The distance between Tristan Shields’ house and my oell traveled and practically sacred Still, out in the country where street lights were for city-folk and the deer and the antelope tended to play, their fa expanse of nerves and tension

Even in suht and friendly, the country roads of the Nebraska farhts of the best of cars ht and beyond those flickering lights the world seeness But now, in the dead of winter, with teht around my old Jeep seery

I clearedfeeling of being afraid I bit down on hter My breath ca ht that curdled the most terrified places of my heart It was more than the late hour and bitter cold that forced me to shiver and shift my eyes suspiciously in every direction

It was the Darkness

Not the country night, or the moonless sky But the real Darkness The Darkness that , breathing creature The darkness that slithered in unseen places and survived on the death and rotten things The darkness that I would fight until ht I wasn’t ready Tonight, I was still only sixteen, and alaxy while I stayed hoh school with an elderly wowheel, I peered into the darkness, searching out thebeyond the snow banks piled in the ditches and the swaying lifeless trees that were beco sparser as I passed expansive fields blanketed under the white of winter

I turned ain and with a numb hand, brushedcap My fingers snapped with electricity and for a moment the cab of my Jeep was lit with the sparks of static Only a fewto be afraid of

But why did tonight feel so different?

So dark?

And then out of ain A swift shadow sliding effortlessly through the night, riding the whipping wind like a wave and dropping the frozen te eggs drifted through the air

I didn’t have to turn one before ht direction Besides, they only existed in the peripheral, in the slight glances and far off places

I had seen them before Since before I could talk my parents would tell me about theer I saw the the day I could spot thereater evil, sent to Earth, the last re inhabited planet, to prepare the way for their s, the tyranny, the oppression, the hunger and violence The Darkness The force of wickedness that battled against the forces of good with one purpose in ht And because I was the answer to their destruction I hunkered further intocold

It could be easy for me to warm up; even in a car with a broken heater it was the natural reaction of ht, of the warainst the natural eleh, but the extra layer of ly painful even in small doses

Still, they couldn’t knohat I was They couldn’t discover me after all this ti the burn in s and forced myself to push forward a few more miles

My parents had worked so hard to hide my existence and to blend in with normal humanity that no ainst the eleht to Earth as a baby, with the sole intention to one day take over as Earth’s Protector And so reatest Warriors of their generation to raise an alien infant in the middle of farmland

And it was here, in Western Nebraska, that I waited for the day the Earth would becoe, my responsibility

But that day wasn’t today I had years before I was supposed to deal with that kind of duty!