Caine saw something then on Sam’s face. An emotion he was anxious to conceal. Guilt? Sam suddenly had the need to rub his face. Caine’s instinct was pinging, warning him of . . . well, he didn’t quite know what. And Sam kept his mouth shut, which meant Toto was no help.

Caine swallowed hard and looked helplessly at Edilio.

Edilio nodded, accepting Caine’s surrender.

“You know what?” Caine said. “You want Perdido Beach? It’s all yours, my friend: it’s all yours.”

And thus ends my brief reign, Caine thought mordantly.

He had to fight down the urge to grin. He drew a deep, satisfying breath. His eyes met Sam’s. Sam had a knowing smile, seeing and understanding, as no one else could, Caine’s relief at giving up power.

“This is only because I’m bored,” Caine said. “I’m not running off to rescue Diana. Or do the right thing or any of that.”

“That is not—” Toto began, but Virtue reached over and put a hand over the truth teller’s mouth.

Well, at least Diana would be grateful, Caine thought. And then smiled. Nah. She wouldn’t be.

SIX

73 HOURS, 3 MINUTES

THEY HAD SOON discovered that Gaia needed to eat. So did Diana, but Drake didn’t care about Diana: Diana could starve for all he cared. Diana could die a slow, painful death, hopefully caused by him, by Drake.

Gaia was a very different matter. Gaia could make him feel terrible pain, deep-down-inside pain. Drake’s body, his unkillable body that somehow shared space with Brittney’s, didn’t normally feel much. Only the most intense pain broke through.

What Gaia did to him when she was displeased—that broke through.

Anyway, it wasn’t like Drake could disobey Gaia. She might now look like a little girl, but Drake knew who and what she really was. Who else was he going to serve? He and Caine had parted ways. Caine had become weak. Drake had nowhere else to go if he wasn’t with Caine. And in the gaiaphage he had found someone much tougher, more demanding. More powerful. Someone who would never be weak.

His sharp eyes detected movement on a rock. A lizard. He unwrapped his reddish, ten-foot-long tentacle arm from around his waist. He took careful aim, snapped the bullwhip arm, and sent the lizard flying.

He scooped up the dead thing and dropped it into the canvas bag slung from his belt. He’d so far nailed maybe a half pound of lizards—about all there was to be found out here in the desert emptiness. Should he carry it back to Gaia? Was it enough? Or would she punish him for bringing too little?

On the one hand, even here, a mile away from her, Drake could feel her hunger. Her hunger was his hunger. His only hunger since he—whatever he was—no longer felt the need for food. Or water. Or air.

But pain? He could still feel that, at least the pain she gave him. If he brought her too little, there was the thing the gaiaphage could do to him, that twisting inner agony, that little visit to hell.

Just then he spotted a roadrunner. The bird was about a foot and a half long from sharp beak to the end of its long tail. Of course that was mostly feathers and bone. But maybe a few ounces of actual meat, too, and if he nailed it he could head back to Gaia in the certainty of a pleasant, or at least pain-free, welcome.

They were quick little birds, though. Not as fast as the cartoon Road Runner, but quick and dodgy.

The bird had its head cocked. One eye was aimed right at Drake. He froze. He needed to halve the distance before he could strike.

The bird darted half a foot and suddenly had a lizard in its mouth. The lizard was still alive, thrashing in the bird’s beak, and that distraction let Drake advance with, slow, silent steps.

Then: the unsettling feeling that presaged the emergence of Brittney. Since they had been buried together and resurrected they had shared . . . well, not a body, really. In fact they shared nothing except that they seemed to trade existences. He would be there, and then Brittney would emerge, and while she was present, he was simply gone.

“Not now!” he hissed, frustrated at the thought of losing his prey.

He snapped his whip arm, but it was already a foot shorter. The roadrunner was gone.

Brittney opened her eyes to see she was alone, in a very dry-looking place, nothing but brambles and sand and stone. She noticed the bag on her belt. Looking in she saw a wad of lizards, some in pieces.

The hunger that had motivated Drake filled her as well, the hunger of her god. The thought of Gaia eating well, growing stronger, made Brittney smile. What a miracle to have her god take on human form, become the baby Gaia! No, not a baby anymore, a beautiful little girl, and growing at an amazing rate. By the time Brittney got back to her, she could be a preteen.

Wouldn’t that be exciting!

Food. That was the first thing.

She saw a roadrunner dart into a thornbush. She wasn’t fast enough to catch the bird, but she wondered . . .

Brittney dropped to her hands and knees and crawled to the bush. She got as low as she could and shielded her eyes from the glare of the true sun beating down very hard here near the center of the FAYZ.

It was shadier beneath the bush, but she could still see clearly, and there was her reward: a circular nest and in the center of that nest three small, white eggs, no more than an inch and a half in diameter.

Brittney carefully lifted the eggs from the nest and put them in her bag. She pulled apart a bit of the nest and used it to pack the eggs carefully so they wouldn’t break.

Now this would be a feast for Gaia!

She backed slowly, carefully, out of the thornbush, indifferent to the multitude of tiny cuts.