Astrid nodded. “People would hate him. Or try to use him.”
Sam nodded. “I wish…”
“No,” Astrid said, and shrugged helplessly. “There’s no way to get him to undo it.”
“That’s a pity,” Sam said, making a wry smile that did not reach his eyes. “Because tick-tock, tick-tock.”
Lana stumbled through the night.
Back with the coyotes. A nightmare revisited.
And now, adding to the misery, Drake and Howard stumbled along with her.
Drake with his gun. Drake cursing his pain.
And Howard calling, “Orc, Orc,” into the night.
Greater than any misery, the dread of that mine shaft and what lay at the bottom.
She had disobeyed the Darkness.
What would the seething monster do to her?
“Let’s stop and I’ll try to fix Drake’s arm, okay?” she pleaded.
“No stop,” Pack Leader snarled.
“Let me try, at least.”
Pack Leader ignored her, and they ran and tripped and picked themselves up and ran some more.
No escape now. No possibility of escape.
Unless.
She maneuvered closer to Drake. “What if he won’t let me heal you?”
“Don’t try to play me,” Drake said tersely. “Anyway, now I want to see this thing that has you so terrified.”
“No, you don’t,” Lana promised.
“What is it?” Howard asked, nervous, almost as scared as Lana herself.
Lana had no answer to that question.
Each step was harder than the one before, and several times Pack Leader nipped at her to move her along. When he didn’t, Drake did, waving his gun at her, threatening her with word and gesture and look.
They reached the abandoned mining camp after the moon had set and as the stars were just fading before the promise of dawn.
She had never felt such dread. It was as if her blood had all been drained and replaced with a cold sludge. She could barely move. Her heart beat in loud, shuddering thumps in her chest. She wanted to pet Patrick, to take some tiny measure of comfort from him, but she couldn’t make herself bend, couldn’t bring herself to speak. She held herself tightly contained, silent, rigid.
I’m going to die here, Lana thought.
“Human light,” Pack Leader slurred. He indicated a flashlight lying wedged between the rocks. Howard leaped at it and switched it on. His hand shook so badly, the light danced across rock walls sending shadows flying like swift-moving ghosts.
Now even Drake seemed leery, frightened of something he couldn’t quite explain. He was asking questions, ever more agitated as they stepped into the icebox chill of the mine.
“Someone needs to tell me what we’re going to see,” Drake insisted.
“I need to know what we’re up to,” Drake said.
“Maybe we better talk about our deal,” Drake said.
“How much farther?” Drake said.
But all the while, they moved down the shaft.
Lana had to force each breath. Had to remind herself: Breathe. Breathe.
Patrick was gone. He’d abandoned them at the mouth of the mine.
“Man, I…I can’t do this,” Howard said. “I gotta…I…” He was gasping for breath.
“Shut up,” Drake snapped, glad to have someone to take out his frustrations on.
Howard turned suddenly and bolted, taking the flashlight with him.
Pack Leader yipped a command and two coyotes went in pursuit.
With the flashlight gone, Lana could see the faint green glow from the walls. Darkness behind. The Darkness ahead.
“Let him go,” Drake said.
“Howard’s not important,” Drake said.
“I’m important,” Drake said. His voice was small.
Lana closed her eyes tight, but somehow the green glow penetrated her eyelids, as though it could shine right through her flesh, right through the bone of her skull.
She could go no farther. She sank to her knees.
Close enough. It was there, just ahead, just around that last bend, a moving, sliding, grinding pile of glowing rock.
The soundless voice was a cudgel slamming her head. The Darkness thrust invisible fingers of ice into her mind, and Lana knew that she herself was speaking its words.
“The healer,” she cried in a tortured, manic parody of her own voice.
She kept her eyes shut but could feel Drake kneeling beside her.
“Why do you come to me?” Lana cried, a puppet, nothing but a tool for the Darkness to use.
“The coyote…,” Drake managed.
“Faithful Pack Leader,” the Darkness said through Lana. “Obedient, but not yet equal to a human.”
Open your eyes, Lana told herself. Be brave. Be brave. See it, face it, fight it. But the darkness was in her skull, pushing and prodding, peeking inside her secrets, laughing at her pathetic resistance.
And yet, she opened her eyes. A lifelong habit of defiance gave her the strength. But she kept her eyes cast down, strong enough to force them open, too terrified to look on the face of the thing itself.
The rocks under her knees glowed.
She was touching it, touching the hem of it.
Pack Leader groveled, lowering himself to the floor of the cave beside Lana, crawling on his belly.
Suddenly, Lana felt an electric shock of terrifying force. Her back arched, her head went back, her arms flew wide.
A pain like an icicle stabbing her eye and searing her brain.
She tried to scream, but no sound would come out.