by Wendy Knight
Selenia’s attack hit her wings, tearing them open. The Garce had gotten one wing during the drive here, but at least she’d still been able to use it. Screaming, Nyx collapsed to the floor. “Let them go,” she whimpered.
“They’re mine. You’ve killed everyone that meant anything to me! You’ve taken them from me, and now I’ll take her from you!” Selenia thrust her hand at Enika.
“The Garce — they’ll be up here any minute. Let me take them to safety.”
“And leave me here alone? Even I can’t fight the pack you’ve brought.” It was like Selenia was two completely separate personalities. The first had been indulgent and confused. This one was terrifying, her bright blue eyes swimming in tears.
“Then we won’t fight them. We’ll run.”
“The sun’s up! We can’t run!”
“Nyx!” Calista burst into the room. Sienna followed close behind, with Constance on her heels.
The Nine were here.
Selenia screamed and dove to Nyx, wrapping her claw-like hands around her throat. “I’ll snap her neck like a branch if you attack.”
Calista froze. Constance flattened her palms, the blood ball dying between her fingers. Sienna searched Nyx’s face, her eyes.
What should I do?
Nyx’s vision was blotchy as her throat screamed in pain. She tried — she tried so hard — but her hands wouldn’t cooperate. It was like she was a puppet, and Selenia was pulling her strings.
Free them.
Somehow, somehow, Sienna heard her. Whirling away, she banged on the tubes. Calista, fast as lightning, raced around her as Constance’s hands lit with another attack. Calista hit the pad with her palm, and the liquid holding Enika immobile drained away. Enika collapsed to the floor and lay still.
“I’ll kill her. I’ll kill her and you’ll never escape me!” Selenia shrieked.
Calista had already freed RayAnna.
RayAnna landed on her knees, coughing and choking. Then her hands reached behind her eagerly, and when she was met with only air, she raised furious brown eyes to Nyx. “How could you?” she screamed.
Sienna blinked in surprise. The fury in Constance’s hands died abruptly.
Slowly, Nyx’s vision faded to black. She couldn’t see, and nothing in her had the will to fight any longer. I’m sorry, Enika.
But then she was free. When Selenia had choked the life out of Nyx, she’d done it to herself as well. Nasty little side effect, that. Fire whooshed through her body, through her burning throat, and she gasped, clawing herself back to her feet. “Get the girls. I’ve got Nyx. Let’s go!”
Callie. It was Callie pulling her to her feet. Nyx forced her eyes open, saw blood — her blood and Selenia’s blood — and then Selenia, struggling to stand. She saw Nima lifting Enika into her arms. Saw Brookyll and Jaycie fighting with RayAnna.
“Are there any others?” Sienna asked, keeping a wary eye on Selenia.
“No. The Garce took care of whatever else was here,” Jaycie said. “The ship was almost empty.”
To Sienna, Cali said, “Andi and Crystal are out there, clearing a path through the Garce. Your friends said the bomb will go off in less than two minutes, Nyx. We’ve gotta move.”
“The sun’s up. You’ll never escape alive.” Selenia laughed hysterically, covered in blood but healing before Nyx’s eyes.
“We came prepared,” Constance said, eyes sparkling.
Nima glanced behind her, nodded once to Sienna, and shot through the halls with Enika’s unresponsive body. Brookyll and Jaycie, with a spitting, shrieking RayAnna between them, followed.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Sienna said, motioning to the others to go, as well. “We’re going to leave, and you’re going to let us. Okay?”
The others were down the hall, around the corner.
Selenia sobbed and sank to the floor.
“Nyx!” Cole screamed. His voice found her somehow — through the Garce’s howls as The Nine fought their way out, through the soft blue metal and Selenia’s cries — she heard him.
The bomb was going to go off. She was out of time.
“Go!” she screamed, shoving Sienna backward. Sienna whirled mid-step and leaped into the air, flying through the hallway and out into the main corridor of the ship. Nyx went to follow her, jumped into the air and spread her wings—
But they didn’t respond.
She tumbled to the ground, hitting the soft metal and rolling several times before she slammed against the wall.
Her wing was broken.
She shoved herself up — saw her goggles across the corridor, and then her mask was ripped from her head with one hand as Selenia’s other hand grabbed the skin of her wing and tore.
Nyx almost screamed. But she knew — if she were to scream, The Nine would come back. And they’d all die. With herculean effort, she didn’t make a sound, although her eyes swam with tears. Selenia, though, did scream, as her own wing tore and started to bleed.
Forgot about that little detriment didn’t you?
But she recovered faster than Nyx.
“You’re not leaving me. You’re my greatest creation. I won’t lose you.”
“We’re both—” Nyx panted, “—going to die.”
Selenia smiled, a sickly sweet smile. “No we won’t. Bombs won’t kill us.”
“But the sun will.” Nyx fell backward, leaning weakly against the wall.
The smell hit her first. The decaying of a thousand bodies. Rolling her head to the side, she saw the Garce coming around the corner of the corridor, eyes bright with blood lust. Selenia leaped to her feet, fiery balls appearing in her hands, and she threw them one after another at the Garce. “We will not die. We will live and we will start a new colony together. We will eradicate this awful planet of all those that stand in our way.”
Nyx pushed away from the wall, landed on her knees. She fought the Garce too, although she wasn’t sure why. Her body seemed to be on autopilot as she created the same attack as Selenia, throwing without telling her arm to throw. She hit the Garce over and over, driving them back.
Selenia. She’s making me do this.
Below them, she heard the bomb go off.
“Nyx!”
Cole’s voice. She grabbed the sound, held on to it, and waited for death. I love you too. Always.
But Selenia had a plan. And her plan didn’t go awry like all of Nyx’s had. She grabbed Nyx by the shoulder, jerked her upright, and shoved her down the hall the way they’d driven the Garce. Stumbling, in so much pain it blurred her vision, only on her feet by Selenia’s sheer force of will. The ship was shaking. Metal fell all around her, and she could see the rise of the giant fire ball from Keven’s bomb.
That’s one huge explosion.
A door slid open and Selenia shoved her sideways into it, and then followed as the door shut behind them. Selenia ignored Nyx while she hit button after button, and then the whole room started to shake.
And then it fell.
Nyx could see through the door. The ship behind them was melting like an aluminum can in a camp fire, slowly curling in on itself. Garce were screaming, trying to escape the flames, but only few succeeded.
The Nine stood in the quickly retreating shadows, fighting the Garce and protecting the colonists. She could see Blair, with his bow. Several of the others from the compounds, fighting the Garce from the roof of an old farmhouse.
She could see Cole, fighting Justin and Trigger, trying to get back to the ship.
Back to her.
But they held him back, because no human could survive that blast. They kept him alive.
Selenia was speaking, her voice frantic, high-pitched with terror. It was a language Nyx couldn’t understand, but somehow the meaning was clear.
Selenia was calling for help.
No matter how much she hurt, Nyx knew. She had to stop her.
And it would kill them both.
“COLE! WE CAN’T GET to her. You can’t go back in there!”
Justin yelled, jerking him back again, pulling him away from the Garce swarming through the smoke, attacking anything they could find. He’d already seen three people from the compound fall under their silent attack.
“I’m not leaving her again!” he jerked away, sprinting toward the fire, only to be tackled to the ground and held there.
“He’s in shock.” Blair appeared above him, his bow clattering to the ground next to Cole’s head, his hands bleeding from the constant effort of reloading his weapon. “Cole. Nyx is tough. If she’s in there, she’ll get out.”
Cole dropped his head to the ground in defeat.
“She was right behind me,” Sienna, who seemed to lead the others, said quietly as she knelt next to him, careful to stay in the shadows. “I wouldn’t have left her if I had known—”
“She’s a damn martyr. She wouldn’t have told you to wait even if she knew she wouldn’t make it. She never planned on coming back,” Keven snarled as he shoved another magazine into his gun.
Enika was alive. She was breathing. RayAnna was screaming, and they’d locked her away. But Nyx—Nyx hadn’t come out.
His eyes blurred as a shadow crossed his face, and initially, he thought it was the Garce, that they’d somehow gotten above them and despite everything The Nine were doing, flying through the shadows, the Garce’s sheer numbers were overwhelming their forces.
But it wasn’t Garce. It was—it was a small ship, the size of a compact car, breaking away from the rest of cylinder.
Cole shoved Trigger off and leaped to his feet. “We’ve gotta stop that!” He grabbed Justin’s gun and swung it to his shoulder, firing after the shimmering blue pod. His bullets, though, bounced uselessly off the metal. The Nine turned the force of their attack on the pod, as well, and while their many attacks did damage, it didn’t slow it. They were forced into the shadows as the pod escaped out of sight.
If that pod escapes, it will go for help. We’ll all die.
Cole raced after it, stumbling over rocks and tumbleweed and the long-dead buffalo carcass littering the island. Keven followed him, the rocket launcher Cole hadn’t even known he possessed tucked under his arm like a massive football. He fell to a stop, leveled the launcher and shot — the rocket shrieked through the sky and hit the pod, but nothing happened. Like everything else the Pys had brought with them, including their very skin, it was too strong for the rocket to penetrate. A black scar spread across the hull, but it didn’t even slow it down.
Keven swore, dropping his head into his hands.
Behind him, the battle still raged against the Garce. Cole could see Blair firing arrow after arrow, bringing down dozens of Garce, and The Nine fought from the shadows of a historic barn, undeterred. But none of that mattered if that pod escaped. He’d seen the retribution the Pys dealt when they were angry. The entire state of Utah could be wiped off the map, just like New York and most of California. Cole looked back at the pod, his heart sinking.
Two dark shapes burst from the hatch.
Dark shapes with wide, beautiful wings.
Cole yelped, grabbed for the scope of his rifle, nearly shoved it through his skull in an effort to get it to his eye.
Nyx. It was Nyx, locked in a deathly embrace with a Py nearly as big as she was.
And flying straight toward the sun.
“Nyx! Noooooo!”
THE GARCE COULDN’T KILL Selenia. A bomb couldn’t kill Selenia. The Nine couldn’t kill Selenia.
But the sun.
The sun could kill Selenia.
She screamed as Nyx’s broken wings carried them higher and higher into the rays of the sun. Nyx felt it burn her — burn her twice, actually — once from her own skin and once through Selenia’s pain. And she didn’t care. Instead, she gathered all her strength, pulled it to the surface, and attacked. She pulled Selenia’s energy from her, her very blood, and used it to keep herself alive, to make her stronger. Faster. To give her the energy to keep flying, despite her broken wing. To numb herself from the sun eating away at them both.
She stole Selenia’s spark.
She didn’t make a sound, but in her head, she screamed at Selenia, thinking somehow Selenia would hear her. The thing you don’t realize about humans is we are a stubborn, stubborn species. It doesn’t matter what the odds are, we’ll fight them. You…” it hurt to think now, “you never had a chance.
Yes, billions had died at the hands of the Pys and the jaws of the Garce. Yes, they’d torn the earth to shreds. But the human race would not die. Not like that. They were born to be fighters, every single one of them. Whether they knew it or not, they all had it in them to fight.
And fight, they had.
Selenia’s beautiful skin was charred and burning, like she’d been light on fire from within. Her wings were curling in, and her screaming had long since stopped.
Nyx realized that Selenia was dead and she was not just as her own wings gave up. She plummeted toward earth, still conscious enough to realize that she was falling straight into a pack of Garce.
Good thing the sun would kill her first.
CHAPTER THIRTY
COLE SKIDDED TO A HALT, NEARLY falling over himself, as he came to the rise of a cliff. Nyx and whatever she’d been holding were nowhere to be seen. He was met, instead, by a pack of Garce on their way to join the rest, drawn by the smell of blood and the noise of the explosion, no doubt. Jerking his gun up, he started firing. Arrows flew over his head, Nyx’s blood-tipped arrows, and he risked a glance over his shoulder to see Keven and Blair had followed him. They’d seen Nyx fall too.
After she’d flown straight into the sun.
Her sun-resistant suit had been in tatters. It hadn’t protected her. They’d all seen her fall from the sky.
“Wait!” Keven bellowed. Cole snapped toward him. “What’s that? What’s that running?”
Cole, his heart in his chest, raised the scope once more. There were three packs of Garce, not huge, but still bigger than any human could take on. And they were all converging on one single form, sprinting through the brush like the hounds of hell were on her heels.
Nyx.
She ran hard; faster and lighter than anything Cole had ever seen.
She wasn’t going to make it.
The two separate packs of Garce were forming a quickly closing wall between Nyx and safety. “Run!” Cole screamed, and as if she heard him, Nyx sped up.
Keven was yelling. Blair was yelling. The Nine stood helpless in the shadows of the barn, also screaming.
Nyx ran out of sight, straight into the Garce.
“Did she make it through? Where’d she go?” Keven stormed back and forth along the ridge. Cole didn’t respond, refusing to blink, refusing to tear his eyes from the spot she’d disappeared from.
Silence fell heavy across them as the seconds ticked on, like a heartbeat.
Slowly dying.
He heard her footsteps first, harsh and fast as they pounded the cracked earth. She was alive.
And then she was rounding the corner, in slow motion, blasting her way through the rocks so that they rained down around her, Garce snarling and biting at her heels. She ran for all she was worth, blood soaking her wings, her chest, her throat. He could hear her ragged breaths even over the howls of the Garce, each one ripped from her lungs.
He jerked his gun to his shoulder. “Help her out!” he yelled, firing into the mass of Garce.
Nyx didn’t even flinch. Even when Keven loaded the rocket launcher and it whistled past her head, even when Cole’s bullets and Blair’s arrows sang past her shoulders, she didn’t hesitate.
She had that much faith in them.
There was twenty yards of water between her and them. Between her and safety.
Nyx dove straight into the salt water, came up screaming as the salt water burned her wounds, and pushed herself further out, away from the beach before she stopped, too tired, too wounded, in too much pain to keep going.
“Nyx!” Cole screamed when she didn’t move,
merely treaded water just beyond the Garce’s reach.
The Garce followed, racing through the gentle waves after her, past the shallow pits of sand until the water was past their heads.
They didn’t come back up.
It wasn’t that the water hurt them, as Cole had always thought. They were too stupid to dig, too stupid to climb…
And too stupid to swim.
The rest of the pack paced the edges, watching and waiting for the others to reemerge. Growling and snapping at a Py so close and yet unable to get her.
Nyx couldn’t swim. The salt had rocketed her pain level to something she couldn’t handle, and she slowly, so slowly, sank below the surface.
Below her, the Garce were still alive. If she sank, they would catch her and tear her apart.
“Nyx, fight!” Cole screamed.
He could see the alien half of her trying to come back, trying to rally around the human half. Lighting her broken wings, pulling her back from the edge she hovered around. Weakly, she started swimming, gaining strength with each yard until she was back on land, on her feet, and running again.
“Get her out of there!” Keven bellowed. Justin and Trigger ran over, dropped to their stomachs, reaching out their hands to her.
Except not, because she was jumping off one wall, catapulting herself to their hands, and then Justin and Trigger were pulling her up as Keven and Blair kept firing on the Garce.
His little runner. Ironic that that was what had saved her, despite all her fancy powers.
She collapsed onto the ground, burned everywhere that her suit hadn’t protected her. Cole ripped his shirt over his head, covering her face and bloody throat as she struggled to breathe. “Cole. I… love. You.”
For several long minutes, Nyx thought she was waking from an awful, beautiful dream. She thought she’d dreamed that they’d driven the Pys out of Northern Utah, and that the Garce had died along with them.
She dreamed that they were safe.
But she could tell without even opening her eyes that she was in her lair. She welcomed the familiar, safe smells and the softness of her bed, the warmth of her blankets against her icy skin. She could hear Cole murmuring.