Duck felt the breeze of the first bullet.
He zoomed upward as fast he could. Which was not very fast.
The second bullet was farther from its target.
Duck yelled, “Hey! Stop it!”
“Freak! Freak!” voices cried up at him.
“I didn’t hurt anyone!” Duck yelled back.
“So why not come on down here?” Turk shouted. Then, like he had said something brilliant, he accepted a high five from some chubby kid with a bottle of booze in one fist.
Maybe fifty faces were gaping up at Duck, orange highlights and black shadows in the light of the bonfire. Halloween colors. They looked strange. Little ovals with staring eyeballs and open mouths. He could barely even recognize them because this wasn’t how you looked at people, from way up high, them with their necks craning.
He saw the barrel of the gun, and the face behind it, one eye open, the other squinted shut. Aiming. At him.
“Get him!” Zil encouraged. “You get the first steak if you can hit him.”
“Mike!” Duck yelled. “You’re a soldier, dude. You’re not supposed to—”
Duck saw the muzzle flash. He heard the bang.
“Why are you shooting at me?” Duck cried.
Careful aim. A muzzle flash. A loud crack.
“Stop, man, stop!”
“You’re missing him,” Zil yelled.
“Let me have that stupid gun,” Hank demanded. He jumped out of the convertible and ran toward Mike.
It may have been Hank’s jostling that saved Duck’s life. The third bullet whizzed by.
Hank grabbed the gun away.
Meanwhile, Duck had risen another thirty or forty feet, higher than he’d gone before. He was up to a giddy height now. He could see the roof of town hall. He was higher than the steeple of the church had been. He could see the school in one direction, Clifftop in the other. He could see far out to sea.
He was probably a hundred feet up now, ten stories. And up here was just a bit more of a breeze blowing off the water, pushing him gently, like a loose helium balloon, back inland.
Too slow.
Hank fired. A miss. But a close one.
It was insane. He was rising, rising, but too slow, too slow, and Hank had all the time in the world to take careful aim, to line up the back sights with the front, to settle them just below his target, and squeeze off a round.
Duck tensed, awaiting the bullet. Wondering if it would hit his leg, his arm, and merely cause horrible pain. Or strike his heart or head, and finish him.
Hank squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened.
Hank threw the gun at Mike in disgust.
Mike frantically reloaded, but in the time it took him to slide in more bullets, Duck had floated and drifted higher and farther.
Hank fired. By the time the bullet had come close to Duck, gravity had slowed it. Duck could see it fly past his head. He saw the moment it reached its apogee. And then he watched it drop back toward the ground.
Duck threw up as he drifted over the church. Sacrilege, probably. But his stomach was empty, so not much rained down on the shattered building below.
Duck floated on. Away from the horror unfolding in the plaza. They were going to kill Hunter. Hunter, who had begged for his help.
Nothing he could do: he went where the wind blew. And nothing he could have done—except get shot—if the wind blew him the other way.
“Superpowers,” he said to himself, “don’t always make you a superhero.”
She had lost herself again.
She kept coming and going. One minute there, the next gone.
Sometimes she was inside herself. Inside her own brain. Other times she was somewhere else, looking at herself from a distance.
It was so sad seeing what had become of Lana Arwen Lazar.
Then she would be there, right inside her own lolling head, looking out through her own red-rimmed eyes.
She walked now. Two feet. Walking.
Seeing the stone walls beside her.
Danger ahead—the gaiaphage felt it, and so did she. So did she. Had to be stopped.
Something Lana was supposed to get. Something she had dropped.
She stopped. The gaiaphage didn’t know what to call it. And for a moment Lana couldn’t make sense of the images in her head. The flat-steel surfaces. The cross-hatched grip.
“No,” she begged the creature.
“No, I don’t want to,” she cried as she knelt.
Her hand groped for it. Fingers touched it. It was cold. Her index finger curled around the trigger. If she could just raise it to her own head, if she could . . .
But now she was walking, and the weight was in her hand, so heavy. So terribly heavy.
She reached the truck, still locking the mine shaft entrance. She crawled onto the hood, sobbing. Slid through the shattered window, indifferent to the glass as it cut her palms and knees.
Why couldn’t she stop herself? Why couldn’t she stop this hand, that foot?
The light of the stars overhead was blinding as she stepped into the mouth of the mine shaft.
The enemy there, the danger.
Lana knew the enemy’s name. She knew what the enemy would do. When the gaiaphage had fed, he would be ready for Dekka. More than ready.
But not yet.
“Don’t,” Lana said to Dekka. “Don’t.”
Dekka froze. There was a look of horror on her face.
The other one stood to one side. He carried a gun. Lana knew his name, too. Edilio. But he was not the danger.
“It’s Lana,” Dekka said.
“Lana, run to us,” Edilio said. He held out his hand.