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But where was Zil?
And was he with Drake?
Could the timing all be coincidence? No. Sam didn’t believe in coincidence.
Again, a movement glimpsed through a veil of smoke. Again Sam raced toward it. This time the figure did not disappear.
“Don’t…,” a young voice cried out, and then choked and hacked. A boy who looked to be maybe six years old.
“Get out of here,” Sam snapped. “Go to the beach.”
He ran on, faltered, turned to his right. Where was Drake? No, Zil. Where was Zil? Zil was real.
And all at once he was at the beach wall. He practically tripped over it. He had sent the six-year-old off in the wrong direction. Too late to do anything about that. The kid wasn’t the only lost one tonight.
Where were Dekka and Brianna and Taylor? Where were Edilio’s soldiers?
What was going on?
Sam saw a group of kids rushing along the sand in the direction of the marina. And for a moment he almost thought he saw Caine. He was hallucinating. Imagining things.
“Freaks out!”
Sam heard it clearly. It seemed very close. Maybe a trick of acoustics.
He tried to penetrate the dark and the smoke but he saw nothing now, not even the hallucinated Caine.
BLAM!
A shotgun blast. He saw the bright flash.
He ran. His feet hit something soft but heavy. He flew and landed facedown. Mouth gritty with sand he climbed to his feet. A body, someone in the sand.
No time for that.
It was time to see who was who and what was what. Sam raised his hands high and a ball of cold brilliant light formed in the air.
In the eerie half-light Sam saw a dozen of Zil’s thugs, half armed.
A mob was running away from them.
Another group, smaller, and looking oddly like doddering old people, kicked through the surf toward the distant marina.
Zil and his crew knew immediately who was responsible for the revelatory light. It could only be…
“Sam!”
“It’s Sam!”
“Run!”
“Shoot him! Shoot him!”
Three shotgun blasts in rapid succession. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
Sam fired back. Pencils of blistering green light scoured the sand. A cry of pain.
“Don’t run away!”
