“Brah,” Quinn said.
Sam nodded. “Yeah. I look pretty bad. How . . .”
“I was fishing. I saw the fire.” Quinn knelt beside him, obviously unsure what he could do to ease his friend’s suffering.
“I look bad, and my head isn’t exactly on straight,” Sam slurred.
“I’ll get you back to town,” Quinn said.
“No, brah. Get a car.”
“Sam, you can’t . . .”
“Quinn.” Sam took Quinn’s arm and gripped it tight. “Get a car.”
“Back off, doggies,” Dekka growled.
The coyotes moved closer, circling, always circling. Each circuit just a little closer.
“Which one of you is Pack Leader?” Dekka demanded. Desperate. How could she stop them circling closer and closer? “I have an offer. I . . . I can help you. I want to talk to Pack Leader.”
One of the coyotes stopped moving and turned his intelligent face to her. “Pack Leader me.”
The voice was high-pitched, strained, as though the act of attempting speech was painful.
Dekka had only seen Pack Leader from a distance, but she knew this wasn’t him. Pack Leader had a nasty-looking face, a scar on his muzzle. He was old and mangy. This coyote was obviously younger.
“You’re not Pack Leader,” Dekka said.
The coyote tilted his head quizzically. “Pack Leader die. Pack Leader now.”
Pack Leader dead? Maybe this was an opportunity. “If you hurt me,” Dekka warned, “my people will kill coyotes.”
Pack Leader—the new Pack Leader—seemed to consider this. His eyes were bright and focused, but almost seemed to contain a trace of humor.
“Pack eat dead human,” Pack Leader said in the eerie, grating voice of the mutated coyotes.
“He’s not dead,” Dekka said.
“Pack eat,” Pack Leader said.
“No,” Dekka said. “If you try, we will—”
There was a flash of tan and gray fur and something bowled Dekka over. She rolled and came up into a squat. Three coyotes were on Edilio. Blood was pumping freely from his chest.
“No!” Dekka cried.
She raised her hands and suddenly Edilio was floating up off the ground, along with three panicked, scrabbling, yip yip yipping coyotes.
Pack Leader bounded away to a safe distance.
And there came the sound of a car approaching at high speed.
•••
“Almost there!” Drake cried, ecstatic.
The night wind whipped their faces as the torn-open Escalade bounced and flew. Overhead the fuel rod was like a cruise missile, keeping pace. Caine stood braced against the seatback, hands held high.
Diana could only see the side of his face, but his was not an expression of wild joy like Drake’s. Caine’s eyes stared from beneath low brows. His mouth was drawn back in a grimace. It was the only time Diana had ever looked at him and found him ugly. No trace of the easy charm. The movie star bone structure was there, but now he looked like a shrouded corpse, a mockery, a fading echo.
“Look! Hah hah hah! It’s growing back!” Drake shrieked, and waved the end of his hideous tentacle in her face. He was right. Within the blunt-cut disk a bump was forming, a new growth. Like a salamander’s tail, the whip could be cut, but would regenerate.
“There! It’s the town,” Drake yelled. “There! Now you’ll see. Now you’ll all see!”
“What is this place?” Jack wondered aloud. He glared at Diana, accusing, blaming her.
Not my fault, Diana argued silently. Not my fault, Jack, not my fault you were weak and followed me, you stupid fool, you needy, stupid fool. Not my fault any of this.
I’m just trying to survive. I’m just trying to get by, like always, like always.
It’s what she did, Diana, survive. And always with style. Her own terms, no matter what anyone thought. It was her special genius: being used, but always using back. Being abused, but then returning the abuse, with interest. And remaining, always, Diana, cool Diana.
Not her fault, any of this.
“Look!” one of the soldiers yelled.
Something was happening in the road ahead. Like a small tornado, like a whirlwind made of coyotes, and there, at the center of the madness, a human body.
“Dekka,” Drake said with special relish.
Dekka dropped the coyotes. Dropped Edilio, too. No choice. Nothing she could do to help him now.
“Good-bye, Edilio,” she whispered.
Now there was only the mine shaft. She ran.
The Escalade skidded to a stop. Drake was out and running after her before the car had even stopped.
She had a head start of no more than thirty feet. And Drake was faster than she was.
The air cracked from the sound of his whip hand. She felt the breeze on the back of her neck. No way she’d make it back up the trail. No way.
Dekka spun and raised her hands.
Suddenly Drake’s legs were pumping in air. He rose off the ground in a vortex of dirt and rock. Like a slow-motion explosion had gone off under him. His whip hand twirled crazily.
“I’ll kill you, Dekka!” he yelled.
Dekka turned gravity back on, and Drake fell from ten feet up.
She turned and ran again, and now the coyotes were around her, bounding along on both sides of the trail, moving ahead of her. They would easily cut her off.
She powered up the hill, breath rasping in her throat. She turned a corner, and there was the new Pack Leader. She raised her hands. Too slow. They came from right and left. Leaped at her from all directions at once.