“I’m only slowing you down,” Lana sobbed. “Leave me here. Why do you want me around?”

“Darkness say: You teach. Pack Leader learn.”

“Learn what?” she cried. “What are you talking about?”

Pack Leader leaped at her, knocked her flat on her back, and stood over her with his teeth bare above her exposed throat. “Learn to kill humans. Gather all packs. Pack Leader leader of all. Kill humans.”

“Kill all humans? Why?”

Pack Leader was salivating. A long string of slobber fell from his muzzle onto her cheek. “Hate human. Human kill coyote.”

“Stay out of towns and no one kill coyote,” Lana argued.

“All for coyote. All for Pack Leader. No human.” With his strained, unworldly voice, Pack Leader couldn’t really rant for long, but the fury and hatred came through in very few words. She didn’t know what a sane coyote would sound like if it could
talk, but there was no doubt in her mind that this was an insane coyote.

Animals didn’t get grandiose ideas about obliterating a whole species. That thought had not come from Pack Leader. Animals thought about food and survival and procreation, if they thought at all.

The thing in the cave. The Darkness. Pack Leader was its victim, as well as its servant.

The Darkness had filled Pack Leader with this evil ambition. But it had not been able to teach Pack Leader the ways to take on the humans. When Lana appeared at the gold mine, the Darkness had seized the opportunity to use her.

There were limits to the power of the Darkness, no matter how terrifying it might be. It needed to use the coyotes—and Lana—to carry out its will. And there were limits to what the Darkness knew, as well.

Gone, Chapter 29