Fear

She let go of his hand.

“It’s the only way I have left to fight him, Quinn. By not dying, and by not letting any of those kids back there die.”

THIRTY-ONE

8 HOURS, 58 MINUTES

PENNY HAD NEVER felt like this before. She’d never experienced a sense of awe. Never even known what people were talking about when they went on and on about some sunset or the sweep of stars in a clear night sky.

But now she was feeling something.

She couldn’t see. It was as black as if her eyes had been gouged out. (A thought that made her smile at memories of Cigar.) And yet she knew where she was going.

Her cut foot no longer mattered. When she stubbed her toe on a rock it didn’t matter. That she had to feel her way along the narrow path with her hands out like a blind person, it didn’t matter, none of it, because she could feel … feel something so great, so, so magnificent.

She’d never been here before, but it was a homecoming anyway.

She laughed out loud.

“You can feel it, can’t you?”

Penny was startled by the voice. It was coming from where Drake had been but it was a girl’s voice. Of course: Brittney.

“I feel it,” Penny confirmed. “I feel it.”

“When you get closer you’ll hear his voice inside you,” Brittney said. “And it’s not some dream or something; it’s real. And then, when you get all the way down to the bottom, then you can actually touch him.”

Penny thought that sounded weird. Not that she had a big problem with weird. But Brittney was not Drake. Drake she could respect. The Whip Hand—and even more, the will to use it—made Drake powerful.

And attractive, too, as she remembered from former days. She hadn’t ever paid that much attention to him back then because Caine was the one for her. Caine had the dark good looks and the brain—so smart. Drake had been a very different boy: like a shark. He looked like a shark, with dead eyes and a hungry mouth.

Well, she’d been wrong about Caine. Caine was totally under the thumb of that witch Diana. Drake, though, he sure didn’t love Diana. In fact, he hated her. He hated her as much as Penny did.

Maybe Drake was better-looking after all. Anyway, good luck to Diana trying to steal him away like she had Caine.

Brittney was bringing up the rear. Then Penny. Diana and Justin stumbled and wept and fell down in front, feeling their clumsy way along.

Unfortunately Penny could not sustain the illusion that had paralyzed Brianna from this distance. It would have faded by now. Which meant Brianna was free to come after them.

Penny grinned in the dark. Good luck catching them. Let Brianna come back in range again. Her speed was useless now. She was nothing now. The Breeze? Hah. If she came within range, Penny would make her run, run real fast, run until her legs broke. Hah!

“He’ll speak to me; he’ll speak to you,” Brittney said in a singsong voice. “He’ll tell us what to do.”

“Shut up,” Penny snapped.

“No,” Brittney chided in a voice dripping with sincerity. “We mustn’t fight amongst ourselves.”

“We mustn’t?” Penny mocked her. “Shut up until Drake comes back.” Then, not happy with the silence from Brittney, silence that sounded like disapproval, Penny said, “I don’t take orders from anyone. Not you. Not Drake. Not even the whatever you call it.” But she licked her lips nervously as she said it.

“The gaiaphage,” Brittney said. She laughed, not cruelly, but with a knowing condescension. “You’ll see.”

Penny was already “seeing.” Not that she could see anything, not even a finger held right up to her eye, but she could feel the power of it. They had reached the entrance to the mine shaft. The darkness, already absolute, was now tight around them.

It was easier to find their way, just to feel for the timbers along the side. But harder to breathe.

A low moan escaped from Diana.

Penny had a fleeting impulse to give her something to be scared of. But that was the problem: fear was the very air they were breathing now.

“There are some hard places,” Brittney warned. “There’s a big, big drop. It will break your legs all up if you fall.”

Penny shook her head, a gesture no one could see. “No way. No way. Done that, not doing it again.”

Brittney’s voice was silky. “You could always leave.”

“You think I …” Penny had to struggle to take the next breath. “You think I won’t?”

“You won’t,” Brittney said. “You’re going to the place you always wanted to be.”

“No one tells me—” Penny snarled. But the defiance died in midsentence. She tried again. “No one…”

“Careful,” Brittney said smugly. “This next section is all jumbled-up rock. You’ll have to crawl over it.” Then, in that weird singsong voice she got from time to time, she said, “Crawl on our knees, on our knees we crawl to our lord.”

Brianna was breathing hard without moving.

The darkness, it was her kryptonite. Couldn’t use super-speed when you couldn’t see where you were going.

So dark. It was actually worse than the images Penny had put in her head. Those had been cool in a way. This, though, this was just nothing.

Just nothing nothing nothingness.

Well, not total nothing, now that she thought about it. When she held the machete up in front of her face there was the tangy smell of steel. She drew her shotgun and there was the feel of the short stock and the smell of gunpowder residue.