Fear (Gone #5)(113)

Caine turned with menacing slowness to Quinn. Quinn felt the heat of his malevolence. Humiliation was dangerous stuff to play around with.

“What do you think your story will look like, Caine? Always swaggering around, playing all bad and tough. You did one right thing, Caine: you went out, helped Brianna, and you fought those bugs back, and that’s why the people said, yeah, he can be our king.”

“I helped Brianna?” Caine snapped. “She helped me.”

“All that, though, that gets wiped out, because the end of the story is how Penny humiliated you—”

“Enough, all right?” Caine said sharply.

“What people remember is the end of the story. And if the barrier comes down, the end of the story will be how you cried and crapped yourself and danced like a trained monkey for Penny.”

There was no way to know whether Caine was as pale as he seemed by the light of the Sammy sun. His eyes were narrow, and his lips were drawn back, almost like a wolf baring its teeth. His face was right in Quinn’s.

He kept his gaze on Quinn but spoke to Sam. “Your loser friend here must have grown a pair, Sam.”

“Seems like,” Sam said, sounding amazed.

Then Caine spoke to Quinn. “Tell you what, Quinn, since you’re so worried about my … legacy. Is that the right word, Astrid? Since you’re worried about my legacy, Quinn, I’ll go out Drake hunting with my brother there if.”

“If what?” Quinn asked.

“If you come with us,” Caine said with a cruel smile. “You’ve been a pain in my ass, fisherman. It’s because of you I had a beef with Penny in the first place. So it’s real dark out there, and most likely Drake and maybe even our old friend Penny are out there. Not to mention Mr. Nasty himself.”

Quinn couldn’t stop himself glancing out toward the utter darkness within which he knew monsters hid.

“He’s a fisherman,” Sam said. “He doesn’t even have a weapon.”

Caine laughed. “Have you been to Perdido Beach? It’s a nice little town. Not much food, no entertainment, plenty of weapons. Weapons are the one thing we do have. And he’ll need one.”

“I don’t even know how to shoot,” Quinn protested.

Caine laughed cruelly. “It’s not for you to shoot Drake or Penny, let alone the Darkness, if he’s actually coming,” he mocked. “It’s for you to stick in your mouth and pull the trigger if any one of them gets hold of you.”





THIRTY-SIX

18 MINUTES

AFTER HOURS AND hours of total darkness, the soft glow of her baby’s skin allowed Diana to walk with more confidence. She was a light in the darkness.

Gaia. Her baby.

She felt still the horror at seeing the green pixels, that swarm that was the gaiaphage enter her daughter’s nose and mouth. She would never, ever be able to block that out.

So many things she would never be able to forget.

But against it all was this person. This soft, chubby little girl, who looked up at her with eyes so absurdly blue and so unnaturally aware.

She seemed to grow heavier even as Diana carried her down through the ghost town beneath the mine shaft. Soon Gaia would not need to nurse. Already Diana could feel tiny teeth biting.

And then what would Gaia do with her mother?

“Doesn’t matter,” Diana whispered. “It doesn’t matter. She’s mine.”

Brittney walked beside her, peering in eagerly to see Gaia’s face. Brittney wore the expression of an ecstatic believer. Diana knew that if Gaia somehow spoke and told Brittney to leap off a cliff, Brittney would do it.

But Gaia spoke through Diana now.

She spoke through her mother.

Diana could feel her baby’s mind probing inside her own. Not the mind of a baby, true, but not quite the cold violence of the gaiaphage, either. The two were becoming one: Gaia and the Darkness. The two were growing together, and the resulting entity might be more than or less than, but definitely not equal to, either the baby or the monster.

Just one thing, though, that Diana couldn’t dismiss from her thoughts. Just one thing. The way Gaia reached into Diana’s memory and opened it up as if she was thumbing through a picture book. Like she was looking for something. Something the baby sensed must be there.

Not rustling around blindly, but looking for something.

Diana had no defenses against Gaia. She could hide nothing from her. Diana could only watch as her memories unfolded to reveal pictures of things past. And of people.

Gaia was studying the people Diana knew. Now Brianna. Now Edilio. Now Duck and Albert and Mary.

Not Panda. No.

Caine. Gaia lingered long on pictures of Caine. A first meeting at Coates. The many flirtations. The teasing. The way Diana had made him want her. The dark ambition she had seen in him. The first time he had revealed his power to her.

The terrible things they had done. Battles.

Murder.

Yes, but don’t look any further; all that I confess, Gaia, my daughter, but enough. Enough.

Please don’t.

The smell. That was what the baby found first. The aroma of roasted human flesh.

Diana’s eyes filled with tears.

“What’s the matter?” Brittney asked.

The baby tasted what Diana had tasted.

The baby felt her stomach gratefully receive the meat that had been a boy named Panda.