Villain (Gone 8)

Francis was in the little kitchen, brewing coffee.

“Hey,” Cruz said.

“Hey. Want some?”

“Like a drowning woman wants a life raft,” Cruz said. She took a cup and scalded her tongue. “What’s that noise?”

Francis grinned. “Armo snores. Dekka, too.”

“It’s like they’re a really bad musical act.”

Francis laughed, and her laugh seemed to flow into Cruz. Cruz grinned despite herself, despite a million images threatening to overwhelm her. “You’ve fallen in with some crazy people, kid.”

“Well, I guess any family I’m part of will have to be crazy.”

Cruz frowned at the word “family.” Was that what they were? “Hey, where are Shade and Malik?”

Francis arched a brow that was too knowing for her age. She nodded toward one of the bedrooms, where a door that had been open was now closed.

Cruz sighed. “Well, it’s about time.”

She gave herself the simple but wrong pleasure of gazing at Armo, who lay on the pull-out sofa, having wrapped himself in a sheet that, fortunately from Cruz’s perspective, revealed a shoulder and almost too much of a thigh.

“Some family,” Cruz muttered.

“What was it?” Sam Temple asked. He’d just hopped off the treadmill in the breakfast nook he and Astrid had converted to a home gym. He’d been using the treadmill and the weights religiously since the world had gone crazy.

Astrid came from the front door holding the FedEx envelope behind her back. “Nothing. Just some kids collecting money for their soccer team. I gave them five bucks.”

“You’re a patron of school sports, babe. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”

Astrid said, “You know it’s not like I hate sports, I’ve just never cared what people did with balls.”

“I’m going to pass on the chance to make a crude joke,” Sam said, and laughed anyway.

Astrid moved on through to the bathroom adjoining their bedroom. She locked the door and sat on the closed toilet, contemplating the FedEx envelope on her lap. She was pretty sure she knew what was in it. She knew who had sent it despite the fake name on the packaging slip.

Should she be grateful to Dekka? She had vowed to keep Sam out of it if she could. But the world was disintegrating, so maybe Dekka had thought it was her last chance to send mail and have it reach its destination.

Or maybe Dekka had reassessed the situation and reached this grim conclusion. Astrid knew that Dekka had never liked her, and the feeling was mutual. But like was not the same as respect, and she had deep respect for Dekka’s judgment, a respect born of too many dreadful and dangerous experiences.

If it has to be: me.

It had been all Astrid had time to write on the note she’d slipped to Dekka as she and Armo had left. She wished she could have provided more guidance, more if-then scenarios. But in the end she’d had to leave it to Dekka.

“Well,” Astrid muttered, “if I had to trust anyone . . .”

Drake would come. With the world in meltdown, he would come. He no longer needed to be prudent. He no longer needed to fear discovery.

Sam had bought a twelve-gauge shotgun the day before, a dangerous, matte-black object with no purpose but to kill. But they both knew that Drake could be blown apart, slowed, but not stopped. Not by any weapon they knew of.

There was a plague of monsters loose in the world, and Astrid feared them, but with her usual logic had seen that she and Sam were just two of potentially millions of victims. But she had no such logical defense against Drake, because Drake was not just a monster; he was her monster. Sooner or later, Drake would come for her. And Sam would fight him, but without the power he once possessed, he would fail. And Astrid would be Drake’s to do with as he wished.

She licked her lips, and her fingers shook as she tore away the sealing strip and pulled out the contents: a plastic sandwich bag containing what looked like perhaps a tablespoon of gray powder.

“Hey, can I come in and shower?” Sam was at the door.

“Just a minute.” Astrid slid the baggie back into the envelope and stuffed it beneath the sink, behind the Comet and the Scrub Free.