Light (Gone 6)

“If he can regenerate . . .,” Dekka began.

“Then we could have a bunch of Drakes, one from each severed part.”

“Are you guys going to turn this into a bad thing?” Brianna asked shrilly. “I got him! I got him and I sliced him up. And I brought you the head.”

“You did great, Breeze,” Dekka said. “But do us a favor and check on some of those parts. Make sure they’re where you left them, huh?”

“Okay, I just have to eat something first. I ran a hundred miles, probably.” She zipped away, leaving Astrid and Dekka, and the head, which was still making faint vocalizations of an unpleasant nature.

“I have an idea,” Dekka said. “There’s a cooler in my trailer. I get it, I poke some holes in it, put the head in, weigh it down with rocks, and we sink him at the end of a long rope. Maybe it’ll even kill him.”

Astrid sighed. “This would be a story not to tell the Today show. I’ll start getting some rocks.”

EIGHT

68 HOURS, 42 MINUTES

DRAKE COULD HEAR perfectly well, although there was something of an echo effect. But pretty well given that his head was separated from his body and split in two still-somewhat-mismatched halves.

He had heard what they were planning. And he was afraid. It was an odd kind of fear, disconnected from his body: there was no stomach-churning, no shortness of breath, no quickening of his pulse.

But he was afraid. He had spent long weeks buried underground—it had had an effect on him. He was not quite human, but he could still feel fear.

And pain. Not like he would have in the old days, but still . . . he could feel the body that was no longer attached to his head.

He itched for his whip hand. God, he would make these two witches pay. Oh, definitely. He could picture it. He had pictured it, many times, especially Astrid. How long had he hated her? Probably from their very first meeting. She was just that kind of girl: hate at first sight.

But now . . .

Dekka, the dyke, was using a Phillips screwdriver to poke holes in the plastic cooler. It wasn’t easy—she was slamming it again and again, like some crazy killer. She’d already put a couple of dozen holes in it.

Astrid was just standing there, watching her, and looking back at Drake. He knew she wanted to say something to him. She wanted to tell him, Hah, see, now it’s me on top. Now it’s me looking down at you. She couldn’t hide the look of triumph, not from Drake.

“Ready,” Dekka said.

Astrid squatted down. She grabbed a handful of his hair, and suddenly he was up and swinging through the air.

He saw the cooler with its top open. He wanted to scream, but he couldn’t manage that much noise, and he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

Astrid set him down—didn’t drop him, set him down—in the cooler.

“I have a bike chain I can wrap around it,” Dekka said. “Then I’ll tie the rope around the whole thing, in case we need to haul him back up.”

“Drake,” Astrid said. “Last chance: tell us where we can find Gaia and Diana.”

For a terrible moment Drake considered it. But he knew that whatever these two could do was nothing next to the pain the gaiaphage could inflict.

He cursed weakly.

The two of them set heavy chunks of broken concrete in beside him. Astrid closed the lid. Darkness stabbed through with beams of light from the holes.

The cooler rocked back and forth with much scraping noise as they wrapped the chain and then the rope.

“That’ll hold,” Dekka said.

Drake felt the cooler being lifted. It teetered precariously as they almost lost their grip.

Then: A short drop. A splash.