Then it was gone and she fell onto her back, legs folded beneath her. She gasped like a landed fish, unable to fill her lungs.
“Defiance,” she croaked in a voice not her own.
“She’s supposed to fix my arm,” Drake said. “If you kill her, she can’t help me.”
“You are bold to make demands,” the Darkness said through Lana.
“I’m not…it’s…I want my arm back,” Drake shouted raggedly.
Lana found she could breathe again. She sucked in oxygen. She pushed out against the floor, scooted inch by inch away from the Darkness.
Drake shrieked in agony. Lana saw him as she had been, like he’d grabbed a power line. His body jerked like a marionette.
The Darkness released him.
“Ah,” the Darkness said, and twisted Lana’s mouth into a rictus. “I have found a much better teacher for you, Pack Leader.”
Pack Leader had dared to stand up. He kept his tail and head aligned in a submissive posture. He glanced at Drake, who had now been released and was doubled over, clutching his arm in pain.
“This human will teach you to kill humans,” Lana said.
Drake spoke as though each syllable was an effort. “Yes. But…my arm.”
“Give me the arm,” Lana said and, unwilling, crawled to Drake.
Drake stood up, shaky but determined. He extended the burned, sawed-off stump.
“I will give you an arm such as no human ever had,” the Darkness said through Lana. “You have no magic within you, human, but the girl will serve.”
Drake moved with surprising speed. He pivoted and yanked Lana up by her hair. “Take my arm,” he hissed.
She placed her trembling hand against the melted flesh, feeling the fresh-cut bone beneath it, wanting to throw up.
The glow deepened. Lana felt her entire body filled with it, not hot but cold, as cold as ice.
Drake’s flesh was growing.
She could feel it moving beneath her fingers. But it wasn’t human flesh.
Not human flesh at all.
“No,” she whispered.
“Yes,” Drake breathed. “Yes.”
THIRTY-NINE
36 HOURS, 37 MINUTES
“And sometimes when you lie to me
Sometimes I’ll lie to you
And there isn’t a thing you could possibly do
All these half-destroyed lives
Aren’t as bad as they seem
But now I see blood and I hear people scream
Then I wake up
And it’s just another bad dream…”
SAM SANG ALONG to the Agent Orange tune on his iPod, feeling as if the familiar lyrics had crossed the line from being just another self-consciously disturbing song to being too close to describing his life.
He was in the fire station not exactly enjoying a lonely lunch. Quinn was…well, he never seemed to know where Quinn was anymore. His friend—was that word even appropriate? His friend Quinn was a shadow who came and went, sometimes joking like his old self, sometimes sitting sullen and watching DVDs he’d seen a million times before.
In any case, he wasn’t there for lunch at the fire station, despite the fact that Sam had made enough soup for extra mouths.
Edilio materialized silently in the doorway. He looked discouraged. Sam realized he’d been singing aloud and, embarrassed, dialed down the music and pulled out the earbuds.
“What did you find, Edilio?”
“If she’s anywhere in Perdido Beach, she’s doing a good job of hiding, Sam,” Edilio said. “We’ve looked. We’ve talked to everyone. Lana’s gone. Her dog is gone. She was in Elwood’s house, then she was gone.”
Sam tossed his music player onto the table. “I have soup. Want some?”
Edilio sagged into a chair. “What’s the song?”
“What? Oh. It’s called ‘A Cry For Help In A World Gone Mad.’”
They shared a mordant laugh.
“Next I’ll dial up that old song, what’s it called?” Sam searched his memory. “Yeah. REM. ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It.’”
“It is that,” Edilio commented. “I been searching for a girl who can heal people with magic, and taking some time to learn how to shoot a machine gun.”
“How’d that go, by the way?”
“I got four boys can more or less handle it, counting Quinn. But, man, we aren’t exactly the marines, you know? Kid named Tom starts shooting and he almost shoots me. I had to dive into a pile of dog poop.”
Sam tried not to laugh, but neither of them could stop once it started.
“Yeah, you think it’s funny. Wait till it’s you,” Edilio said.
Sam was serious again. “I don’t know what’s holding Caine back. It’s been two days. What’s keeping him?”
“What’s the hurry? The more time we have, the more we’re prepared.”
“Dude, tomorrow night I’m out of here,” Sam said.
“You don’t know that for sure, man,” Edilio said, embarrassed.
“I just wish I knew what was going on up at Coates.”
Edilio caught on immediately. “You talking about spying them out?”
Sam pushed his soup away. “I don’t know what I’m talking about, man. I’m halfway thinking we should take it to them, you know? Go up there and do this.”
“We have guns. We have guys who can drive. We got, in addition to you, four other mutants with powers that might be useful. You know, powers you can fight with, not like this one girl where she can disappear but only if she’s really embarrassed.”