Benny and Nix sat on either side of Lilah, each of them holding one of her hands. Her grip was like iron, her face set into a strange, hard smile that was more death mask than anything. The weeks of impenetrable coldness she’d endured had taken a terrible toll on Lilah. During those weeks she’d hardly spoken, barely communicated. Instead of letting Nix and Benny in so they could help her through her pain and grief, she’d closed everything out. Benny knew that she was a practiced hand at eating her pain and pasting on a face of unflappable stoicism, but now a force had come along that was more powerful and dangerous than any enemy Lilah had ever faced. And it was a force over which she had no power.
Hope.
The possibility that Archangel could bring Chong back to her was almost more than Lilah could handle. Tears flowed steadily down her cheeks. They gleamed like hot mercury on her tanned face. Her breathing was ragged and fast, like a sprinter, or like a cornered feral animal whose only option was to destroy everything—even herself.
Hope, Benny knew, was a terrible double-edged thing.
“Lilah,” he said softly, “it’s going to be—”
“Shut up or I’ll kill you,” she said through gritted teeth.
Benny had no doubt at all that she meant it.
He shut up.
But he never let go of her hand.
The Black Hawk slashed through the last pale streamers of sunlight, heading at full speed t
o the darkness in the east.
Toward Sanctuary.
Toward Chong.
74
JOE LEDGER’S VOICE BOOMED AT them through the loudspeakers.
“Get up here right now!”
They tore themselves out of their straps and crowded into the cockpit door.
“What’s wrong?” demanded Lilah.
Joe pointed. Deep lines of tension were cut in his skin, and his eyes were filled with horror. The east was a vast black nothing where the land and the sky were indistinguishable from each other. Except at one spot, miles and miles away.
A red-gold glow was painted onto the horizon.
“What is that?” asked Nix.
Joe’s voice was a tight whisper. “That’s Sanctuary.”
They stared at the light. With every moment, with every mile the light grew brighter and brighter. They knew that they were still far away, which meant that a glow like that could never come from a small fire.
“No . . . ,” said Nix in a small and hollow voice.
A single, wrenching, shattered sob broke in Lilah’s chest.
Benny felt as if he was falling through space, as if a hole had opened in the bottom of the helicopter. His heart tore loose from its moorings and sank into the darkness.
There, far away across the gulf of a nightmare landscape, Sanctuary was burning.
PART THREE
THE TRUTH IN DISTANT PLACES
I dislike death, however, there are some things I dislike more than death.