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Floating. Wrapped in chains that stuck to his skin as they slowly cooled.
When he twisted his head, he saw Gaia walking down the middle of the highway.
Behind her the burning truck floated.
She noticed him stirring.
“Watch this,” she said. She raised a hand and one log broke free from the flaming mass, rose in the air, and then hurtled like a missile across the parking lot to smash into the shattered glass and tattered banners at the front of Ralph’s store.
“Fire is a very good distraction, don’t you think?” Gaia said.
He couldn’t speak. Whatever consciousness he had was almost a dream state, a hallucination.
“I realized, when I saw the forest burning, how fascinating the firelight is. It’s beautiful, and people stare at it, don’t they? It destroys things and kills people, but humans love it. Is it because they crave their own destruction, Sam? I want to understand your kind. I am going out into the wider world, and I must learn. But first things first. First, to escape this shell, this egg in which I have gestated, all eyes will be on the fire, all eyes blinded by the smoke, and when I walk out of here, out into your large world with its billions, no one will even see. It’s the beauty of light, don’t you see, Sam? It reveals, but it also distracts and blinds. It’s even better than darkness.”
“Don’t do this,” he begged in a choked voice.
He saw two people running from the burning grocery store. Some kids had been living there—skaters. The skaters loved it for all the smooth tile floors and the way the shelves and freezer cases could be turned into ramps.
Sam turned quickly to avoid looking, to avoid giving the two kids away, but it was too late.
Gaia stretched out her hand, and the nearest of the kids, a boy who insisted on being called Spartacus, came flying toward them, yelling in surprise.
He was twelve years old. He had hair down to his waist worked into mismanaged dreads. He wore a T-shirt that was more hole than cloth and oversized shorts.
“Watch the pretty light, Sam,” Gaia whispered to him, right into his ear.
“No!” he cried.
“You’ve been a problem for me, Sam, right from the start. You were one of the first ones whose names I learned. I saw images of you in their minds, in the mind of the Healer, in Caine’s mind, even distorted versions that Nemesis showed me sometimes. You defied me. Didn’t you, you willful little boy?”
She was laughing, laughing at her own cleverness, laughing at the way Spartacus cried and begged and at the way Sam pleaded, at the way he turned his face away, at the futility of it.
Gaia grabbed Sam’s head in the crook of her arm. She pried his eyes open with fingers dragging on his forehead. “Watch. Watch it all. Your light, Sam. Because you didn’t have the courage to end your own life, did you? You wanted me to do it for you. The hero who missed his chance. Watch now, Sam. I’m going to slice him apart, and his every scream will be your fault.”
“You’re insane!”
“Compared to what?” she asked. “I haven’t gotten out much.”
The light burned from her free hand and like a power saw begun cutting into the boy’s head, and he screamed and Sam roared and Gaia laughed, and Sam’s hands were close enough, he could twist them just enough, and his own hands blazed with the green light cutting into Spartacus’s heart.
Gaia cried out in ecstatic joy. She dropped the dead boy and with her telekinetic power twirled Sam around in the air like a top and laughed.
“Made you kill! Made you kill!” she yelled. “This will be fun.”
She danced in a circle and shouted up at the smoke-darkened, spark-lit sky. “Too late, Nemesis, too late!” Like a child. Taunting. “Too late!”
TWENTY-EIGHT
1 HOUR, 10 MINUTES
“SHE’S COMING.”
Edilio stood atop the town hall. It was the highest spot in the downtown area since the church was nearly leveled. Dekka was beside him, Jack and Orc just a few feet away.
She was coming with fire. Fire against a background of
fire. She wasn’t waiting for the Stefano Rey fire to reach town; she was bringing it, inspired by it.
