As the gull disappeared, it had no idea it had just saved its own life. Through the shimmering watery plane, the newborn Demonrays were watching it. Born to the sea, their food had disappeared again, and they were in the midst of another migration. This time their destination wasn’t at sea, but on land, a place where they’d already detected massive amounts of prey. Only not seagulls and not bears, either. For the moment, they remained hungry. And perfectly still. So still they seemed like they weren’t even there. And maybe, one day, they wouldn’t be. Maybe nothing would. Maybe there would only be what there always had been. The rolling ocean, the blowing wind, and the moon. The moon from a never-ending sea of pure and absolute darkness, it was still watching.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you very much to Bob Miller, Will Schwalbe, Marly Rusoff, Leslie Wells, Jeff and Marian Freedman, Steve and Judy Katcher, and David Groff. I am truly grateful to all of you for helping make Natural Selection a reality. I’d also like to thank Sarah Schaffer and her colleagues in sales for their enthusiastic response to the book and for really getting behind it. Along the same lines, I am also indebted to Corinna Harmon, Jane Comins, Katie Wainwright, Jill Sansone, and Phil Rose. In particular, I’d like to thank Ellen Archer, who believed in this project from day one right through to publication.
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 David Freedman LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher. Printed in the United States of America. For information address Hyperion, 77 West 66th Street, New York, New York 10023-6298.
ISBN: 9781401384586
1. California—Fiction. I. Title.
First eBook Edition: March 2007