The Survivors: Book One by Angela White, Kim Fillmore, Lanae Morris Page B

to roughly three months on the road, and her mother’s heart cried out again. So long and so many of the odds were against her!
    "Gets better when you call the boy’s real daddy," the Witch seduced, sending her memories of cool, Harrison nights and the softest, blackest hair she’d ever felt, until their son was born. Angela closed her eyes as pain filled her heart as if it had happened yesterday. She had never forgotten what it felt like to belong to Marc Brady.
    “Call him. He’s restless, adrift. He will come," the Demon insisted, and the woman huddling in the nicely warming storage room gave the thought serious consideration this time, instead of pushing it away like the fear in her mind wanted. Marc was also a Marine, had been for a long time, and she had no doubt he could make the trip. More importantly, he owed her.
    "You can’t!" her fear screamed. "Kenny will kill you both!"
    She stretched carefully, wincing at a lance of pain. He'd probably try. Kenny would think they had been having an affair all along, even though she hadn’t seen Marc in almost fifteen years. There was a spark, a connection between them that was undeniable, and her man would see it right away. Not that it mattered. She’d made her choice, and she would face the consequences when the time came. Nothing would keep her from her son, not after all that she had lost, and maybe, just maybe, her man could be surprised into making a mistake by not only Brady’s presence, but by how much she had changed. The Demon inside was awake. She was a slave no more, and Kenny would find out very quickly that she wouldn’t go back to her old life of bondage.
    First, she had to have time to heal, was scared that even if she managed to leave Ohio without Warren and the others stopping her, she wouldn’t be able to handle the trip west. If just surviving in one place was so hard, how bad would a three-month journey across this broken land be? She needed help, and there was no one else she could call. Marc had to come.
    “But not yet,” she told the Witch and the heart that had both jumped eagerly. She would call out to him when she was ready, and that wasn’t today.
    Angela lit a cigarette and blew out thick smoke rings that stayed intact until they hit the big brown blanket hanging over the thin, wooden door. She had been an abused animal in a luxury cage, and it had happened fast. Her gifts ( curse , Kenny always called it her curse) were the end root of their fights, what he wanted her to do with them. After a while, the Demon inside had gone to sleep, locked behind a thick steel door, to prevent Kenny from using the power to satisfy his own selfish, petty desires.
    And Angela had spent a decade in hell because of it. There had only been two things she had kept from him during their long, hard years together - her abilities and the name of her baby’s father. Everything else had been under Kenny’s unforgiving control each waking moment and many of the sleeping ones too.
    Until the War.
     Being alone while her world was being blown away had ripped off the locks on the Witch and the old Angela. The twisted, slotted cell door was barely standing, and the dark, shifting spirit behind that thin shield whispered almost constantly to her now, guided her. She found it easy to listen, still surprised to look inside and see the courage she had been forced to lock away. She was suddenly allowed to be her own person again, to make her own choices based on what she wanted and needed, including exploring these things that she could do…and of that, there was a lot.
    Her gifts had aged well in storage. Most of it was random, coming and going without control, but she was learning to direct it again, to concentrate and get what she needed - to trust the powers inside. When the Demon spoke, she listened.
    The Witch said it was fated for a new, more careful world to replace the old, but when Angela asked if her own small family would be a part of that peaceful