And with that she disappeared, confident that when she returned there would not be a living soul left in Sedona, Arizona.
Just one little thing. Risky was not a native English speaker. She had overlooked the fact that English can be a very tricky language. A language full of homonyms.
Twenty-eight
“Camaro?”
“Mack?”
“You?”
“Here?”
“I had no idea.”
“Me, neither.”
“So, how’s everything in Sedona?”
“Bad. Here?”
“Worse.”
Mack waved his hand toward the volcano where the world’s greatest monster was literally ripping her way up out of the earth.
“Yeah, I noticed,” Camaro said.
“Huh,” Stefan said to Camaro.
“Yo,” Camaro said back. They fist-bumped.
HHHUUUURRRGGGGAAAAAAWWWWW!
That last sound came from the Pale Queen. She was perfectly capable of speaki
ng, but there was no one around to tell her to use her words.
She was a creature half insect, half human, eerily like the ant Mack had earlier had crawling across his eyeball, but with human hands and a mostly humanlike head, and well, okay, there was nothing about the Pale Queen that was really familiar.
If nothing else, she existed on a scale that was simply impossible without great magic. The largest dinosaurs were cocker spaniels compared to her.
The air force and navy were fully awake now, and missiles—small ones, big ones—were zooming in from all directions, from jets overhead, from submarines far out in the ocean, and they would hit her with unerring accuracy and she didn’t even notice. The pale plastic-like armor that covered her wasn’t even stained by the explosions.
The naval destroyer that had come racing from the fleet far at sea was firing its deck guns and machine guns and missiles, and it may as well have been throwing spit wads.
In fact, at least people notice spit wads. The Pale Queen didn’t even bother destroying the ship or the jets or the helicopters that swooped with crazy courage to fire machine guns straight at her face.
They were nothing to her.
They didn’t even exist as far as she was concerned.
They could have all just slept in.
What the Pale Queen did notice was twelve kids standing on the Golden Gate Bridge.
Her terrible eyes were on them. Mack felt her gaze like a beam of fire and ice. He felt chilled to his core and shivered like you do when you have a really bad fever. Uncontrolled shivering.
But at the same time it felt as if his skin was burning. He had to look to convince himself it wasn’t turning as crispy as rotisserie chicken.