The group of maybe two dozen kids, all huddling close together, moved down the road as hungry coyote eyes watched and tongues lolled, waiting for fresh meat.
Brianna had been down the road as far as the hills. When she saw kids coming toward Perdido Beach she knew Drake hadn’t passed that way.
Which meant he might have retreated toward the air national guard base. So she ran there and looked around. And found nothing.
Which left her baffled. Surely she would have seen him if he were close to the lake. Surely he hadn’t come along the road. And he wasn’t at the base or anywhere between those three points.
She was tired and frustrated. And worried about Sam yelling at her. Which just sent her off toward Coates, because she couldn’t come back empty-handed. She was the Breeze: she was the anti-Drake, at least in her own mind. And if he was out and about, running free, she was the one to find him and take him down.
But she hadn’t found him. She had found kids leaving Perdido Beach all babbling about the sky dying, and she’d found that rabbits were proliferating near Coates, and she’d found a dropped jar of Nutella on the line between the lake and the air base and had promptly eaten it.
But no Drake.
The sky was so weird. The light so wrong. That blank blackness all around, rising from the horizon to make a new, jagged horizon, it was all wrong.
And if it really did turn dark and stay dark? Then what? Then what for the Breeze? She would be stumbling around in the dark like everyone else. She would go from being important to being just another girl.
Sam wouldn’t even need her. He wouldn’t ask her to meetings. She wouldn’t be his go-to person. The mighty Brianna. Swift Girl. The most dangerous person in the FAYZ after Sam and Caine.
She had to get some altitude; that was it. Get the larger view while there was still a view to get.
She raced toward the Santa Katrina Hills. She blew right past two sets of footprints, registered them belatedly, then raced back to find them again.
They were quite clear. A pair of boots. And a pair of sneakers. Both leading from the hills in the general direction of Perdido Beach. Neither was big enough to be Drake. And he wouldn’t be heading that way.
Brianna glanced anxiously at the sky. She couldn’t stay out here. And she couldn’t go back to Sam with empty hands. It would be the end of her. She had disobeyed orders before, but now to be such a failure, nothing but a few dead coyotes … and a failure when her powers might be almost useless…
She was nothing if she was not the Breeze.
She dashed to the top of the nearest hill, a scraped-bald thing maybe two thousand feet tall. She could make out the lake, shimmering strangely in the unnatural light. Turning the other way she could see the ocean. The road was hidden from view.
What to do?
Then she saw what looked like a person walking. To the north. It was hard to be sure because of the light and the narrowness of the gap between two hills. But she thought she saw a single person moving.
Brianna said a prayer that it might be Drake. She had a plan for dealing with him. A plan that would make Sam proud. She was going to slice and dice him and use her speed to spread the parts all around the FAYZ.
Hah! See if Drake could put himself back together then.
It would be great. If.
TWENTY-SEVEN
10 HOURS, 54 MINUTES
DIANA’S LEGS ACHED. Her bare feet were bloody. Justin was trying to help her but there was no way to ease the pain of bare soles on sharp stone.
Anytime she slowed or stumbled Drake would snap his whip, and the pain of that was so much worse.
She couldn’t imagine that she would make it to the gaiaphage alive.
Diana knew that was the objective. Drake had taken to gloating about it. She’d had plenty of opportunity to think of snide remarks. But each one came at the cost of another slice in her flesh. Or worse yet, Justin’s. So she stumbled along in silence.
“Don’t know what he wants with you,” Drake said, not for the first time, “but whatever he leaves is mine. That’s all I know. Make some of your witty remarks to the gaiaphage. Hah. Try that.”
He was still looking over his shoulder constantly. Diana had come to think of it as Breezanoia—a terrible fear of Brianna.
“She can come zooming up all she wants,” Drake said. “See if she can cut me without cutting the brat. See if she can do that.”