The first book in the Sign of Seven Trilogy series To my boys, who roamed the woods, even when they weren't supposed to. Where God hath a temple, the Devil will have a chapel. ¨C ROBERT BURTON The childhood shows the man As morning shows the day. ¨C JOHN MILTON Prologue Hawkins Hollow Maryland Province 1652 IT CRAWLED ALONG THE AIR THAT HUNG HEAVY as wet wool over the glade. Through the snakes of fog that slid silent over the ground, its hate crept. It came for him through the heat-smothered night. It wanted his death. So he waited as it pushed its way through the woods, its torch raised toward the empty sky, as it waded across the streams, around the thickets where small animals huddled in fear of the scent it bore with it. Hellsmoke. He had sent Ann and the lives she carried in her womb away, to safety. She had not wept, he thought now as he sprinkled the herbs he'd selected over water. Not his Ann. But he had seen the grief on her face, in the deep, dark eyes he had loved through this lifetime, and all the others before. The three would be born from her, raised by her, and taught by her. And from them, when the time came, there would be three more. What power he had would be theirs,