*  *  *  *  *  EPILOGUE  *  *  *  *  *

I opened up my heart-shaped locket and spread the 7 pictures that were hidden inside across the rock in front of us. Tyler reached over and slid the pictures of my parents over for a closer look. The three-year-old looked up at me with his brilliant blue eyes, "Who are they? I have never seen them before."

I smiled at the two old pictures, "They are my parents."

Tyler looked at the pictures for a long time. He knew I had been adopted. Beside him, Sarah was stacking rocks into a pyramid while listening. She was only one year old, but we all knew that she understood far more than she ever let on. The Heartfire that they had been born with had accelerated both their mental and physical development.

Tyler picked up the pictures to examine them closer. "You met Mom and Dad before they were married, right?"

Sarah furrowed her eyebrows in concentration as she stacked the rocks, "What happened to your parents?" Tact was not her strong point, although the fact that a one-year-old could manage a complete sentence with effort was mindboggling.

I nodded slowly as my mind drifted to the past, "My parents were bitten when the zombies first appeared. I had locked myself upstairs. Nine months later, I was sitting in a window and saw a person with glowing blue eyes running through the street shadows. I wasn't sure what to make of her."

Tyler interrupted, "Only those with Heartfire have glowing blue eyes." His voice made it sound like it was obvious. For anyone in Sanctuary, that fact was a well-known part of life.

I grinned at him. "Yes, but this was back when Diane was still the only one with Heartfire. At that time no one even knew that it was a different virus, not even Diane."

Tyler thought about that for a moment, "Okay, what happened then?"

I slid the heart-shaped picture of Diane closer, "At the time, I only had facts from my family and from the old tv stations to work with. My Aunt strongly believed in guardian angels, and the news stations had warned of fast zombies called Swifts. When I saw her, I was figured that she was either my guardian angel or that she was more dangerous than the zombies that had roamed the streets for months."

Tyler chuckled. "The answer is kind of obvious..."

I grinned at him. "Yep. She was both."

He had not expected that answer and gave me an odd look. It was my turn to chuckle. 

"She was my guardian angel as she protected me from anything that threatened me, and you have to admit that she is more dangerous than a Swift if you get her mad."

He had pushed her patience a few too many times when he had hit the terrible two stage. He grinned as he caught on, "You're right. Although the chances of anyone laying a hand on Mom before Dad sent them face-first into the dust is slim to none."

I chuckled, he was right. Ace was fiercely protective of Diane, which complicated her role as a fighting trainer if she got injured, which occasionally happened. Bruises were one thing, but for some reason, any decent cut that bled freely had Ace intervening. 

Within the first year, Diane had given up trying to teach the more advanced fighters. For all of her tricks and experience, she just wasn't as fast as most with Heartfire and couldn't keep up.

I clearly remembered the event that caused her to stick with training beginners. She had been training a rather fast and enthusiastic person with established Heartfire. He had previous training with a fencing sabre before the Collapse and used several moves that were unfamiliar to Diane. Somehow, she had slipped or tripped, and his sword had connected. Against all odds, the padding around his sword had come undone, and his sword had cut deep into Diane's arm.

I still got goosebumps when I recalled the roar that Ace had made. No one had time to react before Ace had tackled him. Ace had moved so fast that he had been a blur, even to my eyes. The tackle had sent the guy flying to the far side of the training field while Ace stood protectively in front of Diane. My blood had run cold when I noticed that his eyes had turned turquoise. He had gone out of control, and the person who had triggered it was a citizen of Sanctuary.

Diane had jumped to her feet and somehow got in front of Ace before he went after the other guy. She had grabbed his chin so that he looked her in the eyes while she spoke swiftly and softly to him, trying to hold his attention. Thankfully, Julian had been on the field; he had grabbed the other guy and got him out of sight as fast as possible while Todd had cleared everyone off the training field until Ace calmed down.

It took the guy three days to heal from the broken and shattered bones even with the established Heartfire virus in his blood. Ace had apologized profusely, and the guy forgave him, but he kept his full-out sessions restricted to the faster trainers after that. 

Not many people went full-out in their practices with Diane anymore, although Ace and a handful of others would still would. They just had to be careful that the padding on their weapons was very secure since a large bleeding wound seemed to take Ace right back to the bandit attack when he feared Diane's life was in danger, and thus, sent him out of control.

Tyler interrupted my thoughts. "So Mom found you and adopted you? How did she meet Dad?"

I grinned. "Diane originally found me and eventually adopted me. This was back at Wainwright Fort, and at that time, there were some bad guys who were threatening to hurt a kid. Diane volunteered for extra training so she could protect me. You can probably guess who the trainer was."

"Dad," Sarah piped up.

I nodded. "Yes, it was Ace. Eventually, Diane was forced to leave the Fort because someone discovered the scar from her zombie bite. They were scared that she would eventually turn into a zombie. I followed her and found the medical lab where we learnt about the Heartfire virus. After it burnt down, we met Roland's original crew, and they eventually built Sanctuary. Ace moved to Sanctuary shortly afterwards. Not long after that, the bandits attacked. During the fight, Ace and Diane realized that they actually loved one another."

I tapped the heart-shaped picture of Tyler and grinned at him, "They got married half a year later. Then a year and a half after that, you somehow appeared."

I grinned at Sarah and tapped on her picture. "And, as if I didn't wash enough cloth diapers with Tyler, two years later, you came along."

They both grinned at me. For all intents and purposes, they were my brother and sister; their pictures lived in my locket along with the other pictures currently scattered on the rock. I glanced behind me, up on the deck in front of our house, Ace and Diane sat together on a bench. I grinned when I saw that Ace had his arm draped across Diane's shoulders. Diane was leaning against Ace with her head on his shoulder, while Ace had his chin on top of her head.

It was a good thing that exposure to Trish and Nathan had helped me get over my embarrassment of watching couples kiss. Otherwise, Ace and Diane would have driven me to distraction with their short kisses that they gave one another when they thought that no one else was looking. They kept their kisses pretty much out of the public eye, but that didn't really help me since I was around them all day.

Both of them had their eyes closed at the moment and were unaware of me watching them, although I knew from watching Tyler and Sarah that none of us would get far from the playground with them unaware.

I grinned as Trish's three kids approached the playground with Trish and Nathan not far behind. They never had gotten fired, but that never bothered anyone. Our two families were very good family friends.

I looked at the cliffs where over a thousand people were relaxing in the evening sunlight. Blue eyes accounted for nearly three-quarters of the population. I glanced at the huge shelters built for the trading trucks and noticed that most of the trucks were here tonight. We had dozens of caravans now that went all over most of western North America. Only at Christmas were all of the trucks in Sanctuary at one time.

I spotted Joel playing with speaker wiring and grinned. There would be music and dancing later tonight. It still amused me that Ace refused to dance with anyone but his family. It turned out that he quite enjoyed dancing, but if given the chance, he would dance with Diane until well after bedtime while simply staring into each other's eyes. Tyler, Sarah, and I could get him to dance with us, but no one else ever managed it. He would politely decline with a grin, but he no longer pulled a disappearing act.

I gathered the pictures on the rock and carefully put them into my locket. They were a reflection of the past and present. There was still room in my locket for more pictures, plenty of room for a bright future. I lifted my head and watched as the fading light triggered numerous blue eyes to start glowing across the huge expanse called Sanctuary.

Hope for the future was also glowing brightly.