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Nine?That wasn’t his name. I shrunk back into an even tighter ball.
“Fuckin’ spiders, man, I hate ’em,” said another voice. “Good thing I know an extermin—” it went on, only to be abruptly cut off by grunts and gasps, as though someone had lassoed the speaker by their neck to hang them from the ceiling—a thought which was confirmed by a sudden and disgusting crunch.
“So it’s like that, is it?” said the first voice. “Fuck you!” he shouted—and shots rang out.
Thirty-Three
NIA’N’AN
I had not anticipated quitehow desperate our pursuers had become. Who would be foolish enough to taunt me in my own domain, when I only needed one of them alive for answers?
I tethered the first rude human up to the ceiling by his neck, and then webbed another to the wall.
There were several dramatic crevices and outcroppings on the ceiling that would hide me from view—and I was able to operate the trip lines I’d set above the fighters from a distance with my feet, which dropped heavy webs on two more of them, who both panicked and began screaming as they wrestled, further sticking themselves to the ground.
This allowed me to sneak up on another, dropping my torso down from the ceiling behind him. All I had to do was reach forward to snaphis neck.
I was noticed—another man shouted, and a bullet grazed my shoulder before I could lurch back up.
And then I saw the last thing I ever wanted to see—the claws of my own foot, sawing through the webbing which I had put in place to protect Sloane as she extracted herself from safety.
“Don’t hurt him!” she shouted with her full chest, and the words echoed as everyone assembled turned to look at her.
I dropped to the floor on my remaining seven legs immediately.
There was no time for subterfuge anymore.
Now there could only be violence.
Thirty-Four
SLOANE
I was doingokay until I saw the man shoot for Nia’n’an. The thought of him getting hurt again for me made me almost jump out of my skin.
I loved him.
I’d never been in love before, but if this wasn’t it, there was no other possible word to give this feeling.
I would die without him in my life.
And I would be fucking undone if I sat by and just watched it happen, when I could put an end to it, right away.
“My father—” I started shouting. I knew my dad would pay someone—everyone!—here money. He still loved me, I was pretty sure—but before the words could leave my throat, Nia’n’an dropped from the ceiling, spinning in midair, and he reached out with one of his hindlegs, as if to catch himself, but what he did was grab hold of a man’scollar and yank him to the ground, with the full force of his weight. I heard an awful snapping, and the man sat there like a limp doll afterwards, with his eyes wide.
And Nia’n’an didn’t stop there—I pressed myself back into the place he’d hidden me but kept facing out, with the webbing at my back. I watched him snatch up and truss a fighter, to bring them up to his mouth to bite savagely, before tossing the bound corpse aside. He wheeled quickly, knocking other fighters down like bowling pins with his abdomen, and then slammed it onto the ground, breaking them beneath him.
He was so much faster than he had any right to be at the size he was. He disemboweled one with a slice of his foot, at the same time he webbed another across the room, while he prepared to bite a third. One of the men took a wild shot while he was trying to avoid getting hit, and it ricocheted near me. I yelped and ducked further back, and Nia’n’an looked at me to make sure I was all right—which was when the biggest man tapped him with a club.
It shouldn’t have done a damn thing to him—only it did. It froze him for a second, and then he slumped forward.
“Nia’n’an!” I shouted, and started running for him, hobbling as best I could, using the leg that he’d given me for a crutch.
“Our boss thought you might still be alive,” the massive man said. He appeared to be in charge, and he hit Nia’n’an with the club again, this time swinging it like a baseball bat, catching him upside the head. I heard his jaws clacktogether as I shouted a too-late warning. “Two hundred thousand volts. Five hundred milliamperes. Absolutely lethal to anything smaller than you, but to you?” he said, jabbing Nia’n’an again, with the blunt end of the thing. “Should keep you down long enough. Of course, that’s when I thought we had a reason to keep you alive,” he went on—as a nearby fighter snatched me up.
“Put me down!” I said, kicking back at him. “And don’t touch him again!” I tried to twist out of the man’s grasp. “If you touch him, if you do anything to him—I’ll make sure youneverget any ransom money.”
The man holding the electrified club turned to face me and laughed. “Well, that’s the thing, sweetheart. A lot’s happened since you first came down here. Your father changed the brief—he’s the pragmatic sort. Figures we’re just bringing your corpse back out now, and that’s just what we’ll give him.”
