He turned to Penny, who was already quivering with anticipation.

“Penny will have Cigar from sunrise to sunset. Tomorrow, when the sun rises clear of the hills, it begins. And when the sun touches the horizon over the ocean, it ends.”

Caine saw reluctant acceptance in Quinn’s eyes. The crowd murmured approvingly. Caine breathed a silent sigh. Even Cigar looked relieved. But then, Caine thought, neither Quinn nor Cigar had any idea just how far down into madness Penny had sunk since her long, pain-racked ordeal. The girl had always been a cruel creature. But pain and power had made her a monster.

His monster, fortunately.

For now.

Turk hauled Cigar off to the lockup. The crowd began to disperse.

“You can do this, Cigar,” Quinn called out.

“Yeah,” Cigar said. “No problem.”

Penny laughed.

THREE

53 HOURS, 52 MINUTES

DRAKE HAD GOTTEN used to the dark, to seeing only by the faint green light of his master, the gaiaphage.

They were ten miles belowground. The heat was intense. It probably should have killed him—intense heat, no water, not that much air. But Drake wasn’t alive in the usual way. It was hard to kill what was not quite alive.

Time had passed. He was aware of that. But how much time? It might be days or years. There was no day or night down here.

There was only the eternal awareness of the angry, frustrated mind of the gaiaphage. In the time he’d been down here Drake had become intimately familiar with that mind. It was a constant presence in Drake’s consciousness. A nagging hunger. A need. A pressing, constant, unwavering need.

The gaiaphage needed Nemesis.

Bring me Nemesis.

And Nemesis—Peter Ellison—was nowhere to be found.

Drake had reported to the gaiaphage that Little Pete was dead. Gone. His sister, Astrid, had tossed him to the bugs and in a panic Little Pete had not only caused the nearest, most threatening of the huge insects to disappear: he had eliminated the entire species.

It was a shocking demonstration of Little Pete’s inconceivable power.

A five-year-old, severely autistic, little snot-nosed brat was the most powerful creature in this huge bubble. The only thing that limited him was his own strange, distorted brain. Little Pete was powerful but did not know it. Could not plan, could not understand, could only react.

React with incredible, unimaginable power. Like a toddler with his finger on a nuclear bomb.

Nemesis frightened the gaiaphage. And yet he was somehow necessary to the gaiaphage.

Once Drake had asked. “Why, master?”

I must be born.

And then the gaiaphage had tortured him with shafts of bright pain, punishing Drake for having the presumption to question.

The answer had bothered Drake more than the pain. I must be born. There was a raw, ragged edge to that. A need that went beyond simple desire and drilled down into fear.

His god was not all-powerful. It was a shock to Drake. It meant the gaiaphage might still fail. And then what would become of Drake?

Had he sworn allegiance to a dying god?

Drake tried to hide the fear inside him. The gaiaphage might sense it if his attention was turned Drake’s way.

But as the uncounted days had gone by, as he had listened night and day to the gaiaphage’s desperation and impotent rage, he had begun to doubt. What place did Drake have in a universe where there was no gaiaphage? Would he still be unkillable? Would the gaiaphage’s failure mean his own destruction?

Drake wished he could talk about it with Brittney. But in the nature of things he could never do that. Brittney emerged from time to time, writhing from Drake’s melting flesh to take over for a while.

During those times Drake ceased to see or hear or feel.

During those times Drake drifted in a world even darker than the gaiaphage’s subterranean lair. It was a world so tight it smothered Drake’s soul.

It went on like this—the pressure of the gaiaphage’s need, Drake’s inability to comprehend what he could or should do, and periods of nonexistence in the void.

Drake filled his time with wondrous fantasies. He replayed the memories of pain he had caused. The whipping of Sam. And he worked through in elaborate detail the pain he would yet cause. To Astrid. To Diana. Those two especially, but also to Brianna, who he hated.

The deep lair changed. Weeks ago the floor—the very bottom limit of the barrier—had changed. It was no longer pearly gray. It had turned black. He noticed that the black-stained barrier under his feet felt different, not as smooth.

And he noticed that the parts of the gaiaphage that rested on the barrier were also becoming stained black. So far the stain had spread only a little into the gaiaphage, like the gaiaphage was some sort of spread-out, radioactive green sponge and the stain was spilled black coffee.

Drake had wondered what it meant, but he had not asked.

Suddenly Drake felt the gaiaphage’s mind jolt. Like someone had shocked him.

I feel…

“Nemesis, master?” Drake asked the green-glowing cave walls.

Lay your arm upon me.

Drake recoiled. He had touched the gaiaphage a few times. It was never a pleasant experience. The mind-to-mind awareness of the gaiaphage was horribly more powerful when he made physical contact.

But Drake lacked the will to refuse. He unwrapped the ten-foot-long tentacle from around his waist. He moved to a large clump of the seething green mass, a part he couldn’t help but picture as the center, the head of that centerless, headless creature. He laid his tentacle gingerly across it.