MILES DISTANT FROM LOGAN AND SIMRALIN, Catalya hunkered down in the bed of a truck hauling tents and cooking supplies, MILES cradling Rabbit in her arms. The truck jounced and swayed over the uneven terrain, causing metal fittings and tools to clank noisily as they rolled about in their wooden containers. The day was hot and windless, but she had found some small shade in the lee of the piles of canvas where the sun did not penetrate, and what air was stirred by their passing helped cool her heated face.
She was two hours gone from Logan Tom and still thinking about him. He’d been so quick to dismiss her, she thought angrily, as if having her with him was a hindrance rather than a help. She supposed she understood his thinking. He was trying to protect her, doing so in the best way he knew, by sending her away. But his thinking was flawed, and she couldn’t help wishing he could have seen so. She was better equipped to survive this country than the Ghosts—perhaps as well equipped, in her own way, as he was. She had been doing so for several years now, and under less-than-ideal conditions. She had been outcast to all but the Senator, and he had protected her so that he could use her. She had been able to survive that; how could Logan doubt that she could survive this demon that was hunting the children?
She hadn’t been joking when she had told him she wasn’t in danger. A demon hunting human children would not bother with her. Not with another Freak. She might have been in danger once, but her transformation was sufficiently progressed that she was as much Lizard as human, and the mix made her something more than either.
Or something less.
She didn’t like thinking about it, and until now she had thought about it less and less since Logan had taken her away from the Senator. The Ghosts had embraced her, too. Even Panther, who had disparaged her so openly at first, had now become her newly appointed protector. As if Panther could protect her better than she could protect him! Her smile came and went. At least Panther didn’t want anything from her. He was just being a friend. He might have been something more, in other circumstances. She thought maybe he even wanted that. But she knew it could never happen.
Not just with him, but with anyone.
She pushed back the loose sleeve of her shirt and looked at her arm where the fresh Lizard patch had appeared two days before. It was already bigger.
Like the one on her leg and the one on her back.
Rabbit lifted his fuzzy face to nuzzle her nose, and she nuzzled him back. Rabbit was her best friend—her only real friend. Rabbit wouldn’t care that she was mutating again, the inevitability of what she was becoming so overwhelming she could barely stand to think of it.
No, Rabbit wouldn’t care.
But the rest of them would.
TWENTY-EIGHT
T HE WIND APPEARED shortly after midafternoon in the worst heat of the day. Hawk noticed it first as a series of small gusts that touched down just long enough to stir the loose earth. The larger blow was distant still, too far away for its full force to be felt, an invisible presence kicking at the barren flats. He was walking point with Cheney, his eyes sweeping the horizon when he could make himself stop looking at the steady, monotonous movement of his feet. One foot in front of the other, second foot in front of the first, over and over. He was bone-weary and disheartened, but he was keeping it to himself.
Wind, he thought in surprise, and then glanced at the cloudless sky. Was a change in the weather coming?
Within minutes, the first breezes blew across his face, hot and dry and empty of any promise of rain. The blown air was thick with dirt, and it stung the skin of his face as it swept past, died away, and started up again. He searched the horizon more carefully. Any clouds he could spy were clustered atop either the mountains they had left or the ones they were heading toward, the former seemingly no farther away and the latter seemingly no closer than when they had set out. He fought down the sensation of having gotten nowhere, of having not moved at all. He understood that distances were deceiving, but the perception was disconcerting nevertheless.
Ahead several paces, Cheney lowered his head against the bursts of wind and plodded on, ruff flattened.
As if he knew where he was going even if Hawk didn’t. The boy smiled despite himself. Good old Cheney.