Donnie stopped just short of tackling Eve.

He threw his arms around her and his eyes dared anyone to get near her before he was done making sure she was real.

Brady didn't say a word. He just handed her his flask.

Fireball.

She pushed back far enough from Donnie's clutches to take a slug.

"Welcome back," Patty said with a wry smile.

Steve passed her a cigarette, and Chet rushed to light it.

Then they all stared at each other. Long enough for it to get weird.

What do you say in a situation like this? No one knew, least of all Eve.

She had so much she needed to tell them, but she couldn't find a starting point, a way into such a... She could feel hysterical giggles bubbling up her throat and choked them back down.

"I'm sorry," she said at last. "I know... I know y'all..."

"What was it?" Luka demanded.

She wasn't gentle or sympathetic or sweet.

She was pissed, and she didn't care who knew it.

"What the fuck was that thing, and why the fuck did you go with it?"

Not pissed, Eve thought. Scared.

She should be...

"What did you see?" Eve asked. She took the tone of the gentle one.

Tears pooled in Luka's furious eyes and she batted them away with the cuff of her sweatshirt.

"It was a fucking shadow, Eve," she spat back. "A seven-foot-tall, dark-as-fuck Shadow Man, and you just..."

Chet's hand stroked Luka's back the way a preschool teacher soothes a toddler at nap time.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"I'm sorry," Eve stammered again.

That wasn't what Eve saw.

She saw a man — tall, yes, but not abnormally so — and she almost shot him.

Eve and the other adults on the property had taken to strapping on a gun whenever they went outside. All except for Donnie. Eve wasn't nuts. She gave him one of her dad's World War II Ka-Bars and a bear horn, and he seemed happy with that.

The weapons weren't for people, though there had been chatter about roving bands of thieves breaking into places and setting up shop. Jacob had found fresh mountain lion scat down by the creek, and it was better to be safe than sorry with those big kitties, especially with kids around.

But when Eve was taking a walk that day, away from the construction and endless stream of things she needed to get done, what she saw was a black-haired, forty-something man, absurdly dressed, like some New-Ro reject from the '80s, in black leather pants and one of those white flowing shirts with the ruffled sleeves that Adam Ant always wore.

He was perched on a fallen log and he looked at her with an almost relieved smile, like he'd been waiting for hours for her to come out of an arrival gate at LAX.

Eve's hand went for her holster, but when he held out a red rose, like a knight to a maiden before a jousting tournament, she knew exactly who he was, and she knew a bullet wouldn't stop him.

In that moment, Eve knew she had two choices and only two choices: Accept that her imaginary Bearer of All Things Bad had leaped out of her disheveled head and was sitting before her...

...or listen carefully as her sanity snapped like a saltine cracker.

The former seemed slightly less painful.

When he spoke, she almost crumpled with the laughter of a woman literally on the brink of a nervous breakdown. He sounded, to her, a lot like Alan Rickman.

"Hello, Eve. I think it's time we have a talk, don't you?"

"You've got to be fucking kidding me." It wasn't a question, and the words flew out of her mouth before she could edit them.

"Charming," he responded, standing in a way that wasn't menacing so much as it was impatient. "You need to come with me —"

"If I want to live?" She really needed to stop laughing. It was a thing she did when her brain was fritzing, and she thought it might just get her killed.

If he — IT! — ohdeargodimlosingmymind — caught the reference, he didn't let on.

"Not quite," he replied, "but do we have a lot to discuss, and there is, unfortunately, a clock that is very much ticking."

"Anything you have to say to me —"

"—I can say to your blah blah blah," he interjected sternly. "No, Eve. I'm afraid that isn't how this is going to work. I am the watcher. You are the scribe. This isn't a group activity."

And then it became starkly, without any humor at all, very fucking real for just a moment.

"You're Darkness," Eve whispered hoarsely. She felt her knees wanting to buckle.

"Yes, about that... you've always had that detail a bit sideways, my dear."

"I don't know what you are." She spoke the words as she was sharply inhaling, like a runner with a stitch in his side, so they came out scratchy and shrill.

"I have a name. A name you know."

He bowed. The motherfucker bowed and made a sweeping gesture with his foppish hand.

"I am Gabriel."

Ka-pow! Boom! Bazoinga!

Eve wasn't dreaming, she was stuck in a dime store comic book, which sucks because I hate comic books and I just want to go home because I really have to pee and I'd like to take a nap now please.

"You're an archangel," she said, her face, expressionless, her brain exploding like a glitter bomb.

"Also not entirely accurate," he answered. "I am Elohim, and I'll be happy to explain the difference — later. We. Must. Go."

He looked at her. In her. Through her.

"Eve," he implored her, "she's pregnant."

And that's when she knew she had to go with him.

She found Luka, told her to start reading her journals, to keep them safe, and to write everything down, and then she turned and reached her hand out to what Luka thought was a giant evil shadow demon and disappeared.

Eve looked at Luka's flushed face through the crackling fire and loved her fiercely.

"Look at me, okay?" They locked eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm okay. We're okay. And I'm really, really sorry."