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spires of New Victoria. They seemed to pierce the sky, the
blood of twilight everywhere. I gave the city one final look,
wondering if I would ever tempt its power a third time. I
certainly hoped so.
Once out from beneath its shadow, I moved back onto the
main road beyond the broken barricades. I wasn’t ten feet
before I sensed a presence, resentful for my leaving. Were
it not for the smell, I might have thought it the residuum
of sour grapes—one of the Wakeless bemoaning my escape.
But it was nothing less than the White Gaia herself. She
stood on the far side of the pavement, her sickly yellow light
pouring atop the cracked blacktop, emphasizing each pebble
of artificially blackened stone. I could feel her gangrenous
thoughts pulling at the shadows around me, trying to weed
her garden of stinking blacktop. Her stench—a horrible
mixture of tar and heat—swept back and forth across the
air, causing even the light to recoil. It was the pattern of
cracks in a nearby concrete wall that betrayed her shape, a
corpulence of swollen rot piled into the crude likeness of a
woman. Her head was buried in the sun—just a sickly bloom
of yellowed light spread wide and warm across my upturned
face. This was a powerful omen, indeed. She wanted me
dead in that city, so that I might not continue the Game. She
was threatened by me. Before she vanished into the reeking
air, I managed the Dead Queen a thin smile—a mere sample
of smiles to come.

80 | Mark Anzalone