“He’s probably all right.” Saundra ran her fingers through Simon’s hair.
“If he was all right, he would have called.” Simon made himself say that, to remind himself what he was probably facing.
“They say the communications systems were taken out early on. Either they were destroyed or some kind of damper was put over them. Maybe he couldn’t call.”
“They have shortwave radios.” When he saw the stricken look on Saundra’s face, Simon knew he’d spoken too forcefully. He softened his voice. “Hey. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap like that.”
“It’s all right.” But she looked away from him.
Simon sighed. They’d both stayed away from family stories. He knew she had a mom and dad in Australia, and three younger siblings, a brother and two sisters, or it could have been the other way around. But he didn’t know all the little anecdotal stories for them.
He’d mentioned he’d had a dad, and that his mother was dead, but nothing much beyond that. There was no way he could have brought up the Templar upbringing. Although after the way he’d dealt with the poachers, she’d wanted some kind of explanation but hadn’t been rude enough to ask for one.
“It’s just…” Simon hesitated. “You’d have to know my dad. He’d get a message out. Shortwave radios don’t depend on satellites or anything, and you can broadcast halfway around the world on one of those.”
“I know about shortwave radios. I grew up in Australia, remember? Long way from anywhere if you didn’t grow up in one of the bigger cities. My dad still has a base radio. But who would your dad broadcast to? Does he know where you’re staying?”
Simon thought about it only for a moment, then shook his head. “No.”
“Nowhere to send the message, no message,” Saundra said. “I don’t have a message from my dad, either.” She paused. “And I’m scared, too, Simon. I want to be home.”
“I know.” He turned to her and put his arms around her, just holding on. “We’ll find a way.”
Six
DOWNTOWN
LONDON, ENGLAND
O n his knees in the wrecked supermarket with a dozen other scavengers, Warren Schimmer felt the demon before he saw it.
All his life, he’d had feelings about people, situations, and things. He could generally tell when someone meant him harm, and no one could lie to him. He knew when a street was dangerous at night, whether because of muggers or because of motorists. When he held objects, he sometimes got intimations about the past history of a particular piece.
Sometimes, if he concentrated hard enough, he could guess which sports team to bet on, or which horse at the track. He’d never had enough money to make a big profit with a bookie or at the track. Money in his life was hard to come by. It always had been. But not being able to be a big winner allowed him to score a good bet every now and again that helped tide him over. But generally, he had to watch his finances.
That was why he was out scrounging for food now instead of staying at home hiding from the demons and hoping the military units would find a way to evacuate them from London. There simply wasn’t enough food in the flat to last an extended stay. And his instincts told him the demons were going to be in London for a long time. He hoped to be evacuated soon. He had no feelings about that.
Not that Warren had anywhere to go. He’d lived his entire life in London. He’d never even been to France or Scotland or Ireland on a lark. On what he made working at the bookstore, there hadn’t been enough money.
He’d barely made enough to keep his three flat mates from putting him out on the street. If they’d been able to make enough money between them—at the very least control their spending habits—or had been able to pick up another fourth to share the rent, he was certain they’d have gotten rid of him.
For them, he was too creepy or too strange. Too silent and withdrawn. They called him Weird Warren behind his back and didn’t think he knew that. Although they didn’t know it, they had few secrets that he didn’t know after living with them.
Personally, Warren thought of himself as taciturn. He didn’t like the company of others, and that usually bothered others. Instead of being glad he wasn’t trying to continually get into their business, they looked on him with resentment and suspicion.
They hated the fact that he always had his rent ready at the first of the month without fail, and sometimes had a little extra to cover someone who was short. Instead of being grateful that he had it and was generous enough to share, although he’d been forced to do that through circumstance, they had speculated that he was involved in something illegal, which wasn’t a lot of fun for Warren, either.
As a result of their suspicions, they’d sometimes tried to follow him. They also went through his things in his room and occasionally nicked any money he might have left lying out. He was creepy, but lucky, and everyone knew it.
That was why he was one of those that got sent out tonight to get rations. Because he was lucky.
Only now he knew that he had a demon sniffing him out. There was a fine line between good luck and bad luck, and all his life Warren Schimmer had experienced tons of both.
Warren cowered in the back of the small convenience store. He knelt flattened against the refrigeration unit along the back wall. Nothing inside the unit was cold any more, of course. When the power had gone out, the refrigeration
