Light by Michael Grant

Author:Michael Grant
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

27 HOURS, 13 MINUTES

GAIA WAS MOVING faster, almost at a normal walking speed. The leg was healing. It would have healed altogether if she’d been able to sit and focus on it. But the two mutants were on her trail, and in addition to that she had to keep moving to stay ahead of the fire, which had quickly burned to the edge of the forest and merely awaited some encouragement to spread farther.

It had occurred to Gaia that inhabiting a body meant she, too, was vulnerable to smoke and fire. She had run through her mental inventory of powers that would save her from smoke inhalation. Nothing.

At least the pain was under some control now. The music in her ears helped distract her. The song was called “When All the Lights Go Out.” There was a lot of yelling. Gaia decided she liked yelling music best.

She walked straight down a gravel road, counting on the fact that she had a small lead and was in open ground now where she would see Sam and Caine before they caught up to her. They were a manageable threat. What worried her far more was the knowledge that Little Pete was looking at her. She could feel him watching her. And while Nemesis was fading fast, he wasn’t dead yet.

Bodies were definitely a mixed blessing—they kept you alive, they focused power, and they allowed you to move about. But they felt pain, and they could be killed.

What would happen to the great and glorious creature called the gaiaphage if this body died?

The truth was, she didn’t know. She might end up like Little Pete, a disembodied ghost. Or she might actually, truly, die. Cease to exist.

They hungered, these bodies. Constantly. It was like an insistent, nagging voice in her head: Feed me. Feed me now!

She found a dead body by the side of the road, a boy. At first glance he didn’t seem to be injured. But when she used her foot to push him over, she saw a chunk of wood protruding from his back near his spine. He might not even have known it was there, and had simply bled to death as he walked from the lake toward Perdido Beach.

Well, one less to kill.

She quickly stripped off his clothing and put it on. It was filthy and stained with blood, but her own clothing was worse and now too small as well. It might confuse her pursuers. She ate some of his thigh, then quickly moved onward. In a while she would try out her speed again. This slow walking was boring.

She reached the highway just as a yellow school bus half covered in graffiti came rattling toward her. It stopped by the side of the road, and a dozen kids climbed out. They were carrying implements and buckets. Two of them manhandled a wheelbarrow out through the back door.

One of them, a girl with black hair, looked up, saw Gaia, and frowned uncertainly. Other kids stared past Gaia and pointed not at her but at the forest fire, which was certainly generating a lot of smoke.

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