37. Rhaek
RHAEK
I came around the junction fast and hit him low.
He was bigger than I had thought from a distance. Much bigger. He might be lean but he was not weak. Thick through the shoulders, dense through the chest.
But I had already committed.
I went up his back instead of through his front, got my arm around his neck before he had fully turned, and locked it. My wounded arm screamed.
Surprised, he twisted, attempting to hurl me off. But I locked myself in.
I was like a ghi’larian limpet. No getting me off.
Then he laughed.
Actually laughed. A low wet sound that vibrated through his whole chest and up through my arm and into my teeth.
He reached back over his shoulders, claws finding my back, and raked down. I tightened the grip and tucked my head and held on.
He slammed me into the wall.
The rock was not soft. My spine screamed with enthusiasm. He pulled forward and slammed me again, harder. The corridor filled with the sound of it and bounced back at me.
I heard her make a sound — my name, she said my name — but I did not look at her because looking at her meant loosening the grip. And that meant this was over.
He slammed me a third time.
I held on.
He wasn’t laughing now.
The claws found my back again, longer, deeper rakes this time. I tucked tighter and squeezed.
I felt the first change. The breathing pattern shifted, becoming fast and frantic. The slams became slower and less coordinated. The claws lost their strength.
He staggered.
I squeezed harder.
He went to one knee. Then both knees. The enormous body lost its certainty, the muscles melted from iron to tin. I stayed on his back and kept the arm locked and waited for the rest of it to play out.
He went still.
I didn't let go.
One more second. Two. Making absolutely certain.
Then I locked both arms around the neck, my left almost useless now, felt the position, and lifted.
The crunch it made was the kind you don't forget.
He faded before he hit the ground. Edges dissolving, mass becoming nothing more than mist, gone before the echo of it had fully died.
I stood in the empty corridor and breathed. I let my back say what it needed to say and then I turned.
She was there.
Alive. Upright. Her eyes finding mine in the dark. The sight of her hit me somewhere I had no clinical word for and for one moment the crossing and the creature and the wall and all of it simply didn't exist.
I saw only her.
But then, of course, I had to acknowledge she wasn’t alone.
Her eyes went wide.
Not at me.
At the thing behind her.
The blood in my veins went very still.