At that Sam had no choice but to go to her, put his arms around her, and kiss her. Because now she was one hundred percent Astrid again.

“So now what?” Astrid asked a few minutes later.

“Drake’s had plenty of time to get Diana to the mine shaft. Going in there after them is a job for an army, not just me alone,” Sam said, thinking out loud. “In any case, however bad it is for Diana, they won’t kill her until they have the baby, and that won’t happen for months.”

“That must mean the gaiaphage has months before the barrier cracks. How do we survive that long?”

Sam shrugged. “That, I don’t know. Yet. But if we’re going after that thing in the mine shaft, we’ll need help. Brianna, if she’s still alive. Dekka, Taylor, Orc. And Caine. Especially Caine. If he’ll help.”

“So we go to Perdido Beach?”

“Slowly. Carefully. Yeah. And we’ll leave a trail of lights for anyone else needing a safe path. I need to get my troops back together. Then we worry about going after the gaiaphage.”

After a while Drake lifted the baby up with his whip hand. He was gentle. He knew what the baby was. Who it was.

He laid it down just as gently on Diana’s belly.

“Feed it,” he ordered.

Diana shook her head.

Yeah, Drake thought with a smirk, all the snark has been beaten right out of that girl. Still, he’d have loved to make her beg.... But no. The will of the gaiaphage was clear in his mind. The baby body must be nurtured, protected. That baby now was the gaiaphage. Drake’s god. And he would follow it. He would obey it.

Even though the baby itself was a girl.

That was a shame. It would have been cooler if it was a dude’s body. But okay, what was a body but a tool or a weapon?

Drake gave Diana the baby. Diana closed her eyes, squeezing out a tear.

The baby latched on and nursed.

Now, at irresistible urging from the gaiaphage, Drake went to Penny. She was white as a ghost. She was shivering like she was cold, although it was hot as always down here.

She was lying in a pool of her own blood.

Fine with Drake. She was too full of herself. Way too impressed by her own power. The gaiaphage didn’t need her.

But a voice in his head made him turn around. The baby was sitting up on Diana’s belly. Sitting up. Looking at Drake.

Drake knew nothing about babies, but that wasn’t right. He knew that much. This was definitely not right. Babies still covered with slime weren’t supposed to be sitting up and making eye contact.

Then, to his even greater shock, the baby seemed to be trying to speak. No sounds came out, but he knew without question what the gaiaphage wanted.

“Yeah,” Drake said, annoyed but submissive.

He curled his tentacle arm around Penny. She was small, not hard to carry. So he brought her, shivering and muttering incoherently, to the baby gaiaphage.

Drake set her down and the baby toppled over. It would have been comical in another time and place. The baby’s giant head was too big for the body to support it very well.

So it toppled, but then, with surprising speed, it was on all fours. It crawled the few inches to Penny.

It reached out a pudgy hand and touched the grisly wound.

Penny gasped, a sound that might have been either pain or pleasure.

Drake felt a stab of jealousy, thinking the gaiaphage might give Penny the gift of a whip hand. But no, all it did was to heal the wound.

The baby healed the shotgun-destroyed flesh in seconds.

And then the baby crawled back to her mother and nursed.

Brianna had not expected to return to Justin. But there he was, breathing softly in the pitch-black. And here she was, a mess of cuts and bruises, but alive.

“It’s me, kid,” she said wearily.

“Did you rescue her?”

“No. I didn’t. I couldn’t pull it off. It was a fight I couldn’t win. Not by myself. Besides…” She stopped herself, unwilling to explain about the baby. And about the overwhelming urge to place the baby on the gaiaphage.

“I need to find Sam,” Brianna said. “Which is pretty hard in the dark.”

“Take me, too, okay?”

“Yeah. Of course, little dude, what am I going to do, leave you here?” Actually the thought had occurred to Brianna. She was already slowed to a crawl by the dark. With Justin she’d be moving at whatever it was that was slower than a crawl.

They began feeling their way, inch by bruising inch, toward the mine shaft entrance. In her imagination, with her boundless optimism, Brianna still hoped that when they emerged they would find the world magically restored. Sun shining. Light everywhere.

But when, after a terribly long time, Brianna finally felt clearer, cleaner air on her face, she knew her hope had been futile.

The trip was from narrow darkness to wide-open darkness. She was still blind. And still slow.

The bonfire in the plaza was much smaller now. They’d realized that it had to be if they were going to keep it burning. Even with Caine’s sullen help, ripping flammable materials out of buildings and carrying them to the fire was not easy. So now the bonfire was more like a campfire. And the light of it barely cast a glow on the first circle of kids. Most sat in darkness, staring at the fire, unable even to see the person sitting beside them.

In the dark fights broke out. And there was nothing Quinn could do but yell at them.

One fight went from curses to sickening thuds of some blunt weapon on flesh and bone.

A few seconds later someone—no one knew who—dashed forward to grab a burning chair leg and ran off into the night.