CLANG!
“AHHHH!” Through grinding teeth he said, “I don’t let the Darkness touch me.”
The chisel was cutting closer now, with more than half the concrete chipped away. Penny hadn’t mixed a very good batch, really. No gravel. It was gravel that gave it hardness. He and Drake had learned that.
“Sorry,” Lucas said, not really meaning it.
CLANG!
No, Caine thought, no gentle concern for Caine’s wellbeing. They needed him, but that didn’t mean they liked him.
“The sun is setting,” Lana remarked almost without emotion. “Kids will lose it. They’ll set fires. That’s the big worry, probably, that they’ll finish Zil’s work by burning down the rest of the town.”
“If I ever get out of this, I’ll stop them,” Caine snarled, biting back a cry of pain as the hammer rose and fell again.
“It’s going after Diana,” Lana said. “It wants the baby. Your baby, Caine.”
“What?”
The hammer waited, suspended. This wasn’t exactly a private conversation, and Paul was shocked. He snapped out of it and dropped another awful blow.
CLANG!
“Don’t you feel it?” Lana demanded.
“All I feel is my fingers being broken!” Caine yelled.
“I’ll fix your fingers,” Lana said impatiently. “I’m asking you: do you feel it? Can you? Will you let yourself?”
“No!”
“Scared?”
His lips drew back in a snarl. “You’re damned right I’m scared of it. I got away from it. You’re saying I should open myself up to it again?”
CLANG!
“I’m not scared of it,” Lana said, and Caine wondered if she really wasn’t. “I hate it. I hate myself for not killing it when I had the chance. I hate it.” Her eyes were dark but hot, like smoldering coals.
“I hate it,” she repeated.
CLANG!
“Oh. Ohhhh!” He was breathing in short gasps. “I won’t… What makes you so sure it’s going after Diana?”
“I’m not sure. That’s why I’m talking to you. Because I thought you might give a damn if that monster is after your kid.”
Caine’s hands felt lighter. The concrete block had split. There was a wedge about the size of a double slice of pie hanging from his left hand. His hands were still locked together in a crumbly mass that looked like the stone from which a sculptor might chisel a pair of hands.
Paul and Lucas readjusted their positions, and Caine lifted the hands and carefully, carefully used a piece of concrete to scratch his nose.
“Caine—” Paul said.
“Give me a minute,” Caine said. “All of you. Give. Me. A. Minute.”
He closed his eyes. Pain in his hands, a deep ache of something—or more than one thing—broken. The pain was terrible.
Worse by far: the humiliation.
He’d been outwitted by Penny. Weakness.
He’d been made to bear the torture he and Drake had invented. Weakness.
He sat here now on the steps of town hall, the steps where not two days earlier he’d ruled as king. He sat there now with piss-smelling pants, made to feel weak and small and cowardly by Lana.
He hadn’t been this low since he had walked off defeated into the desert with Pack Leader. Since he had crawled, weeping and desperate, to have his mind messed up by that malevolent, glowing monster.
Lana could let it touch her mind. She was that strong.
He could not. Because he was not.
What did it matter anymore? he wondered. It was the end at last. Darkness would fall and the sun would never rise again and they would wander lost in inky blackness until they starved. The smart ones would just walk into the ocean and swim until they drowned.
What did he, Caine, matter? Let alone Diana. Or the … whatever. Baby. Kid. Whatever.
He closed his eyes and he could see Diana. Beautiful girl, Diana. Smart. Smart enough to keep pace with him. Smart enough to play her games with him.
They’d been happy, mostly, on the island. Him and Diana. Good days. Then Quinn had come with a message that he was needed to rescue Perdido Beach.
He had come back. Diana had warned him not to. But he had come back. And he had proclaimed himself king. Because kids needed a king. And because after he saved their stupid lives for them he deserved to be that king.
Diana had warned him against that, too.
And no sooner was he in charge than he’d realized it was Albert who was the real boss. And no one really respected Caine. They didn’t realize how much he did for them.
Ungrateful.
Now they wanted him, but only because they were all scared of the dark.
“We’ll try a smaller hammer now,” Paul said anxiously.
Caine gritted his teeth, anticipating the blow.
CLANG!
“Ahhh!” The chisel had missed. The hardened steel chisel blade skipped and bit into his wrist. Blood poured out over the concrete.
He wanted to cry. Not from the pain but from the sheer awfulness of his life. He needed to use the bathroom. He wouldn’t even be able to lower his own pants or wipe himself.
Lana took his wrist. The bleeding slowed.
“You need to let them keep at it,” Lana said. “It’ll be a lot worse in the dark.”
Caine nodded. He had nothing more to say.
He bowed his head and cried.
TWENTY-FIVE
12 HOURS, 40 MINUTES
SINDER WEPT AS she and Jezzie ripped up their vegetables. It was all over. Their hard work, almost done now. This was the final harvest.