Gaia smiled back to calm him. Then with a single swipe of her deadly light she cut the head from his shoulders. It hit the ground with a surprisingly loud thump.
The Drake head dropped from Alex’s dead fingers.
And, finally, Alex’s body collapsed in a heap.
There wasn’t much blood: his heart was no longer pumping.
Gaia dropped to her knees, lifted Drake’s head, and pressed it against the stump of Alex’s neck.
Drake tried to speak, but now his airway was blocked.
“Transplant,” Gaia explained. She held the head in place and focused her healing power. Would it work? Drake was no longer fully human, and Alex was dead, but only just.
At the same time, her own wounds had been barely patched, not healed. She was pushing at the very limits of her great powers now, fighting pain and the weakness of her damaged body. And she would never get through it all without something to eat.
So she stretched out her leg and awkwardly rolled Alex’s head closer to her.
Diana knew things had gone badly as soon as she saw Caine walking into town behind Edilio with his head down. She was running to him before she could stop herself. Like a fool, like a stupid tween rushing some pop star. Right across the plaza.
But even when she was standing right in front of him, right where he couldn’t fail to at least see her legs, he wouldn’t look up.
She reached to touch him on the arm, hesitated, did it anyway. “Caine.”
“Hey, Diana. How’s it going?” It was the worst of commonplaces. It wasn’t even words, really, just sound.
“How’s it going?” Her sarcasm didn’t seem to affect him. “You mean, aside from giving birth to a monster who is going to try to kill us all and will probably succeed?”
He nodded. “Yeah, aside from that.”
“Aside from that, things are pretty bad, Caine.”
He nodded. “Yeah.” Then he raised his face but only to look away, to the left, to the right, everywhere but at her, behind to the town hall and the ruined church, as if he couldn’t quite figure out where he was and desperately wanted to be somewhere else.
Well, Diana thought, she also wanted to be somewhere else. Pretty much anywhere would do.
“How long have we got?” Diana asked him.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. She can be hurt. She’s not invulnerable. But in the end she’ll get us. Sam’s crippled. Brianna’s dead. Orc and Jack are—”
“Brianna’s dead?” Diana interrupted. Now she was squeezing his bicep, fingers digging in. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Yeah. I actually, uh, admired her, you know. The two of us—”
“Caine, Gaia’s powers are borrowed from other moofs. She gave me some big story about fields and connections or whatever, but the thing was, that’s why she didn’t go after you and Sam in that first fight, why she didn’t stay and finish you: she needs you alive.”
Now Caine met her gaze with an expression of disbelief and dawning horror. “That’s why she didn’t kill Sam; she just left him helpless. Why she didn’t kill me. So why did she kill Brianna?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she had no choice. Maybe she was confused. I don’t know.” Then, her mouth twisting into a bitter smile, she added, “It’s not like I really know her. She’s not . . . I know I gave birth to her, but . . .”
At last he looked at her and really seemed to see her. There had always been a guardedness between them, a layer of dishonesty, of show. Caine was not a person who could let himself be vulnerable.
To her surprise, Diana realized that was gone. For the first time, Caine wasn’t wearing a mask. For the first time, when she looked into his eyes she saw undisguised sadness.
He drew her to him. For once, maybe for the first time, it had nothing to do with either power or desire. They were two people at the end of the world. They were two losers waiting for their final defeat.
Diana went willingly to him. He put his arms around her and she refused to cry, refused because how would that make anything better? Their time was over: their chances had all been used up.
“We have to make sure Edilio really understands all this,” Diana said. “About Gaia . . . about the gaiaphage, and these powers. Edilio’s been shaken up. Maybe too much to really . . .”
She looked at him and saw his eyes shutting her out. His withdrawal wasn’t total, but it was undeniable.
“Diana, you want to make sure Edilio understands this? Do you understand it? Diana, if I’m dead and Sam’s dead and Dekka and Jack are dead, the gaiaphage isn’t very dangerous.” He made a disbelieving sound. “It will be ‘kill the moofs’ all over again. It’ll be that moron Zil and his Human Crew all over again.”
“So we do nothing? We wait until Gaia’s killed everyone but you? And then, at the end, she comes for you?”
“Maybe by then the barrier’s down,” Caine said.
“But maybe it’s not, and you and Sam are the last ones standing, surrounded by nothing but dead bodies.”
It was as if a cold wind had blown through the space between them. He was Caine again.
“Isn’t that the game we all play, Diana? We all try to stay alive. Even though in the end we all die.”
Diana turned away and only then realized that Astrid had been standing just a few feet away, quiet, listening.
Caine saw her, too. “What’s your advice, Astrid the Genius? When she comes, when that monster child of ours comes to kill us all, it will be Sam’s little laser show she does the most damage with. So what do you have to say, oh great fountain of morality?”