AllFreeNovel
Share Us
So, I can finally—finally—have some peace. Just me and Hetty in some quiet place. No interruptions. No explanations. I’ll take her to someplace like her nest, but cleaner and more private. Away from everyone except each other.
The possibility of that peace is what drives me. There’s no way I’m letting Cass or anyone else take it away from me. So, overpowering him is simple. Killing him, effortless—even easy.
He struggles and scratches at his throat as I elevate my arm, moving him about six feet off the ground.
But as I’m about to deal the fatal blow with a slight twist of my hand, the battle at the gate catches up with us.
Abruptly, the world is enveloped in a cloud of dust. We both fall to the ground, an eruption of energy shaking the earth as debris rains down, a veil of dust cloaking the early morning light in gray darkness.
One second, I’m strangling the life out of him, and the next second, I’m on the ground, his body, a dead, heavy weight lying atop me. He’s dead, but I wasn’t the one who killed him. I know it immediately. Maybe it was something from behind—either the force from the blast or a piece of debris.
Coughing, I push off his motionless corpse and stagger to my feet, my ears ringing and my body buzzing. The smoke and dust are billowing from behind me, coming from the very end of Spruce Street, I realize.
Splotches of the bright orange sky shed an uncanny light through the dust, but when I hold my hand up, all I see is smoke. It smells acrid and sharp, and makes the world seem impossibly quiet, deathly so.
I’ve no idea what happened and have no desire to figure it out. In fact, I’m ready to turn toward Dogwood Street—make my way to Hetty, at last—when I hear it. Loud mechanical sounds. Revving, crushing, pushing.
I pause, so hypnotized by the foreign sounds that I almost jump out of my skin when something whizzes by my ear—something narrow and sharp, followed by a loud shattering behind me.
A window breaking. Maybe in one of the houses? I can’t see anything, so I’m not sure.
Before I can fully process it, though, another whirring sound moves through the air. I grunt, my bicep bursting with blazing pain. Sucking in a sharp breath, I bring my hand up to my arm to find it sticky with warm, wet blood. Whatever that was, it grazed my arm.
But the pain disappears as soon as I see something large and rumbling moving through the dust. I drop my hand slowly, watching with awe as a green, lumbering box on wheels rolls through the smoke, stopping about twenty feet away from me. It’s loud, with a dirty, chemical smell surrounding it.
I don’t move right away as voices ring out, and a door opens on the side, two men hopping out. They’re dressed in all green with round hats and long, pointy sticks. I stare at them curiously as they move toward me, yelling and waving their sticks at me.
“Move back!” one of them yells. “Put your hands up or we’ll shoot!”
I don’t move and I don’t put my hands up.
Even through the dust and smoke, I can see that they’re tiny—their heads can’t go up any higher than the middle of my chest. With arms and legs like twigs, their hands appear no bigger than a baby’s, and their feet like the rocks I used to skip on Arrowhead Pond.
In fact, everything about them is crushable and delicate. Even tinier than the smallest beta—Hetty would dwarf them.
I blow out a laugh, amazed. This is who we’ve been so scared of? These tiny ants? They can’t hurt me.
I take a short step forward, and they immediately tense and back up.
“Stop right now!” yells one of them, his voice muffled by fear. “Or we’ll shoot!”
“No,” I reply calmly, stepping closer to them. “I’m not going to stop.”
Their sticks erupt as their tiny fingers pull on the levers over and over again. More whirring sounds fly by my ear and I feel another sting graze my shoulder and my leg.
Vaguely, I feel more hot blood gushing down my body. But it’s not enough to stop me. No, I don’t stop until I’m directly in front of them.
Pressed up against their giant, stinking vehicle, they drop their sticks at their sides, their little faces twisting into worried expressions.
“Put your hands up,” one yells halfheartedly, pushing his stick into my chest.
“If you say so,” I reply, and slowly, I raise my hands in the air.
Nothing happens right away. But then, I release it like a deep breath. Exhaling a minimal amount of pressure, I wrap it smoothly around his neck. He staggers back, his friend holding him up as he wheezes and heaves in an attempt to breathe.
I can feel the weak tendons of his neck flexing under my fingers. Slowly and methodically, I levitate his body off the ground—holding it still for just a second before I clench my fingers tight, snapping his neck quickly and succinctly.
Ecstasy surges through me as he falls to the ground in a heap, his friend looking up at me with wide-mouthed shock. Trembling, he straightens and holds his stick up to his shoulder, shaking so much he can’t hold it straight.
