Gone Series Complete Collection (143 page)

Nerezza’s howl of pain was the most satisfying thing Astrid had ever heard.

She clamped her jaw together as hard as she could, yanked her head back and forth, ripping at the ear, tasting blood in her mouth and pounding with her fists at the back of Nerezza’s head.

Nerezza’s hand closed on the crowbar, but she couldn’t reach behind herself to get Astrid. She stabbed blindly with the edged end of the tool, grazing Astrid’s forehead, but not dislodging her.

Astrid wrapped her fingers around Nerezza’s throat and squeezed, now releasing the ear, spitting something squirmy out of her mouth, and put all her strength into squeezing Nerezza’s windpipe.

She felt the pulse in Nerezza’s neck.

And she squeezed.

THIRTY-EIGHT

32
MINUTES

SANJIT
AND
VIRTUE
carried Bowie on a makeshift stretcher that was nothing but a sheet stretched between them.

“What are we doing?” Peace asked, twisting her hands together anxiously.

“We are fleeing,” Sanjit said.

“What’s that?”

“Fleeing? Oh, it’s something I’ve done a few times in my life,” Sanjit said. “It’s all about fighting or fleeing. You don’t want to fight, do you?”

“I’m scared,” Peace moaned.

“No reason to be scared,” Sanjit said as he struggled to hold the sheet ends in his fingers while walking backward toward the cliff. “Look at Choo. He doesn’t look scared, does he?”

Actually Virtue looked scared to death. But Sanjit didn’t need Peace losing her head. The scary part was still ahead. Scary had only just begun.

“No?” Peace said doubtfully.

“Are we running away?” Pixie asked. She had a plastic bag of Legos in her hand, no idea why, but she seemed determined to hold onto them.

“Well, we’re hoping to fly away, actually,” Sanjit said brightly.

“We’re going on the helichopper?” Pixie asked.

Sanjit exchanged a look with Virtue, who was struggling along much like Sanjit, legs wobbly, feet tripping in the long grass.

“Why are we running?” Bowie moaned.

“He’s awake,” Sanjit said.

“You think?” Virtue snapped between gasps for air.

“How do you feel, little dude?” Sanjit asked him.

“My head hurts,” Bowie said. “And I want some water.”

“Good timing,” Sanjit muttered.

They had reached the edge of the cliff. The rope was still where he and Virtue had left it the other day. “Okay, Choo, you go down first. I’ll lower the kids down to you one by one.”

“I’m scared,” Peace said.

Sanjit lowered Bowie to the ground and flexed his cramped fingers. “Okay, listen up, all of you.”

They did. Somewhat to Sanjit’s surprise. “Listen: we’re all scared, okay? So no one needs to keep reminding me. You’re scared, I’m scared, we’re all scared.”

“You’re scared, too?” Peace asked him.

“Peeless,” Sanjit said. “But sometimes life gets tough and scary, okay? We’ve all been scary places before. But here we are, right? We’re all still here.”

“I want to stay here,” Pixie said. “I can’t leave my dolls.”

“We’ll come back for them another time,” Sanjit said.

He knelt down, wasting precious seconds, waiting for the cold-eyed mutant creep Caine to step out of the house any moment. “Kids. We are a family, right? And we stick together, right?”

No one seemed too sure of that.

“And we survive together, right?” Sanjit pressed.

Long silence. Long stares.

“That’s right,” Virtue said at last. “Don’t worry, you guys. It’s going to be okay.”

He almost seemed to believe it.

Sanjit wished he did.

Astrid could feel the arteries and veins and tendons in Nerezza’s neck. She could feel the way the blood hammered trying to reach Nerezza’s brain. The way the muscles twisted.

She felt Nerezza’s windpipe convulsing. Her entire body was jerking now, a wild spasm, organs frantic for oxygen, nerves twitching as Nerezza’s brain sent out frantic panic signals.

Astrid’s hands squeezed. Her fingers dug in, like she was trying to form fists and Nerezza’s neck was just kind of in the way and if she just squeezed hard enough—

“No!” Astrid gasped.

She released. She stood up fast, backed away, stared in horror at Nerezza as the girl choked and sucked air.

They were almost alone in the plaza. Mary had led the littles away at a run, and it had signaled a full-fledged panic that drew almost everyone in her wake. Everyone was pelting toward the beach. Astrid saw their backs as they ran.

And then she saw the unmistakable silhouette that sauntered after them.

He might almost have been anyone, any tall, thin boy. If not for the whip that curled in the air and wrapped caressingly around his body and uncurled to snap and crack.

Drake laughed.

Nerezza sucked air. Little Pete stirred.

Gunfire, a single loud round.

The sun was setting out over the water. A red sunset.

Astrid stepped over Nerezza and turned her brother over. He moaned. His eyes fluttered open. His hand was already reaching for the game player.

Astrid picked it up. It was warm in her hand. A pleasurable sensation tingled her arm.

Astrid grabbed the front of Little Pete’s shirt in her sore fist.

“What is the game, Petey?” she demanded.

She could see his eyes glaze over. The veil that separated Little Pete from the world around him.

“No!” she screamed, her face inches from his. “Not this time. Tell me. Tell me!”

Little Pete looked at her and met her gaze. Aware. But still, he said nothing.

A waste of time demanding Little Pete use words. Words were her tool, not his. Astrid lowered her voice. “Petey. Show me. I know you have the power.
Show
me.”

Little Pete’s eyes widened. Something clicked beneath that blank stare.

The ground split open beneath Astrid. The dirt was a mouth. She cried out and fell, spinning downward, down a tunnel in mud lit by neon screams.

Diana opened one eye. What she saw before her was a wooden surface. A spilled Cheerio was the closest recognizable object.

Where was she?

She closed her eye and asked herself that question again. Where am I?

She’d had a horrible dream, full of gruesome detail. Violence. Starvation. Despair. In the dream she had done things she would never, ever do in real life.

She opened her eyes again and tried to stand up. She fell backward a very, very long way. She barely felt the floor when it smacked her in the back of the head.

Now she saw legs. Table legs, chair legs, the legs of a boy wearing frayed jeans and beyond the splayed, scarred legs of a girl in shorts. Both sets of legs were tied with rope.

Someone was snoring. Someone too close. A snore from an unseen source.

Bug. The name came to her. And with it the shock of knowing that she was not dreaming, had not dreamed.

Better to close her eyes and pretend.

But the girl, Penny, her legs strained against their ropes. Diana heard a moan.

With clumsy hands Diana grabbed the chair and pulled herself up into a seated position. The urge to lie back down was almost irresistible. But hand over hand, and then numb foot over numb foot, Diana pulled herself back up and into the chair.

Caine slept. Bug snored loudly and invisibly on the floor.

Penny blinked at her. “They drugged us,” Penny said. She yawned.

“Yeah,” Diana agreed.

“They tied us up,” Penny said. “How did you get free?”

Diana rubbed her wrists, as though she had been tied up. Why hadn’t Sanjit tied her? “Loose knots.”

Penny’s head wobbled a little. Her eyes wouldn’t quite focus. “Caine’s going to kill ’em.”

Diana nodded. She tried to think. Not easy in a brain still slowed by whatever drug Sanjit had slipped her.

“They could have killed us,” Diana said.

Penny nodded. “Too scared,” she said.

Or maybe they just aren’t killers, Diana thought. Maybe they just weren’t the kind of people who could take advantage of a sleeping foe. Maybe Sanjit wasn’t the kind of kid who could cut a sleeping person’s throat.

“They’re running,” Diana said. “They’re trying to get away.”

“Never hide on this island,” Penny said. “Not for long. We’ll find them. Cut me loose.”

Penny was right, of course. Even drugged Diana knew it was true. Caine would find them eventually. And he
was
the kind who killed.

Her true love. He was not the beast Drake was, but something worse. Caine wouldn’t kill them in some psychotic rage. He’d kill them in cold blood. Diana staggered out of the room, moving like a drunk, slamming into a doorway, absorbing the pain, moving on. Windows. Big windows in a room so huge it made the furniture arranged here and there in separate pods look like dollhouse toys.

“Hey, untie me!” Penny demanded.

She spotted Sanjit immediately. He was in profile against a red sky, standing at the edge of the cliff. There was a little girl with him. Not Virtue, some girl Diana had not seen before.

That’s what Sanjit had been hiding: there were other kids here on the island.

Sanjit looped a rope around the girl in a sort of web. He hugged her. Leaned down to speak to her face-to-face.

No, not the killing kind, Sanjit.

Then he began to lower the clearly terrified girl out of sight. Over the cliff.

There was a shout from the other room. Bug. He yelled, “Ah ah ah ah! Get them off me!”

Bug was awake. Penny had used her power to give Bug a nice shot of fear adrenalin.

As Diana watched, Sanjit himself climbed over the side. He faced the house as he did so. Did he see Diana standing there, watching?

Diana heard Penny coming into the room, at least as wobbly as Diana herself.

“You stupid witch,” Penny snarled. “Why didn’t you untie me?”

“Bug seems to have taken care of that,” Diana answered.

She had to cut Penny off before she saw what was happening. Before she saw Sanjit.

Diana picked up a vase from a side table. Very pretty crystal. Heavy.

“This is nice,” Diana said to Penny.

Penny looked at her like she was crazy. Then Penny’s eyes focused beyond Diana. Out of the window.

“Hey!” Penny said. “They’re trying—”

Diana swung the vase and caught Penny on the side of the head. She didn’t wait to see the effect but staggered, vase still in hand, to the kitchen.

Caine was still asleep. But he wouldn’t be for long, maybe, not long enough. Penny’s power of hallucination could wake the dead. She would send terrors into Caine’s dreams and wake him as she had Bug.

Diana raised the vase over her head. It occurred to her in a moment of wry clarity that while Sanjit might not be the kind of person who would brain someone in their sleep, she apparently was.

But before she could smash the vase down on her true love’s head, Diana’s flesh erupted. Gaping red mouths appeared on her arms, gnashing with serrated shark’s teeth. The mouths were eating her alive.

Diana screamed.

In some corner of her mind she knew it was Penny. She knew it wasn’t real, because she saw the mouths but did not feel them, not really, but she screamed and screamed and her fingers let go of the vase. From far off came the sound of shattered crystal.

The red mouths were crawling up her arms, eating her skin, baring muscle and sinew, eating their way to her shoulders.

And then they stopped.

Penny stood there, snarling. Blood streamed from the side of her head. “Don’t mess with me, Diana,” Penny said. “I could send you screaming off that cliff yourself.”

“Let them go,” Diana whispered. “They’re just nice kids. They’re just nice kids.”

“Not like us, you mean,” Penny said. “You’re a stupid idiot, Diana.”

“Let them go. Don’t wake Caine up. You know what he’ll do.”

Penny shook her head, disbelieving. “I can’t believe he likes you, not me. You’re not even pretty. Not anymore.”

Diana laughed. “That’s what you want? Him?”

Penny’s eyes gave it all away. She looked longingly, lovingly at Caine, still passed out. “He’s all there is,” she said.

Penny reached with a trembling hand and gently stroked Caine’s hair. “Sorry to have to do this, sweetheart,” Penny said.

Caine woke shouting.

THIRTY-NINE

29
MINUTES

ASTRID
FELL
AND
fell knowing it wasn’t real, knowing it was all an illusion of some kind. But it was very hard to believe that when her clothing rippled and her hair flew straight up and her arms were reaching for the walls of a tunnel that couldn’t possibly be real but seemed like it was.

But after a while falling began to feel like floating. She was suspended in the air and things no longer streamed past; they floated around.

Symbols, Astrid thought.

She was relieved to see that her brain still worked. Whatever was happening, whatever power was giving her this intense waking dream, it wasn’t frying her brain. Reason intact. Words right there where she had left them.

Symbols. Neon symbols arrayed across a dark landscape.

Not even symbols, she realized: avatars.

There was a monstrous face framed with long dark hair that formed snakes. Dark eyes and a mouth that dribbled fire.

There was a female being with orange rays, like sunset beams spraying out of her head.

A male with a hand held up and a green light formed in a ball. This avatar was far away, at the edge of the dark playing field.

One avatar was neither male nor female but half of each sex. Metal teeth and a whip.

Nerezza. Orsay. Sam. But what was the fourth avatar?

It was this fourth avatar that seemed to be in contention between two manipulators, two players. One player was represented by a box. The box was closed but for one edge that shone so bright it was hard to look at. Like a toy box containing a sun.

Petey, Astrid whispered.

The other player she felt rather than saw. She tried to turn her eyes toward it, to see it, but it was always just out of range. And she realized that the light box was restraining her, not allowing her to see the opponent.