Chapter 25 #2
I know. “I’m willing to bet you’re the one man on the planet who could get one for me.”
He hesitates, and I wonder how much I could get him to agree to if we kept going. I don’t expect him to follow through on any of it.
“I’ll settle for an ostrich.”
I don’t think he knows what that is.
I know I’m losing him when he starts to turn back to the lab. I don’t know if I’ll get another chance.
I move as quickly as I can, setting my grip, pushing myself up first to get the momentum as I drop and swing…
Pulling both of my legs up, I kick him backward, out of the cage. His curses are in Sianese, and I understand them all.
He hits the console behind him with a loud thud and a hard rush of his breath from his lungs.
Dropping to the ground, I snatch the device on his belt and turn for the door.
I only get a few feet away before the cavrinskh circle.
I freeze, but they’re not snarling. They look at me curiously, like they can’t decide what I am.
Atker shouts, not at me, but at them. Whatever command he gives them, all it does is pull their attention away from me. And when they don’t move, he kicks the closest one in the snout.
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” I say, holding up the device to show him I have it.
All of the blood drains from his face. He tries to run at me, and then for the door… but they trap him in, herding him.
If they’re going to eat him, I don’t need to be here to watch that.
I run straight out into the hallway, rebounding off the wall, and I see my cold boys making their way to me.
I go straight into Arc’s arms.
ARC
Chrys is a dirty, dusty mess, but she kisses me so sweetly, I briefly forget where we are.
Relief—mine and all of theirs too—floods me.
It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, but I hand Chrys off to Risk. “Wait out here with her.”
“Absolutely not.” She glares at me. “Keeping me out here isn’t going to keep me safe. But I have this. It should keep us all safe.”
She hands me a small device, hard plastic, the size of my palm. “It’s what he uses to control them.”
That’s very helpful. “You can come, but you stay behind us with Kissu.”
She nods and I kiss her forehead before turning to the doorway she’d run out of moments ago.
Shock moves in close behind.
A quick sweep of the space almost makes me think he escaped, but the cavrinskh circle near the corner.
The Maker climbed up the wall and crawled part of the way across the ceiling, dangling from support scaffolding. The cavrinskh take turns jumping up to snap at him.
He sees us almost immediately.
“Do something!” His commanding tone is thin, tired.
“You tortured us for years and we thought that fire took care of you,” Shock says, and I note the burned skin where it’s visible around his neck. “Why would we save you now?”
“Because I made you!” His thoughts scream a dozen other reasons. None of them sway me.
He has to readjust his grip.
From behind us, Chrys says, “I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy.”
“You stole our mate and our unborn children to do saints knows what to them,” Risk reminds him.
“The only reason our species can mate with theirs is because of me. I brought her here. You would not have her without me.”
“Do you think that makes up for what you’ve done? To us? To the others?” I snort and it almost sounds like a laugh. “It doesn’t even scratch the surface.”
“You can’t just kill me.”
“We can’t hand him over to the CSS,” Shock says. “They’re afraid of him… he’d probably be out terrorizing whoever he pleases before we get back to the caldera.”
“I don’t like it,” Chrys says, “But I’ve seen these movies… if we don’t kill him, it will come back to haunt us.”
“We killed him before and it still came back to haunt us,” I remind them.
The Maker looks back and forth between us. “You’re not murderers. I didn’t make murderers.”
“Sure you did.”
I flinch at Fault’s arrival. I didn’t hear him come in.
“Fa—” The Maker’s tension eases. “You have to stop them.” He actually looks like he believes Fault will help him.
“There is only one thing I have to do, and I thought that opportunity had been stolen from me.”
Risk turns, clutching Chrys to him, blocking the Maker from view. Fault doesn’t take the time to aim before he shoots him. He doesn’t need to.
One bullet to the center of the Maker’s forehead… the same place he put the cavrinskh’s chips.
He falls and hits the ground with a heavy thud.
“May I?” Fault asks, holding out his hand.
I give him the remote that Chrys gave me, and he points it at the Maker, marking him with a red dot before he presses two buttons. I flinch as the cavrinskhs’ thoughts focus on two words: Eat him.
“How did you know how to do that?”
He looks at me sideways and doesn’t actually answer. You don’t want to know.
I hear the others before I see them. And after a single, confirming glance, I don’t look back. Don’t acknowledge Drift until he’s standing beside us.
I keep my gun trained on the cavrinskh… just in case.
“You should have waited,” Drift says, like we’re the ones who called him in.
“Would you, if it had been Kimba?”
“No.”
At least he didn’t lie.
“I assume the Maker is what was on the menu?” Trench asks.
To that, I just nod. Then, I draw my gun more tightly against my shoulder. The cavrinskh are done. But their thoughts have meandered back to something like Kissu’s.
Kissu knocks his head against my hip. Wiffan safe. Sisans safe.
Some of the cavrinskh turn back to us, others lope out of the space through a tunnel half hidden by a cage.
The ones watching us do so for a moment too long, and I grip my gun tighter. But Fault says, “Get out of here.” And they do.
He looks at me. Go be with your mates.
I turn away.