Holder Stone was a healer and an assassin. A peacemaker and a revolutionary. She had been a lot of things, in her very long life. But on this particular morning what she was, was: tired.
She’d been out catching monsters for the last three nights, with only her faithful donkey Balaam to talk to. He rarely talks back, she always claimed, but you can tell he’s listening.
The monsters were the usual kind: midapocalyptic punks, rival gangs at war, slaverunners. As long as there have been women, there have been ways — and those willing — to hurt them. But almost nearly that long, Holder has been here. Trying to help.
They could have just called her a detective, but the people in Port Yuma treated her like a demigod. Which it was possible she might also be.
They called her The One Who Knows, presumably because — as a thousand-year-old scholar — she did know an awful lot. They called her healer, witch. Curandera, some of them. She would say, “I just try to help.”
One day, she was fond of thinking, we’ll get the family back together and reunite the whole Chain, somehow. Find a way to save everybody, once again.
It was a nice thought! Obviously! But this particular morning she was too tired.
Holder glanced at the row of candles burning on the hearth of her shady, low-set bungalow. She’d only enchanted the candles a few decades back, but they did the trick. In the years between visits they made her feel more connected to them all. Her family of friends. For roughly a thousand years, some of them.
Goodnight, sweet weirdos…
And as she looked, they went out. Thomas and Sailorboy, gone first. She gasped. Probably on the boat together, as usual. Then, Queene dead, a moment before Maeve — Queene Death wouldn’t let anybody hurt Maeve, so whoever was killing them knew them. Or knew at least enough to target QD first.
They knew where they’d all be: Out went poor little Benjamin, and that was everyone. Her ancient, powerful family. All snuffed out.
She hoped it was quick, and painless. She hated to think of them hurting. Hated more to think of them lying dead.
But they’ll be back, she thought. And we’ll have to go find them.
For the next hour, Holder thought, I am the only Dreamer in the world. And the only one that can protect the world from us, too.
Then she thought, And here we go. Because there was someone trying to be quiet. Someone in the house.
Holder rolled her tired eyes, irritated; she went killer mode, laughing into the dark.
“Come on out,” she said, and so he did.
A scary-eyed youth in some kind of navy blue uniform, silver knife in hand — were they still saying silver could kill her? — and in his other hand a small net of silver chain.
He stared at her skin like he’d never seen a Black woman before. Maybe any woman, full stop, the way his gaze crawled across her. She hoped he would attack, anything, just to get those mad eyes off her.
He tossed the net and it acted alive, sparking orange and sickly yellow as it wrapped itself around Holder’s head. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but you can feel your magic go dead.
Anti-witchtech. He wanted to do it the ugly way, apparently. Magic could have made this easy on us both, she thought.
Holder sighed and carefully removed the sparking thing, tossing it in the corner, and stepped into the young man’s space. Her magic was still gone for now, but she didn’t mind. In one movement, she had destroyed his left eye with a kitchen corkscrew and dislocated his right arm.
“You have the chance to stop this,” she pleaded with the young man, crooked arm pulled back. “What happens next is that you die. I’ve already won this little fight and I plan on winning the ones that follow. Tell me what’s happening to my family.”
He bled and laughed to himself, but didn’t speak. His knife swished uselessly at her from a dangling, flaccid arm as he chuckled and gurgled.
In his remaining eye was scrawled a madness she’d absolutely never seen before, not in a thousand years. The scars lining his face, scalp, his body in the uniform: This young man was beaten into a killer, maybe from birth. The stink of him. Some sick creep had treated this kid worse than a dog and sent him to kill her.
“Do it,” he grunted almost lasciviously, blood filling his mouth and his eye socket. “Don’t send me back. I won a Red Night. I won. I want to go home. Under the underground. I want to see the Fathers…”
This is how Holder works: She thought, I can’t solve my family’s murder if I hang around fooling with this poor creature. And then she thought, I could heal him for a day and a night — it wouldn’t touch this. Not where he’s been broken.
He thrust his abdomen against the corkscrew in her hand, grunting with pain and effort. This was someone determined to die, and not safe to roam. So she obliged him.
But those are justifications, alibis, reasons. Nobody needs those: What matters is what you do. And what she did was put down one more lost, rabid animal.
Add it to the list of things we’ll never know for sure.
Holder Stone was just about done cleaning up when one by one the candles lit themselves again, sparking into life. The family had returned, reborn, just as she knew they would be. But where had they come through?
If it worked right, they’ll be okay. Mostly.
But her reborn family would have amnesia. Holder and Our Lady Maeve had never found a way around that mind wipe effect — they just knew it meant immortality.
Our Lady Maeve wouldn’t be able to solve this with her own powers, not yet. She was in this with the rest — the worst possible scenario. The Dreamers would be confused and scared and alone, possibly among strangers. And most importantly, no idea what they were capable of.
Kids with nukes, Holder Stone thought.
We always were.
Balaam the pack donkey knocked gently against the front door, and let himself in. There was a worn rope attached to the door so he could come and go as he pleased.
Balaam was clearly ready to go, and Holder knew him well enough to follow. They’d be waking up soon. She packed the donkey up with supplies and extra blankets, and headed out into the soft rising sun.
Part One begins next:
Chapter One — The Gathering