He panted as he looked down the dark tunnel where the nynt had disappeared.
Lucy squeezed Dray's shoulder, and before he understood what she was about to do, she darted forward and snatched the restraint opener, as well as the restraints Virn had meant to use on her, from where he'd dropped them on the ground during the attack.
She had Dray's restraints off in moments. Virn seemed to realize belatedly that something had changed, but by the time he turned his head to look at them, Dray was already moving, grabbing the shockgun from Virn's loose grasp.
“You'll never get up the cliffs.” Virn spared him another look, then shuffled closer to the wall, his gaze back on the passageway. “I brought the cams down with me.”
Dray saw the bag near the door, and moved toward it, opened it up.
He didn't say anything, but when he looked up, Lucy was watching him, face set and serious.
“I can't get up without help.”
“It's all right.” He pulled the bag straps over his shoulders. “I can. I'll go up and put the cams back, but I'll also try to set up a way to haul you up.”
She nodded. Her eyes were huge, and her skin had gone a shade paler. He put the shockgun in her hand.
“Stay near the entrance, but right up against one side, so you aren't in its way if it tries to fly out.”
“It won't fly.” Virn was leaning back against the cave wall, his breath coming in quick pants. “Nynts don't inhabit caves. It has to be injured.”
That's what Dray had guessed, too.
“Just in case,” he said. “Shoot it if it comes near you.”
She reached out and closed her hand over his wrist. “Be careful.” She lifted up and brushed her lips over his.
He held himself still, letting his forehead rest against hers, and then forced himself to step away. There was no time to indulge in what he wanted to do.
He walked to the far side of the cave mouth, found a hand hold, and swung himself out.
Chapter 29
“What do you think has happened to Bly?” Lucy looked over at Virn, who was crouched down, carefully applying something from the medkit to his shoulder.
He grunted as he slapped something over his wound. “Dead.”
“Nynts eat people?”
“I've never heard of them eating us, but they do attack if they feel threatened.”
She guessed having its safe haven invaded had made it feel very threatened, and being shot would have just added to it.
“Where does it usually live?”
Virn set the medkit aside. “What does it matter? I'm not in the mood to give you a lesson on the nynt.”
She shrugged. “Fine.” It was nerves that had her talking at all. She kept worrying about Dray.
More than half an hour had passed, but since he'd stepped out of the cave and pulled himself upward so casually with one arm, she'd heard nothing but the wind and Virn as he hauled out the medkit from the supplies.
“Give me the shockgun.” Virn had moved up into a crouch, leaning back against the cave wall and watching her with sharp eyes.
“No.” She lifted it, set it to a low setting, and aimed it at him.
“You don't even know how to use it.”
She sneered. “It's not that hard to use.”
He held out his hand.
“No.” She shook her head.
“If the nynt comes back out, and it will, we'll die if you don't give me the shockgun.”
She tightened her hold on the weapon. “I'm not going to keep telling you no. Accept it.”
He rose up, and started moving toward her.
She stared at him, honestly trying to find some logic to his actions.
“You don't think I'll shoot you?”
“I doubt you know how. My life's on the line here--”
Maybe it was because Virn was moving around, blocking the entrance, but the nynt exploded out of the passageway again, shrieking as it slammed into him.
He gave a cry as he pitched forward, and the nynt grabbed at him with its sharp beak, lifted him up by his jacket, and tossed him out of the cave.
Lucy shrank back deeper into the little crevice she'd been tucked into, her grip on the shockgun white-knuckled.
The nynt paused, and she really saw it for the first time. It came closest in shape to a bird of prey from Earth--if there existed an eagle the size of a small pony--but its legs were longer than any eagle or falcon's, its body smaller in proportion to its head and beak, which seemed massive in contrast.
It watched her with one eye, and she carefully upped the shockgun charge to its maximum.
Then it snapped its attention forward and shrieked again, thrusting its neck and head out of the cave and calling.
A lead weight landed in Lucy's stomach as she heard an answering cry.
There were two of them.
“Lucy?”
She jerked at the sound of Dray calling her name from outside the cave.
“Get out of here, there's another one.” She shouted as loud as she could over the nynt's shrieks.
“I can see it.” His voice sounded near her, on the left side of the cave mouth.
The nynt shrieked again, its attention turning in the direction of Dray's voice, and Lucy slowly rose up, shockgun raised.
As it lunged out of the cave, its one wing extended to balance itself, the other bent at a strange angle and dragging down, she shot it. It screamed as it tilted and scrabbled for a hold, its claws scraping rock as it pivoted until it was almost directly facing her, most of its body outside of the cave.
She shot it again, directly in the chest.
It tried to propel itself back inside, one wing beating strongly, the other barely moving, and then it dropped away.
For a moment there was no sound at all, and she took a step toward the entrance.
But the air seemed to split with a scream of outrage, and a massive body, wings extended, claws curved around some strange sea creature that lay limp in its grasp, slammed against the cave entrance, almost completely blocking it.
Lucy stood right in front of it, seeing everything in one clear, terrifying moment; the intricate pattern of feathers on its breast, the strange bulging eyes and purple and white markings on the fish in its claws, the bronze scales that covered those claws.
And then she heard Dray cry out in pain, and she engaged the shockgun again.
With a cry that was as much outrage as pain, the body of the second nynt dropped away, falling back, and Lucy ran forward in time to see it spin as it fell, righting itself, and swooping down to its mate who lay in the water far below.
“Dray!”
There was no answer.
She ran to the edge of the entrance, as far left as she could get, and gripped rocks to lever herself out.
Dray hung, clipped to a rope, swaying silently in the breeze.
Shit!
She wanted to scream it, but she swallowed it down, and turned back to face inside the cave, and took a deep, deep breath.
Time to woman up.
She walked forward to where the storage units had been stacked, and looked through them.
In the second one, she found Bly's pack with his rock climbing equipment.
She still had her special rock climbing shoes. And he had left his gloves inside the pack.
She put them on, and looked through the cams he either had spare, or like Virn, had taken with him as he'd gone.
No thinking about it. No giving herself time to freak out. Just go. Go. Go. Go.
She slung the bag's straps over her shoulders, but with the bag in front, rather than on her back.
She didn't think she'd be able to reach back into it and get the cams if she was hanging from the cliff.
She looked down at the shockgun in her hand and set it down on the ground.
She couldn't carry it and climb. It would have to go.
She loosened her shoulders, blew out a breath, and took a step out of the cave, sliding her foot along to re
ach a small shelf. She grasped a piece of rock above and hauled herself out of safety.
As she looked for the next handhold, she started to sing Le Freak under her breath.
All she had to do was move.
Every pull, every boost meant she wasn't falling to her death.
She found the flaw in her plan when she at last took stock of where she was, and found she was too far left and not able to reach Dray.
He still hung, unconscious--please let him be unconscious--his body gently bumping against the cliff face in the breeze.
She had to backtrack, take a different route, but finally she reached him.
She leaned against the cliff, the bag digging into her chest, and carefully lifted a hand.
It was one of the hardest things she'd ever done.
Her fingers brushed his arm, and she gripped him, then had to let go as his body swung away from her, almost jerking her off her perch.
She blew out a breath, waited for him to swing back and then slid her hand up his chest, too late remembering she was wearing gloves.
She swore, drew her hand back, and gripped the glove's fingertips in her teeth, pulled it off, and tried again.
Third time lucky.
She finally reached his neck, and the warmth of his skin weakened her knees, so she had to lock them together to prevent herself falling.
His pulse beat strong and firm beneath her fingers.
She couldn't see any blood, and she lifted her hand higher, running it over his head.
There was a large bump at the back.
Okay.
She looked upward.
He was on a rope that seemed to extend all the way to the top of the cliff.
She wondered if this was part of his plan to haul her up.
If so, that was good. He was obviously secure, and she could use the rope as a way to guide her up.
She carefully put the glove back on, and then made the mistake of looking down.
She felt everything in her stomach revolt and fought to stop herself vomiting.
She felt the prick of sweat all over her body, cooling uncomfortably in the icy breeze.
She leaned back against the slick, cold rock of the cliff, closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe again, to calm down.
Something nudged her, and her eyes flew open in time to see Dray bump against the rock and then spin away.
It helped to focus her.
Time to go.
“I'll get you out of here. I promise.” She reached out to him one last time, her fingers brushing his arm.
Above her, the color of the light seemed to change, and she looked up, saw the fog and low cloud had been blown away, and there was a spectacular sunset lighting the sky.
Tecra's two moons hung, white and impossibly beautiful, higher in the darkening blue sky, and while the sight should frighten her, because it meant night was falling, after the bland, blanketing white of the last few days, she felt her spirits lift.
She changed her climbing song from Le Freak to Mr. Blue Sky, and started upward.
Chapter 30
The climb down had seemed to take hours.
So when Lucy boosted herself up and found herself at the cliff top after what couldn't have been more than forty minutes, she nearly toppled backward.
In panic, she threw herself forward, fingernails tearing as they scraped on rock, and then, with the pack digging into her chest and stomach, she wriggled onto safe ground.
She twisted herself onto her back, and lay for a moment, looking up at a sky that had turned dark indigo. The two moons were glowing, one full, one in crescent, and the first stars were visible.
It was breathtakingly beautiful.
With a groan, she sat up, tossed the pack to the side and crawled to the pulley Dray had set up on a stone that stood about her own height and seemed to balance on the cliff's edge.
The pulley was fastened with no screws or nails that she could see, but it was holding fast, so she had to trust it was fixed on with some kind of high-tech alien glue that was going to take his weight.
Well, it was already taking his weight, she reminded herself, so it was too late to panic anyway.
The braking system had done its job, and stopped his downward fall, but now she had to pull him up. She remembered from science class that a single pulley halved the weight an object would be if you lifted it by hand. That might have still been a problem for her, because Dray was a good eight inches taller than she was, but she was stronger here, her bone and muscle denser, and she had no other solution.
She lowered herself to the ground and cautiously crawled back to the top of the cliff and peered over, her heart beating fast and hard even though she was almost completely lying on the solid ground above the cliff.
“Dray?”
There was no sound.
She wriggled out a tiny bit more, so she could see the rocks at the cliff's bottom, and the nynt were both still there, huddled together, so big, they were clearly visible.
She was glad neither was dead, but given the choice again, she would still have shot them.
“Okay. Let's do this.” She wriggled back, stood up, and then heard the sound of a hover in the distance.
And she remembered Rua.
Her stomach plummeted and her breathing sped up.
He must have been sent to the nearby town they had spoken about to get supplies, and maybe touch base with their superiors.
And now he was coming back.
She couldn't believe she hadn't thought about him once. Hadn't, also, thought about Bly and whether he was alive or not. She hadn't even gone to check on him.
Priorities. She heaved in a breath. She'd had other priorities.
And now she had no time.
She grabbed the rope, moved around the back of the rock, looked up to check the rope wasn't tangled, and started to pull.
Hand over hand, one foot braced against the rock, leaning back into it as she pulled as gently as she could so that she wasn't bashing Dray against the rock too much. The strain made her sweat, even in the icy air.
The burn in her hands, even with gloves on, made them suddenly cramp, and she almost cried out in pain as she jerked the rope, and then slowly fed it back, hoping the breaking system would engage.
When it did, she hunched over, her shoulders and back weeping in agony, and shook her hands out.
She looked at the rope at her feet, and it didn't seem like she'd pulled up very much.
The wind had changed, and she couldn't hear the hover anymore. Night had also closed in, and although both moons glowed with light, the moors behind her seemed absolutely black and impenetrable.
She knelt slowly, like an old woman, then dropped to her stomach again and crawled to the cliff top to peer over the edge to see how far up she'd pulled Dray.
To her dismay, he looked like he was as far down as he'd been when she'd started.
That obviously wasn't true, she reassured herself. She had been pulling him up. Just not fast enough.
Her arms, already trembling from her climb, felt numb now, but she couldn't stop. Wouldn't stop.
She reversed back, and then used the side of the rock to help pull herself up.
She had just straightened and turned back, steeling herself to pull again, when she was slammed against the rock, her shoulder taking most of the impact.
With a cry, with the thought of kol flashing through her head, she spun around, wishing she'd somehow found a way to bring up the shockgun.
Rua stood an arms-length away, his face so alien, so pitiless, she did what she had refused to do since the first day they'd taken her, she shrank back.
“What is wrong with you?” Her voice was too high as she rubbed her shoulder.
“You don't give up, do you?” His hiss was sinister. “You should be down in the cave.”
His words helped her snap out of her fear. Telling her where she should be was always a red flag to her. Always had been. Even before . . .
&n
bsp; She stepped forward, both hands raised, and shoved him. “No, I don't give up. You think you'd give up if someone stole you?” She shoved him again. “You want to know where I should be? I should be at home on Earth. But I'm here. Dealing with idiots like you.”
For a moment, he said nothing, so close to her she could see the flare of his nostrils as he breathed, saw the golden shards in his eyes as he stared at her. Then he suddenly jumped back, and the move was designed to give him the room he needed to raise his shockgun.
For a moment, her brain froze.
She couldn't get shot again. Thoughts of Dray hanging from the pulley, at Rua's mercy, chilled her more than any Tecran wind.
“You don't want to shoot me.” She lifted her hands to gesture around her. “Why do you even think I'm up here on my own? What did you think I was doing?”
Rua blinked. “Whatever it is, it's linked to that Grih. Otherwise you'd be gone.”
Well, he had her there.
“There was a nynt in the cave.”
She watched him blink again, and she guessed that was the last thing he expected her to say.
“Nynts aren't cave dwellers.”
“This one had a broken wing.”
“They travel in pairs.”
“I found that out. Look down at the bottom of the cliff.” As she said it, she realized that as it was now fully dark, he probably wouldn't see anything.
He edged to the cliff top, standing so close to the edge that she winced.
He looked down, and despite her fear, he obviously could see well enough, because when he turned back, he looked less trigger-happy for the first time.
“Nynts.” He sounded thoughtful. “What happened to Bly and Virn?”
“Bly was first in the cave. I think it got him. I didn't see what happened to him. Virn fought the nynt, and it threw him out, so he's down there with them.”
Rua seemed to absorb the information with little reaction.
“Bly's definitely dead?”
She shrugged. “I don't know. He disappeared at the back of the cave and never came back.”
“Hmm.” He looked down at the nynt again. “What happened to the Grih?”
“He was climbing back down to get me when the nynt's mate attacked him.”
Dark Matters (Class 5 Series Book 4) Page 17