It left a bad taste in his mouth, Albert running away. No doubt it made good business sense. But the word “treason” was on the tip of his tongue.
Backstabber.
Coward.
Astrid was on her way to offer an alliance with a beaten and humiliated “king” and a cowardly “businessman.”
He shoved away the image of the coyotes finding her before she could reach town. There were thoughts too painful to allow.
He had to think, and think clearly, not let his mind be seized and paralyzed by lurid images of Astrid brought down in some lonely place by coyotes, or zekes, or Drake.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
“Are you okay?” Sanjit asked.
“Okay?” Sam shook his head. “Nope. I’m not. The guys I was counting on to be with me aren’t. It was already hopeless. Now?”
“Lana’s still there,” Sanjit said. “And Quinn.”
“Quinn?” Sam frowned. “What’s he got to do with anything?”
“Lana put him in charge. He’s got his people with him.”
Sam nodded, distracted. He was seeing a chessboard in his mind. Most of the pieces he might have played, the powers that might have helped, his bishop sand knights and rooks, were all down or missing. Dekka, Brianna, Jack, Albert, possibly Caine, all down or missing. His steady knight, Edilio, would have to watch over the lake. Which left Sam with pawns.
On the other side Drake. Maybe Penny. The coyotes.
And the opposing king, the gaiaphage, who was so well protected he might be impossible to reach, let alone destroy.
“What was that TV show?” Sam asked, rubbing his face to clear away the smoke of burning bodies. “The one where they vote you off the island?”
“Survivor?”
“Yeah. ‘Outwit, Outplay, Outlast.’ Right?”
“I guess,” Sanjit said doubtfully.
“Outwitted and outplayed. That’s me, Sanjit. You just joined the losing team. I’ve got nothing left. And pretty soon? I’ll be blind.”
“No. Not you, Sam. You’re the only one who won’t be.”
“Sammy suns?” Sam laughed derisively. “They might as well be candles.”
“In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king,” Sanjit said.
“In the dark the one guy with a candle is an easy target,” Sam countered.
One thing was crystal clear to Sam: his job was not to sit here and protect his charges at the lake. That was a losing move. That was him waiting for the enemy to gather its forces to come for him. Maybe he’d been outwitted and outplayed. He had not yet been outlasted.
Without another word to Sanjit he headed back to the lake.
Diana saw Penny and her knees gave way. She sat down hard in the dirt. She couldn’t breathe.
No, she mouthed soundlessly.
Penny looked at Drake first. At his terrible tentacle. At the little boy suspended in the air. She glanced curiously at Brianna, like she wasn’t quite sure who she was.
Then she looked at Diana, and her eyes widened with pleasure. Her smile started small and grew and grew and became a laugh of pure delight. She clapped her hands together.
“Too good,” Penny said. “Too, too good.”
Diana’s mind had stopped working. Thoughts would not form. Reactions would not take shape. Fear took her. A low keening sound came from deep in her throat.
This was no longer about pain: terror was here.
Drake shot a look at Penny. “Who are you?”
“I’m Penny,” she said. “You used to push me out of your way back at Coates. I was nobody to you.”
“You have a beef with me?” Drake asked, just a little worried.
Penny smiled. “Oh, you were just a jerk, Drake. Nothing special. Whereas Diana…” She laughed her demented, delighted laugh. “I absolutely love Diana. She took such good care of me on the island.”
“Leave me alone,” Diana heard herself beg, like hearing someone else, not like the words were coming from her, because she had no words in her brain; she could see what was coming; she knew what was coming.
God save me, Diana begged, God save me, save me, save me.
“How’s the baby, Diana?” Penny asked, her voice slithering, her eyes bright. “Do you want a boy or a girl?”
And suddenly the baby woke up, and its claws came out like the claws of a tiger, and its insect face with saber mandibles ripped at her insides, tearing through the flesh of her belly, tearing out of her, a wild animal, nothing human there, but no, that wasn’t true; it had Caine’s face, his face but smeared across a soulless ant face and the claws and the pain, and she screamed and screamed.
Diana was facedown in the dirt. Penny’s bare feet—one of them crusted with bloody mud—were in front of her.
There was no monster baby.
Her belly had not been torn open.
Diana cried into the dirt.
“Cool, huh?” Penny said.
“What did you do to her?” It was Drake, fascinated.
“Oh, she just saw something. She saw her baby as a monster. And she saw it rip her apart from the inside. Felt it, too,” Penny said.
“You’re a freak?” Drake asked.
Penny laughed. “The freakiest of the freaks.”
“Don’t hurt the baby,” Drake warned. He tossed Justin aside, ready to take this interloper on if necessary. The boy landed hard but without breaking anything.
Penny was not intimidated by Whip Hand. “What’s in there?” She indicated the narrow path leading up to the mine shaft.