He dragged himself to his feet, using the cane Daniela had given him to hold himself up. He felt dizzy, his head swimming. He reached for the walkie-talkie at his belt but couldn't find it. He looked down and saw that it had disappeared.
"What do you mean? What are you talking about?" he cried, taking a step toward Eleanora's apparition.
She didn't stay where she was but backed away from him.
He lifted his cane and pointed the tip of it at her.
"You're not going anywhere until you tell me what you mean!" he yelled, his face getting red with the exertion.
"Hello, Dad."
He wheeled around to find Daniela standing behind him, holding the walkie-talkie in her hands. She let it fall from her grasp and it clattered onto the deck. She lifted her foot and smashed the radio's plastic body with the heel of her shoe, so that it splintered apart, useless.
"Daniela . . . ?" he moaned, surprised to see her here on the deck of the boat.
"Where else would I be?" she asked him, her eyes narrowing into slits as she surveyed his ravaged body.
He knew he looked even worse than he had when she'd seen him last, could see her disgust and fear reflected back at him.
"I told you I was dying," he said.
"I don't think you can die soon enough for me, Desmond," she said.
Her words shouldn't have bothered him, but they did. She was the one child whom he thought he had a decent relationship with, but he'd been wrong. Daniela hated him as much as the others. Maybe even more.
"Why did you do it?" she asked.
"Do what?" he said, his mouth suddenly dry.
"Kill my mother and Francesca . . . use Francesca's spirit to cast the spell on Lizbeth that would destroy our world . . . ? I'm sure there's more, but looking at you makes me sick to my stomach, so I won't go on."
He laughed, which sounded more like a croak because his throat was so parched. He'd always enjoyed Daniela's plainspoken bluntness. She was a woman unafraid of saying something that might offend, and he'd appreciated that about her.
She didn't like being laughed at. He could see the anger growing in her eyes. She stepped toward him, grasping for his upper arm with her bare hand.
Her bare hand, he thought. But she can't . . . I'll kill her.
He tried to sidestep her, but he wasn't fast enough. She latched onto him and-
-they were no longer on the prow of the destroyer.
"Where are we?" Desmond asked-everywhere he looked, there was only black, empty space as far as the eye could see.
He blinked and then Daniela was standing in front of him, her rainbow-hued hair a staticky mess as she stared at him with flashing eyes. She lifted her arms in the air and electricity shot out of her fingertips.
"You're in my head," she said. "Only I'm not alone in here. The monster you created in your lab is here with me. And this is its true form!"
She lowered her hands and as she did, light exploded all around him. He tried to cover his face, block out the pain in his eyes, but he found that he was unable to move.
"They're all here to say hello . . ." Daniela gestured around her and what Desmond saw chilled him to the bone.
He was surrounded by a sea of women . . . old women, young women, girls . . . he recognized some and others he did not. They were pale blue and shimmering, their bodies like floating crystals all around him.
"You created this monster," Daniela said. "You murdered my blood sisters and stole their powers . . . but you couldn't steal their souls."
"I didn't know," he said, weakly.
"Yes, you did," Daniela said. "And now you're going to pay."
The women descended on him . . . and Desmond began to scream.
• • •
Desmond was sitting alone on the deck of the destroyer, hands lying limply in his lap, the lion-headed cane resting against the inside of his thigh. A slight breeze blew in from the sea, carrying with it the heady scent of salt and decay . . . but Desmond, the bringer of The Flood, was no longer alive to smell it.
Daniela
They'd stayed inside Daniela just long enough to get their revenge on Desmond. But when Daniela had opened her eyes again . . . she was alone. The creature was gone.
"Laragh? Is she still there?" Niamh asked, but Daniela shook her head.
Niamh looked crestfallen, her eyes filled with a grief Daniela could taste. It made sense. Niamh and her twin, Laragh, had been like two halves of the same person. Now that Laragh was gone, a part of Niamh was dead.
They were sitting inside a maintenance closet. They'd been stashed away in there as soon as everyone had realized Desmond was not coming belowdecks.