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“Well,” Sam said. “At least we know that would have worked had it been necessary.”
“Too bad it wasn’t Drake himself,” Dekka said. “But my little Brianna did him in. Yeah. Breeze took down Drake and saved our butts, twice. Oh, man. I thought I was cried out.”
“Dekka,” Sam said, putting his arms around her, “we will never be cried out.”
“We have a lot of people to bury,” Edilio said. He was looking at the crude grave markers in the town plaza. The first had been a little girl who died in a fire just a few feet from this spot, when Edilio had taken on the job of burying the dead.
“Brianna wouldn’t want to be in the ground,” Dekka said. “She’d want to, I don’t know. Cremation, maybe. You could do it, Sam.”
“He’s thinking,” Gaia said. “Nemesis. He’s thinking. I can sense it. He’s weak, weakening, so close. But he’s thinking, and hiding his thoughts from me.”
She swallowed hard, and Drake was frankly contemptuous. It was crazy that the gaiaphage should be afraid of Little Pete, the Petard. He wasn’t going to say that to the gaiaphage, that was for sure, but still he could hardly conceal his disappointment.
It was the gaiaphage that had gone weak since inhabiting this girl’s body. She, it, seemed almost paralyzed by fear. Drake’s arm was back! Back, baby! Gaia had given it back to him, better than ever. He snapped it and broke a branch from a bush. Time for war. Time to kill. He was back!
Back! Hah hah hah! But his master was healing, and slowly. And worst of all, complaining. Like a typical female.
“She’s fighting me,” Gaia said. “I can feel her blocking me.”
Shook up, that was it. The mighty gaiaphage, all shook up. Well, that’s what came of turning yourself into a girl.
“When do we go?” Drake demanded. “They’re waiting to die.”
“When it’s dark,” Gaia said sullenly. “When the barrier comes down I have to walk out of here. In this body. I can’t be recognized by every human out there. I will need time. I will need to gather my powers . . . find a new form . . . a place to hide, out there.”
A place to hide? Drake coiled his arm around his new body. He was stronger than before. His whip was longer, quicker. A better, badder Whip Hand. And ready to go!
“I get Astrid to myself,” Drake said.
“You don’t make demands of me!” Gaia raged.
Drake laughed. His voice was strange now, with portions of Alex’s throat melded to his. He sounded older than he had before. “You’re afraid of the people outside?”
“This body keeps me alive. This body allows me to concentrate my strength. But this body is weak. I had not realized how weak. It makes its own demands. It needs food. It excretes. It hurts.” Gaia shook her long black hair. “It bothers me.”
“You look like her, you know. Like Diana. The way she looked before. Back when she thought she was hot.”
Gaia frowned.
“Yeah,” Drake said. “Yeah. You look hot and nasty. Like her.”
He knew immediately that he had gone too far, said too much.
Gaia’s blue eyes were like lasers. “You want to hurt me,” she whispered.
Drake shook his head violently. “No. No, that’s not what I—”
“You. Want. To hurt this body.”
“Not you,” Drake said, desperately. “Not the real you.”
“You think you know the real me?”
Drake shook his head again. He didn’t want to go any deeper into this. He just wanted to feel the satisfying slap of his whip hand on flesh. That was all. He just wanted to hear the cries of pain and terror. He wanted to find that blond witch, that smug so-called genius, and watch her fear grow, watch her—
“It comes closer, the fire. In the smoke . . . that’s when we attack.” Gaia looked off toward the wall of smoke in the north.
“I thought you were worried about Nemesis.”
