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The man behind me started squeezing.
“But how much more would I be worth alive?” I asked at once.
Not just to save my life—but Nia’n’an’s.
“I don’t know why your boss wants me dead, but I promise that my father will pay double for me if I’m alive!”
The squeezing around my ribcage stopped, so I continued.
“And it sure would be a shame if I told my father only one of you all saved my life!” I shouted.
I was using the only superpower I’d ever had—manipulating other people’s greed.
And because my father was so fabulously wealthy, it was working.
One of the humans left standing looked to his left and shot his neighbor.
After that, chaos reigned.
I was dropped, so I crawled to Nia’n’an’s side, dragging his snapped leg along with me, ignoring the cuts the sharp rocks on the ground made on my knees and palms.
“Nia’n’an,” I whispered the second I was there. I pulled his head into my lap. I couldn’t even tell if he was breathing or not. The rest of the room didn’t exist anymore, it was just the two of us. “Please, Nia’n’an,” I said, stroking his head and neck.
And then everything around us was silent again, except for the rough breathing of a nearby fighter: the same one who’d hurt Nia’n’an in the first place.
I stared up at him, tears in my eyes, glad he seemed to think he had to kill me for his own sake, because if Nia’n’an had died, I wanted to die with him, right here.
The man looked down at the two of us, with utter contempt in his flat, cold eyes. “Do you really mean to tell me you’re in love with a spider?” he mocked.
“The spider you’re still scared of!” I shouted back at him. Because he was standing out of Nia’n’an’s reach—if Nia’n’an had been awake.
He grunted and brought up the club he’d used to hit Nia’n’an—and I realized it was attached to a battery pack strapped across his back.
“Girl, if this stunned him—I’m afraid it’s going to obliterate you,” he said, preparing to swing.
I realized two things at once in the next moment.
The first: I was prepared to go. All of me, utterly. I knew it, so strongly. I would follow Nia’n’an wherever he went, even unto death.
The second: Nia’n’an was still alive.
He rose his torso up fluidly, he snatched up the leg that I’d brought over with me, and threw it at the man with all of his force, exactly like a spear.
The man stumbled back from the force of it—and that was all the time Nia’n’an needed, to rise up and over me, claw the cable from the club to its battery and sever it, and then take the remaining fighter down, standing atop him, all the immovable weight of his body holding down each of his limbs as he dripped acids from his fangs right atop the man’s face.
Once I realized what was happening, I yipped and looked away—but I didn’t run. I just waited. I knew we would figure everything out when Nia’n’an was finished.
Except he didn’t tell me when he was.
He just collapsed.
Thirty-Five
NIA’N’AN
Somehow I’d done it.
I was irritated that none of the men had survived for long enough for me to interrogate them—such as it would have to be, without a translator—but Sloane was safe.
