A meeting was arranged with the woman, Laura DuSantiago, in the west of the land, and Ruth accompanied him. Yet they had barely passed beyond London's city limits when the dark forces moved against them. At a service station an attempt was made to kidnap Ruth by another face-changing creature much like the one they had seen that night they came together. With the help of a mysterious, elderly wanderer named Tom, Ruth was rescued, but by then it was impossible to deny that they had become targets, although they knew not of whom-or what.

Tom joined them on their journey. He was a fellow who kept his secrets hard inside him, and although he was not one of the five, his role in the epochal events that were fast approaching was pivotal.

As night fell, the Evil abroad increased its attempt to prevent the five from coming together. While heading west along the M4, a Fabulous Beast soared down from the black sky, its scaled body glittering in the headlights, blasting fire from its mouth. The motorway became the scene of a terrible conflagration; many died. It was the first of the great slaughters. There was no Saint George to slay the creature; Church, Ruth, and Tom could only flee.

Tom, in his wisdom, took them to Stonehenge, which proved a remarkable sanctuary against the attack; there, Church and Ruth were initiated into the ancient mysteries. Tom told of the lifeblood of the earth, the blue fire, long dormant but slowly awakening after the great change that had overtaken us all. Rejuvenating, powerful, the source of all magic, it seared along the lines of force; the age-old sacred sited marked the areas where it was most intense. The Fabulous Beasts were both its symbols and its guardians; the one that attacked them had been briefly corrupted by the power of the forces raised against them. And there, too, Ruth and Church first began to learn of their true destiny as the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, the spiritual bond that was linked to that earth energy.