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well, then he blanked out.”
     

    “Blanked out? Galen?” Bobby asked with a concerned frown.
     

    “Not for long, but long enough to affect the bond.”
     

    “Tell us what happened,” Parry said.
     

    Rob told them—about the creatures, about the attack on Flash and Greg, and about that moment when he was pretty sure Galen had died and his corpse had forgotten to fall. The terror of those moments pulsed through his veins. Parry put a shimmering arm over his shoulder and Rob drew from his father’s healing enough to calm the slamming of his heart.
     

    “What do you see?” Bobby asked him.
     

    “What do you see, Bobby?” Rob looked at him, his uncle shifted, the shimmering light surrounding him dimming. Rob glanced at Parry, he’d dimmed as well. “You don’t need to know what I see. You know, both of you, don’t you?”
     

    “What do you see?” Bobby said again, his voice a harsh whisper.
     

    “Mists, shifting around him, through his eyes. Sometimes I see horses, a stone circle. Tell me,” Rob snapped.
     

    “We thought he’d escaped, Rob, we thought once you were back, it would solve the problem,” Parry said gently.
     

    “Problem?” Rob looked from one to the other, watching the colors shift around them, dark shades of concern mixing with the usual hues he associated with his father and uncle. It was bad, whatever was coming was bad.
     

    “It was seven years ago…” Parry began.
     

    Seven Years Before
     

    Parry
     

     
     

    It was cold, the kind of damp chill that permeated the Northwest coast, and to add to it, there was fog wisping through the landscape. The evergreens along the road were black with wet, their stunted limbs lifting into a dull gray sky. Parry sighed as he turned onto the road he was looking for. He felt Bobby’s eyes on him, but just shook his head. They couldn’t talk about it now, Galen was in the backseat and the discussions with him never went well. His son was something beyond stubborn when the subject of Rob came up.
     

    “This is the place, Dad,” Galen said from the backseat, his eyes fixed on the map he was holding. “There should be a path out to the beach.”
     

    Parry pulled off the road. They got out of the car, Bobby wandering to the edge of the trees. Parry and Galen gathered up the weapons they were carrying, then walked to stand beside Bobby. “What do you see?” Parry asked.
     

    “There’s something here,” Bobby said softly, his eyes unfocused as he used the Sight. “Something dark has moved through, there’s a trail of blood here.” He pointed at the path winding through the trees. “They went that way.”
     

    “Are you sure?” Parry was staring at the trail, wishing he had the Sight for the thousandth time. He knew the bodies had been found on the beach above the high tide mark, so they hadn’t come out of the ocean, but that didn’t mean they had come this way.
     

    “Pretty sure,” Bobby said, his eyes bleak. “Let’s go,” he added, leading the way down the path. Parry followed, aware of the emotion flowing off Bobby, whatever he’d seen was bad.
     

    They walked down the path towards the sound of surf, it wound through a marshy area, the scent of decay filling the trees around them. There was a cliff, rising up more than a hundred feet on their right, just ahead the trail narrowed where a hill, looking like a giant boulder, thrust out of the ground. The cliff swept away from them as they approached the hill, opening up to a grassy area, leading to the beach.  
     

    “They broke off, there are two trails,” Bobby said, stopping at a fork in the path.
     

    “I’ll go left and out onto the beach that way,” Galen said, coming up beside Parry. “I’ll meet you by that rock.” He pointed to a large gray stone sitting in the sand where the grass met the beach. Something in his voice alerted Parry.
     

    “Galen?” Parry walked over and put his hand on his son’s shoulder. A wave of