A stunning new edition of Book Three of the Patternist series, in which two immortals chase each other across continents and centuries, binding their fates together - and changing the destiny of the human race. 'A book that shifted my life... Epic, game-changing, moving and brilliant' VIOLA DAVIS on WILD SEED'Butler's evocative, often troubling novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power and, ultimately, what it means to be human' NEW YORK TIMES--In an alternative America, Blake Maslin is a doctor travelling across the Californian desert with his teenage twin daughters. When their car is ambushed, he and the girls are taken captive by armed men demanding urgent medical care. Transported to an isolated compound, the Maslins meet a collective of people suffering from an unknown and deadly disease. They appear sickly yet possess unnatural strength, torn between the compulsion to infect others or to hold on to their humanity. What Blake and his daughters don't yet know is how the community came to be there, and who they really are. But the babies born in the compound are undeniably not human. In the following hours, each of the Maslins must make an impossible choice: risk everything to escape infection and warn the rest of the world - or accept their place in this strange new society. A PATTERNIST NOVEL: BOOK THREE