“You’re welcome,” Brianna said.

The impact had thrown the game player from her hand. It spun through the air and hit a rock. Smashed.

Drake drew back his whip arm.

“Oh, I’ve been waiting for this,” Brianna said.

“No, Breeze,” Sam said. “This is my job.”

Drake whirled, seeing Sam for the first time. Drake’s mud-stained grin disappeared.

“Sam!” he said. “You really ready for another round?”

His whip snapped.

Sam raised his hand, palm out. Brilliant green light blazed. But the whip had upset Sam’s aim. Instead of burning a hole through Drake’s middle, he hit Drake’s foot.

Drake bellowed in rage. He tried to take a step forward, but his foot wasn’t just burned-it was gone. He rested his weight on a charred stump.

Sam aimed and fired and Drake fell onto his back. Both his feet were gone now.

But even as Sam watched, the legs were regenerating. Growing.

“See?” Drake said through teeth gritted more in fury and triumph than in pain. “I can’t be killed, Sam. I’ll be with you forever.”

Sam raised both hands.

Beams of green light burned away the new growth. Sam played the light slowly up Drake’s legs. Calves. Knees. The whip hand thrashed and slashed, but Sam was out of range.

Drake screamed.

Thighs burned. Hips. But still Drake lived and screamed and laughed. “You can’t kill me!”

“Yeah, well, let’s just see if that’s true,” Sam said.

But then, a voice cried out. “Sing, Jill! Sing!”

Nerezza, her face no longer covered with flesh but with what seemed to be billions of crawling cells that glowed a green not much different from Sam’s own killing light.

“SIIIING, Siren!” Nerezza cried. “SIIIING!”

Jill knew the song she was supposed to sing. The song John had taught her.

She had come to fear Nerezza. She’d feared her almost from the first. But then had come the moment when Orsay told Nerezza to go away.

The last words Orsay had spoken. “I can’t go on this way,” Orsay had said.

“What do you mean?” Nerezza had asked.

“You…you have to go away, Nerezza. I can’t go on this way.”

That’s when Nerezza had done the horrible thing to Orsay. With her hands around Orsay’s throat. Squeezing. Orsay had barely seemed to fight back, as though she accepted it.

Nerezza had carried her to the rock and dragged her to the top.

“She’ll be fine,” Nerezza had lied to Jill. “And if you do exactly what I say, you’ll be fine, too.”

Now Orsay stared through blank, empty eyes. She hadn’t seen Mary lead the children to the cliff.

She hadn’t seen Mary pull the children off the edge.

Hadn’t seen them fall.

But Jill had.

Jill sang.

Tho’ like the wanderer,

The sun goes down,

Darkness be over me.

My rest a stone;

Yet in my dreams I’d be

Nearer, my God, to thee,

Nearer, my God, to thee,

Nearer to thee!

Sam’s killing light died.

Brianna stood still completely still.

Astrid froze in mid-cry.

The kids of Perdido Beach, all within sound of the Siren’s voice, stopped, and turned toward the little girl.

All but three.

Little Pete stumbled toward his game player.

Nerezza laughed and reached down to give a hand to Drake, who was swiftly regrowing what he had lost.

“Sing on, Siren!” Nerezza cried, giddy, triumphant.

Sam knew in a distant, far-off way what was happening. His mind still worked, though at a tenth of its normal speed, gears turning like a windmill in the faintest breeze.

Drake could almost stand. In a moment he would come for Sam. He would finish what he had started.

The memory of pain bubbled slowly up within Sam. But he lacked the power to move, to act, to do. He could only watch helplessly. Just like before. Helpless.

But then, out of a corner of his eye, Sam saw something very strange. Something was flying very fast over the ocean.

He heard a distant thwap thwap thwap.

The sound grew louder, as the helicopter roared across the ocean.

Loud.

Louder.

Loud enough.

Sam tried to move and found that he could.

“No!” Nerezza cried.

Sam fired once. The beams hit Nerezza in the chest. It was enough to kill anyone. To burn a hole through any living thing.

But Nerezza did not burn. She simply looked at Sam with a look of cold hatred. Her eyes glowed green, a light so bright it almost rivaled Sam’s fire for brightness. And then, she was gone.

Drake watched as his feet grew back. But not quickly enough.

“Now, Drake,” Sam said. “Where were we?”

He felt Astrid at his side. “Do it,” she said grimly.

“Yes, ma’am,” Sam said.

Sanjit had mastered the art of flying straight ahead.

He had almost mastered the art of aiming in one particular direction. You could do it with the pedals. So long as you were very, very gentle and very, very careful.

But he wasn’t exactly sure he knew how to stop.

Now he was rushing toward land at amazing speed. And he supposed he might as well keep going a while longer. Especially since he didn’t quite know how to stop. Exactly.

But then Virtue yelled, “Stop!”

“What?”

Virtue reached over, grabbed the cyclic, and pushed it hard to the left.

The helicopter banked suddenly, wildly, just as Sanjit noticed the fact that the sky directly ahead of them wasn’t exactly sky. In fact, when you looked at it from the right angle it looked an awful lot like a wall.

The helicopter screamed over the heads of a bunch of kids who looked like they were watching the sunset from the cliff.

The helicopter went fully sideways and the skids screeched along something that was very definitely not sky.

Then it was free again but still sideways and sinking fast toward the ground. An empty pool, tennis courts, rooftops flashed by in a split second.

Sanjit eased the cyclic back to the right but completely forgot about the pedals. The helicopter spun a 360 in the air, slowed, fought its way up, and then hovered in midair.

“I think I’m going to land,” Sanjit said.

The helicopter came down with a crash. The plastic of the canopy cracked and starred. Sanjit felt as if his spine had been jackhammered.

He switched off the engine.

Virtue was staring and shaking and maybe mumbling something.

Sanjit twisted in his seat.

“You guys okay? Bowie? Pixie? Peace?”

He got three shaky nods in response.

Sanjit laughed and tried to high-five Virtue but their hands missed. Sanjit laughed again.

“So,” Sanjit said. “You guys want to go up again?”

Drake bellowed in fear and pain as the green light ate its way relentlessly up his body.

Drake was smoke from the waist down when from his mouth came Brittney’s voice.

Drake’s teeth flashed metal.

The lean, cruel face of the psychopath melted from its own internal fire. Brittney’s full, pimpled face emerged.

“Don’t stop, Sam!” Brittney cried. “You have to destroy all of it, every bit.”

“I can’t,” Sam said.

“You must!” Brittney said through her screams. “Kill it! Kill the evil one!”

“Brittney…,” Sam said, helpless.

“Kill it! Kill it!” Brittney cried.

Sam shook his head. He looked at Astrid. Her face was a mirror of his own.

“Breeze,” Sam said. “Rope. Chains. A lot of it. Whatever you can find. Now!”

Astrid spotted Little Pete. He was safe. Looking for his game. Searching, but not near the edge of the cliff, thankfully.

She forced herself to go to the cliff. She had to see.

She leaned out over the side.

Dekka lay on her back in a mud of bloody sand. Her arms were both outstretched toward the cliff.

The little boy named Justin was limping up out of the surf, holding his stomach. Brianna had saved him. Dekka had saved the rest.