Shadowed
by Connie Suttle
"This is all that's left?" Bill Jennings, Director of the Joint National Security Agency and Homeland Security Office glanced up at his assistant. Six names on a piece of official letterhead had been passed to the aging Director. Bill was two months away from retirement and the president and other high-ranking officials were already vetting candidates to fill his position.Bill shook his head at the list of children still living. Another piece of paper resting under his hand listed the names of the dead. There were nearly seven hundred of those and he still wasn't sure they'd gotten information on all the children involved. He worried about many other children listed as missing—had they been abducted? How could he explain these things to the president, let alone someone coming in to take over his job? Bill sighed heavily. "Where are they now?" he asked."These six," Vince Jordan, Bill's assistant, tapped the paper containing the names of the half-Elemaiyan children still living, "are relocated, but we've seen how unsuccessful that has been in the past. You know where the seventh one is, through Mr. Winkler.""Yes. I do know where the seventh one is," Bill agreed."Do you think, sir," Vince mused aloud, "that we might put these six," he tapped the paper again, "where the seventh one is?"Of the hundreds of Bright Elemaiyan children born to human parents, only seven remain. Six of those have been relocated, but the Dark Elemaiya are closing in to destroy them. The seventh, Ashe Evans, resides in Cloud Chief, Oklahoma. Government authorities, in an effort to save the relocated six, approach the residents of Cloud Chief seeking shelter for the children and their human families. Ashe must find a way to keep them safe as murders begin to pile up outside Cloud Chief's protected boundaries.