“Two answers?” Diana asked.

“Look, number one . . . no, numbers one through nine were running away. But the other answer, the one that was much less at, sort of, the forefront of my mind, but that was a possibility . . .” He ran out of steam after all that evasion. “Look, part of me was thinking about those stupid missiles of Albert’s.”

“You think they would kill her?”

He shrugged. “It’s all I could think of that would surprise her. Catch her off guard.” He sighed. The truth welled up inside him. The fact that he loved her. And the fact that it wouldn’t save him.

“We don’t make it out of here, do we?” he said.

Diana shook her head. “No, my love.”

They stood for a long time in each other’s arms. Then, at last, Caine fired up the motor and the boat headed toward the island.

And Diana, with Perdido Beach falling away behind her, with tears rolling down her cheeks, with the light of the onrushing fire reflected in her dark eyes, whispered another boy’s name.

“Little Pete . . .”

His name was Peter Ellison, but everyone had always called him Little Pete.

Sometimes Petey.

And now he heard his name. Like prayers floating up to him from the ghosts.

A voice he knew.

A voice he did not know.

A third voice that reached to him in a way like the Darkness sometimes did, silently, through that emptiness that connected all who had been touched by the Darkness.

In different words, in different ways, they each said, Take me.

Take me, Petey.

Take me, Little Pete.

Take me, you little freak.

TWENTY-FIVE

4 HOURS, 44 MINUTES

PUG, THE CRAZY thing, had actually fired one of the missiles at them as Caine and Diana neared the island.

The missile was not much good against a person with the power to move things with his mind—something Caine knew he would have to remember later. Maybe the element of surprise . . . maybe Gaia wouldn’t know what they were . . .

Yeah. Maybe. And maybe not. In which case, plan B.

Caine did not much like plan B.

But as he lay beside Diana in the big bed, the same one where they had conceived Gaia, he knew he had, finally, no alternative. He was trapped between pains: the pain that Gaia could bring, and the pain that would come if he lost Diana.

Why had she forced him to admit his feelings? Women. Didn’t they know that emotions were meant to be suppressed?

“Love sucks,” Caine muttered.

Diana nuzzled against him, her lips on his neck, sending chills all through his body.

A line of night-blue between separated curtains became a line of gray. Dawn, and time to go.

He slid carefully, silently, out of the bed. Where were his clothes? He’d left them right here, right on the floor, knowing he would have to dress silently to escape undiscovered.

“I hid them,” Diana said.

He turned to face her. “And why would you do that?”

“So you couldn’t sneak away. Really, Caine: how long have I known you? Also . . .”

“Uh-huh?”

“Also I like you like this.”

He swallowed hard, feeling strangely vulnerable and a little silly. “You said we couldn’t . . .”

“Mmmm. True. But I still like looking at you. It’s a good thing you’re so rotten,” she said with a long sigh. “Scares off most girls. I never would have had a chance with you if you’d been a decent human being.”

“I wasn’t running away,” he said.

“I know. I know what you were doing, Caine. And thanks for the thought. But I want to be there to see the end. I want to see you stop her.”

“Yeah,” he said, straining to put some slight shred of optimism into the word. “If you’re coming, then we have to go.”

“Or the reverse of that . . . We have a few minutes,” she said. “Come here. It won’t take more than a few minutes.”

Connie Temple had given up waiting for Astrid to arrive at the rendezvous Dahra had arranged. She had spent the night at a motel, then come back in the morning, just in case. She wrote a note and stuck it on the end of a stick where the northeastern shoreline of the lake met the barrier. The note said, Sorry I missed you. Connie Temple. There was a PS. Just the single word “Sam,” followed by a question mark.

It seemed somehow ludicrous. Like putting a Post-it on the refrigerator door for Sam, back in the old days.

As she was leaving, she noticed a body on the beach that she had not seen before. Maybe someone sleeping, maybe some survivor, most likely a body washed ashore. She watched until she was sure it was not Sam.

Boats were heading out from the outside marina, more lookers drawn by rumors of a slaughter at the lake. She couldn’t bear to think of mothers like herself possibly seeing the bloated body of a child floating just inches away, unreachable. A TV truck had come in the night. She saw cameras with long-distance lenses.

She climbed into the borrowed SUV and drove back down south. She tuned the satellite radio to a news station.

“The fire is clearly now spreading beyond the Stefano Rey. California fire officials are rushing firefighting teams to the perimeter of the anomaly. They are concerned that should the containment fail, the fire would spread immediately to the large forest outside the so-called FAYZ.”

Connie switched stations.

“. . . monstrous and evil children, and the idea that they should be allowed to walk out of that satanic place and infect decent God-fearing people with—”