Fear

It was apparently clear.

“Good. Now I have work to do. Get out of my way.” She descended into the gore left in Penny’s wake. Quinn came to her side.

“Me?” he said.

“For now. Make sure Penny leaves town. Kill her if you want to, because she’ll be trouble if she lives.”

Quinn made a face. “I don’t think I’m a guy who kills people.”

Lana smiled her exceedingly rare smile. “Yeah, I think I figured that out about you, Quinn. Send one of your people to bring Sanjit down here. He has to reach Sam. So find him a gun. Taylor is done for, and we need to be working with Sam, so it’s communication the old-fashioned way. Being divided will get us all killed.”

“You’ve got it.”

Lana’s smile died. “The Darkness is going after Diana. She has to be warned.”

“Diana? Why?”

“Because she has a baby in her belly. And the Darkness needs to be born.”

TWENTY-THREE

14 HOURS, 39 MINUTES

DRAKE EMERGED.

He had no idea where he was. It was a cramped, damp place that smelled of oil. He moved his head slightly and felt an impact that would have been pain back in the old days. He had bumped against something steel.

He blinked. The light was very dim. It came from a square in the low ceiling. He realized it was the edge of some kind of hatch. Just inches above him.

With his hand and his tentacle he felt around this tiny space. It took some time to make sense of things. The complex metal object. The square of light. The way the floor seemed to move slightly beneath him. The smell of oil.

He was on a boat.

In the engine room.

Barely room to move.

He grinned. Well, well: clever Brittney. Good job. Somehow she had found a way to sneak aboard one of the boats. Probably not the boat where he’d seen Diana. Could she have pulled that off? Simple metal-mouthed Brittney?

No. But a boat. Definitely a boat.

Nice.

Now what? He still had to get to Diana.

Easier said than done. First, he had to know where he was. He spent a good twenty minutes trying to squirm his body in such a way as to bring his head up against the hatch. He couldn’t hold the position for long.

He held himself in place by wedging his hand against the engine block, then used the tip of his tentacle to push gently, gently upward on the hatch.

It moved up easily enough. A quarter of an inch. A half an inch. And then he could see a long, very narrow slice of the world beyond. A single spoke of a steering wheel. A bucket. Then a foot.

He lowered the hatch as quietly as he had raised it.

Something had bumped against the side of the boat. He heard a muffled voice, a guy.

Then a second male voice that froze his marrow. Sam.

Sam!

Drake heard sounds of someone clambering up the side. Now he could hear the voices more distinctly.

“T’sup, Roger?” Sam said. “Hey, Justin, hey, Atria. How are you guys holding up?”

The first male voice, presumably “Roger,” whoever that was, said, “We’re fine. Doing fine.”

“Good. Well, I’m just here to hang some lights for you.”

“Sammy suns? So…” Roger hesitated. “Why don’t you kids go play? Old-people talk here.” The sound of running feet, but no high-pitched voices. Then, “So it’s like that?”

“Well, Roger, we don’t know for sure.” Sam sounded weary.

Could Drake take him? Right here and now when he was alone, without Brianna or Dekka to add to his power?

No, Drake told himself. He would never get up out of this hatch before Sam started burning him. And his mission was to get Diana, not kill Sam.

“Is it going to be totally dark?” Roger asked in a voice that quavered just a bit.

“Not totally dark,” Sam said reassuringly. “That’s why I’m here. You’ll have plenty of light on board. Is she up or is she asleep?”

They wandered out of earshot at that point, presumably into the cabin. But Drake had heard a female pronoun.

Was it possible? Was Diana on this very boat?

He grinned in the darkness. He would wait and be sure. The opportunity would arise. His faith in the gaiaphage had not failed him yet.

From boat to boat, one after the next, Sam rowed.

At each boat he climbed aboard and crouched to enter whatever cabin they had. In the smaller sailboats or motorboats he installed one or two Sammy suns.

Sammy suns were the long-lasting manifestation of his power. Rather than firing light in a killing beam he could form balls of light, which then burned without heat and hung in the air. They experimented a bit and discovered that the Sammy sun would stay in place relative to the boat when it moved, a rather important consideration.

Some of the boats, like the houseboats, got as many as three or four Sammy suns.

Halfway through the process, Sam realized he was feeling very weary. He’d had this same feeling after battles where he’d had to use his powers. He’d always assumed it was just the depression that followed any fight. Now he was wondering if the use of the power itself had some kind of tiring effect.

Maybe. But it didn’t matter. The Sammy suns were reassuring to kids. No one—least of all Sam—could tolerate the idea of being trapped in perpetual darkness. It was inconceivable. It struck terror right down to his core.

The last Sammy suns were for the big houseboat. Five in all, including an especially large one floating beside the front railing.

They would be in the dark. But they would not be totally blind.