Page 187 of Moon Chosen

“If all that is true, why are you and Nik hiding her from us?”

Nik searched the faces until he found Wilkes, but before he could respond to the Leader of the Warriors, Mari spoke.

“They were hiding me because I told them if they didn’t I wouldn’t come—I wouldn’t heal O’Bryan of the blight. There is such a history of violence and mistrust between our peoples that I was unwilling to share the cure with you.”

“That’s cruel!” shouted another Companion.

“More cruel than enslaving the women of my Clan and slaughtering our men?” Mari countered with.

“What does she propose?” Cyril asked Sol.

“She can answer for herself,” Sol said.

Mari lifted her chin and faced the old man. “I don’tproposeanything. There is only one truth here, and it’s a simple one. If you want the blight that infects your Tribe to be cured you will let the Earth Walkers go free, and swear never to enslave them again. If you don’t, the blight can continue to kill you and I’ll say good riddance to a people so driven by their own selfishness that they deserve to be culled from the earth!” Mari shouted at him.

“There’s one other truth,” Cyril’s voice was granite. “You will not be allowed to destroy our world. Kill her and get those Scratchers back in their cages!”

“Cyril, you must do the right thing! We are not monsters! We cannot continue to—” Sol began, but in a motion blurred with inhuman speed, Thaddeus lifted his crossbow and fired. Sol surged forward, knocking Mari to the ground, and the arrow meant for her pierced him through the chest.

“No!” Nik cried and fell to his knees beside his father. “No! Father! Father!”

From the kayaks, men and canines began to leap to the dock, closing on the women, and on Mari, Nik, and Sol.

Suddenly Laru and Rigel were before them. Hackles raised, teeth bared, they formed a wall between them and the encroaching Companions, who hesitated, as even the angriest of Warriors could not abide harming a canine.

From her hands and knees, Mari watched in horror as panic rippled through her people. Screaming, they tried to flee the Companions, and in the midst of their hysteria the torch was knocked to the ground. Mari saw it roll into the straw-floored house and with awhooshit caught flame.

Heart hammering, Mari turned her attention to Nik, who was sobbing over his father.

She crawled to Sol, feeling for his pulse, though when she saw that the arrow had gone through his body, skewering his heart, she knew she would not find one.

Nik was shaking his father’s body. “Wake up! You have to wake up, Father!”

“Nik!” She took his face in her hands and forced him to meet her eyes. “He’s gone.”

He stared at her, at first unseeing, and then his vision focused. “Save him, Mari! Please, save him,” he wept brokenly.

“I can’t, Nik. Your father is dead. I can’t save him any more than I could save Mama.”

There was an explosion behind them that rocked the dock as the first house was engulfed in flames. The roof collapsed inward, and the walls began to blaze, setting the house beside it aflame as well. With an incredible rush of heat, the next house and the next caught as the fire roared.

The heat was terrible. It drove the Companions back to the Channel, and had the women milling around the edges of the dock in panicked groups.

Mari stood, and in a voice amplified by the horror of what was happening around her, she shouted above the blaze, “Earth Walkers, flee! Go to ground! Go to the burrows!” Her words were all they needed. The women leaped into the channel and began to swim for the far shore.

“You bitch! You caused this!”

Mari looked up to see the Companion called Thaddeus standing in his kayak, another arrow notched and aimed at her.

Growling fiercely, Laru and Rigel backed against her, shielding her with their bodies.

He fired his crossbow, but the young Companion who was paddling the kayak, and whose blond Terrier was barking fiercely at Thaddeus, had swerved the boat in time, and the deadly arrow flew harmlessly over the canines’ heads.

“Thaddeus! What are you thinking? You can’t kill the Shepherds!” the young man shouted at him.

Thaddeus ignored him. His sole focus was on Mari. “You have to stand up some time, and when you do, I’m going to kill you!”

There was another explosion, as more of the houses imploded, and the blast of heat forced Thaddeus and the other Companions to cringe away from the flaming dock.