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THE FIGHT LASTED six seconds.
In that time Brianna rushed, swung her machete, and missed.
Gaia swung a fist as powerful as Jack’s and caught just a corner of Brianna’s shoulder, spinning Brianna away to sprawl on the concrete.
Brianna was up in a flash, snapped her shotgun up, fired, and hit Gaia in the chest with a load of buckshot that knocked Gaia staggering back with seven small holes in her.
Brianna rushed, yelling, “Die!” stuck her shotgun into the stunned Gaia’s mouth, and pulled the trigger.
And there was no explosion. Dud shell.
Brianna’s one good eye widened and Gaia’s hand was on her neck. Impossible to get away. Brianna swung her machete, but the angle was all wrong, so she caught Gaia’s neck, too low and too weak. Blood was everywhere.
But Brianna’s head was woozy. The weakness was spreading through her.
She struck again, and Gaia easily blocked this blow, ripped Brianna’s machete from her hand, and threw it aside.
Gaia’s face, those cold blue eyes, were all Brianna could see. But she felt Gaia’s hand pressing palm-out against her heart and knew . . .
“NO!” Dekka screamed.
But there was a hole burned right through Brianna. A smoking hole where her heart should be.
Brianna’s body fell limp. Suddenly so small.
Gaia fell back, touched the buckshot wounds, but then realized the arterial spray from her neck was the bigger problem. She was bathed in her own blood.
“NO!” Dekka screamed again, and charged, with Orc at her side, with Jack suddenly yelling, rushing up from the side of the road, all straight at Gaia.
Gaia fired the killing light but missed, and now retreated in confusion, her already weak vision blurred by her own blood.
She tried to turn on her speed, but she felt it ebbing. Of course: she had just killed the girl with the power of speed! She’d had no choice: another few seconds and she herself would have been dead.
Gaia turned to run, but the gray monster would be on her in seconds. She kicked wildly and hurled herself through the air, canceled gravity to slow her descent, touched down, and kicked off again into the darkness, trailing an arc of blood behind her.
“No, no, no! Brianna!” Dekka sobbed, cradling the burned head in her arms. The obscene hole in her chest did not even bleed; it had been cauterized.
Brianna’s eyes were still open. In a hundred movies Dekka had seen the survivors shut the eyes of the dead, but no, she couldn’t do that. Those were Brianna’s eyes. She couldn’t be gone. She couldn’t be dead, not the cocky, funny, terrifyingly brave little girl Dekka loved.
“Get Lana!” Dekka raged. “Get Lana!”
“We’ll get her,” Edilio said softly, but Dekka knew better. Lana healed the injured; she did not raise the dead. Brianna’s lioness heart had burned from her body.
Dekka looked up at Edilio, tears streaming so she could barely make out his features. He knelt beside her and put his arms around her.
Still holding Brianna, Dekka buried her face in Edilio’s shoulder and sobbed uncontrollably.
Orc did not stop chasing Gaia. But he couldn’t see her, and after a while he couldn’t hear her. Maybe she was hiding. Maybe she was just too fast. Jack caught up with him.
“Where did she go?” Jack cried.
“I don’t know.”
They stopped running. They stood side by side on the dark highway. Neither knew what to do. Neither could bear the thought of going back and seeing Dekka cry. And seeing the body of the girl who had more than once fought their battles and saved their lives.
Anything but that, anything but that.
“I changed my mind, Lord,” Orc said to the night sky. “It don’t matter if people see me. Please let us out of here. This place is too sad.”
