Taylor felt. She hadn’t felt lately, but now she felt. Something. Like she was water and someone was plunging a hand into her. She gave way: she formed around the probing.
For a moment she was gone. Then back. For a moment she felt disturbed, and then not.
Suddenly she gasped. She drew air into her mouth. It was surprising. She hadn’t breathed lately, though she remembered breathing before. That other Taylor.
“I can’t remember what I did to make you this way.”
She heard the voice, though she saw no one here.
“But I’m trying.”
She reached up and touched her hair with a golden hand. “My hair,” she said, the words a shock to her. The voice coming from her thoughts felt alien. “It’s wrong.”
“Like this?” Little Pete asked, because now she knew it was him.
She touched her hair, and it was no longer a single rubbery sheet. It was black hair. Her hair.
“This is better,” she said.
“Your eyes,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Is this better?”
She felt that strange touch, that solidity where she was somehow liquid. And suddenly she saw him. He didn’t look like Little Pete. He looked like a swirl of light, like a thousand fireflies swarming together.
“I can’t do more right now,” Little Pete said. “I am weak, and the Darkness will notice. It looks away from you now. It has forgotten you.”
Some part of Taylor, some reawakened part of her, some fragment of the old Taylor, realized that she was not back to what she had once been. Her eyes saw things and her ears heard things differently than in the old days, before. But there was breath in her lungs. And a heartbeat in her chest.
And she had hair.
“I hurt you, even though I didn’t mean to. I can’t ask you to help me,” Little Pete said.
“You don’t have to,” Taylor answered. “I know the Darkness. I know it hates the Healer. I know what side I am on.”
TWENTY-ONE
18 HOURS, 57 MINUTES
EDILIO HAD HEARD Lana’s warning by way of Astrid. But attack? With what? With who? People were just now coming back in from some of the fields. Brianna was still down. Sam missing, Caine missing, Jack reluctant, Orc willing but exhausted.
Attack? Where?
No, that might be good advice in other circumstances. Not with what he had available. Besides, he had an instinct. If Gaia wasn’t already here, it was because she was waiting for darkness. She might be a monster, but she was a monster used to darkness, not to broad daylight. She had attacked the lake at night, despite having Brianna’s speed. She had waited for night.
She would wait for darkness again.
Edilio was well aware that he was playing a hunch, and playing with all their lives. Like every general since the dawn of time, he was assessing his forces, trying to understand his enemy, putting his bet down and rolling the dice.
He had made his arrangements. He was on automatic now, not thinking about Roger, not thinking about the images of corpses floating on the lake.
If he’d been there, maybe . . .
“Dekka, how long can you maintain a gravity-free zone?”
“As long as you want, Edilio.”
She was being too nice, feeling sorry for him.
“I want you to be out of sight,” he said.
“But anytime I do my thing, everything floats up. Dirt, plants, rocks . . . It’s not exactly invisible.”
“I know. I was thinking if you kept it just to the concrete on the road. Just like a narrow slice. Nothing to float there. Also, it’s starting to get dark, and the ash from the fire . . .”
Dekka nodded. “I can do it.”
Edilio had chosen a spot right at the edge of town, near Ralph’s grocery store. Open ground was his enemy: he needed places to hide shooters, he needed a complex terrain, and he needed to be concealed.
There was an overturned moving van. It had long since been looted, of course, and the household goods were strewn all around the area: leather easy chair, cracked by the sunlight; a dining-room table with wood bleached by exposure; a mattress in plastic wrap; boxes of books and boxes that had once held clothing. Knickknacks, lawn furniture, a bundle of brooms and mops, all of it tossed around on the road and the shoulder. The van itself was two-thirds empty, and what was left was just a jumble of small tables and chairs and cardboard. It was dark inside.
“Are Orc and Jack here yet?” Edilio called over his shoulder.
“Just walking up,” Dekka said.
“Okay, Dekka, find your spot, do your thing. About twenty yards down the road. You can hide behind that burned-out Volkswagen.”
Orc and Jack—one lumbering, the other stepping cautiously—appeared. Edilio pointed at the roof of the moving van, which was now a wall. “I want six holes punched in here, just big enough for a shooter to see through and shoot from.”
He walked away and heard six hard blows.
Did he have six capable shooters? He looked around. He’d started the day with twenty-four of his trained people. Somehow he was now down to seventeen. Some had gone to pick food, driven by hunger more than cowardice. Ten were lying in wait around the town plaza—plan B. More might join when the field hands came back. He had seven here. Six for the van, one to use as a sharpshooter with a scoped rifle fifty feet down the road.
“Don’t shoot until you see Gaia stumble or start to kind of float, right? When she walks into Dekka’s field. Once that happens, you shoot.” He held up a cautionary finger. “Shoot smart, like you’ve practiced, right? Aim every shot. Don’t stop until you’ve run out of ammo. Don’t assume she’s dead. Don’t forget, she can heal like Lana.”