Sanjit was distantly aware that several voices were screaming. Five kids in the chopper. Five screams. Including his own.
Pedals again. And the helicopter stopped spinning. It was still drifting toward the yacht’s superstructure, but now it was doing so backward.
He twisted the collective all the way, all the way, baby, and the helicopter shot upward. Like a ride Sanjit had been on in Las Vegas once. Like the helicopter was on a string and someone was yanking it toward the clouds.
Up and over the superstructure. Sanjit saw it pass beneath his feet.
WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!
The rotors had hit something. Bits of wire and metal poles flew away. The yacht’s radio antenna.
The helicopter was still rising and still drifting backward toward the cliff.
The other thing. The watchamacallit the cyclic the stick the thing near his right hand grab it grab it do something something something push it forward forward forward. Spinning again! He’d forgotten the pedals the stupid pedals and his feet couldn’t find them now and the helicopter had spun 180 degrees and with the cyclic tilted forward was now zooming straight for the cliff wall.
It was maybe a hundred feet away.
Fifty feet.
In a split second they would be dead. And there was nothing he could do to stop it happening.
Diana ran across the overgrown lawn. Caine was ahead of her, faster, she had to catch him.
The sound of the helicopter engine was growing louder, closer.
Caine stopped at the edge of the cliff. Diana reached it, panting, a dozen feet away from Caine.
In a flash Diana understood what Sanjit had been hiding. Far below a white yacht lay crumpled against the rocks. A helicopter struggled aloft, spinning crazily this way and then that.
Caine’s face formed a wicked smile.
Penny was just laboring up behind. Bug, well, he might be there, too. No way to know.
Diana rushed to Caine. “Don’t do it!” she cried.
He turned a furious face to her. “Shut up, Diana.”
As they watched, the helicopter spun again and surged toward the cliff.
Caine raised his hands and the helicopter stopped moving forward. It was so close that the rotor hacked apart a bush that clung to the cliff face.
“Caine, don’t do this,” Diana pleaded.
“What do you care?” Caine asked, genuinely puzzled.
“Look! Look at them. They have little kids in there. Little children.”
The bubble canopy of the helicopter was no more than a rock throw away. Sanjit struggled with the controls. Virtue beside him, gripped his seat cushion. Three smaller kids were huddled in the back seat, screaming, covering their eyes, not so young they didn’t know they were a split second from death.
“I guess Sanjit should have thought about that before he lied to me,” Caine said.
Diana grabbed his arm, thought better of it, and reached for his face. She pressed one hand against his cheek. “Don’t do it, Caine. I’m begging you.”
“I’ll do it,” Penny said, appearing on Caine’s other side. “Let’s see him fly when the cockpit is full of scorpions!”
The wrong thing to say, Diana knew.
Caine snarled, “You’ll do nothing, Penny. I make the decisions here.”
“No, you do what she tells you to do,” Penny said. She practically spit the words at Diana. “This witch! Pretty girl, here.”
“Back off, Penny!” Caine warned.
“I’m not scared of you, Caine,” Penny shouted. “She tried to kill you while you were unconscious. She—”
Before she could finish the accusation Penny flew through the air. She floated, screaming, in midair, above the thrashing rotor blades.
“Go ahead, Penny!” Caine bellowed. “Threaten me with your powers! Make me lose focus!”
Penny screamed, hysterical, flailing wildly, staring down in terror at the flashing blades below her.
“Let them go, Caine,” Diana pleaded.
“Why, Diana? Why do you betray me?”
“Betray you?” Diana laughed. “Betray you? I’ve been with you every day, every hour, from the start of this nightmare!”
Caine looked at her. “But you hate me, anyway.”
“No, you sick, stupid creep, I love you. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t. You’re sick inside, Caine, sick! But I love you.”
Caine cocked an eyebrow. “Then you must love what I do. Who I am.”
He smiled and Diana knew she had lost the argument. She could see it in his eyes.
She stepped away from him. She backed toward the cliff. Felt with her feet for the edge as she held his gaze.
“I’ve helped you when I could, Caine. I’ve done all of it. I kept you alive and changed your filthy crap-stained sheets when the Darkness held you. I betrayed Jack for you. I’ve betrayed everyone for you. I ate…God forgive me, I ate human flesh to stay with you, Caine!”
Something flickered in Caine’s cold gaze.
“I won’t stay with you for this,” Diana said.
She took another step back. It was meant as a threat, not meant to be final.
But it was one step too many.
Diana felt the sudden horror, knowing she was going to fall. Her arms windmilled. But she could feel that she was too far, too far.
And in the end, Diana thought, wouldn’t it be better?
Wouldn’t it be a relief?
She stopped fighting and toppled backward off the cliff.
Astrid ran, pulling Little Pete behind her.
No way she could have known, she told herself as she panted and yanked and her heart pounded from the fear of what she would see when she reached Clifftop.