29. Helsa
HELSA
H e stopped.
Not slowed. Stopped. One step into the run and then completely still, like something had cut the signal between his brain and his legs.
I felt it a half-second before I understood it. The grip around me didn't loosen so much as simply cease, and then I fell face-first into the shallows.
The Withholder was making a sound I hadn't heard from him before. Lower than the hissing. Something with real fear in it.
I turned.
The Controller had the Withholder's tail pinned under his knee.
I hadn't even seen him move.
He was on the ground behind us, both hands now free, the tail flat beneath him. The Withholder was going nowhere.
The Controller looked up. His pale eyes moved from the Withholder to me and back, and I understood, in the same moment that the Withholder understood, that this was a trap.
He’d deliberately let me slip through his fingers.
Knowing the Withholder would snatch me.
Knowing his arms would be full with me.
Still, the Withholder turned on him.
I will give him this: he didn't hesitate. He went in with everything he had, claws and teeth and the full weight of his deep-water body, fast and vicious and completely without strategy.
Scratch and bite and tear. He raked his claws down the Controller's face and opened four new lines of dark blood. The Controller took it and didn't remove the knee.
Then he reached up.
One hand on the Withholder's upper jaw. One hand on the lower. The grip was slow and inevitable, fingers finding their position. The Withholder went very still, eyes bulging, tongue flailing.
Then the Controller pulled.
The sound was nothing like what I expected. A wet finality, quick, as the jaws were wrenched apart.
And then silence.