Lana shoved the corpse away from her, rolling it back to reveal the remaining pocket. The gun clattered onto the rock, Hermit Jim between Lana and the weapon.
No chance now that she could reach it before Pack Leader could reach her.
Lana fumbled for and found the pocket.
Inside, something cold and hard-edged.
She drew the keys out, squeezed them tight in her fist, then thrust them into her own pocket.
Lana leaned out over poor, dead Jim and swept the flashlight until she found the gun.
Pack Leader growled deep in his throat.
“The Darkness asked for it,” she said.
Her fingers closed on it. Slowly, knees creaking, she stood up.
“I forgot. I have to get something,” she said. She walked directly toward the coyote.
But this was too much for Pack Leader.
“Go to Darkness, human.”
“Go to hell, coyote,” Lana answered. She did not move the light, did not telegraph her move, just snapped the gun up and fired.
Once. Twice. Three times. BangBangBang!
Each shot was a bolt of lightning. Like a strobe light.
There was an entirely satisfying coyote yelp of pain.
In the strobe she saw Pack Leader leap. Saw him land hard, far short of his objective.
She was past him and running now, running blind and heedless down the path and as she ran she screamed. But not in terror.
Lana screamed in defiance.
She screamed in triumph.
She had the key.
TWENTY-SEVEN
17 HOURS, 48 MINUTES
BRIANNA WOKE.
It took a while for her to make sense of where she was.
Then the pain reminded her. Pain all down her left arm, left hip, left calf, left ankle.
She had been wearing a denim jacket over a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers. The hoodie was burned away on her left shoulder and arm, a skid burn. A three-inch oval was gone from her shorts on the same side.
The skin beneath was bloody. She had hit the roof at high speed. The concrete had been like sandpaper.
It hurt amazingly.
She was on her back. Staring up at the bogus stars. Her head hurt. Her palms were scraped raw but nowhere near the scraped-to-the-meat injuries on her side.
Brianna picked herself up, gasping from the pain. It was like she was on fire. She looked, expecting almost to see actual flames.
It was scary bright on the roof of the power plant. So she could see the wounds all too clearly. The blood looked blue in the fluorescent light. Her injuries weren’t life-threatening, she reassured herself, she wasn’t going to die. But oh, man, it hurt and it was going to keep on hurting.
“Happens when you slam concrete at a couple hundred miles an hour,” she told herself. “I should wear a helmet and leathers. Like motorcycle guys.”
That thought offered a welcome distraction. She spent a few seconds contemplating a sort of superhero outfit for herself. Helmet, black leather, some lightning-bolt decals. Definitely.
It could have been worse, she told herself. It would have been worse if she were anyone else on earth, because when she had hit the deck her body wanted to go tumbling out of control. That would have broken her arms and legs and head.
But she was the Breeze, not anyone else. She’d had the speed to slam palms and feet against concrete fast enough—barely—to turn a deadly tumble into an extremely painful skid.
She limped at regular speed over toward the edge of the roof. But the way the building was constructed the edges sloped away, round-shouldered, rather than forming a nice, neat ninety-degree angle. So she couldn’t see straight down, though she could see the gate and the parking lot, all blazing bright. Beyond, the dark mountains, the darker sea.
“Well, this was a stupid idea,” Brianna admitted.
She had attempted to fly. That was the fact of it. She had tried to translate her great speed into a sort of bounding, leaping version of flight.
It had made perfect sense at the time. Sam had ordered her not to enter the power plant’s control room. But by the same token she had to try to get the lay of the land, to see where all of Caine’s people might be positioned. She’d thought: What would be better than the view from on top of the turbine building?
She’d been toying for a long time with the idea of flying. She’d worked out the basic concept, which amounted to running real fast, leaping onto something a little high, then jumping to something higher still. It wasn’t rocket science. It was no different from leaping from rock to rock while crossing a stream. Or perhaps like taking a set of stairs two at a time.
Only in this case the “stairs” had been a parked minivan, and a low administrative building, with the final “step” being the turbine structure itself.
The first two steps had worked fine. She had accelerated to perhaps three hundred miles an hour, leaped, slammed off the roof of the minivan, landed on the admin building, kept almost all of her speed, taken six blistering steps to regain whatever speed she’d lost, and made the jump to the roof of the massive concrete hulk.
And that’s when things had gone wrong.
She was just short of landing on the flat part of the roof and instead hit the shoulder. It was more like belly-flopping than it was the sort of airplane-landing-on-runway situation she was looking for.
She’d seen the concrete rushing up at her. She’d motored her feet like crazy. She’d managed to avoid sliding off and falling all the way to the ground, but her desperate lunge had ended with an out-of-control impact that had come very close to killing her.
And now, now, having reached this perch, she couldn’t actually see much of anything.
No chance now that she could reach it before Pack Leader could reach her.
Lana fumbled for and found the pocket.
Inside, something cold and hard-edged.
She drew the keys out, squeezed them tight in her fist, then thrust them into her own pocket.
Lana leaned out over poor, dead Jim and swept the flashlight until she found the gun.
Pack Leader growled deep in his throat.
“The Darkness asked for it,” she said.
Her fingers closed on it. Slowly, knees creaking, she stood up.
“I forgot. I have to get something,” she said. She walked directly toward the coyote.
But this was too much for Pack Leader.
“Go to Darkness, human.”
“Go to hell, coyote,” Lana answered. She did not move the light, did not telegraph her move, just snapped the gun up and fired.
Once. Twice. Three times. BangBangBang!
Each shot was a bolt of lightning. Like a strobe light.
There was an entirely satisfying coyote yelp of pain.
In the strobe she saw Pack Leader leap. Saw him land hard, far short of his objective.
She was past him and running now, running blind and heedless down the path and as she ran she screamed. But not in terror.
Lana screamed in defiance.
She screamed in triumph.
She had the key.
TWENTY-SEVEN
17 HOURS, 48 MINUTES
BRIANNA WOKE.
It took a while for her to make sense of where she was.
Then the pain reminded her. Pain all down her left arm, left hip, left calf, left ankle.
She had been wearing a denim jacket over a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers. The hoodie was burned away on her left shoulder and arm, a skid burn. A three-inch oval was gone from her shorts on the same side.
The skin beneath was bloody. She had hit the roof at high speed. The concrete had been like sandpaper.
It hurt amazingly.
She was on her back. Staring up at the bogus stars. Her head hurt. Her palms were scraped raw but nowhere near the scraped-to-the-meat injuries on her side.
Brianna picked herself up, gasping from the pain. It was like she was on fire. She looked, expecting almost to see actual flames.
It was scary bright on the roof of the power plant. So she could see the wounds all too clearly. The blood looked blue in the fluorescent light. Her injuries weren’t life-threatening, she reassured herself, she wasn’t going to die. But oh, man, it hurt and it was going to keep on hurting.
“Happens when you slam concrete at a couple hundred miles an hour,” she told herself. “I should wear a helmet and leathers. Like motorcycle guys.”
That thought offered a welcome distraction. She spent a few seconds contemplating a sort of superhero outfit for herself. Helmet, black leather, some lightning-bolt decals. Definitely.
It could have been worse, she told herself. It would have been worse if she were anyone else on earth, because when she had hit the deck her body wanted to go tumbling out of control. That would have broken her arms and legs and head.
But she was the Breeze, not anyone else. She’d had the speed to slam palms and feet against concrete fast enough—barely—to turn a deadly tumble into an extremely painful skid.
She limped at regular speed over toward the edge of the roof. But the way the building was constructed the edges sloped away, round-shouldered, rather than forming a nice, neat ninety-degree angle. So she couldn’t see straight down, though she could see the gate and the parking lot, all blazing bright. Beyond, the dark mountains, the darker sea.
“Well, this was a stupid idea,” Brianna admitted.
She had attempted to fly. That was the fact of it. She had tried to translate her great speed into a sort of bounding, leaping version of flight.
It had made perfect sense at the time. Sam had ordered her not to enter the power plant’s control room. But by the same token she had to try to get the lay of the land, to see where all of Caine’s people might be positioned. She’d thought: What would be better than the view from on top of the turbine building?
She’d been toying for a long time with the idea of flying. She’d worked out the basic concept, which amounted to running real fast, leaping onto something a little high, then jumping to something higher still. It wasn’t rocket science. It was no different from leaping from rock to rock while crossing a stream. Or perhaps like taking a set of stairs two at a time.
Only in this case the “stairs” had been a parked minivan, and a low administrative building, with the final “step” being the turbine structure itself.
The first two steps had worked fine. She had accelerated to perhaps three hundred miles an hour, leaped, slammed off the roof of the minivan, landed on the admin building, kept almost all of her speed, taken six blistering steps to regain whatever speed she’d lost, and made the jump to the roof of the massive concrete hulk.
And that’s when things had gone wrong.
She was just short of landing on the flat part of the roof and instead hit the shoulder. It was more like belly-flopping than it was the sort of airplane-landing-on-runway situation she was looking for.
She’d seen the concrete rushing up at her. She’d motored her feet like crazy. She’d managed to avoid sliding off and falling all the way to the ground, but her desperate lunge had ended with an out-of-control impact that had come very close to killing her.
And now, now, having reached this perch, she couldn’t actually see much of anything.
