He wished Quinn had been able to eliminate Drake. But he suspected his friend would not have survived with his soul intact if he had. Some people could do things like that. Some couldn’t. That second group were probably the luckier ones.
“Come on, Caine,” Sam whispered to himself. “Let’s do this.”
Brianna blurred up next to him. “Drake went to his house. You know, the place where he was staying.”
“Is Caine there?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Good job, Breeze. Now go into the church. Go slowly so Bug can see you if he’s watching.”
“I want to help.”
“That’s what I need you to do, Brianna.”
She trudged off, making a show of it. Sam was alone. The normals huddled at the far end of the plaza as Caine had ordered. The freaks—Sam hated using the word, but it was hard not to—were in the church.
And now it came down to him and Caine.
Would Caine come?
Would he come alone?
Sam glanced at his watch. In just a little over an hour, it wouldn’t matter.
From not far enough away, he heard a coyote howl.
FORTY-FOUR
01 HOURS, 06 MINUTES
“THEY’RE DOING IT,” Bug yelled as he burst through the door.
“All right,” Caine said. “Showtime. Everyone load up. Into the cars.”
There was a scramble for the door. Chaz, Chunk, Mallet, and a much-abashed Frederico, who had finally freed himself from duct-tape bondage, all raced for the station wagon in the garage. Diana, oozing suppressed rage from every pore, followed. Panda grabbed Lana by the arm and pushed her toward the door.
Only then did Caine realize someone was missing. “Where’s Howard?”
“I…I don’t know,” Panda admitted. “I didn’t see him leave.”
“Useless worm. Without Orc, he’s dead weight,” Caine said. “Forget him.”
The second car in the garage was a luxury car, an Audi with a sunroof. Panda jumped behind the wheel, and Diana rode shotgun. Caine took the backseat for himself.
Panda pushed the automatic garage door remote control. Both doors rose.
Both cars lurched forward. The Subaru wagon promptly crunched into the side of the Audi.
Chaz was driving the wagon. He rolled down his window. “Sorry.”
“Great start,” Diana said.
“Go,” Caine ordered tersely.
Panda accelerated into the street, keeping his speed to a prudent twenty-five miles per hour. The wagon stayed a block back.
“Bada bum bada bum bada bum bum bum.” Diana began humming the William Tell Overture.
“Knock it off,” Caine snapped.
They had gone two blocks when Panda slammed on the brakes.
A dozen coyotes streaked across the street.
Caine rose up through the sunroof and yelled, “What are you doing? Where are you going?”
Pack Leader stopped and glared with yellow eyes. “Whip Hand gone,” he snarled.
“What? What happened at the day care?”
“Whip Hand go. Pack Leader go,” the coyote said.
“No way,” Caine said. To Diana, he said, “They’ve got the day care. What do I do?”
“You tell me, Fearless Leader.”
Caine slammed his fist down on the roof of the car. “Okay, Pack Leader, unless you’re a coward, follow me.”
“Pack Leader follows the Darkness. All others follow Pack Leader. Pack is hungry. Pack must eat.”
“I’ve got food for you,” Caine said. “There’s a plaza full of kids.”
Pack Leader hesitated.
“It’s easy,” Caine said. “You can come with me and take as many kids as you want. Get every one of your coyotes. Bring them all. It’s a buffet.”
Pack Leader yipped a command to his pack. The coyotes circled back toward him.
“Follow us,” Caine cried, caught up in it now, eyes wild and excited. “We go straight toward the plaza. You go straight at the kids there. It will work perfectly.”
“The fire fist is there?”
Caine frowned. “Who? Oh. Sam. Fire fist, huh? Yes, he’ll be there, but I’ll take care of him.”
Pack Leader seemed dubious.
“If Pack Leader is frightened, maybe someone else should be pack leader.”
“Pack Leader no fear.”
“Then let’s kick,” Caine said.
“Oh, man,” Howard said. “Oh God, oh God, what happened to you, Orc?”
He had slipped out of Caine’s hideout and made his way to the house he had once shared with Orc. He found his protector there, sitting on a couch that had broken beneath Orc’s weight, collapsed in the middle. Empty beer bottles were everywhere.
Orc held up a game controller. “My fingers are too big to work this thing.”
“Orc, man, how did this…I mean, man, what happened to you?”
Orc’s face was still half his own. His left eye, his left ear and the hair above it, and all of his mouth were still recognizably Orc. But the rest of him was like some slumping statue made of gravel. He was at least a head taller than he had been. His legs were as big around as tree trunks, his arms as thick as fire hydrants. He had burst through his clothing, which now hung from him and provided the barest degree of modesty.
When he shifted in his seat, he made a sound like wet stones.
“How did this happen, dude?”
“It’s a judgment on me,” Orc said flatly.
“What’s that mean, man?”
“For hitting Bette. It’s God, Howard. It’s His judgment on me.”
Howard fought the urge to turn and run screaming. He tried to look at Orc’s one human eye but he found himself looking into the other eye, a yellow oyster beneath a brow of stone.
“Can you move? Can you stand up?”
Orc grunted and stood much more easily than Howard expected.
“Yeah. I still have to be able to get up to pee,” Orc said.
“What happens when it spreads to your mouth?”
“I think it’s done spreading. It stopped a few hours ago, maybe.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Nah. But it itches when it’s spreading.” As if to illustrate, he used one of his sausage-sized stone fingers to scratch the line between his gravel nose and his human cheek.
“Heavy as you are, man, you must be pretty strong just to stand up.”
“Yeah.” Orc dipped his hand into the cooler by his feet and came up with a can of beer. He tilted his head back and opened his mouth. He squeezed the top of the can and it blew out an eruption of liquid and foam. Orc swallowed what landed in his mouth. The rest dribbled down his face onto his rocky chest. “Only way I can open ’em now. My fingers are too big to pull the tab.”
“What are you doing, man? You just been sitting here drinking beer?”
“What else am I gonna do?” He shrugged his slag heap shoulders. His human eye was either crying or teared up. “Thing is, I’m almost out of beer.”
“Man, you have to get back in the game. There’s a war coming. You need to be in on it, making your statement, you know?”
“I just want to get some more beer.”
“Okay, then. That’s what we’ll do, Orc. We’ll get some more beer.”
Stars filled the sky.
The moon glinted off the steeple.
A coyote howled, a wild ululation, a ghostly cry of despair.
In his mind Sam saw the mutants in the church. He saw Edilio concealed with a handful of trusted kids in the smoked-out ruins of the apartment building. He saw Quinn on the roof with the machine gun he might use or not. He saw the kids milling and lost and scared at the south end of the plaza. And Mary and the little kids still in the day care. And Dahra in the church basement awaiting casualties.
Drake had retreated. For now.
What would Orc do?
Where was Caine?
And what would happen in one hour when the clock
ticked and marked exactly fifteen years since Sam had been born, linked though he hadn’t known it to a brother named Caine?
Could he beat Caine?
He had to beat Caine.
And somehow he had to destroy Drake as well. If—when—Sam stepped outside, took the big jump, poofed, he didn’t want to leave Astrid to Drake’s mercy.
He knew he should be scared of the end. Scared of the mysterious process that would, it seemed, simply subtract Sam Temple from the FAYZ. But he wasn’t as worried for himself as he was for Astrid.
Less than two weeks ago she had been an abstraction, an ideal, a girl he could check out furtively, but without ever revealing his own interest. And now she was almost all he thought about as his own personal clock ticked down toward a sudden and possibly fatal disappearance.
How would Caine play it, that’s what the rest of his mind turned over and over. Would Caine walk into town like a gunslinger in some ancient cowboy movie?
Would they stand at thirty paces and draw?
Which would be more powerful? The twin with the power of light, or the twin with the power to move matter?
It was dark.
Sam hated the dark. He had always known that when the end came for him it would be in the dark.
Dark and alone.
Where was Caine?
Was Bug watching him even now?
Would Edilio do what Quinn could not?
What surprise would Caine have up his sleeve?
Taylor appeared standing a few feet away. She looked like she’d just come from an interview with a demon. Her face was white, her eyes wide, glittering in the light of streetlamps. “They’re coming,” she said.
Sam nodded, braced his shoulders, consciously slowed the sudden sprint of his heart. “Good,” he said.
“No, not him,” Taylor said. “The coyotes.”
“What? Where?”
Taylor pointed over his shoulder.
Sam spun. They came at a run, full out from two directions, racing straight for the unprotected crowd of children.
It was like some classroom nature film. Like watching as a lion pride attacked a herd of antelope. Only this herd was human. This herd had no reservoir of lightning speed.
Helpless.
Panic swept them. They surged toward the middle, kids at the edges seeing their doom approach on swift paws.
Sam broke into a run, raised his one good hand, looked for a target, yelled. But then, the loud roar of a car engine.
He skidded to a halt, spun again. Headlights raced down the street past the church. A dusty SUV. It slammed into the curb surrounding the plaza, jumped the sidewalk, and came to a shuddering stop that sent up clods of damp dirt.
Behind it other cars, racing.
Screams as the coyotes neared the human herd.
Sam stretched out his hand and green fire lanced toward the left-side swarm of coyotes.
He couldn’t fire at the other column, they were blocked by panicky, running children, all now racing toward Sam for protection and so making it impossible for him to beam.
“Get down, get down, get down,” he yelled. “On the ground!” But it was useless.
“Save me!” said Computer Jack, falling from the SUV.
An Audi skidded to a stop in front of the church. Someone was standing up in the sunroof.
A scream of sheer terror and pain. Someone was down, struggling against a coyote twice his size.
“Edilio! Now!” Sam roared.
“Having a bad night, brother?” Caine shouted, exultant. “It’s going to get worse.”
Caine raised his hands, aimed not at Sam, not at Sam at all. Instead, he directed the impossible energy of his telekinesis at the church. It was as if an invisible giant, a creature the size of a dinosaur, had leaned against the ancient limestone. The stone cracked. The stained-glass window shattered. The door of the church, the weak point, blew inward, knocked clear off its hinges.
“Astrid!” Sam cried.
Screams, panicked screams from the plaza, mixed with snarls and wild yelps as the coyotes fell on the children.
Suddenly the impossibly loud clatter of a machine gun. Fire blasted from the roof of the day care.
Edilio running from the burned building, three others behind him, charging the coyotes.
Caine blasted again and this time the invisible monster, the beast of energy, pushed hard, hard against the front of the church.
The side windows, all the ancient stained glass and the new, exploded in a sparkling shower. The steeple swayed.
“How you going to save them, Sam?” Caine exulted. “One more push and it collapses.”
Jack at Sam’s feet, clutching him, tripping him, strangely strong.
Sam fired blindly at Caine as he fell.
“I can save you! Save me!” Jack pleaded. “The poof, I can save you.”
Sam fell hard, kicked at Jack’s grasping hands, wiggled free, and stood up in time to see the front wall of the church sag and collapse slowly, slowly inward.
The roof shuddered and slumped. The steeple teetered but did not fall. But tons of limestone and plaster and massive wooden beams fell in with a crash like the end of the world.
“Astrid!” Sam cried again, helpless.
He ran straight at Caine, ignoring the massacre behind him, blocking the screams and the ravening growls and the staccato of machine guns.
He aimed and fired.
The beam hit the front of Caine’s car. The sheet metal blistered, and Caine climbed awkwardly out through the sunroof while others Sam didn’t care enough to identify bolted through the doors.
Sam fired and Caine dodged.
A blast hit Sam, stopped him as dead as if he’d run into a wall. He searched wildly for Caine. Where? Where?
Muffled screams from inside the church joined the background roar, a noise out of a child’s hell, high-pitched cries for mother, agonized cries, desperate, pleading.
A flash of movement and Sam fired.
Caine fired back and the statue on the fountain was blown off its pedestal and fell with a splash in the fetid water.
Sam was up and running. He had to find Caine, had to find him, kill him, kill him.
More machine guns firing and Edilio’s voice yelling, “No, no, no, stop firing, you’re hitting kids!”
Sam rounded the burning Audi. Caine running ahead, leaping a fire hydrant.
Sam fired and the ground under Caine’s feet burst into flame and oily black smoke. The pavement itself was burning. Caine went sprawling onto the street, rolled quickly, got to one knee, and Sam took a massive blow that laid him flat on his back, stunned, blood coming from his mouth and ears, limbs all askew, unable to…unable…
Caine, a wild, bloody, screaming face.
Sam felt hatred burn through him and erupt from his hands.
Caine jumped aside, too slow, and the scourging light seared his side. Shirt burning, Caine screamed and beat at the flame.
Sam tried to stand, but his head was swimming.
Caine bolted into the burned-out apartment building, through the same door Sam had entered to try and save the little firestarter.
Sam wobbled but ran after him.
Up the stairs and to the scorched hallway, still stinking of smoke. The top floor was a wreckage of burned timbers and asphalt-tiled slopes of roof like children’s slides, and fragments of walls and incongruous jutting pipes.
A blast and Sam could actually see the half-wall beside him ripple from the impact.
“Caine. Let’s finish this,” Sam rasped.
“Come get me, brother,” Caine cried in a pain-squeezed voice. “I’ll bring this place down on us both.”
Sam located the sound of his voice and ran down the hallway, ran beneath the stars, firing the deadly light from his hands.
No Caine.
A creaking door, still hanging from hinges though the wall around it was gone, swung slowly.
Sam kicked it, spun, and fired into the room.
&n
bsp; A charred wooden beam flew through the air. Sam ducked under it. The next one hit his left arm, shattering the elbow. More debris, a torrent of it, drove Sam back.
Suddenly, there was Caine, not ten feet from him.
Caine’s hands were raised over his head, fingers splayed, palms out. Sam clutched his shattered left elbow with his right hand.
“Game over, Sam,” Caine said.
Something blurred behind Caine and he reeled. He clutched his skull.
Brianna stood over him, brandishing her hammer.
“Run, Breeze!” Sam yelled, but too late. Even as he staggered backward, Caine fired at point-blank range and Brianna flew backward into the wall, through the wall.
Caine jumped after her through the opening.
Sam fired into the wall, burned a hole. Through it he could see Caine blowing away the next wall.
Sam felt the floor buckle beneath him.
The building was collapsing.
He turned and ran, but all at once the floor was gone and he was running in midair, falling, and the building with him, all around him, on him.
He fell and the world fell on him.
FORTY-FIVE
14 MINUTES
QUINN WATCHED IN frozen horror as the coyotes attacked the children.
He saw Sam fire and miss.
He saw Sam agonize for a terrible moment as Caine attacked the church.
Sam ran toward the church.
Quinn shouted, “No!”
He aimed.
“Don’t hit the kids, don’t the kids,” he sobbed, and squeezed the trigger. Aiming at the mass of coyotes. So many more than before.
The coyotes barely noticed him.
One fell, twisting, like it had tripped, and didn’t get up.
Then he could shoot no more, the beasts were in with the kids. He ran for the ladder and slid and fell and landed hard in the alley.
Run away, his brain screamed, run from it. He took three panicked steps away, toward the beach, running toward the beach, but then, as though some invisible force had taken hold of him, he stopped.
“Can’t run away, Quinn,” he told himself.
“Can’t.”
And even as he said the words, he was running back, into the day care, pushing past Mary shielding a child in her arms, past her out to the plaza, wielding the gun as a club now, running and screaming his head off like a lunatic, swinging the gun butt to a sickening crunch on a coyote’s skull.