Part 35 (2/2)

And then of a small planet.

The shattering, fiery impact.

A death. A man obliterated.

And the absorption into that alien virus of something new and incredible: human DNA.

A new life-form. The unintended consequence of a n.o.ble plan.

No G.o.d in His Heaven had created the gaiaphage. And here, now, in the airless pit, no G.o.d could save her.

It was then in her despair that Brittney prayed, not as she always had, but to a new Lord. A savior who waited to be born, to break free.

Brittney bowed her head and prayed to the gaiaphage.

Tanner appeared to Brittney as she prayed.

Her dead brother was an angel. Not with wings and all of that, but she knew he was an angel. And now he appeared to her and spoke in a soft, soothing voice.

”Don't be afraid,” Tanner said.

”Let me die,” Brittney whispered.

”Who do you pray to?” Tanner asked.

”To you,” she said. Because she had no doubt that Tanner was speaking for the gaiaphage.

”I cannot give you death,” Tanner said. ”You are two in one. Your immortality is his. And he is necessary to me.”

”But who made me this way? Why? Why?”

Tanner laughed. ”'Why' is a question for children.”

”I am a child,” Brittney said.

There was softly glowing magma dribbling from Tanner's cruel mouth. He bent down and touched her with fingers of ice.

”I must be born,” Tanner said. ”And then, at the ending of my beginning, you will die.”

”I don't understand.” With piteous eyes she looked up at the angel-turned-devil. ”What do you need me to do?”

”Nemesis must be mine,” Tanner said. ”Nemesis must serve me and me alone. All who defend him and protect him must be destroyed. He must live to serve me.”

”I ... I don't understand.” She knelt with bowed head, unable to look at Tanner, knowing now that he had never been an angel, that he had never been G.o.d's servant, that he was nothing real at all, just the voice of the evil one.

”Nemesis,” Tanner said, hissing the word. ”We are two in one, like you and the whip hand. Two in one, waiting to be born. Only when he is alone, utterly alone, will he serve me. And then I will be burst from this coc.o.o.n.”

”I don't know anyone called Nemesis,” Brittney whispered.

She could feel her consciousness fading. Already her fingers were melting together to form the whip.

In the moments before she lost sight and sound, as she spiraled down into the blackness and Drake surged upward, Brittney's tortured mind saw the image of Nemesis.

She knew his name.

Peter Michael Ellison. Who everyone called Little Pete.

Pete.

HE FLOATED ABOVE the ground in the arms of a monster. His cheek lay against a stone shoulder. Rain no longer fell. Wild colors-green and yellow, brown and red, jagged edges of color sc.r.a.ped at him, wounding his ears.

The sister walked behind him. Her face was as stony as the monster's. Lips too red, eyes too blue, the sound of her breathing too loud.

At each step the monster's pebble skin rubbed against Pete's raw flesh, like sandpaper, like a thousand saw blades drawn slowly over tender scabs.

He wanted to scream, but if he screamed the loud colors would get louder.

He was no longer high atop the sheet of gla.s.s. He had fallen, fallen, down into the world of noise and blazing light. The Darkness was only a distant echo now. Now was now, utterly now and here and like needles under his skin, like knives in his ears. His eyes ached and throbbed.

He coughed and it was a cannon firing out of his chest, up through his throat, his mouth, burning him like blazing lava.

Why was he here? Why in a monster's arms? What was happening to him? After a long and peaceful escape he had been recaptured by the too-much world of furious activity and disjointed images.

His body, his body, that was all he could see or feel, the pain and the ache and the s.h.i.+vering that made him feel as if parts of him might come loose and fall, his body, forcing his attention away from the pristine gla.s.s cliff. Forcing him to feel every s.h.i.+ver, recoil at every cough, to feel, really feel, the sickness that was overwhelming his defenses.

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

5 HOURS, 1 MINUTE.

DRAKE DID NOT see Tanner.

The gaiaphage needed no angelic illusions to reach into Drake's fevered mind. Drake knew all he needed to know. The bugs, the creatures would serve him. He had his army.

And in his head he had a list of names. The freaks first. The normals next. All of them.

All but one, the gaiaphage told him. Kill until there is no one left to kill. But don't harm Nemesis.

Drake was filled with a pure joy he had never known. He felt a wild energy. All his life he had waited for this kind of moment. It was as if every single thing he had ever done-the beatings he had suffered, the much more numerous beatings he had delivered, the pleasure he had found in burning frogs and microwaving a puppy and drawing all those endless loving pictures of weapons, spears, knives, torture devices, all of it, all the hatreds, all the burning l.u.s.t, all the madness and rage, had come together to form this perfect, ultimate moment of crystalline joy.

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