The Glass Arrow(60)

In one move, the Watcher shoves Kiran back and drops me. I hit the ground flat on my back. The air is knocked out of my chest, and though my mouth gapes, I can’t swallow a breath. Stars burst before my vision. Finally the air comes through.

All my thoughts turn to Kiran.

I flip over just in time to see him. He’s tall, but still a head below the Watcher. There’s a moment when they square off, staring at each other, and then the worst happens.

In a flash, the Watcher grabs his wire, and snaps his wrist towards Kiran. The metal extends through the air like a striking snake. Kiran’s fast, but not fast enough. He dodges to the side, and the metal snake latches below his arm, smacking against his ribs.

There is no time. Soon, the wire will coil around Kiran’s body. It will freeze at first, then heat gradually, until it burns and tears through his flesh, his ribs, into his organs. I crawl towards the only thing I think can help. The broken knife handle.

And then I’m up, running back towards the Watcher. With a heave, I leap onto his back and gouge the knife down hard.

It connects. I hear the tear of flesh, made callused by skin treatments, and then the broken blade slides into something soft. I fight back the nausea scratching its way up my throat. This is different from killing an animal. Different even than killing a man, I imagine. I’m trying to kill a monster.

I fall off and stagger back. He falls on me, grasping my throat. The handle is sticking out of his neck at an angle. Blood is spraying out in the pulse of his life force. His thick hand squeezes my neck, and I can feel my windpipe close and bruise. The breath to my brain is cut off. I begin to panic and flail.

Out of the darkness springs a silver beast. With a ferocious snarl, the animal latches onto the Watcher’s calf, tearing through his skin in one bite. He whips his head from side to side, trying to rip the flesh from the Watcher’s leg.

I am released. I suck in a hard, ragged breath, and peel the handle of the wire out of the Watcher’s grip. Struggling, I press a red button, praying that this is the release. It works. The wire retracts from Kiran’s body in a whir of metal and blood.

Kiran falls to his knees. The wound is not fatal, but it’s deep enough to have begun to eat through his skin. The wire never made it around his core; it locked, like a hook, only around one side of his rib cage. I don’t see bone, and for that I’m thankful, but the blood has stained his shirt and is draining in long lines down into the gravel below.

The Watcher is swiping at Brax, but the wolf is edging him back towards the office. Pride flushes through me. Brax has just saved our lives.

Frantically, I search for Daphne, but she’s missing. She must have run around the other side of the office. At least she’s free; the chain with the metal bracelet is strewn across the dirt.

I try my best to haul Kiran to his feet, and though he’s dazed at first, his eyes clear a little as he stands. His jaw is working beneath the skin. I know it’s taking everything he has to stay silent.

He staggers into the poisoned stream. I hesitate, glancing back, but Kiran grabs my hand and we slosh through together. It doesn’t register immediately that I am afraid, but that’s what it is. I’m scared. More scared than I have ever been.

Brax cries—a short, high whine. From behind me comes a thunk, like a tree falling to the ground.

“Brax!” I shout.

The Watcher is on his knees crawling after us, the wound in his neck leaking crimson in a slow drip. One eye is round and crazed, a black circle in a sea of white. The other is mashed to bruises by Kiran’s well-aimed rock. Behind him, Brax shakes and slowly rises from the ground.

The Watcher makes it to the stream. Kiran and I pause on the opposite shore and watch him with bated breath.

A groan gargles out from the giant’s throat. And then he falls face first in the water and lies still.





CHAPTER 15

I’M RIGHT ON KIRAN’S heels as we charge past the white-fenced paddocks into the barn. The horses within lower their heads and stomp their shod hooves. Only when we stop do my knees threaten to collapse. I grasp a stall door before they give out completely, and open my eyes wide to hold back the hot tears threatening to break free.

“We have to go,” I say weakly. “Now. We have to go now.”

He must be hurting, but you couldn’t tell by the look on his face. It’s completely bland, untelling, but his eyes are dark, like a shadow passing over the sun. He unlatches a stall door and disappears within.

The clomping and nervous whinnies from the horses are like screams to my ears. My head jolts towards each noise and soon I’ve spun in a circle, overloaded by my senses.

From outside comes the patter of footsteps, and I duck down, bracing myself to fight once again. Kiran springs back to my side.

Daphne rounds the corner of the hallway into the barn. Her orange hair is a mess of dirt and grass, matted on one side with blood, and her chest is heaving. She’s been crying too; her pale face glimmers like the moon.

She looks from me to Kiran and back to me. Her arms cross over her waist. She’s holding the plastic bottle in one hand—my supplies. I snatch it from her, and it crinkles in my hard grip.

“You’re running?” she asks, like she’s confused. “With a Driver?”

“Get out of here,” I growl. I helped get her free, now she’s on her own. The farther away from me the better.