The Darkness was wrong. It was not time for Peter Ellison to fade away. It was time to hit back.

  Caine had not wanted to feel it happening. He’d wanted it just to be over quick. Bam, over. But he did feel it.

  He felt like maybe he’d stepped into a hot shower and was having that lovely sense of relaxation as the water warms the back of your neck, and you close your eyes, and you sigh away the night’s bad dreams.

  It was warm: that was the surprise. It was warm and it made him sigh. It was like . . . well, not exactly like anything he’d felt, but maybe closest to the way he’d felt after he made love to Diana, and lay beside her, and smelled her, and felt her breath on his cheek, and she would put a hand on his cheek and . . .

  You’re giving me a good memory to go out on, aren’t you, Pete?

  Well, good choice, Caine thought.

  Huh. I can’t feel my body, Caine thought.

  Huh.

  I . . .

[...]

 Gaia still stood. She still lived.

  A million years in the blackness of space.

  Fourteen years in a hole in the ground, growing, mutating, becoming the gaiaphage.

  Not dead yet. The body it inhabited was beyond agony, but the gaiaphage lived, and it could still kill.

  And there before her was Caine, somehow smiling. Not a cynical smirk: a genuine, happy smile.

  And there, rushing up the road, Diana yelling, “No, Caine. No!”

  Even Sam, still alive, excellent: her powers would be undiminished.

  “Hello, Darkness,” Caine said.

  Gaia’s face fell. Her bloody, feral grin faded to be replaced by lips drawn tight in fear. Her killer blue eyes widened as she looked at Caine who was no longer Caine.

  “Nemesis,” Gaia said.

Light, Chapter 30