He sounded both more grim and more confident. “Go ahead,
Caine, do whatever you want with the hostages. Then you
won’t have hostages anymore. And you’ll still be hungry.”
“You think I won’t turn the hostages over to Drake?”
Caine threatened. “You’ll be able to listen to them scream.”
He could feel the color rising in his cheeks. He knew Sam’s
answer. It wasn’t long in coming.
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“Two seconds after I hear anyone yelling, in we come,” Sam
said. “It will be bloody, and I’d like to not have that. But you
know I have enough people with enough power to do it.”
Caine chewed his thumbnail. He glanced at Diana, willing
her to have some solution, some helpful idea. He carefully
avoided making eye contact with Drake.
“So, I have a better idea,” Sam yelled. “How about I give
you ten minutes to get out of there? And I give you my word
you can go back to Coates.”
Caine squeezed out a laugh that was half snarl. “Not happening, Sam. I’m holding this place. And you can go back to a very dark town.”
There was no answer.
The silence was eloquent. Sam didn’t need to say anything
else. And Caine had nothing left to say. It felt as if there was
a band tightening around his chest. Like he had to fight for
each breath.
Something was not right. Something was very much not
right. The fears that lived in his nightmares were rising now,
like an incoming tide inside his head. He was in a trap.
“Stay tight,” Drake muttered as his soldiers exchanged
skeptical, worried looks.
Diana swiveled in her chair. “So what now, Fearless Leader?
He’s right: we don’t have any food.”
Caine winced. He ran a hand through his hair. His head
felt hot.
He turned quickly, feeling as if someone was sneaking up
behind him. No one there but the girl, Brittney, on the floor.
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How had he not seen this coming? How had he not realized
he would be trapped here? Even if he could somehow reach
his people at Coates, they were far fewer in number than the
number of kids Sam could command.
And none would come. Not here. Not with Sam surrounding the place.
Sam could have fifty people sitting outside the power plant
within a few hours. And what could Caine do?
What could he do?
They had taken the power plant. They had turned off the
lights in Perdido Beach. But now they were trapped. It was
impossible.
Caine frowned, trying to concentrate. Why had he done
it? In the space of a minute he had gone from crowing triumph to dismal humiliation.
What he had done? It made no sense. It gained him nothing. All he had thought was: Take the plant. Take it, and hold it. Then . . .
Then . . .
Caine felt himself sinking, mind swirling down and down
as if a pit had opened beneath him.
The realization was sudden and sickening. He hadn’t taken
the power plant in order to get food for his people, or even to
show his power over Sam. He hadn’t been following his own
desires at all.
Caine, the color all drained from his face now, stared at
Drake.
“It’s for him,” Caine said. “It’s all for him.”
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Drake narrowed his eyes, uncomprehending.
“He’s hungry,” Caine whispered. It hurt him to see the
dawning realization in Diana’s eyes as he said the words,
“He’s hungry in the dark.”
“How do you know?” Drake demanded.
Caine spread his hands, helpless to explain. Words would
not come.
“It’s why he let me go,” Caine said, more to himself than to
Diana or Drake. “It’s why he released me. For this.”
“Are you telling me we’re living out some fever dream
of yours?” Diana was poised between laughing and crying,
incredulous. “Are you telling me we did all this because that
monster out in the desert is in your head?”
“What does he need us to do?” Drake asked, eager, not
angry. A dog anxious to please his true master.
“We have to bring it to him. We have to feed him,” Caine
said.
“Feed him what?”
Caine sighed and looked at Jack. “The food that brings the
light to his darkness. The same thing that brings light to Perdido Beach. The uranium.”
Jack shook his head slowly, understanding but not wanting
to understand. “Caine, how do we do that? How do we take
uranium from the core? How do we move it for miles across
the desert? It’s heavy. It’s dangerous. It’s radioactive.”
“Caine, this is crazy,” Diana pleaded. “Drag radioactive
uranium across the desert? How does this help you? How
does this help any of us? What is the point?”
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Caine hesitated. He frowned. She was right. Why should
he serve the Darkness? Let the creature feed itself. Caine had
problems of his own, his own needs, his own—
A roar so loud, it seemed to vibrate the walls, filled the
room. It knocked Caine to his knees. He clapped his hands
over his ears, trying to block it out, but it went on and on, as
he cringed and covered himself and fought the sudden desire
to void his bowels.
It stopped. The silence rang.
Slowly Caine opened his eyes. Diana looked at him like
he had gone crazy. Drake stared incredulous, on the edge of
laughing. Jack merely looked worried.
They hadn’t heard it. That inhuman, irresistible roar had
been for Caine alone.
Punishment. The gaiaphage would be obeyed.
“What is going on with you?” Diana asked.
Drake narrowed his eyes and smirked openly. “It’s the
Darkness. Caine is no longer running things. There’s a new
boss.”
Diana gave voice to Caine’s own thoughts.
“Poor Caine,” she said. “You poor, screwed-up boy.”
For Lana each step seemed too loud, like she was walking on
a giant bass drum. Her legs were stiff, knees welded solid. Her
feet felt each pebble as though she were barefoot.
Her heart pounded so hard, it seemed the whole world
must be able to hear it.
No, no, it was just her imagination. There was no sound
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but the soft cornflake crunch of sneakers on gravel. Her heart
beat for her ears only. She was no louder than a mouse.
But she was convinced it could hear her. Like an owl listening and watching for prey in the night, it watched and it waited, and all her stealth was like a brass band to it, him, the
thing, the Darkness.
The moon was out. Or what passed for the moon. The stars
shone. Or something very like stars. Silvery light illuminated
tips of brush, the seams of a boulder, and cast deep shadows
everywhere else.
Lana picked her way along, holding herself tight. The gun
was in her right hand,
hanging by her side, brushing against
her thigh. A flashlight—off for now—stuck up from her
pocket.
You think you own me. You think you control me. No one
owns me. No one controls me.
Two points of light winked in the shadows ahead.
Lana froze.
The twin lights stared at her. They did not move.
Lana raised the gun and took aim. She aimed at the space
directly between the two points of light.
The explosion lit up the night for a split second.
In that flash she saw the coyote.
Then it was gone and her ears were ringing.
From back down the trail she heard a wooden door creaking, slamming. Cookie’s voice. “Lana! Lana!”
“I’m okay, Cookie. Get back inside. Lock the door! Do it!”
she yelled.
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She heard the door slam.
“I know you’re out there, Pack Leader,” Lana said. “I’m not
so helpless this time.”
Lana started moving again. The explosion, the bullet—
which almost certainly had missed its target—had settled her
down. She knew now that the mutant coyote leader was there,
watching. She was sure the Darkness also knew.
Good. Fine. Better. No more sneaking. She could march to
the mine and take the key from the corpse. And then march
back to the building where Cookie waited with Patrick.
The gun felt good in her hand.
“Come on, Pack Leader,” she purred. “Not scared of a bullet, are you?”
But her bravado faded as she drew near the mine entrance.
The moonlight painted the crossbeam above the entrance
with faintest silver. Below it a black mouth waiting greedily
to swallow her up.
Come to me.
Imagination. There was no voice.
I have need of you.
Lana clicked the flashlight on and aimed the beam at the
mouth of the cave. She might as well have pointed it at the
night sky. The beam illuminated nothing.
Flashlight in her left hand. Pistol heavy in her right. The
smell of cordite from the shot she’d fired. The crunch of
gravel. Limbs heavy. Mind in something like a dream-state
now, all focus narrowed down to a simple task.
She reached the mine shaft entrance. There above it,
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5
perched on the narrow ledge, stood Pack Leader snarling
down at her.
She aimed her flashlight and swung the pistol to follow the
beam, but the coyote darted away.
He’s not trying to stop me, Lana realized. He’s just observing. The eyes and ears of the Darkness.
Into the mine entrance. The beam searched and stopped
when it found the object.
The face was like a shrunken head, yellow skin taut against
bones that waited patiently to emerge. The rough, patched
denim seemed almost new by comparison with the ancient-
looking mummy flesh and sere-grass hair.
Lana knelt beside him. “Hey, Jim,” she said.
She now had to choose between the gun and the light. She
laid the gun on Jim’s collapsed chest.
She found his right front pocket. Wrangler jeans. The
pocket loose. Easy enough to reach in. But the pocket was
empty. She could reach the hip pocket easily enough as well,
but it was also empty.
“Sorry about this.” She seized the waist of his jeans and
rolled him toward her, exposing the other hip pocket. The
body moved oddly, too light, too easily shifted, so much
weight evaporated.
Empty.
“Human dead.”
She knew the voice instantly. It wasn’t a voice you ever forgot. It was Pack Leader’s slurred, high-pitched snarl.
“Yes, I noticed,” Lana said. She was proud of the calmness
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of her tone. Inside, the panic was threatening to engulf her,
just one pocket left, and if the keys weren’t there?
“Go to the Darkness,” Pack Leader said.
He was a dozen feet away, poised, ready. Could she reach
the gun before Pack Leader could reach her?
“The Darkness told me to pick this guy’s pockets,” Lana
said. “The Darkness says he wants gum. Thinks maybe Jim
has a pack.”
During her time as Pack Leader’s captive, Lana had come
to respect the coyote leader’s ruthless determination, his cunning, his power. But not his intelligence. He was, despite the mutation that allowed speech, a coyote. His frame of reference was hunting rodents and dominating his pack.
Lana shoved the corpse away from her, rolling it back to
reveal the remaining pocket. The gun clattered onto the rock,
Hermit Jim between Lana and the weapon.
No chance now that she could reach it before Pack Leader
could reach her.
Lana fumbled for and found the pocket.
Inside, something cold and hard-edged.
She drew the keys out, squeezed them tight in her fist, then
thrust them into her own pocket.
Lana leaned out over poor, dead Jim and swept the flashlight until she found the gun.
Pack Leader growled deep in his throat.
“The Darkness asked for it,” she said.
Her fingers closed on it. Slowly, knees creaking, she
stood up.
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“I forgot. I have to get something,” she said. She walked
directly toward the coyote.
But this was too much for Pack Leader.
“Go to hell, coyote,” Lana answered. She did not move the
light, did not telegraph her move, just snapped the gun up
and fired.
Once. Twice. Three times. BangBangBang!
Each shot was a bolt of lightning. Like a strobe light.
There was an entirely satisfying coyote yelp of pain.
In the strobe she saw Pack Leader leap. Saw him land hard,
far short of his objective.
She was past him and running now, running blind and
heedless down the path and as she ran she screamed. But not
in terror.
Lana screamed in defiance.
She screamed in triumph.
She had the key.
TWENTY-SEVEN 17 HOURS, 48 MINUTES
B R I A N N A W O K E .
It took a while for her to make sense of where she was.
Then the pain reminded her. Pain all down her left arm,
left hip, left calf, left ankle.
She had been wearing a denim jacket over a T-shirt, shorts,
and sneakers. The hoodie was burned away on her left shoulder and arm, a skid burn. A three-inch oval was gone from her shorts on the same side.
The skin beneath was bloody. She had hit the roof at high
speed. The concrete had been like sandpaper.
It hurt amazingly.
She was on her back. Staring up at the bogus stars. Her
head hurt. Her palms were scraped raw but nowhere near the
scraped-to-the-meat injuries on her side.
Brianna picked herself up, gasping from the pain. It was
like she was on fire. She looked, expecting almost to see
actual flames.
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It was scary bright on the roo
f of the power plant. So she
could see the wounds all too clearly. The blood looked blue
in the fluorescent light. Her injuries weren’t life-threatening,
she reassured herself, she wasn’t going to die. But oh, man, it
hurt and it was going to keep on hurting.
“Happens when you slam concrete at a couple hundred
miles an hour,” she told herself. “I should wear a helmet and
leathers. Like motorcycle guys.”
That thought offered a welcome distraction. She spent a few
seconds contemplating a sort of superhero outfit for herself.
Helmet, black leather, some lightning-bolt decals. Definitely.
It could have been worse, she told herself. It would have
been worse if she were anyone else on earth, because when
she had hit the deck her body wanted to go tumbling out
of control. That would have broken her arms and legs and
head.
But she was the Breeze, not anyone else. She’d had the
speed to slam palms and feet against concrete fast enough—
barely—to turn a deadly tumble into an extremely painful
skid.
She limped at regular speed over toward the edge of the
roof. But the way the building was constructed the edges
sloped away, round-shouldered, rather than forming a nice,
neat ninety-degree angle. So she couldn’t see straight down,
though she could see the gate and the parking lot, all blazing
bright. Beyond, the dark mountains, the darker sea.
“Well, this was a stupid idea,” Brianna admitted.
She had attempted to fly. That was the fact of it. She had
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tried to translate her great speed into a sort of bounding,
leaping version of flight.
It had made perfect sense at the time. Sam had ordered her
not to enter the power plant’s control room. But by the same
token she had to try to get the lay of the land, to see where all
of Caine’s people might be positioned. She’d thought: What
would be better than the view from on top of the turbine
building?
She’d been toying for a long time with the idea of flying. She’d worked out the basic concept, which amounted to running real fast, leaping onto something a little high, then
jumping to something higher still. It wasn’t rocket science. It
was no different from leaping from rock to rock while crossing
a stream. Or perhaps like taking a set of stairs two at a time.
Only in this case the “stairs” had been a parked minivan,