Staring at their suddenly powerless leaders.
Edilio spotted Jack on a motorboat. He was too far away to be able to hear, but Edilio pointed straight at him.
Jack mimed a who me? gesture.
Sam emphasized Edilio’s order by stabbing his finger unmistakably in the direction of Jack. Then he swept his arm to point at the shore.
Jack reluctantly trudged to the back of the boat and there came the coughing start-up of an outboard engine.
Edilio raised the binoculars again to look at Roger. He was in pain. Helpless.
He forced himself to look away, to follow Jack as he headed to shore, to sweep along the bluff and find Dekka levitating herself over rises.
And there, coming toward her, Orc.
Edilio felt a small breath of hope.
Orc, Jack, and Dekka. Could they do it?
The coyotes trotted with the relentlessness of motion that marked them as successful predators.
Brianna spotted them maybe half a mile away.
“Heh.”
Then beyond them, at the limits of her sight, a second group. The rest of the pack. Or a different pack? It didn’t matter, really: all coyotes were kill-on-sight. In fact, it had gotten so they were pretty rare.
Take out this nearer pack. Then take a quick look-see for Drake before Sam even noticed she was gone.
One of the coyotes spotted her. The result was a very gratifying panic. She made out four of them. They were tearing away at top speed.
The light was pretty bad. And the terrain was pretty rough. So she couldn’t crank it up to anything like full speed. But that was okay: a coyote might break twenty-five, thirty miles per hour. But even Brianna’s low gear was twice that.
She ran up beside the nearest of the coyotes. It glanced at her with death in its dumb eyes.
“Yeah,” Brianna said. “All dogs go to heaven. Coyotes go the other way.”
She swung her machete.
The body took two steps, tripped over the head, and tumbled into the dirt.
Two of the coyotes decided to stand side by side and make a stand. They were panting, tongues lolling, already worn out. One had a ruff matted with dried blood.
“Hey, doggies,” Brianna said.
She danced forward and they snapped at her. But it was no contest. She decapitated one. His mate, the one marked by dried blood that had probably once given life to Howard Bassem, turned tail and ran and Brianna severed her spine.
“I never liked Howard,” Brianna said to the body. “But I like you even less.”
She had trouble finding the fourth animal. It had probably decided to cower and hide. In the dim light it was hard to see. Everything was brown on brown, even the air itself, it seemed.
She waited patiently, watching.
But if the coyote waited her out, it could probably get away when the final darkness came.
Anyway, if time was short, she had a more important target. Coyotes were mere accessories: Drake was the main goal.
Brianna took off at the cautious pace of a galloping thoroughbred, pursued by a sense of guilt and worry about what Sam would say if she came back with nothing but three dead coyotes to show for it.
She’d have to get Drake. That would stop Sam’s complaining.
Where were the coyotes? Drake had expected them to close in with him as soon as he reached the bluff. They should have been waiting there.
No coyotes.
Not good. They had abandoned him. Which meant they were abandoning his master as well. Like rats deserting a sinking ship.
Not for the first time Drake felt the sharp edge of fear. Maybe the stupid dogs were right to go rogue. Maybe the gaiaphage’s power was waning. Maybe he was serving a failing master.
Well, not if Drake succeeded. Then the gaiaphage’s gratitude would be even greater.
He had to move fast. Fast! Once night came he would be safe, maybe, but until then…
Drake feared two things. One was that Brittney would emerge just when Drake needed to be able to fight.
The second was Brianna.
So far she wasn’t in sight. But that was the thing about Brianna: she could show up in a real hurry.
Night would be the end of Brianna’s usefulness. Even this weak iced-tea light was dangerous to Swift Girl. But he wouldn’t be able to stop worrying about her until true darkness came.
And then there was the problem of finding his way back to the gaiaphage. The coyotes could have done it with smell and their own innate sense of navigation, but he was no coyote.
“Let us go, Drake,” Diana said. “We’re just slowing you down.”
“Then move faster,” he said, and snapped his whip, cutting through her shirt and painting a red stripe on her back. That was nice. That was good. No time to really enjoy it. But yeah, that was good.
She had cried out in pain. That was good, too. But that wasn’t his job. No, he had to warn himself: he’d made that error before. He’d let himself be distracted by his own pleasures.
This time he had to come through. He had to deliver Diana to his master.
“You’ll move or I’ll see if the little kid likes old Whip Hand.”
He heard a noise and glanced over his shoulder, flinching in the expectation of a machete suddenly zooming at him at the speed of a motorcycle.
He should have finished Brianna back at Coates. She had just been an annoying nobody then. He’d barely known she was alive. Now she was his living nightmare. He should have finished her.
Nasty little brat. The memory of her taunts was still a red wound in his psyche. He hated her. Like he hated Diana. And that frosty prig, Astrid.
He loved the memory of humiliating Sam, but even now the memory of his triumph over Astrid gave him a warm glow all over. He could hate guys, he could want to destroy them, he could enjoy making them suffer, but it was never as deep and intense as it was with girls. No, girls were special. His hatred for Sam was a cool breeze compared to the seething, hot rage he felt for Diana. And Astrid. And Brianna.